Johnny Appleseed Day

We celebrated Johnny Appleseed Day on September 26th with an Appleseed Party!! These ideas are all over Pinterest, so we just borrowed the best of what we found and used them for our own party.

Of course, you cannot stage an apple party without making your own applesauce. We got that stewing while we worked so that the delicious smells wafted while we worked. 

First item of business: an apple taste test. Apples come in all colors and flavors, so we had to try a few to find our favorite ones. And, Mrs. C even brought us a lemonade apple - that was certainly something unique! Very citrus-apple tasting - yellow - one step less than crisp. Quite a taste sensation!!

Everyone liked a different type of apple. W's favorite: the pink lady! Is anyone surprised?

After our taste test, we started painting. We had a cardboard box. We put a piece of cardstock in the bottom. Everyone picked their favorite apple colors and I put a dollop of paint in each color on the paper. Then we put a whole red delicious in the box and rolled it all around, through each paint color, coating our paper. After the paint dried, we cut the painted paper into apple shapes. 

Next up, we painted with apple slices. We cut a Granny Smith apple into slices and we painted with the slices and the seeds. That created some interesting art. Everyone had their own style, which ended up being pretty fun to see. 

 

We took a break to eat some pork chops with apple stuffing, cauliflower with pecans and apples, and our applesauce. The kids had roll ups with peanut butter, granola, and apple slices. All good. 

We read the book Apples by Gail Gibbons, which shows pictures of different apple types and talks about the process of growing apple, and Johnny Appleseed's role in getting things rolling. 

 Any excuse for a party, right?

Fall Activities

Soooo - maybe you know that fall is my absolute favorite time of the year. I love the colors and the (ahem!!) weather change and the pumpkin everything. I incorporated my favorite things into some games for W to play. The gourd sorting idea I adapted from Mailbox magazine. W and Ev both got into the whole thing. At first, I had labels so W had to sort them how I wanted it. After our initial sorting and discussion of the different types of gourds and pumpkins, I set the boxes on the coffee table and, low and behold, every couple of days I will see W getting the boxes out and sorting gourds according to something in his head. Ev wanted to play too, though I cannot discern his patterns.

 

For our second activity, I borrowed an idea from W's teacher, Ms. Amanda. She was working on patterns when I dropped W off at school one day. I thought...what better to teach patterns with than candy corn? It would sure motivate me to learn...Pattern: one for the activity, one for mama, one for the activity, one for mama, etc...

That activity worked pretty well. I had to help W figure out the pattern by repeating it and pointing to the pictures over and over. He eventually got it, but it was definitely a concept that we will need to continue to work on. Also - the template was easy to make. I just used Word and Clip Art.

Then we went back to something slightly less challenging - sorting  - of a different ilk. I gave W a bowl full of the autumn mix candy corn. You know the kind with Indian corn, candy corn, and mallowcreme pumpkins. First I had him sort the mix into three different containers- easy. Then I had him pick one kind and count out the pieces. We also did a taste test. Since the items looked different, we were interested to know if they tasted any different...and they do. We described the look, texture, and taste of each.

 

For our final activity, we painted a candy corn pattern using corks from my favorite beverages.I don't have any pictures from the finished product. After drinking two bottles of wine to round out the supply list, mama went to bed. Not really....we were just all covered in paint. 

Again - this is just a word document and a candy corn clip art. Nothing fancy.

 

Those are our fall activities so far. We are working on our fall bucket list and it is almost completed. I borrowed that idea from a friend and can't wait to debut our plans!

Happy Fall!!

 

Happy Birthday, Ev!

Hard to believe that one year ago today I was recovering from a c-section, resting in bed. Katie and Jason were there. Aunt Sue answered the call to arms and was at our house with W and the dogs. Thank goodness for Aunt Sue!!!

Ev was asleep in the little plastic bassinet that they wheel into and out of your room (mainly out because I knew it was my last chance at sleep). Just one year ago. 

And I have to admit that Ev's baby book is a far cry from W's baby book. Poor second baby. W's baby book is very detail oriented and photo intense. Ev's baby book looks like this: 

Ev was born.

I jest. I have kept a journal of Ev's first year. It is less detail rich than W's, but I'm working on it!

So - here are the highlights:

This time last year, Ev arrived (three weeks early, though I'm not complaining about that)...

6:16am

7lbs 4oz

19 inches

8/31 rocking you to sleep tonight, I noticed that you were rubbing your ear -just like Wyatt.

9/1 first college football game

9/17 Today W said that Everett will always be his best friend 

(ha! We must revisit this now that toy "sharing" has started)

9/20 first smile

9/26 first time Aunt Katie watched both of you alone while we went to dinner

10/2 slept through the night (you were amazing about sleeping. I appreciate it)

10/15 first State Fair with Gabby & Aunt Sue

10/20 first party in your honor - Aunt Katie & Gabby threw a Sip & See

10/23 first laugh - with Gabby

12/23 first food - Royal Riviera Pears

1/4 first meat - chicken

1/26 first 5k!

1/29 first double bath with Wyatt

2/26 first double ear infection. poor baby. 

3/12 first word - started saying da-da (thanks for nothing)

3/18 first wave

4/1 first tooth popped out

4/26 first crawl 

5/6 had to lower the crib - you pulled yourself into a sit

5/30 first experience with finger paint. proud that you didn't eat it.

6/20 pulled to a stand on the kitchen windowsill

6/22 first trip to the beach - you LOVED it!

6/25 you FINALLY said ma-ma today. It wasn't in reference to me, but you DID say it. 

7/23 first real fight with W over toys. I am pretty sure that you won. 

8/7 first birthday!! first cupcake!!

So - all of that happened. Now you're one. I can already tell that you're going to give us a run for our money. You're super loud. You won't take "no" for an answer. You laugh in the face of discipline. You are the poster child for second born children everywhere. 

...but, you're pretty sweet, so we're probably going to keep you.

Happy 1st Birthday, Everett.

Emily Mulkey Photography

On Our Summer Bucket List: Art Projects

One of the things on our summer bucket list was to look for opportunities to do more art. Mailbox Magazine sends weekly ideas for craft projects. We usually pair it with some books from the library and call it a day. 

First up, our camp fire. 

We painted several sheets of paper with orange, red, and yellow. 

Once dry, we traced W's hand several times, then cut out the handprints to make our flames. We used brown markers and colored on some paper to make our logs. A special trip to Michael's helped us find sparkly paper for our stars. We used crayons to color paper and then used a large circle punch to make our moon. In that way, it is a mixed medium piece of art. It was fun to put together, it took awhile to get it done, and it looks pretty cute. We finished our day of art by eating marshmallows and talking about s'mores. (Too hot for a real fire?)

 

For our next bit of art, we made some suns. It is so blazing hot out, it seemed appropriate. 

I drew circles of different sizes using lids I had around the kitchen. W colored them using different yellow and orange crayons. After that, I gave him a plastic fork and a plate of paint to make the sun rays. We finished up by adding some glitter. Glitter. Was. Everywhere. He had fun with this one and seemed to like "painting with the fork". Plus, clean up was great - no brushes to wash.

 

 

 

And sweet Ev. Always a good sport. We gave him some paint, too, and let him go to town. This was very hard on my OCD, but Ev seemed to enjoy getting his fingers in the mess. He ended up making a nice painting as well. 

So - the Mailbox Magazine newsletter is free and I always like the projects they send us. Up next - a nice, cool glass of homemade lemonade and some sponge paint to go with it!

The Salamander Room

We are participating in Scholastic's Summer Reading Program, and they [nicely] put together a reading list for W's age group. Some of the books we have, but I put a large chunk on reserve at the public library. The books are hit or miss when competing for W's attention; one that he really had laser focus for was The Salamander Room by Anne Mazar. A boy finds a salamander in the woods and decides to bring it home. [Ugh. Please don't let life imitate art.] His mom asks him a ton of  [very thoughtful] questions - like: where will it live, what will it eat...and the boy has all kinds of creative answers for his mom [none of them based in reality]. I think the wheels started turning in W's mind and he immediately thought we could lift the roof off of our house and create our very own salamander room [no can do]. 

 Instead, we created a salamander habitat. We spray painted a shoe box to create our diorama type habitat. Then we found some rocks and some sticks while out on a nature walk that we used to make our forest floor [we had VERY lame tiny rocks around here, so I had to supplement with a river rock package from the store]. Rock placement was VERY important and had to be very precise. [Look at that sassy face!!]

 

Then we cut multi-colored green yarn and used that to create a mossy forest floor. Placement of that = not so important. We added in some sticks...and we were set. 

Last step: add our salamander [from our piles of lizards, frogs, bugs, and dinosaurs that we have around the house - how did this happen???] and then admire. 

Next up: make our own salamanders. We found a recipe for salt dough. We mixed, rolled, baked, and then let it cool. The mixing was very intense and I would like to go ahead and say that nap lasted THREE hours on the day that all of this salt dough salamander business went down...


 

We waited for them to bake. We talked about how lizard tails can be ripped off for protection and then regenerate...which led to a five fast facts sheet. We added some new words and revisited some classics [Nocturnal...Ev is nocturnal, etc...]

.

W sat down to tell Ev all about the time he accidentally ripped off the tail of a lizard at Pop Pops' house and how Pop Pops threw the tail into the bushes. Why are boys so gross? Clearly, Ev LOVED the story...


Since these ditties take an hour or so to cook up, we also gave Ev a mound of salt dough to play with. It was all fun and games until he tried to eat it. That stuff is SAL-TY.

 
Once cooled, we painted our lizards and added googly eyes. W was in charge of the glue since the eyes were so tiny. We made a few of these guys so that we could paint in many colors vs. only PINK.



We did a watercolor of some salamanders. I would like to say that W did a decent job of staying close to the lines this time. He told me that he can do lots of things now that he is three. Riiiiggghhht.

Finally, You Tube offers a couple of versions of this story. Apparently Reading Rainbow did a whole 28 minute presentation on it. We didn't watch that version, but we did watch THIS version. Not the best, but W was interested in it.

So - that is an overview of our salamander lesson plan. Thank goodness summer school starts next week. I can't maintain this level of "fun"...;) Thank goodness, too, for Pinterest. Lots of good ideas floating around out there so you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Memorial Day!!

Gabby, Pop Pops, and W cleaned up the pool and got everything spiffy for our Memorial Day party on Sunday. We had Sue & Jim, The Levy crew, and our family poolside to celebrate. Gabby made some delicious homemade salsa and vodka lemonade that went down like water. Very dangerous water. Pop Pops grilled burgers and dogs. Katie made a Hummingbird cake AND wore a maternity swimsuit. Brad made homemade ice cream that was to die for! Sue made a delicious coconut cake. 

It was very summer-y. I think Ev was kissed a million and a half times. W...you couldn't catch him to give him a kiss. He was into Popsicles, lizard hunting, eating hot dogs, and swimming. He loves that pool!

The pool was beautiful and FREEZING...which didn't stop W from getting right in...which then led to Jason and Pop Pops embracing the cold...then Aunt Katie and Ryan.

It was a nice kick off to the summer fun ahead! Happy Memorial Day!