April 14-18, 2014 (Math Dice, Window Stars, Wet Felting Flowers, Owls)

A few weeks ago, we painted planters to go along with our weekly Super Sam story. Super Sam planted strawberries in his planter, so it was only fitting that we do the same. The children had a delightful time filling up their new planters and gently transplanting the strawberry plants.

I signed up for a "Fun and Games" swap and knew from the beginning that I wanted to make a math game of some sort. Rainbow Girl helped me brainstorm and create this delightful math dice game. Each game has 0-12, all the operations, greater than, and less than. The player rolls all the dice and makes as many math problems as they can with the numbers and operations rolled. 

My hand was so sore after wood burning all those numbers and signs- but the game is a hit- so it was worth it.

I made wool and silk storage bags for the math dice.

Rainbow Girl asked to make window stars, so we made it so. This time was different than usual, however, because she was able to do all of the folds and gluing- without any help from me! She was so proud of herself. 

The next day, she requested that we wet felt. We decided to do flowers in the name of Spring. Both kids did a fantastic job setting up the flower's color schemes and felting them. We threw them in the dryer in a nylon and they came our beautifully!

We decided this week that it was time to start setting up Rainbow Girl's room to prepare for the baby. Rainbow Girl is so excited to have a crib in her room! 

Beautiful mobile I received in a nursery toy swap

Spring time children's swap (the children made Spring crafts, sent them in, and received items made by their swap friends!)

Last week, I worked on painting the first forest for the "Jorinda and Joringel" swap. I also had to make owls as part of my set. I decided to upcycle a wool sweater and make finger puppet owls. The owl character is the witch from the story, so I had to make her look evil- hence the red fiery eyes. Sugar Bear LOVES all of them.

That evening I had craft night with my local Waldorfy mama friends. I began work on my Whitesuntide swap items, while several of them worked on their "Jorinda and Joringel" characters. 

I love my friends. :)

April 13, 2014- The Museum of Natural History

As most of you know, my sweet Sugar Bear is quite the dinosaur aficionado. A trip to the Museum of Natural History in DC has always been on the list of day trips that need to happen, however the two-plus hour drive plus the metro ride with two wee kids has caused me hesitation. Upon hearing that the museum would be temporarily closing (for five years!!!) I knew that we had to get the trip in. 

We knew that the area would likely be busy because of the emanate museum closing, but in addition to that, it was also the last weekend of the Cherry Blossom Festival. Unfortunately, that made for insane crowds and metro rides so, so, packed that this pregnant mama had a difficult, claustrophobic time.

However, we made it.

It was hot, and called for popsicles. 

Eventually, we made it into the actual museum, and managed to find the cafeteria which actually had a few vegan options. I won't go into the insane amount of time it took to get said "food", how non-delicious it was, or how much money we had to give up to get it because the memory of that is just un-fun.

After eating, we finally saw some dinosaurs! Sugar Bear was thrilled to see real dinosaur bones. After looking at the dinos, we moved on and enjoyed exploring my favorite Smithsonian. There is such a mass of natural history there that it just can not be explored in a single day- at least with two tired kids, a pregnant mama, and a grandma getting over a bad shoulder injury...that said, we got through a majority of the museum and had an awesome time.

I am so glad that we decided to go on this adventure before the dinos went under wraps for a few years. The kids learned a lot and still talk about it now (almost 3 months later now- and post Disney!). I look forward to returning and enjoying the newly renovated exhibit in five years! (Gosh. I'll have 12, 9, and 5 year olds then...)