Recent Projects

Wow, it feels GREAT to catch up on all this stuff we've been doing lately!  This is bad blogging (no posts for weeks and then a tidal wave), but good family archiving, and I'll take it!

Dave seems to be scheduled for LOTS of evenings and pretty much every Saturday, then tends to schedule clients on Sundays, leaving the girls and I to our own devices.  After the long winter, plus this strange balance of roles, I find myself needing someone else to supply some of the structure.  And so we have been going places with activities.

In Boulder, I loved that our libary had great cultural activities, and that they communicated events really well.  Here. we are part of a HUGE library system, and hunting down activities through them can be a bit of a daunting puzzle.  But I recently found a cool after school event at one of the closer branches.  Eleri was kind of just alon for the ride, but Clio got to make a book (which you may have noticed she loves to do.)  The real focus of the event was making tin plates reminiscent of Mexican folk art.

Here's Clio's initial drawing

And here's the finished tin piece, as a cover plate on her (as yet blank) book.

This was a super easy project to set up, and really fun and different.

At the Children's Museum, we built a "Bird and Butterfly house" out of a cardboard box, colored masking tape, popsicle sticks, and other odds and ends.

Here is the sign to let butterflies know they should come in.

The museum also had their face painting station set up, and while Clio requested that I paint three stars on her face, Eleri went ahead and did her own.

Kind of a beard, really.  (Oh, and that's the start of her "angry" face.  She bares her teeth and clenches everything so hard she shakes.  True story.  She doesn't do this too often, if she did I might worry!)

We also have this book called Draw and Play All Day, and when I tidied up the bookshelves Clio rediscovered it.  I got it at the Walker shop, and it's full of paper crafts and activities.  I think it would be a great book for slightly older kids to tackle on their own, but Clio (and especially Eleri) needs quite a bit of help with it.

The other day, we made ornaments.  Really this just means popping the shapes out of the book and gluing the two sides together, then threading a hanger through (we used pipe cleaners.)  We braved a VERY cold and windy day to hang them on the tree in our backyard, but the wind had other ideas an ultimately we packed them up for another day.

We're keeping ourselves busy!  And the weather is getting a bit more cooperative.  Yesterday we hit the playground after school instead of some kind of indoor activity, and it's looking promising for today, too!