Some Things That Keep Us Occupied

A couple of weeks ago, Jacy requested that I make black playdoh.  I think he wanted to make some character that needed black.  We had made playdoh previously using a recipe for a Playdohrecipe.org, but had made it using colors I already had on hand.  Like pink and blue.  Our local grocery store didn’t have black food coloring, but Amazon did!

I love the way it turned out.  The black color was so rich and vibrant (for black) and we used Root Beer flavoring to give it a nice smell.  After they get bored with the plain black, my plan is to add some glitter to it so we can have some sparkly playdoh.

Izzy showing me his new playdoh

Zion making something

Jacy making some kind of monster while he talks to papa on the phone

My kids love to craft.  They have a giant box of craftable things in their toy room that they are free to use whenever they want to.  Most of the stuff is recyclable or things we’d ordinarily toss out.  I keep a small bin in the kitchen to catch smaller items like bottle caps, twist ties, bread clips, etc.  Sometimes I purchase a few goodies to toss in the box as well, like pom-poms or pipe-cleaners.  I am constantly on the look out for “treasures” at the thrift store or while out shopping.  I’d like the kids to start adding more organic materials to their box like pinecones, seeds, leaves, nuts and so on.

Gabriel showing off his airplane. Made 100% from "garbage"

Promise made some butterfly wings from paper and yarn

So they say mother is the necessity of invention.  This was one of those days.  I had two really bored, really cranky little boys in my house.  And they needed a new project.  I gave one of them a bowl of rolled oats (uncooked) and the other a bowl of white flour that we had bought for playdoh making and two spoons.  Oh they fun they had with their new “toy.”   At first, they played independently, and then they started mixing the oatmeal and the flour together.  After a while, to my dismay, Zion got the idea to add water.  Oh the mess they made, but they had a fun time and it all washed away easily the next time it rained.

Cooking!

 

Fizzy Art

Boredom had set upon us and we needed something fun to do.  Thank goodness for the Play At Home Mom blog.  I love their ideas.  If you have kids ages 3 months and older.  Moms like the activities too.  Recently, they had posted on their site about Fizzy Paint.  I knew sooner or later we needed to do this fun idea and that day had come.  The basic recipe is baking soda, cornstarch, water and food coloring.  Then fill a spray bottle with vinegar to make the paintings fizz.

Here is the fizzy paint set up.  The spray bottle has the vinegar in it.  I didn’t tell them what it was, other than sidewalk paint and let them have at it.

Zion made his pink paint fizz

This was a whole lot of fun and got us outside in the sunshine for nearly an hour without any complaints.  I even needed to refill their paints once.  They probably would have painted long had I made more paint and if they wouldn’t have filled the whole drive way with paint.

Promise paint dancing

After being sprayed with the vinegar.  Fizzy fun.

Still Life

Today has been a busy day.  We were supposed to go to a play group, but my eye is bothering me so we stayed home.  I am really glad we did because we have done all kinds of fun things today.

The weather has been just gorgeous so the little boys and I took the bikes into the front yard to ride on the driveway for an hour or so.  Lincoln sure liked playing on a blanket in the grass.  Jacy and Gabriel made some Mario Lego Stop Motion movies again.  This seems to be one of the favorite activities lately.

After rest time, I found the inspiration to draw still life with the kids.  I can’t even remember what made me think of it.  Promise and I looked up the definition from Wiki:

A still life (plural still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural (food, flowers, plants, rocks, or shells) or man-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, and so on).

Then we set up our still life.  I think it turned out really cute.  Promise liked that it had real and fake fruit and other non-fruity items.

From one side

And from the other side

Everyone said that it was a fun activity, except Israel who fussed from under the table.  He’s been rather grumpy today.  I taped everyone’s paper to the table so we’d all have a different perspective of our still life.

Artwork in progress

Our finished drawings.  I really need to get different art supplies so we can try out more mediums than just plain crayons.  We also read a couple of books afterwards that I had picked up from our last trip to the library: Chasing Degas by Eva Montanari and What Makes a Degas a Degas? by Richard Muhlberger.

Jacy's. I love how he drew everything he saw; including the table and background

Promise's - She also drew the still life as she saw it. Very detailed.

Zion - He didn't want to draw the still life at all, but instead chose to draw himself playing upstairs.

Gabriel drew his favorite parts; the pumpkin and the pumpkin leaf.

Mine. The yarn was my favorite part.

Before I forget.  Last night we had a game night.  I found a Trivial Pursuit Jr game at the thrift store the other day.  This was the first time we played it all together as a family…even Lincoln 😉  It was a lot of fun and some of the questions were hard for even mommy and daddy.

Game Night!

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