My Little Artist

Not only do all three of these girls have extremely different personalities, they approach all of their tasks...even artwork...in completely different ways. Elora loves to work on details, making everything elaborate and beautiful. Seleia likes to get the point across, working quickly and with few details. She saves the detailed work for special occasions. Amarra, however, was born with an eye for design.  Where her sisters would draw stick figures and flowers at a young age. She would do color blocking. Her pages would be full, bursting with colors, and completely abstract. Here eye for balance and use of negative space are amazing. I'm very excited to see what this kid can do as she gets older. In the meantime, I love working on projects with her. She has a couple of watercolors framed up in the house, and right now we're painting a funky architectural piece we found for a couple of dollars at the thrift store. It was cool but dark and dreary, so I started working on it to lighten it up and give it a fun shabby chic-esque patina. But I didn't get very far before Amarra took over!  She spent an hour this morning getting the first coat exactly how she wanted it, and tomorrow she's going to add the details.  (We haven't decided whether to keep it all in cheerful shades of yellow or to add in other colors. In this house what we set out to create often works itself into something even better somewhere along the way.  I love that.) I love watching her concentration and seeing the love that she puts into her work.  I can't wait to see how this turns out and get it hanging on the wall!

Bread and Jam for Frances

I have to say that I love First Favorites. Even if we did not home school I would likely be going through these guides while the kids were on break! They teach reading comprehension the sneaky way...through fun! (Vol. 1 even includes my very favorite children's book, A Chair For My Mother, among other goodies like If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.) The girls have loved reading the books together, then answering the questions and doing the activities. (Seleia sometimes wishes she could still do First Favorites instead of actual book reports....can't blame her!)  They listen closely to the stories to be able to answer all of the questions correctly, and are quite proud when they do. We've made a chair shaped bank, mouse shaped cookies, and learned all sorts of new things about some of their favorite stories (and some new stories, too!) So now it's Amarra's turn to be Frances for a few days. I'll probably make her some bread and jam.

Buggy Buggy Birthday Cake

For Amarra's Buggy Birthday party she put in a special request for some very "buggy" cake. (I tried to talk her into cake from the bakery, but when the answer is, "But Mom, your cake tastes so much better!", what can you possibly say?) We made chocolate cake for the "dirt" and some green whipped cream/cream cheese frosting with green "sparkles" for the grass. Amarra giggled and giggled as she and I placed the bugs ( two packs of plastic bus from the dollar store) all over the cakes. She then ever so graciously took the time to tell me what each and every bug was. (Mmmm, cockroach frosting.) Some people laughed their heads off when they saw the cakes, a few said, "Ewwww!", but everyone gobbled it up, bugs or no bugs! Amarra was simply in heaven. And really, that's all that counts.

Snowmen and Snowballs and Sledding, Oh My!

What a day! The snow fell steadily throughout the night, so before I went to bed  I pulled the blinds up in the girls' room so they could see a winter wonderland first thing in the morning. Their excitement upon waking was out of control. A blanket of white, as far as the eye could see! They got right to their schoolwork so they could go play outside, but I had to take pity and let them have an hour long "recess" mid-morning. They were in heaven!! They built snowmen (we were out of carrots, so they got celery noses!), sledding hills, made angles and, as always, snacked on snow. Dashiell kept sneaking his mitten off so that he could gobble up some handfuls, too. After some more schoolwork and a nice warm lunch, back out they went! The neighbor kids had a snow day from school, so some friends joined them out front as they built a few more snowmen and another sledding run. Finally, frozen and soaked from head to toe (but beaming from ear to ear!) they headed back in to "bundle up on the inside" with popcorn and hot chocolate. In the world of kid-dom it simply does not get much better than this!

Bug Me

Well, you know we love the library. And OMSI. And we've got a self-procalimed etymologist (though I like "tymolotist", the way she says it) living among us. So, when we happened  to be at the library the day they started registering for an OMSI bug class...well, Miss Amarra was just in heaven. When it was time to talk about the parts of the insect, the instructor asked for volunteers that liked to wear costumes. Elora's hand shot up as she shouted, "I so TOTALLY do!", which made everyone laugh. So she got to go to the class as he dressed her in an abdomen, thorax, wings, legs, and head. Pretty funny stuff! Then the class got to "meet" a few insects from OMSI and learn about their habits, diet, life spans...all that good stuff. Then the class split up to examine specimens through microscopes and do some buggy crafts (yes, I have marshmallow insects living on top of my refrigerator right now). Those who wanted a closer look at the insects gathered, just a few at a time, at the other end of the class.  First in line?  Oh yeah, Amarra. Another mom and I grossed out together a bit as she leaned her face about an inch away from a hissing cockroach, and she petted the Rosie the rose haired tarantula more than once. Her favorites, though, were the walking sticks. (I just know it wont belong before this house is full of even more bugs than the currently captures spiders and grasshoppers.  *shudder*) She looooves those walking sticks. The big surprise, though, was that when Seleia and Elora joined a later group to get up close and personal with the bugs they both petted those hissing cockroaches.  Ewww! (For those not in the know: cockroaches and I?  Not friends.) I love the look on the little boy's face in the background when Seleia pets it...I think I was making the same face. These girls get an A+ in my book, though, between the bugs and the squids. Tough little chickies. And  we came home with another hundred or so bug books from the library that day. That's my tymolotist!

The Little Actresses

A new quarter of acting classes started up this week, and this time Amarra, finally six years old, was old enough to join in. She was so excited...asking, "How many days till my acting class?" every day for about 10 days leading up to her first day. She will be performing with Elora in Cinderella's Mice, a fairy tale from the mouse perspective. I am extremely impressed with Amarra for taking this class, as she can at times be paralyzingly shy (UNlike her big sisters). She wouldn't quite say lines onstage without help during auditions, so she is thrilled that her part will be small. But the real story here is that she auditioned. She got onstage and said lines.I am so incredibly proud of her. I actually tried a bit to talk her out of taking the class because I've had so much fun with her during the girl's classes, but to no avail.  Now it's just the boy and me. But he's pretty fun, too, so I suppose I'll get by.)
Seleia, running around in the bright orange shirt up there, will be performing in The Creature in the Classroom, a play based on and primarily written in poetry. The lines she has brought home already are hilarious. I love watching her laugh every time she reads them.
Performances are March 9th, people! Mark your calendars!

Science Playground

While Seleia and Elora take their science classes at OMSI, Amarra, Dash and I usually head upstairs to play at the Science Playground, a space packed with sensory, motor skill and educational goodness specifically geared for kids aged 0-6. Amarra has a particular fondness for the pulley system and Dashiell, well, he loooves those bean bags! I'm just going to have to break down and make him some to play with at home. Simple pleasures, I find, are often the best, and in this case that definitely holds true! He will laugh, laugh, laugh while retrieving bean bags and placing them through slots of various shapes and sizes. Amarra, generally encouraging him from the other side of said slots, will then gather up the bean bag bounty, take them to the pulley, and deliver them back up to her brother.  Again.  And again. And them a few more times. I just get to sit back, make sure nobody (Dash) topples down the stairs, and enjoy the show. Everybody wins!

Flamingoed

The other morning our resident flamingo enthusiast (that would be Amarra for those of you who might not be in the know) was all a flutter.  Our neighbors lawn was incredibly...pink. I called my lovely neighbor to see what the dickens was going on over there, and was informed that they had been "flamingoed". A local church youth group had the most creative camp fund raiser I'd ever heard of. There was a number you could call to pay to have someone flamingoed. The flamingos would then reside at said house for two days before heading off somewhere else. (There was a sign in her yard along with all of the birds explaining why her lawn was suddenly covered in them. We debated calling to have our own yard flamingoed for the kids, but weren't sure how A would handle it when the two days were up.) "The first thing I thought of", said lovely mom neighbor, "was Amarra. Would the kids like to come over later and play with the flamingos?" Well, umm, yeah!