Frederick

Hurray! Another storybook craft! These are my favourite. I just love reading a book and then creating the character in the book with the boys. Jacob and I read the book "Frederick" by Leo Lioni together and then he asked to make Frederick. And I think they turned out so cute. In the story four mice are storing up food for the winter, but the fifth mouse, Frederick, isn't helping. Instead he gathers sunlight and colour and words. The other mice don't understand him but when the winter runs long and the food runs out, Frederick warms them with memories of their beautiful meadow, and ends the book with a poem. Daniel wanted his Frederick to one carrying corn (there is a picture of the mice storing up corn in the book) and Jacob wanted his Fredrick to be eating a chocolate chip cookie (this comes from a picture where Frederick is eating a nut with black spots).

"ROAR"igami

So my brother in Japan sent us another Japanese craft to do. This time it was origami. It was way easier than the last craft!
"Firetruck" & "Digger"

We Love Experiments

The boys started asking to do "Volcanoes" this morning, which is basically a pie pan full of baking soda and then I make four small bowls of different coloured vinegar. They use tiny measuring spoons to make mini colourful volcanoes. Today I said "Why don't we make a really big volcano?" 

So we did. I put 3/4 cup of baking soda in a bottle and shook it up with some red food colouring. Then we added 3/4 cup of vinegar. Their reaction was awesome. 

"Bubbles!" That is what the boys kept yelling. I felt smart putting the bottle inside a dish... Good thing too!

We added vinegar three times before the baking soda ran out. Measuring spoons joined the fun.

Next we added some canola oil to see how it didn't mix. This was not smart, since I did not foresee oil stains on their shirts.

Next we added blue food colouring because I had no more ideas. We needed about four more cups of water to make it a fun adventure. They made Pepsi Pudding... Which to me sound delicious.

They played with this for about 1 hour and it was awesome.

Oh yeah... There was also glitter glue involved... When squeezed in it didn't mix and made glitter snakes, which was really cool.

Beanbag Monster

Sorry the pictures are all sideways... I can't seem to make them flip! 

Anyways... Awhile back I made beanbags for the boys out of a bunch of scrap fabrics. These are great beanbags... kind of pyramid shaped, good for throwing. We kept waiting to get a big enough box to make a monster to throw our beanbags at. I had found a few on pinterest I liked (Can you tell I use that site a lot?) and the boys both loved the open mouthed monster. The boys helped design and paint this guy.

After about 2 days of using it for its proper purpose they discovered it was also good for climbing...

 For the record, the monster was also used as a chair by Jacob to watch an entire movie. And then they had a BLAST destroying it. Monster is now in the recycling.

I was going to be annoyed and then I thought- painting, throwing, climbing, resting, and breaking... all before recycling. That's alot of activities for one box that before I had kids would have just been recycled. Good times.