April Showers

This was our morning. It was rainy and wet and chilly. The April showers had come. So we found lots of fun things to do inside.

Levi wanted to play with Play-Doh and a tractor. He rolled it flat and then made tracks.

Clarey liked using the Easter cookie cutters in the Play-Doh.

I found a fabulous website, PreKinders.com, that had free pattern block printables. We printed off a butterfly, a turtle, a rabbit, a flower, a caterpillar and some others that I can't remember. The boys worked so hard figuring out what pieces went where to make the shapes.

Clayton easily filled in the puzzles. Levi had to think about it a bit more.

We sorted the pattern blocks in a muffin tin so that Levi could find the pieces he needed more easily.

Clarey enjoyed putting the pieces in the muffin tins. Of course, since it was a rainy, stay-at-home day, my children chose not to wear any clothes...it's all about choosing the battles.

Once Levi was no longer interested in figuring out the puzzles, he decided to play with the pattern bears.

He matched the colors and then built a fort out of the pattern blocks. It was the perfect activity for a rainy day.

Clarey's Ice Rocks

Tuesday when we dropped the boys off at school, Clarey played in Aunt Sherri's room for a good little bit with clear rocks. She just loved them. As we were walking through Hobby Lobby 20 minutes later, she spotted some "ice rocks." For a $1.47 I couldn't turn her down.

We got them out this morning and while she was content to play with just the rocks, I thought she might enjoy the contract in textures between the rocks and carpet samples. I pick these up any time I'm in Lowes or Home Depot. I have all kinds... We use them for all different things... They cost nothing.

She really enjoyed placing the rocks on the carpet and was very deliberate about what rock went where.
She didn't enjoy me taking pictures. "No, Ma. No!" That's what she's saying here. So I left her alone to play with her ice rocks.

Research Project: A Lizard Mystery

This morning, the boys found a dried up lizard on our deck. They were convinced that it had just crawled up there and died. No lizard in it's right mind would crawl onto our deck - it's where the cats live. I finally convinced them that one of the cats probably killed it and brought it to the door as a gift.

I was busy baking cookies, doing laundry, putting Clarey down for a nap. The next time I looked out the window, this is what I see. They had gathered their Herps books from the Missouri Dept. of Conservation and were trying to identify this poor, little, dead, dried-up lizard. While those books are wonderful and have spent many hours occupying and enlightening my boys, they aren't a complete guide.

So Clayton found another resource. "This is DEFINITELY NOT our lizard."

Having no luck with the printed word resources available in our house, Clayton came in and very matter-of-factly declared, "This lizard is not in ANY of our books. It's time to use the internet." We had to do a bit of searching and found in a very roundabout way the Discover Nature section of the Missouri Department of Conservation's website. There we found the field guide to lizards. And in the field guide, there are 13 lizard species in Missouri, we found the broad headed skink. It was a perfect match to our dehydrated lizard. We read all about it. We learned that it eats insects and is Missouri's largest forest dwelling lizard. We also learned that it likes to live in trees and will often make it's home in abandoned woodpecker cavities. As I type, my boys are searching the trees in our woods for abandoned woodpecker cavities for broad headed skinks. The cats are with them. I'm not sure how much luck they'll have.

Super Sudsing Dinosaur Eggs

After seeing on Pinterest this fabulous idea from the blog Red Ted Art's Blog, I just couldn't resist making soap dinosaur eggs. The warmer weather has turned my kids into little mud balls and we already had our Jello egg mold out for Easter - the timing was perfect!

We gathered our supplies: melt and pour glycerin soap (bought 40% off at Hobby Lobby), a pourable measuring cup, tiny dinos, and our Jello egg mold

Can you feel the excitement?

Levi was really fascinated by the texture of the soap - before it was melted and after.

First we put our little baby dinos into the mold. Having never done this before, I started off by just making 3. One for each child.

Levi was really, really interested in this project. Clayton was semi-interested - he had already moved on to something else at this point. And Clarey, well she thought the solid soap was ice and wanted to eat it so I had already moved her and given her something else to keep her occupied.

After we melted the soap in the microwave, very slowly - per package directions, I very carefully poured it into the mold. A very tiny funnel would have been helpful. Levi just couldn't get enough of feeling the soap. The melted soap was so different from the solid pieces.

Then we had to wait. This was the patience portion of the lesson. Only an hour. But to Levi this was eternity.

After the soap had cooled, we unmolded them. Look! One is already trying to hatch!

The kids thought it would be easy to hatch them. They'd just pick away at them like they've done with other eggs. If only it had been so easy...

I gave them a tub of water in a very deep sink and let them play with these super sudsing eggs. My younger two played so nicely together for over 30 minutes as they squished and tried to grip and made bubbles and worked so hard to get those baby dinosaurs out. Clayton played in the bathroom sink, not wanting to compete for water. This did make for some very quiet time in our home. And I did get a lot done while they played. Yes, I did have quite a bit of water to clean up off the floor once they were done, but it was well worth it.