Cowboys!

When Atlas woke up this morning, he wanted to play 'cowboys'. He wished he had a sheriff badge, so we made them. We printed out photos of badges, glued them to foam paper, added pin backing, then they decorated with stick on jewels.

Finished badges

Next we transformed our red wagon into a covered wagon. They decorated with western drawing.

Running arround, playing, the fun lasted for hours!

Cooking beans over a homemade camp fire.

Foot Mural

A beautiful day for taking off shoes and dipping them in paint!

Indiana Jones Maps

The boys played Indiana Jones in the backyard and went on a hunt for hidden treasures.

Creating maps for their adventure.

maps

Indiana Jones

Dinosaurs!

We spent the afternoon at Eccle's Dinosaur Park in Ogden.

What better evening to do a dinosaur project.

Learning about mixing colors.

Oliver painting a triceratops.

Oliver's

Atlas' long necked dinosaur, he's a happy daddy dinosaur, with a tie and black hair.

Finished Garden Markers and Butterflies

One of my favorite parts of doing ceramics projects is opening the kiln after the last firing, and seeing the colorful finished projects.

Glazing time

Oliver enjoys puting many layers of glaze onto his butterfly

Our beautiful garden markers! We finished all of our vegtable planting last week and put all of the markers in their place.

Joaquin's beautiful spotted butterfly

Oliver's thickly colored butterfly

Atlas' happy butterfly

Super Heros!

Super heros and dress up are daily themes in our household, Batman, Ironman, Flash, and Captain America are a few of my boy's favorites. This time they are designing their own heros. Atlas and Jackson (neighbor) are the Cheetah Brothers, Oliver is currently Robin, and Joaquin is a one eyed hero with fangs, name to come.

Designing masks

Finished designs

Finished masks! After designing on paper, i cut them out of a firm felt, they colored them with oil pastels, then used sticky foam letters to decorate, I finished them off with some elastic. They have so much fun dressing up in them! Joaquin is still working on his...

Pinocchio

As a child, one of my favorite stories read aloud to me, was when my mom read us The Adventures of Pinocchio. Tonight I started reading it to my children. When we were done reading, we started making our own marionettes. We used paper mache over plastic balls. When they are dry we will do the next step, painting.

Making paste

Atlas loved slimey fingers

Joaquin working hard

Atlas is doing Mickey Mouse, Oliver is doing Batman, and Joaquin is doing Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

On Calvary

For Easter week we spent a lot of time learning and talking about Jesus, His death on the cross, and rising from the grave. The boys did a wet on wet watercolor sunsets with a hilly landscape of the crosses.

Atlas', love his big hills!

Oliver's, he loves color  mixing!

Joaquin's beautiful painting

 

My Hungry Caterpillar

After reading Eric Carl's book, we used fingers to paint our own caterpillars! I love how they came out!

Printing

Oliver's

Atlas'

Joaquin's

Snow Play

Late spring time snow storms annoy me, but it gives the boys one last chance to play with snow before next winter. We set out bowls at night, then brought them in in the morning, for play and experimenting.

We used food coloring and rock salt

Garden Stakes

We got our seeds started indoors this week, Atlas and Oliver love gardening! Joaquin wasn't really interested. The boys used ceramic clay to make garden stakes to mark our different vegtables. We've still got a couple weeks till the ground is warm enough to bring the seedlings outside, hopefully by then our stakes will be fired and glazed.

Adding texture to his corn 

Making celery

Snail's View

We read one of my favorite children's stories to the kids, The Snail's Spell, by Joanne Ryder, illustrated by Lynne Cherry.

The boys imagined being snails, crawling arround the yard and looking at details from a snail's veiw. Using their sketch books they did a drawing from this veiw.

As soon as Joaquin seddled down, the boys found their sitting spots.

Joaquin's finished