Sometimes you just need to take two things that you like to play with and put them together. Like rocks and blocks. This time it was water and LEGOs. Take one large plastic storage container filled with water, some LEGOs, and mix. Or the bathtub. LEGOs are great with water, because when you snap them together they capture air, which makes them buoyant. Rebecca and her friend Samuel did need to do some experimenting with base size vs height though, Rebecca’s first attempt at a boat was three times as high as it was wide, so it tipped right over which she found very concerning!

After the LEGOs, all sorts of things ended up in the water. This is a boat too, can you see the passenger?

Here is a 100% child led activity. I was dragged. Really.

I was cutting loose threads off a red canvas shopping bag that I had just washed and dyed yet another load of clothes pink with, I’m starting to learn, really, although I just did it again with a purple blanket… And Rebecca wanted to make a new bag with the threads I was pulling off. I think she was upset that the bag was loosing threads, and had a hole in the corner. She asked if we could make a new bag, and I grudgingly admitted that *theoretically* we could make a very small bag, but it would be a lot of work. From there I was dragged into helping her set up a tiny cardboard loom, warping it for her and finding a large needle to use to weave the weft threads. From there she wove her little postage stamp of red cloth.

Later when she was helping me make the bed she said, “Wow mama, someone did a lot of work making this big sheet!” So there you go, the last couple months of chaos we’ve become unschoolers.

Yes, I realize that the winter holidays are so last month! And frankly, we did this last month, but there you go, right now my house is full of moving boxes and not so full of exciting crafts! Two weeks to go.

The pine cones were a Friday Art Group project, we painted them white and then sprinkled them with kosher salt – it comes in larger flakes than table salt, but not so large as rock salt, and makes reasonable glitter substitute. We have no glitter in our house. Okay, we have one bottle of clear plastic glitter somewhere, but I don’t know where, and if I did I might not say.

The mini tree is a dead bonsai tree my husband gave me… We stuck it in some flour play dough and baked it. Somehow the tree wicked up the salt (maybe it was salt dough, honestly I don’t remember, it keeps a disgracefully long time.) and turned whiter than it was to start with, kinda cool. We hung lots of little mini ornaments on it with tweezers and fingers. It was a great fine motor activity, and lots of fun. The mini ornaments consist mostly of plastic beads and sequins in various arrangements strung on earring wires from the craft store. I have them from years ago, but next year I should find more earring wires (just short wires with a flat bump at the end – you could just twist a loop instead) and let Rebecca make the ornaments. I don’t think that tree is going to make it to next year, maybe we will have to use one of the still-living bonsai, it would be much sturdier too, even if it wouldn’t give as much of the ‘winter’ aspect.

Notice the haircut? That was a christmas morning present. She’s been wanting that consistently for quite a while, and now that it’s done I like it too, surprisingly enough! (I’m firmly in the long hair camp myself.) She slouched quite a lot when I was cutting off her ponytail, when it was off and she straightened up I was rather shocked at how short she had managed to get it without my noticing! Chin length in front, but up above her hairline in back. And so she ended up with a reverse bob, because that was what happened, and it was practically instantly exactly the haircut that she should have had, no getting used to it period, no who’s child are you? And I would have had no idea how to get there if it hadn’t happened by accident!

Tape them down to the kitchen floor, and rub with the side of a crayon. This is both fun, and it lets you know where to bang in the next step. (Now when we do rubbings Rebecca talks about ‘finding’ things hidden under the paper.

Bang bang bang with a rubber mallet.

Peel the papers apart and see how the plant pigments have transfered to the paper.

We used our geranium (Pelargonium) hedge (yes we live in California where geraniums grow and flower in the dirt year round) and the colors were really lovely. The rose petals we tried weren’t so colorful, but they were from a lightly pigmented flower. (Yes, we also have roses flowering in front of our house in December. It gets a little boring frankly. I miss snow.)

The girls loved whacking the heck out of the plants with the rubber mallet, that’s why I suggest you use the kitchen floor and not a table you don’t want dented.

Also, have you seen Filth Wizardry’s Lego and hole punching card post? Combine paper crafts with LEGO blocks. Brilliant brilliant brilliant!

Filling it with tinsel also wasn’t my idea… But I fully accept that it was very interesting. We could have made more, but I had more fun dripping it out of the tinsel.

Here is the recipe we use, we got it from the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose:
1. Mix 1 cup hot water and 1 1/2 tsp. of Borax until dissolved. Set aside.
2. Mix 2 cups of clear glue and 2 cups of warm water together in a plastic bowl. (We use 1 cup hot water and 1 cup of washable tempera paint for color, and a glass bowl.)
3. Using a metal spoon, slowly pour Borax mixture into glue mixture while stirring quickly. Stir until the mixture leaves the side of the bowl. Gak will be sticky.
4. Knead until Gak is not sticky. The more you work with it the easier it will be.

We leave ours on the kitchen counter (in a plastic container so it doesn’t dry out) for months. If you use washable tempera in the mixture eventually (after a couple months) it goes runny and you have to make more. If you just use water it eventually gets solid, or sticky, I can’t remember, our friend made it that way. But in anycase, it lasts a good long time, probably it will be full of dust and hair before it goes bad.

Gak is fun, but remember that Borax is a poison, you don’t want to inhale the powder, and you don’t want to eat it. So if you think your children might eat this I wouldn’t really recommend making it. We first played with it in the Discovery Museum’s under 5 room, so I’m not sure what to think.

Today, through Kiva.org, I loaned $25 to a woman in Tanzania to support her used clothing store. Join me in my December drive to give a helping hand to people in poverty.

Rebecca has a swing in her (smallish) bedroom. I’m not sure what this says about me, or my husband that he agreed to hang it there. Anyway! It is a very tippy swing, and has been great for her balance. The other day I suggested we stack blocks on it, it was great! It turned an easy block stacking exorcise into quite a challenging one. So, if you just happen to have a tippy Ikea swing in your bedroom… no, I thought not.

Also, see those little people? Big hit. I got some peggish people, thinking I would paint them, but it turns out the smallest, ‘1-1/8″ Baby – Little People‘, are the perfect size to go with European blocks that have a basic measurement of 4cm, like Plan blocks and HABA blocks. So now they are all living with Rebecca’s blocks, and I’m not going to paint them. I think it might be a good idea to stain them different colors, because Rebecca kept getting mad at me when I would loose track of which one was ‘her’. And I might give them eyes, but probably not, and I’m definitely not going to paint them to be different community characters, because they are so much more flexible this way.

There are so many games you can play with maps. This is a map of the San Francisco Zoo that I found and laminated when I was cleaning out my desk. I set it out for Rebecca with a marker, and when she wanted to play with it we started by circling where different animals lived in the zoo, then traced lines on the sidewalk from one animal to another, then traced some of the different colored dotted line tours, and then I think there was a bunch of scribbling. I’m pretty sure we did some other things too, but now I can’t remember! Just pretending your marker is a person and walking them around on the paths is great fine motor pen practice though. I have a map of Gilroy Gardens around here somewhere, I’ll need to get that out too. Of course that will raise the question of when we are going back again, hmm. But it’s a very colorful map! The tradeoffs of motherhood. Maybe I should just print out a Google map of our neighborhood, then we could take it with us on walks to the park, and trace how we got there.

Last week we did a lot of sewing. Sewing on plastic canvas with our art friends, sewing with needle and thread on a marked line, sewing on paper (I’m just the mom, I’m not in charge here.) Then Monday she showed me you could sew through your clothes with pine needles.

I really need to draw her a cloth doll to sew (possibly turn) and stuff. I’m sure she could do it. I guess it would be simplest to start with felt. Felt and not turning, or cloth and turning. Hmm.

I got this idea from MaryAnn Kohl’s Math Arts, although I think the math connection is pretty weak it sounded like fun from a sensory perspective. The version in the book was more involved, but what we did was paint with glue and then sprinkle spices over the glue. Then there was a lot of spice layering, and then we were making ‘mudge’ according to Rebecca. Mudge being a paste of white glue and aromatic spices apparently. Although I was not deemed competent to make mudge, maybe someday if I practiced enough, but I was just making spudge. Which was fine with me. I don’t care what you call an art activity if it lasts for almost two hours, which this did!

So find those five year old spices in the back of your pantry, put them in jars with shaker tops if they aren’t already, and some paint brushes and watered down white glue. It may look like, uh, awful, but it smells really nice. Ours is hanging on the kitchen wall for Rebecca to sniff. I think we’ll do this with our artfriends on Friday.