Veggie Sculpture for Kids

Veggie Sculpture is great fun. I have to give an uncle credit for teaching me the basics when I was a bored little girl. He was my momma's brother. They and their siblings, grew up in the days of make-your-own toys, and boy did they know how to do that! Some of that ingenuity was passed down from Grandfather Vinson who made fences for his children's tiny bottle "animals" with large nails to form the fence posts and wire twisted around the nails to make the fence.

If you have a garden this summer, or produce going too big or dry (not rotten) you already have the makings for cute creativity. Above are my tiny eggplant people. They just started to appear while I was peeling little finger eggplant. Clove and fennel seed features.
 Since my grand kids don't live near I am doing a couple of crafty critters for them and their mommy can help them do their own.

 Gather produce such as: squash (the crooked-neck squashes make great animals), cucumbers, beans, eggplant. Supplies such as: sticks for legs & arms, pine needles, leaves, flowers, toothpicks to hold the vegetable parts together. Pruning shears to cut sticks, seeds like fennel, whole cloves.... you get the idea!

Test out how you want the pieces to go together. 

Little ones will need help with shears and the sharp toothpicks.

Cuke Creatures!

Dear Sweet Peas - The Cheese Stands Alone

 Hi Sweet Peas. Remember the cheeses I brought home from Germany? I only recently started carving on this one. He is so delicious! 

 I don't know why he'd have to stand alone. He looks quite handsome. He even has a few freckles. :)

I had forgotten my cheese had a face and glasses, so I took a photo for you. It reminded me of the song and game. The poor cheese stands alone at the end. I read that this song may have actually come from Germany. Get Mommy and Daddy to teach it to you and some friends sometime. You need a few people to play. Even if you don't have enough to play you can still sing it.

The Farmer in the Dell

The farmer in the dell
The farmer in the dell
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The farmer in the dell

The farmer takes a wife
The farmer takes a wife
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The farmer takes a wife

The wife takes a child
The wife takes a child
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The wife takes a child

The child takes a nurse
The child takes a nurse
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The child takes a nurse

The nurse takes a dog
The nurse takes a dog
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The nurse takes a dog

The dog takes a cat
The dog takes a cat
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The dog takes a cat

The cat takes a rat
The cat takes a rat
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The cat takes a rat

The mouse takes a cheese
The mouse takes a cheese
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The mouse takes a cheese

The cheese stands alone
The cheese stands alone
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The cheese stands alone 

"Poor lonesome cheese", says Nanny. "I'll eat you all up and then my tummy won't be lonely."

Form a circle holding hands around one who is chosen to be the farmer. Sing the first verse while moving around the farmer. When the verse is over everyone stops and the farmer makes her or his choice of a wife (sometimes without looking). The wife joins her or him in the center for her verse and so through the verses until either the cheese or dog is chosen.

Love

Love...We use the same word whether we mean how we feel about our family, our God, or chocolate. We know it's not the same thing, right?

Benji says: "Nanny, I love you so much my stomach hurts."

"Nanny, I love you a whole pile of frogs!"

"I love Nanny, she's my friend."

Oh, Benji Boy, I want you to love God that way. I want you to love God like He's your friend, and please Him, and raise up a new generation to love Him. That would make me the happiest, if you and all my grandchildren could grow up adored and taught by your families and raise up more just like you! What a blessing you are to your Nanny and Pappy!

Fun Inside Activities for Young Ones

So here's Benji boy enjoying one of the activities I mention below from the
Preschool Activities in a Bag.

Yucky weather or a busy momma makes for restless children, especially the smallest. Sometimes the cheapest fun is the best fun. I used to make a little boy happy with something as simple as tractors and trucks cut out of old magazines, or a ball of yarn that the kids could wind around table legs, doorknobs, anything that wouldn't fall over and break, turning the whole room into a giant spiderweb. The only rules were that the big kids had to watch out for the littles and it all had to be cut off and thrown away before dad came home. I'll post that photo when I find it.

We had the regular blanket tent creations and giant box caves, but also couch cushion castles and bed pillow tunnels. I once or twice let the kids, nieces and nephews included, use an old foam twin mattress to slide down the stairs. Well, okay....I slid once too, but only because they begged and said it was such fun, and it WAS FUN!

Other ideas for bad weather:

• Go outside anyway. They do where the weather is rainy or snowy a lot.
  
• Games- charades, board games, hink pink, hide & seek, hot & cold, red light/green light, gossip (a good time to discuss gossip with your kids), Mother may I? Simon says....
  
• Go to a museum or the library.
  
• Make & take cookies to the fire department, police station, or post office. (call first)
• Scavenger or treasure hunt.
• Get out your favorite Bible kids songs DVD or CD and move or make up your own motions
• Have a puppet show (stuffed animals work for this)
• Play dress up
• Make playdough or Bread dough creations like we did here (play dough recipe coming)
  

Starfall is a free, interactive website for littles learning their alphabet sounds, and for those beginning to read.

Tumblebooks are ebooks for kids, sometimes narrated by the author. You can get a trial subscription, or access them through a public library with a subscription like this one: Tumblebooks at the Portland Public Library.

One of my favorite sites for littles is DLTK kids Craft page. It has printable paper crafts, alphabet tracer pages, songs and rhymes, mini books, online puzzles, Bible crafts, coloring pages.....

Preschool Activities in a Bag are wonderful fun for preschoolers to do on their own while you work with older children or need an uninterrupted moment for Bible study or housework. Even if you are very crafty and make learning things and games for your kids as I did years ago, these books are great tools to help you plan and do a swap. What's a "swap"? You invite other moms, babysitters, grandmothers...anyone with little people in their lives to make an educational activity in a bag for each participating family, and set a time to get together and swap! That means if there are 20 participants your family will receive 20 different activities! Maybe when you meet and swap you'll have a picnic lunch together as a group, go on a field trip together, or some other extra to get your preschoolers together for some fun. I participated in one my friend, Marsha, organized and then my daughter did one with friends where she lives, in Germany. Here's Benji's stash.


Made by Joel is the blog of a crafty, creative dad. Make sure to check out his printable creations like the paper city, thaumatrope spinner, and easy homemade toys like his branch trees toy and box dollhouse. His blog is chock full of neat, cheap fun, like Cheerios box crafts, simple marionettes, slotted building disks.... well he also has a book, Made to Play.

A Good Belly Laugh

"A merry heart does good, like medicine,
But a broken spirit dries the bones." -Proverbs 17:22

"A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance, But by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken." -Proverbs 15:13

There's nothing as uplifting as hearing my good friend, or my sister laugh uproariously. Both ladies know how to bring the cheer out of the depths of their hearts and let it spill out in side-holding, tear-inducing, I'm-gonna-wet-my-pants laughter. Just let my sister tell you the story of the time the Texas wind blew her nativity set away...."Mary was rolling across the lawn, Joseph was hitting the side of the house, and baby Jesus was no where to be found!"

I love being around cheerful people. God says a merry heart is good medicine and makes a cheerful countenance. What's a countenance? Technically it's your face, but it's also your demeanor, behavior toward others, expression, composure, your bearing. So I think that means what's on the inside comes out in our faces and actions, kind of like the other thing God said about what's in our hearts comes out of our mouths. (See: Luke 6:45, Proverbs 27:19, and Proverbs 4:23.)

As awful as sorrow is, God can use even sadness for our good. We can mourn over our sin. Bad situations can bring us back to God. There are situations were sorrow is better than laughter.

"Sorrow is better than laughter, For by a sad countenance the heart is made better."-Ecclesiastes 7:3

"For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning." Psalm 30:5

Silly Octopus

Tell me, O Octopus, I begs
Is those things arms, or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, Octopus;
If I were thou, I'd call me Us.  ~ Ogden Nash

Poor thing, he couldn't wait for his snack.

Seven feet long, thirty pounds and he squeezed himself through a 2 inch hole!

Putting on support hose has got to come in a close second to that squeeze. ;)

Octopus gets inside lunchbox at Boston aquarium - Boston.com


The Oklahoma Aquarium near Tulsa is a great place
to observe sea and lake creatures.

The next two homeschool discount days are April 21, 2009 and May 18, 2009.
You have to pre-register, but what a fun field trip!
It's one of my favorite places.

Here's an octopus I photographed there.

When we were there last I took photos of the jellies. My favorites! I made this composite photo of a jellyfish swimming. They are so amazing.  

How awesome is our God to think of such interesting creatures?!
Click the photo to see it larger.


By the word of the LORD were the heavens made,
their starry host by the breath of his mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea into jars ;
he puts the deep into storehouses.
Let all the earth fear the LORD;
let all the people of the world revere him.
For he spoke, and it came to be;
he commanded, and it stood firm. -Psalm 33:6-9

I Want a Search Engine

I love Google search. Anything I want to know....sometimes more than I want to know,

I can find with a quick "type and click".

Alas, the search engine which would be the most helpful to me doesn't exist, yet. I want a search engine for my house.

Maybe one for the car too. NO, not a GPS, a search engine.... you know, to find lost stuff within the car itself!

Sometimes I could use one for inside my head, when I forget things.

Yes I know, I'm a nut. It doesn't stop me from REALLY wanting a search engine for my very own.

Can you get me one for Christmas? I'll try to be good and declutter before it arrives so the poor dear doesn't blow a gasket. Or I'll take my very own Sherlock Holmes. He'd look at the scene of the crime and say, "I wish to draw your attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
     "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
     "That was the curious incident," he would remark.

Falling Faces

If you're over 30, have you ever made the horrifying mistake of leaning over and looking at your reflection in a mirror which is laying on a counter? Go do it, I'll wait for you to come back, laughing and crying hysterically......

Not a pretty sight, is it? Well, that's what small children see when we lean over them!
LOL! Now, lean over your mirror, slightly stick out your tongue, shake your face vigorously and say, "Bbbbblllllah!"
It's enough to frighten children and tiny pets. Maybe scar them for life!

What happened to my face? I'm glad I'm not too terribly vain. It would scar ME for life. I'm sure that God lets our vision worsen as we age so we can't see each other's outer flaws clearly. I need failing vision for people's inside flaws too.

I'm so thankful that God looks on the inside and not the outside, even though, I'll admit, sometimes the insides of me aren't very pretty either.

"Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing,
But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised." - Proverbs 31:30

"...the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." - 1 Samuel 16:7b

Isn't It Ridiculous?

Isn't it ridiculous when a grown woman can't help but covet admire an
old car that she knows she could never buy? Oh well, it's cool.





I'd be cool in it, especially when I'm old and start to wear a big floppy hat, white gloves, and long silk scarf trailing in the wind.....

Nah, I'd just lose my hat and get sunburned.
It probably drinks fuel like a teenager eats.

Help me here!
What are the other reasons I can't stand this car?

Your Printer Lies

Money saving tip:

Both of my printers lie, and one of them speaks foreign languages. I know the lying/deception comes from the humans who birthed these infuriating appliances, but I'm not inclined to hold the machine blameless. (I tend to talk to inanimate objects that infuriate me. A sign of immaturity my mother says.)

Most of us have been there, desperately needing to print a document when the printer stubbornly informs us that it has no more ink. We know that isn't the truth because we've pushed buttons to ignore the message and the thing prints 1,000+ more before the pages start to fade. There's a ink and toner cartel. Isn't the stuff expensive enough? Do they really need to make the machines say they're empty, so they can sell even more?

This week I bought black ink for the ink jet, the foreigner. I knew I had to make it speak English first, so I looked up instructions for changing the language: "Go to Maintenance, pick your language"....hold on, I'm not even sure what language it's speaking now! How can I find "Maintenance"? I went to Babelfish to translate some words I suspected were German. I lived there for awhile, surely I could figure this out. I typed in "Verbeteringen" and Babelfish told me my printer was saying, "Struggle-Pray". "That lying contraption should be praying!" I thought. "Repent, you evil printer!" I tried Dutch, and that was "Improvements", and I figured it out from there. Now that I had an English-speaking printer it stealthily replied that it could not possibly print in black, because I needed to check its color ink. It's still not printing.

I had more success with the other machine. I thought it still had toner, even though the toner light was on, and it was refusing to print. I did what I always do when I want technical advice and my son-in-law Randy isn't around, I Googled it. I found other frustrated, geeky, souls who had the knowledge. I pressed buttons in the sequence they advised, and it worked! Take that stupid printer! Some of these people fix printers for a living.