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

Jack's Beanstalks

In a gardening mood, ready for spring! My boys all love the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, so we planted our own little beans.

Atlas' magic harp

Joaquin drawing a castle in the clouds.

Joaquin's Jack

Atlas' and Oliver's

Space Party

For Atlas' 5th birthday, he wanted to have a Paul Frank Space Monkey party. Te party was a great success, and he wants to do it again next year!

Joaquin helped me bake and decorate the cupcakes!

I sewed up fleece astronaut helmets for each of the kids and embellished with my embroidery machine.

Happy astronaut! The kids each made and ate their own pizza.

Party bags with silver sharpees.

The kids loved making and playing with alien slime!

A huge pile of guys left for me to clean off!

It was a great party!