The Agents are Reading

We're not talking Dostoevsky here, or even Seuss, but the agents are reading books.

Agent 002 brought home a little flip-book from school to practice on -- I See a Butterfly.

This just happened to be the same day that Agent 004 made it through In My Hat from Hubbard's Cupboard, and homemade productions called The Cat That Sat on the Hat and Jan is a Cat.

Wowsers.

WFMW: No-Spill Batter

Welcome to Wednesday at reprehriestless warillever, when I give you the little tips that "work for me." To find more handy-dandy tips, visit Rocks in my Dryer for Shannon's weekly WFMW carnival.

Today we have a cooking tip from mr warillever. Yes, you read that right -- a cooking tip from my blessed and wonderful but hopelessly culinary-impaired husband.

Mr warillever makes pancakes nearly every Sunday. He mixes the pancake batter in a 4-cup Pyrex measuring cup, then pours the batter from the spout into the warm frying pan.

No mess, no dribble, and no ladle to put down between batches.

A splendid hack, and one that I have taken on with gusto. I now mix batters, sauces, and dressings in my liquid measuring cups, then pour without a mess.

Works for me!

Jonah and the Giant Fish in the Great Foil Sea

These collages were completed during my internet diet last fall, but they fit well with this week's Unplug Your Kids "shiny" theme.

Jonah and the Fish, according to young children:

After disobeying God, Jonah is caught in a storm at sea. Agent 004 artfully symbolized the storm by wrinkling her foil (or at least I would like to believe that is why the foil is so crinkled).

Jonah is swallowed by a large fish covered in glue: (Cousin F's work)

The fish delivers Jonah to the shore, and then the fish all live happily ever after. Look at those fish smile: (Agent 002's work)

Haiku: Kindness

"Do unto others"
is a very simple rule,
but hard to follow.

Why Can't I be a Comma?

Or a question mark? Or even an ellipses?

You Are a Colon

You are very orderly and fact driven. You aren't concerned much with theories or dreams... only what's true or untrue. You are brilliant and incredibly learned. Anything you know is well researched. You like to make lists and sort through things step by step. You aren't subject to whim or emotions. Your friends see you as a constant source of knowledge and advice. (But they are a little sick of you being right all of the time!) You excel in: Leadership positions You get along best with: The Semi-Colon

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

HT: Happy Catholic

Boogie Woogie

The whole quarto was grooving to some jam band* favorites.
Look for the little foot tapping to the beat on the right edge of the frame.

*Yes, I both own live-recorded jam band CDs, and let my kids dance to the instrumentals.

Thank you, Internets!

Thank you for all of your advice about digital file storage.

I have already started backing up my files onto CDs. Those of you who suggested DVDs may have misunderstood what I meant when I said that my laptop is "elderly." My poor old computer does not know what a DVD is, and would probably set it on fire if I asked it to "burn" one.

Speaking of fire, the librarian in me decided to burn a second set which will be stored off-site in case my house burns down. Well that and so my father will have access to my photos. Have I mentioned that the digital camera addiction is a hereditary trait? My father pushed off his retirement for three months so that he could purchase a Sony Mavica.

I thought (briefly) about storing my photos online, but decided against it for a variety of reasons. The biggest reasons is that I wouldn't have instant access to the photos like they were on my hard drive. Thus, I will buy sime thumb drives for active use of the photos. Once I do that, I will delete the files from my computer so that the poor thing can function once again.

WFMW: Help me Find Some Space

It is a backwards "Works for Me Wednesday," in which I get the opportunity to ask your advice. Please help me, pretty please?

No, not space away from my children (although that would be nice sometimes), but on my computer.

You see, I have an elderly laptop with only 18GB hard-drive. I also have a digital camera addiction. Blame it on record snowfalls and some really cute kids, but I took 643 pictures in February alone.

I have defragmented, done a "disk cleanup," and deleted duplicate files. And we are still at 97% capacity. There is17.44GB stored on the computer.

Short of buying a new computer or external drive, what can I do? What do the rest of you camera hounds do with your pics?

More Questions: Who can view pictures on online storage sites like Shutterfly or Picasa? I would be a little skeeved if total strangers could see pictures of my kids taking a bubble bath.... Can I somehow ban strangers while giving Grandma permission?

Big Brother

Agent 002 pulls Agent 004 to the library.

Rebirth of Haiku

Photo by xparxy.

Although I am not a poet, I am still willing to scribble a few lines now and again. This is my entry for "change" at the new haiku blog One Single Impression.

Singing our Lives Away

The "unplugged" theme this week is music.

I haven't done much with music except to have it constantly available. Although I frequently rotate toys out to cold storage,* there is always a basket of musical instruments for the kids to play with. The Agents are well aware that even though screaming is prohibited in the house, I always allow loud music. This frequently results in a four-child heavy metal band screaming gibberish at the top of their lungs. All in good fun, right?

I also sing all day. To keep myself from screaming in frustration, I have set many of the standard household commands to music. For instance, when one of the children squirms at dinner, I substitute that child's name for "John" in the song "Sit Down John" from the musical 1776 (obviously skipping the blasphemous phrase in the original). To keep the military discipline up, our clean-up song is set to the tune of a reveille bugle call:

It's time to clean up
It's time to clean up
It's time to clean up the t-oys

It's time to clean up
It's time to clean up
It's time to clean up the t-oys

Each of the children has a theme song. P started to recognize his (which is sung to the tune of "Copa Cabana") by the time he was 5 or 6 months old. Agent 004 loves hers because it has choreographed kissing throughout. F's song is an ever-changing version of "Frere Jacques." Agent 002's is my favorite: it is an original tune with "I love you" in both English and Russian. He frequently requests it when we snuggle.

Here is a snippet of the song that allows me to blog. Sing along to the tune of The Muppet Show theme song:

It's time to go to bed now.
It's time to get some sleep.
It's time to lay your head down.
Its time to get some rest now.
At the *** house today.

Why do we always do this?
As if you didn't know.
It's kind of like a torture
To have to make you go.

It's time to go to bed now.
It's time to get some sleep.
It's time to lay your head down.
Its time to get some rest now.
At the *** house today.

*cold storage = our three-season porch

So Small

The world is so big, and Agent 004 is so small.

Construction

This week's obsession has been construction. We started the week off right with cracker structures for breakfast on Monday.It took the Agents two days to build this train station out of cardboard. The vestibule (based loosely on Washington DC's Union Station) is built of interlocking toilet paper tubes.* I love the detail that went into this project. You can not see it very well in this picture, but there is a train in the tunnel and people are waiting on the platform.

*We read about "TP tube tower blocks" in Steven Caney's Ultimate Building Book. Cut four equidistant slits on one end of each tube. To connect the blocks, hook the unslit end of one tube over a tab on the block below it. With practice, you can make rigid panels, slanted walls, or huge towers out of the tubes.

Here is Agent 002's wooden block house just before demolition. The wrecking balls have been a big hit all week.
As you would expect, we also read many books about construction. Agent 002 selected the books and checked them out on his very own library card. Here are quick reviews of our favorites.

	Steven Caney's Ultimate Building Book by Steven Caney Not a story book (or even a book that small children would like to page through), this is a valuable resource for a parent or older child. It is full of creative ideas like "TP tower blocks" and "cake blocks and frosting mortar." It also provides technical explanation of why certain structures are stronger or more efficient as well as the history of many of the materials.
	Underground by David Macaulay Again, this is not a story book, and the vocabulary is far beyond a preschooler's comprehension. Nonetheless, this is Agent 002's favorite book because of the detailed illustrations. He was fascinated to learn about the infrastructure of a city and all of the goings-on below the surface.
	Up Goes the Skyscraper by Gail Gibbons A step-by step description of how a skyscraper is built. The book is approachable for small children but does not oversimplify the process.
	A Day in the Life of a Builder by Linda Hayward Like the title implies, this books follows a builder throughout the day as he supervises the construction of five homes. It is cute, simple, and introduces the business and customer service sides of construction.
	Construction Zone by Tana Hoban A picture book, Construction Zone provides an action shot and a close up of various pieces of construction machinery. The only words are the labels on each page, although there are verbal descriptions of each machine at the end of the book.

Alphabet Jar

You remember the pretty jar we made last week?I found a use for it. Alphabet storage. A novel container makes the simplest game fun, even for a guy who is quickly approaching 6 years old.

Why I Need a Mudroom

Hanging the coats to dry
after playing in the snow.

WFMW: Happier Children Through Sensory Play

Once again, it is Wednesday, the day in which I pass on a priceless gem of knowledge that "work for me." Like most other great tips, this one is not original, but rather an adaptation of something I learned from other moms. To join in on the tip-giving madness, check out Works for Me Wednesday at Rocks in My Dryer.

How do I keep four small children happy all day?

With God's grace and a whole lot of sensory play.

You have probably heard about the benefits of sensory play -- it is calming, organizing, and a really interesting way to discover new things. In our house, sensory play takes many forms. Currently most popular are cooking, pillow crashing, play-do, fingerpaint, shaving cream, and rice.

Lots of rice. In fact, a wading pool of rice located in the corner of our art room. We keep buckets, shovels, egg cartons, empty spice bottles, coffee cans, and (on occasion) pine cones or branches. For added interest we color the rice with food coloring and rubbing alcohol.

Rice play is open-ended. Baby P likes to pour rice into buckets and kick his legs back and forth to make noise. Agent 004 and Cousin F pretend to cook. Agent 002 builds roads with his plastic construction tractors. All four kids would spend the bulk of their day in there if they had the chance, but the room has a door and they are only allowed in with direct adult supervision.

A word of warning: this is a "Works for me Wednesday" tip that may not work for you. If you are a neat freak or if your vacuum cleaner is underpowered, a large sensory pool would probably drive you over the edge. The rice gets everywhere --on the floor, in the kids' hair, and even inside of the baby's diaper. As a result the mess does spread somewhat to other parts of the house. We have decided that the benefit far outweighs the cost, but I thought that it was only fair to warn you of the downside. Remember, however, that even small children can learn how to use a dustpan and broom (see Monday's picture for evidence).

The ABCs of Decoupage and Clean Cars

Decoupage. All the cool kids are doing it!

The unplugged theme this week is "letters."

We focused a lot on letters last year, and even compiled a book of everything we did. I have backed off a bit on actively teaching letters because both of the Agents know them well, but Cousin F is not quite ready for any formal instruction yet.

We did have two activities this week, however, that fit well with the Unplugged theme. The first was an alphabet decoupage. Following the directions here, we covered a super-sized animal cracker jar with construction paper scraps and letters*.

Some additional tips:

1. If any of the pieces overlap the corner of your object, make sure that there is at least one full inch on each side of the corner. We have several spots where a piece of paper barely overlaps a corner and has popped up
2. Make sure to cover every square inch of the object with paper. The glue peels off of bare plastic.
3. If you are using construction paper, be aware that the color may bleed a bit.
   

*The letters are from Hubbard's Cupboard. It is a PDF with a full page of each capital and lowercase letter in various fonts and styles. It uses a lot of paper, but I have only printed the set once, and we have been using them for various purposes for two years. It is great for letter recognition activities because he gets them used to the many ways that a single letter may look.

The second activity was a shaving cream car wash.


I put a mound of shaving cream in the middle of the art table,and let the kids play in it with wooden alphabet blocks and toy cars. They soon took a sheet of cardboard from the supply shelf to form a roof for their car wash

At Agent 002's request, I cut a hole in the cardboard so that we could spray shaving cream through the roof to further replicate an automated car wash.

We extended the activity by scrubbing the cars with a toothbrush and rinsing the toys off in a bowl of water.

The fun lasted for about forty minutes, and clean up was very easy.

Post edited 3/1/08 to restore the photos I accidentally deleted from Blogger.

After the Craft

I frequently post pictures of our completed crafts. What I don't usually show is what the floor looks like after those activities. Here is a shot of the Agents sweeping up after making their body flip book: This is what the kitchen looked like after building cracker houses this morning. Note the table cloth pulled back so that my creative geniuses did not smear peanut butter mortar all over it. The toys strewn all over the floor is what Baby P accomplished while we "worked."

Kendra of Preschoolers and Peace posted a challenge to share the reality of life as a busy homeschooling household. Any other takers? I'd love to see your messes :)

Cat Napping

I never got in a nap yesterday,

but Janice did.
Lucky cat!

Five Little Duck Books

This past week, we learned about ducks. It all started because Agent 004 is fascinated by the song "5 Little Ducks."

Five little ducks
Went out one day
Over the hill and far away
Mother duck said
"Quack, quack, quack, quack."
But only four little ducks came back.

The verses continue with four little ducks going out, then three, then two, then one, until finally, in a surprise (wink, wink) ending, all five little ducks come back.

I made up a set of movable pieces for our new felt board. Agent 004 had a grand old time moving them along with the lyrics. It is great to see that she knows her numerals and is able to subtract one to figure out how many ducks come back each day.

We read a nonfiction book about ducks -- DK's Watch me Grow: Duckling -- as well as about 20 story books.



Of those, here were our 5 favorites.

	Duck on a Bike by David Shannon A stunningly illustrated book, Duck on a Bike is the tale of a farm duck's adventure on two wheels. The kids asked me to read this book again and again.
	Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey The classic 1941 tale of what happens when the ducks cross the road. It has a rare combination of complex vocabulary and rhythmic text, and the monochromatic illustrations draw the children in.
	Chibi by Julia Takaya and Barbara Brenner A true-life version of Make Way for Ducklings, set in Tokyo. The book is lengthy -- 62 pages -- and has some content that may be upsetting to very small children. My 3 year old enjoyed pronouncing the Japanese words that are sprinkled through the text.
	Have You Seen my Duckling? by Nancy Tafuri A Caldecott Honor Book, Have You Seen my Duckling? is beautifully illustrated. The story is told in pictures and small children love to find the missing duck on each page. The story easy lends itself to counting activities and interactive reading.
	Curious George and the Dump Truck illustrated in the style of H.A. Rey by Vipah Interactive George's curiosity gets him in a bit of trouble, but a fortuitous turn of events makes the ducks happy.