Easter Craft...

Am posting this a bit late to be of any use to egg dyers this year, but in 2011 if you happen to realize that cheap box of egg dyes you grabbed at the store was made in China and seem particularly worrisome ("do not ingest"  & "may stain skin and clothing" & "age 8 and up"  warnings, and markedly NO sign of a "non-toxic, food safe, etc, etc..." statement) and you decide at the last moment not to risk your toddlers skin & clothes & health (as well as who knows what kind of mess to deal with in the aftermath, with a week old infant btw... oh wait, you might not have those exact variables, but I digress.) and grab your bag of food dyes that you keep handy in the kitchen for coloring playdough and wool yarn, and consider that they should probably work on eggs if you add a bit of vinegar to the hot water in ramekins just deep enough for a single egg, than have I got a fun idea for YOU!

It occurred to me that if we used red, yellow and blue dyes we would have a great opportunity to let the girls play around with color mixing. We dipped paper towels in each color for them to rub over the already dipped egg so they could see what colors appeared in each area. I have to say, I think re-dipping the egg in a secondary color would be much better, as the towel kind of rubbed off the initial layer of dye, but feel free to try whatever you method you prefer. Also, powdered food color ended up giving a not ver uniform dye, and in fact collected on the bottom of the ramekins (yellow and red were powder, blue was paste) and kind of speckled the eggs darker where it touched, which I kind of liked, but keep it in mind of you want a very smooth uniform color. 

So, after dyeing all the hard boiled eggs daddy could come up with, there was still most of a ramekin of dye of each color, and not wanting to waste it, I of course suggested that each of the girls dye there own mini hank of wool yarn with which I would knit them a hat or other small accessory. I labeled a gallon ziplock for each of them, placed wool inside with a splash of vinegar and hot water and squished it all around and left it to soak while we ate lunch. Once yarn was thoroughly soaked daddy rung it out (daddy was very involved in all crafts and games, and basically everything that the girls have been up to in the past couple of weeks because, you know, baby boys like to nurse all the time, and generally make it difficult for mommy to do much of anything with big sisters. sigh. ) and put the bags on the table for the girls to drizzle the leftover dye into, but then, of course, we decided, it would really be more precise and personal if the yarn was set in a pyrex baking dish so that they could place the dye just where they wanted, so we did. (I still think the bags would be good, but it is true that the liquid dye might mix and go all over the bag and generally give a different quality look than hand painting the flat hank of yarn...) 

After spooning or pouring every last drop of dye over the yarn, we realized that mommy may have over estimated how much coverage we would get, and that quite a bit of yarn was still pristine off white, so daddy poured a little extra water into the dishes and the girls squished the yarn in it to distribute the dye that was in the yarn already more evenly. It worked quite well! And the little bits of powdery dye "dregs" at the bottom of the ramekins gave really bright spots among the slightly washed over other areas, and everything got covered (though perhaps not as vibrantly as originally expected). 

We then covered each dish with saran wrap (so it could steam without losing too much moisture) and popped them in the microwave for several minutes. Once cooled the yarn was rinsed and allowed to dry, and has not yet ben wound or knitted with, but will, probably, someday. 

Of course, I thought the colors were very nice and the dyeing came out well, and feel somewhat sentimental about my girls first yarn dying. So when I asked Sophia what she would like me to knit for her with the yarn she dyed, she replied "a pink hat!!" and I was unable to answer for several seconds. Of course. A pink hat, I will just knit that right up for you and over dye the whole thing. }-{ (head desk)

Baby Ben has arrived!

It's been a couple of weeks, (time flies when you are having a lovely babymoon!) but I am finally getting around to syncing up my phone (photos) and computer so I can introduce the "boy" (according to Maggie!)  who will shortly be modeling many new knitted items for newborns. (and hindering school and play for his older sisters I am sure!)

Play Dough

We periodically need to "refresh" our play dough supply because the previous batch has become so overrun with dog fur, or the colors have been so mashed into one another that the entire thing is one gob of putty colored muck. Today we decided to choose one color for a change, (pink, of course) to see if we could avoid the dingy camo look for a while. The recipe we used was:

2 cups flour
1 cup salt
3 tsp cream of tarter
2 tbsp oil (we used apricot oil b/c it is good for the skin and we had some in the cabinet anyway, but olive oil works just as well)
2 cups water

Mix in a pot over moderate heat. You probably should add in the food coloring while the dough is still liquid-ey and easy to mix, but since we sometimes separate it out into smaller batches to color I wait until it is done and then let the kids knead the color (powder or paste) into the dough, which is a fun activity in and of itself. Until everything homogenizes you get a pretty marbled effect. I have used wilton cake icing dye in the past (I keep it handy for dying wool) but this time we used powdered food coloring which I have no idea when or how I aquired. I assume it is ancient and not good for eating (does eating anything that brightly artificial ever seem like a good idea?) but very efficient at coloring paste, dough, wool, etc. I keep kool-aid packets around for wool dying as well, (maybe we post about that one day) and suspect they would work for play dough, but the fruity smell can be a bit overwhelming even with wool that has been rinsed repeatedly so I would use a very very small amount to start.                                                     

Duplos and more...

We dug out a box of Duplos (intermediate sized Legos for toddler size fingers and coordination) that were mine (holy cow?!) when I was a preschooler and bought a box to replace any missing or broken pieces which has been a popular item lately. So far the kids like to build towers, but S has started to build other things as well so I thought an activity with a hole punch and card stock might be in order.... (As seen at Filth Wizardry, what a fun idea!!)

I gave the kids (well, mostly Sophia, b/c Maggie is still struggling a bit to put together the Legos at all on her own, though she will happily take apart anything I put together for her...) some cut-out shapes with punch holes placed such that they can place them over the Lego "nubs" to build new structures or animals. We looked at this page  for some inspiration.

Unfortunately, once we got set up at the table with out card stock and hole punch (and bucket of Legos) we found that our standard old hole punch was just a bit too small to make properly sized holes for the Legos. sigh. In any case, mommy was able to rescue the day by jamming the paper over the Lego nubbies, but it was not really something S was going to manage on her own so we put everything away (except our marvellous tree of course, which became part of some sort of game involving a zebra, hippo, panda and a squeaky ball that took turns jumping onto the greenery...) to try again tomorrow, after an expedition to a craft store hunting for a larger than normal hole punch. I wonder what we will find? Will report back.

Zingo! (Bingo?)

Zingo! is another really surprisingly fun game we got this Christmas. Our new family tradition is to spend Christmas Eve together relaxing and playing games, so we let each of the kids open a gift from Mom & Dad that happened to be a game (rather than book or toy).

The idea behind Zingo! is basically bingo, but with a nifty little (durable) gadget that you slide back and forth to get tiles printed with pictures of objects (with their names printed below in nice clear block letters that little kids can associate with the object, and eventually sound out themselves).

When each set of 2 tiles slides out of the dispenser everyone around the table quickly looks at their game card/board and shouts out the object that matches one they need. There are variations to game play, like fill the entire card to win, fill just a row of 3 objects, a diagonal, etc, etc.... Also, each card has a red side and a green side, the green side is apparently easier for younger kids to win b/c the cards have fewer objects that coincide (leading to someone not getting their tile) but the red side is a bit more competitive and fun b/c you have to be fast and shout out for you tile before anyone else.

Even 21 month old M has gotten in on the fun by having her own board and getting tiles than no one else needs in exchange for telling us what she thinks the objects are. (The "CUP" is apparently "TEA", I wonder where she picked that up...lol)

I am very impressed with the build quality of this game, all of it seems quite durable. We have played every single day since Christmas Eve, probably averaging 4 games a day, and there has been no hint of anything that might break any time soon, and, most important, it remains very fun. (Even for the grownups, which is, let me tell you, really saying something.)

Wedgits!

One of the top items of Christmas 2009 at our home was this unassuming little box of blocks. Wedgits are appropriate for even much smaller siblings (no choking hazards!) and easy to put together into all kinds of fun and interesting towers and shapes. We also got a stack of cards with pictures showing structures to build in increasing levels of difficulty, rather like 3-D tangrams. S flew through the beginner levels, but I suspect that the more challenging ones will take some thought and perhaps parent assistance. Fun for everyone!

Also, judging from the "free play" that S has been doing with these all day they will be helpful in sequencing/size concepts as well as interesting balance/motor skills and spatial relations.

Family Math

This summer my mom sent us a copy of Family Math, probably to alleviate my fears that S was not counting "properly" due to some sort of negligence on my part. When we tried the first "beginner" exercise in August it was a bit of a bust b/c we were still having a lot of trouble counting in sequence. I still don't quite understand why S had such trouble getting numbers in order, (letters did not seem to present the same difficulty) but seemingly overnight (maybe over a few days at most) she just "got it" even though we had pretty much stopped practicing or stressing about it at all, and now she can go past 10 (up to 17 I think now?) out of the blue. I had no idea she knew numbers in the teens! Anyway, during the summer we tried a couple of times to do "school" (S was antsy for school even then b/c some friends had been talking about pre-school and we visited one just to see) and opted for the "counting beans into an egg carton" activity, which did not go well. S got frustrated (I  got frustrated!) trying to count out beans and place them in the proper (labeled) cups in an egg carton. So we left it for a few months, and I just dug the book back out to flip through and see if there was anything more promising for us to try.

I am pleased with a few ideas for "beginners" and plan to implement them as we go along, but most of the book is geared toward older kids. A couple of things intended for more advanced levels actually may be interesting for us to try in a simplified way, I am pondering some ideas. (Venn diagrams for sorting shapes and colors?) We will for sure be using some of the handy graph paper with varying size grids to play with shape blocks and measuring areas/length. I was already planning on some activities with measuring/area using cuisenaire rods or pattern blocks and other objects, but this will add another dimension.

I also really like their suggestion of "Number Guess" which entails choosing a number between 1 and 10 (for beginners, choose a larger range for more advanced kids) and have them guess the number based on clues in your responses. ("too large/too small") You can print out a number line to help cement the concept of larger vs. smaller and number sequence, even use markers/objects to show areas that have been ruled out and narrow the field down.

Another activity that holds a lot of promise is the Animal Crossing game, though I think it will be even more fun to make our own board and movable "hazards" that Sophia and Maggie can both color in and help design, and maybe hunt down appropriate "tokens" in their bin of animals and other toys. This could be made more or less complicated as desired by expanding the board and adding extra hazards and maybe even areas that can be crossed if you choose but will require extra turns to do so, etc...I'll make a post with pictures whenever we get around to doing this one. (as well as a version of NIM with toothpicks...lots of logic games!)