Wordless Wednesday - Ha' To Do It!

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"I ha' to paint dis box, Mommy!"

Sigh... A girl ha' to do what a girl ha' to do. So I set out the paints.

She never told me she ha' to paint dis face, too. Sigh...

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For more Wordless Wednesdays, visit

• 5 Minutes for Mom
• Extraordinary Mothers
• Momspective
• Look What Mom Found
• Wordless Wednesday
• 7 Clown Circus - Wordful Wednesday
• Ordinary and Awesome - Mostly Wordless Wednesday

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In case you missed the announcements:

• If you like reading free books, then make sure you check out our new blog, Winning Readings. It's a bulletin board of family-friendly book giveaways that are easy to enter!
• And if you've got a fashionista in your household, make sure to take a couple of snapshots! I'm sharin' the Fashion Friday catwalk here, so post those stylin' photos and link here on Friday.
• While you're visiting, check out our giveaway for a 3-month membership to JumpStart. All you gotta do is leave a comment...
  

Clothing

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The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project was clothing. So we decided to model some extraordinary clothing outfits for you.

First, here is the Trader Joe's look. Note the handy handle in the back!
For an eye-catching spring look, combine the bag with a diaper-head accessory. Yes, I am doing the catwalk turn here, just for you.
Just to prove that you should never judge a book by its cover, I decided to model the Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? book. Once again doing the catwalk turn for you. I am definitely not a panda bear!

Mommy decided we needed to MAKE something, too. So we combined some discarded fabric paints and an old tshirt of Pappa's to make a fresh new look. Won't he look just stunning the next time he paints?!


Check out Unplug Your Kids for more clothing ideas...

Homemade Craft Recipes

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If you thought you were getting lots of good craft ideas from Ms. Shannon at Teaching Tinytots before, you are in for a bonus round today! We got LOTS of recipes from her to share with you...

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What is mommy school with out homemade craft recipes?

Flour-Based Poster Paint

NEED:

1. 1/4 cup flour
2. 1 cup water
3. Small jars or plastic containers
4. 3 or 4 drops of food coloring or paste (for smelly use kool aid)
5. 2 tablespoons water per container
6. 2- 4 drops of dish soap ( to make it washable)
7. for shiny finish a few drops of corn sryup

TO DO:

1. Measure flour into saucepan.
2. Slowly add 1 cup water while stirring to make a smooth paste.
3. Heat, stirring constantly, until paste begins to thicken.
4. Cool.
5. Measure 1/4 cup paste into each small container.
6. Add food coloring/kool aid
7. Stir well.

*If you want to make a big batch, don't divide into containers!

Store covered.

Stamp Pad

1. Lay some paper towels or napkins onto a paper plate.
2. Pour enough paint to make it stampable but not too much! You might need to spread it around with a paint brush.
3. Now you can stamp anything you want!

Homemade Glue

NEED:

1. 3/4 cup water
2. 2 tablespoons corn syrup
3. 1 teaspoon white vinegar
4. 1/2 cup cornstarch
5. 3/4 cup cold water

TO DO:

1. Mix water, corn syrup and vinegar in a saucepan.
2. Bring to a rolling boil.
3. In a small bowl, mix cornstarch and cold water.
4. Add this mixture slowly to first mixture, stirring constantly.
5. Let stand overnight before using.

Kool-Aid Play Dough

NEED:

1. 1/2 cup salt
2. 2 cups water
3. 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
4. 2 cups flour
5. 2 tablespoons alum
6. 1 envelope unsweetened Kool-Aid,any color/flavor desired

TO DO:

1. Boil salt in water until salt is dissolved.
2. Add Kool-Aid, vegetable oil, flour and alum.
3. Knead or process until smooth.

Keeps for two months or longer.

Imitation Sand

Here is a great recipe for colored sand that will keep forever! Great for crafts or sensory tables

NEED:

1. 1/2 c salt
2. 1/2 c cornmeal
3. 1 1/2 tbsp liquid paint
4. ziploc baggie
5. paper towels/wax paper

TO MAKE:

1. Pour all items in a baggie and seal shut.
2. Give to LO to shake up and lay on paper towels or wax paper to dry!

Imitation Glitter

This is great and wonderful to use w/ real LO's that might put glitter in their mouth! Great for crafts or sensory table too.

NEED:

1. salt
2. food coloring
3. baking sheet

TO MAKE:

1. Mix up the amount of salt you want to make and food coloring
2. Mix well
3. Lay out on a baking sheet and bake in oven at 350 for 10 minslet cool and store!

Glossy Paint

NEED:

1. 1 can sweet condensed milk
2. Pink, Blue and green food coloring
3. 3 bowls

TO MAKE:

1. Add enough food coloring paste to get the desired color depth you want and add just a tad of water to make it more spreadable.

Wordless Wednesday

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Here is our favorite art project of the week! See today's WFMW post for more info.

Lion Sleeps Tonight

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I’ve been busy today!

I started by pulling out all my onesies out of my suitcase and trying to dress my monkeys in them. I convinced Mommy to help me. Then I had her play the Lullaby mobile so they would go to sleep like good monkeys.

Then we did art with tempera paints. This was my second time – and I was so good the first time that I lulled Mommy into complacency. So this time I got to paint my fingers and toes and mouth and pants and table and walls and floors, plus I rubbed my eyes a lot after I painted my fingers. But we got some cool paintings on paper, too. I’ll post pictures of them another time after the camera battery is charged up.

While Mommy was making lunch, I got into the fridge and took bites out of apples and put the apples back in the fridge. I also put some plastic dishes in (they’re better chilled) and some dental floss.

Then I said “bah” and threw the lemons on the floor to see if they would bounce.

Then I took the flour out of the pantry and very carefully measured it with a teaspoon onto the floor. When I had the right amount, I stepped in it and made white footprints everywhere.

Of course, I helped clean up. I love using the little broom and dustpan and spreading dirt around, just like Mommy and Ms. Cathrine do.

Then I had to spoonfeed Mommy my lunch, otherwise how would I ever get done with my food?

I did NOT take my naps. Neither of them.

Then I had to treat my dolly for a black eye with an icee Mommy gave me for my pinched finger.

Then I tried to put pompoms in my nose.

For supper, I decided to try extensions and put spaghetti noodles in my hair.

But now we are all very tired. And since I have no photos of today, I thought I’d embed one of my favorite YouTube videos here. Nothing special about it, but it fits the Africa theme of my blog and makes us smile. So without further ado, may I present Hippo, singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”



That’s all, folks. Have a blessed and restful day. This lion cub’s gonna get to sleep now . . .

Red + Blue = Purple

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Mommy has been winging school lately. So she comes up with all sorts of weird ideas, like "Ball Art" on the day our theme is "Balls." That consists of coloring a ping pong ball with a magic marker and then crumpling up a piece of paper around it, resulting in a crumpled, smudged piece of paper.

Or on the day we had Moses and the Bulrushes theme, I ate pancake pieces floating in applesauce – I'm not sure the pancake pieces qualified as baskets, even though they were fibrous with whole wheat flour and sweet potatoes in them. They were yummy, though.

And yesterday the theme was "Bed." You can tell what's on her mind, huh? So I decided not to take a morning nap in civil protest. Some other themes have been "Money" and "Telephone," as well as some numbers and colors.

For art, Mommy lets me paint the bathtub. Here is me blending red and blue. She says I will probably be an engineer and not an artist, because I am more interested in how the paint lid goes on and whether the rubber bathtub stopper will close the paint jar than I am in my artwork.

We still have fun most of the time. Mommy's just not learning as much, since she makes up everything as we go.