Backyard Afternoons

The weather has been fantastic here for the last week, and we’ve been spending most afternoons in the backyard.  C typically sits in the sandbox, gets pushed in the swing, or collects rocks and flowers while M runs around playing animal rescue fairy or some other multi-faceted pretend game.  But for the last few days, [...]

Read Full Post »

Book Stacks, Part 2

Part 1 is here. This stack was on the girls table in the living room (which, as you can tel,l is, in fact, lived in).  The stack contains: Georgia the Guinea Pig Fairy by Daisy Meadows How Elephants Lost Their Wings (Usborne First Reading)) Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban Mary Manatee: A [...]

Read Full Post »

Playtime

Recently C’s ability to participate in imaginative play has increased dramatically.  M is still the director of their play but I’m fascinated by the growing complexity of their games. We spent part of the week after Easter with my parents, and we brought back my old play kitchen and lots of great vintage metal dishes [...]

Read Full Post »

Nonfiction Monday: Rare Treasures: Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries

Last week, we picked up Rare Treasures: Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries by Don Brown from the library.  We remembered Mary Anning from one of our favorite read-alouds, Ivy and Bean Break the Fossil Record.  Ivy reads a biography of Mary Anning and the girls decide to break Anning’s record of being the youngest [...]

Read Full Post »

Book Stacks, Part 1

We are book people.  There are books in every room of the house, bathrooms included.  All our bookshelves are filled and overflowing.  Every time we’ve moved it’s been painfully obvious that books make up the majority of our possessions. Yesterday morning, C and I dropped M at school and had the morning to do whatever [...]

Read Full Post »

Cotton Ball Chicks and Totoros

When I was in elementary school, one of my favorite spring/Easter crafts was making chicks, bunnies, lambs, etc with cotton balls and crushed chalk.  I think we did this several times at school, and I did it at home as well.  While there are probably many methods of dying the cotton balls that would be [...]

Read Full Post »

Non-Fiction Monday: Seashores, A Golden Guide

As I’ve said before, we love field guides.  We’re planning a trip to the beach at the end of May so on our last library trip, we looked for several books about the beach, the ocean, and the plants and animals we’ll see there.  One we especially like is Seashores, A Golden Guide by Herbert [...]

Read Full Post »

My New Bag

I made this handbag from the pattern in Amy Karol’s Bend the Rules Sewing. I made the bag 10% larger than the suggested size and I made the handles twice as long so I could put it over my shoulder if I wanted to.  I used a grosgrain ribbon instead of a velvet one though [...]

Read Full Post »

Poetry Friday: Children’s Poetry Collections

I’ve resolved to share more poetry with my girls this month, so we picked up the Random House Book of Poetry for Children at the library last week (I noticed it in the sidebar at Crafty Crow).  We’ve been enjoying opening it to a random page and reading a few selections. So far M’s favorite [...]

Read Full Post »

Library Day

We had a wonderful Easter celebration and a great week.  Easter Sunday afternoon, we drove to my parents house and stayed until yesterday.  I’ll post more about the adventures we had when I get a chance to up load my pictures.  Today we settled back in which meant unpacking, cleaning, making room for my old [...]

Read Full Post »