We are on break here at the circus. And I couldn’t be more excited about it. I have been looking forward to this week for ages. The week before Christmas. All I want to do is enjoy the kiddos and catch up on some house work. And bake. And do some shopping. And maybe see some friends. (ha, ha… can you tell I am an introvert? read over that list, when I proof read this and re read it, it made me laugh)…
Can I make a little confession? I was going to skip Presidents Day… truthfully, it’s a holiday that I’ve only really given a nod to in the past, no real hoopla. And this year it falls right before Fat Tuesday and the end of Mardi Gras… Mardi Gras is another holiday I’ve skipped in the past but for some reason this year I decided to educate the kids on New Orleans food and culture as well as jazz music… (I think it’s b/c of these Family Fun magazine recipes)…
You all know that the really talented crafty genes somehow skipped over me in the family tree. My girls are not going to get their wedding dress sewn by their Momma like I did. In fact there is a lot of doubt as to whether or not they’ll ever get the pajama pants I set out to sew them a year ago. But, I think I may have stumbled across a medium which I can do, and do with confidence.
The kids and I started reading the Chronicles of Narnia a few weeks ago. I finished reading them The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe and we’re now onto Prince Caspian . The truth is, I’ve never read these books before, so I am just as interested and captivated as my oldest son is. The other day during quiet time the oldest two kids started walking back and forth between their separate areas… eventually they asked if they could play quietly together and I let them as long as they stayed quiet.
I have many fond childhood memories of working on crafts with my Mema. She’d come to visit and bring her puffy paints and we’d make tee shirts and sweat shirts. Once she even attempted to teach me to crochet… but after a few hours and only a few loops, I opted to let her continue making me anything I wanted crocheted. Now I am grown, with kids of my own, and I must confess, my craft skills don’t look a whole lot different than when I was a kid.
I come from a long line of crafty and artistically talented people. I am not one of them.
But, I do ok with basic elementary arts and crafts. I even considered them my forte. Until this week.
I was quite excited to do some apple stamping with the kids after our trip to the orchard last week. I’ve never done it, but wanted to for awhile. This seemed like the perfect time… last week we did the short a sound in phonics, went to the orchard on Friday, so this seemed perfect for art on Tuesday.
I once read or heard somewhere that kids need to draw in spaces bigger than 8x11 sheets of paper.
I tucked that little nugget of info away and to be honest did absolutely nothing with it, till last week.
During one of our 3 sick days last week, I looked down at a brown bag and got inspiration!!
I cut the bag open much like you do when making book covers and gave each kid one half of a brown bag to draw on.