Boy Craft

Sometimes it can be difficult to get boys involved in (and excited about) crafting. Especially when we insist on making 'cute' things that involve glitter and stickers and fluffy bunnies. 
But once in a while, when things go right, there are times when they totally take the craft out of your hands and run amok with it. 


These are some of those times. 


I saw This Post a few weeks ago from Last Minute Mel (don't you LOVE that blog title!... maybe the degree of my love for it is proportional to the 'last-minute-ness' of my own life...sigh) and called the boys over to see how Mel's boys had made the COOLEST Lego ski resort. 


Here's a picture of thiers: 

And I was immediately kicked off the computer so the boys could have a chance to study the above handiwork. About an hour later they called me into the bedroom to see this:

Not quite as fancy, but entirely theirs. It stayed up for about two weeks. 

*********

Then there was the embroidery day. I had been working on improving my (aka acquiring any kind of) embroidery skills, for a while making easy little handkerchiefs  (see This Post), and was completely taken aback one day when the boys declared that they wanted to make some of their own. 

So we sat down and i showed them a few things, and said, go for it. 

They went. 

 This was the result. 

Max wanted his smack in the middle of the hanky, a wonky little happy face. 

I love it to pieces. 

And how cool (and ... well done) is Owen's robot guy. 

Great job.

*******

That one day during spring break when it rained and everyone was going nuts inside the house, I gave the boys a free pass to build a fort right in the middle of the living room. 

They built this.

I was pretty impressed. It was like a mini circus tent, strung up with pulleys and held up with chairs and tables and even stitched together a little bit so there wouldn't be any gaps in the ceiling. 

*******

And who could forget the day of the cups... 

If you missed it, Here's the Link. 

When Max gave us a run-down on how to build a super-cool rocket out of plastic cups,

and Owen built the largest cup-tower ever. 

It's so much fun being mom to some seriously creative boys. And I've learned that, while instruction and step-by-step crafting is good, there are also times when you just need to provide the materials and the occasional suggestion, and let them see what they can do. 

I'm always amazed and impressed. 

What have your kids made on their own that surprised you?

Slips and Snails,

-shawnacy

Marble Jars and Positive Discipline

Probably the most puzzling and certainly the most dreaded part of being a parent is discipline. We all hate it. We hate doing it, and we hate that there is a need for us to do it at all. 
But.
Let's be honest. Nobody's kids are perfect (certainly not mine). And from time to time we have to pull them out of the candy drawer, or off their brother, or away from the street...again, and plop them into time-out. It happens.  
Sometimes, when we're really busy or stressed out (or when they have ADHD plus a lot of other things plus a billion brothers and sisters), it seems to happen a LOT. 

I was getting really tired of all of the behavior issues we were having, and of how somehow I had become little more than a warden and a referee. 


So a few years ago, I re-vamped my approach. 


First thing, was to HAVE. A. PLAN. 
For the times when the kids were home, I needed to have something for them to do. There are tons of ideas out there for fun things to do with kids. Many of them don't cost any money and don't really take much on your part but a little bit of planning before hand. I was a teacher for quite a while, but for some reason, the idea of having a 'lesson plan' for our home time never crossed my mind. 
But let me tell you, it has changed things for us. 
All I do really is keep a list of projects, games, activities, books etc. (it's just one of my bookmark files) and add to it as I find things (I add stuff pretty much every day). Then, at night (I try to do this once a week, but sometimes I get behind and do it the night before... works either way) I pick some activities for the week (checking to make sure I have everything I need in the way of any materials) and just plop it into my daily to do list (I use teuxdeux.com.) Here's mine for today and tomorrow. 

THURSDAY

APRIL 14, 2011

• press here book pojcect
• finish red and orange bags
• call abt. gre in lit. when?
• Walking
• post organ to ebay
• groceries
• J- takes the car
• outside time - build a fort
• ch. breast caserole
• write up alchemist thing
• rave on

FRIDAY

APRIL 15, 2011

• Poem project with ink blowing
• LAUNDRY!!
• Walking
• Shrimp pasta
• bike ride
• family night

And that's it. Most days it isn't even anything particularly special. Just going for a walk, or playing outside with water tubs while the boys and I have a game of catch, or having a stack of drawing books from the library on hand when they get home from school with some notebooks and sharpened pencils... that's really all it takes. 
And they have a directed activity that isn't too stressful, and I was relieved of my policemama duties, and we're watching hardly any tv anymore, and everyone has a (mostly) peaceful time at home. 
It was crazy how well it worked. 


and then, Secondly, I came up with the Marble Jars. 

Essentially it's the same kind of thing they have in every elementary school classroom. You know, the kind where you get to put a bean in the jar every time you're caught being good, and, when the jar is full  you all get a pizza party... that kind of thing.


We don't do allowance in the traditional sense here at home, because it seems to devolve quickly into little more than paying your kids to do their chores. Which I think maybe gives them the wrong message. Instead, when they get their chores done for the day, or when they complete their homework without complaining, or have a tidy room at the end of the day, or practice their good manners at dinner - then they are allowed to put a marble into their jar. When their jar is full they are rewarded with something fun of their choosing. Sometimes they choose a toy, other times a trip or outing. And when everyone in the family has filled their marble jars once (or twice... we're working on our fourth filling!) we get to do something special as a family. Last time all the jars were filled, we went to LegoLand. 


So it's really just an incentive program to get them focused more on what they can do that is positive, rather than on how they're going to get punished for NOT doing what they ought. 


Here's what we give marbles for:
Room inspection - just before bed (no punishment if they're not clean... but also no marble.)
Homework - done quickly and cheerfully
Chores - the assigned ones, and any they choose to do on their own (I nearly fell out of my chair the first time Nancy volunteered to scrub the kitchen floor)
Good Manners at the table
Being helpful and kind




So really, that's what it boils down to. Being prepared, and giving them a reason to want to be responsible and kind. 
This has been working really well for us, but I'd love to hear your ideas. How do you keep the peace in your house?

Marbles and Manatees

-shawnacy

Kids Poetry Challenge week #1

Last month was National Reading Month and we had such a great time doing our celebratory theme: 30 Days of Books, (flip through for tons of book recommendations for all ages... even grown-ups!) and participating in the Read-Along at Helping Little Hands. We read so many great books, and did a bunch of fun activities, and, though we'll be continuing to do that, of course, I was a little bummed that it wouldn't be quite as focused or intentional. ... but... I stumbled upon the beautiful and fun Brimful Curiosities Blog via the Ultimate Blog Party (yay!) and she is doing a Kid's Poetry Challenge during the month of April. (double Yay!) 

We'll do one of these each week this month, and link up with Brimful Curiosities to see what everybody else is doing! Join in!

For our first poem, we used a Chippewa Indian Song called 'A Song of Greatness.'

here's an excerpt:

"When I hear the old men

Telling of Heroes,

Telling of great deeds

Of ancient days,

...Then I think within me,

... I too, when my time comes, 

Shall do mightily."

The boys love hero stories and have been in a bit of an Indian craze lately, so I thought this would be a great inspiration for art. We spent some time looking up information about the Chippewa, and found out that :

## They called themselves the Anishinabe, which means 'original person.'

## They live in North America, especially in the northern US and southern Canada. 

## They lived in wigwams or tipis depending on location. 

## They wore clothes like These.

And then we went to work on our illustrations. We used the fun watercolor colored pencil technique to make the drawings bright and colorful. 

If you've never done this before, it's super easy and ends up looking a lot like a watercolor painting, but without the mess. (less mess = happy mom). 

Quick little explanation, if you'd like to try: you just take a regular set of colored pencils, and dip them in water as you would a paintbrush, before coloring.    We've found that soaking the pencils for a few minutes before using helps the led become nice and soft and watery. Also, that normal printer-weight paper isn't really good enough for this type of technique, as it tends to rip and tear. 

Here are the finished works: 

Max's, titled: 

Young Brave Dreams of Killing a Bear Like a Great Warrior.

Annika's, titled:

An Indian Girl and her Mama in their Wigwam Doing Grown-Up Things Like Cooking and Setting the Table

And Owen's, which he calls:

Chippewa Brave Listens to the Old Men Speak, and Dreams of Brave Things

Thanks for playing, everyone, and pick up a poem today! 

If you're at a loss for where to start, here are some great ones for us big kids:

W.B. Yeats, When You Are Old

Billy Collins, I Go Back to the House for a Book

Margaret Atwood, Spelling

Dorothy Parker, A Thought For a Sunshiny Morning

to rhyme and meter and the love of cadenced words,

-shawnacy

linking up to:

The Z Was Zapped, Yarn Letters, and The Alphabet Signs Song

I've mentioned before how much our family loves all of the Chris Van Allsburg books. (<-- Check out the link! His site is super cool!)

And when an idea popped into my head for an Alphabet Book craft, I couldn't think of a better book to use than his "play in 26 acts," The Z was Zapped. 

It's 26 of his intensely beautiful illustrations depicting each letter succumbing to an unfortunate demise.  Here are a few of the pages, to whet your curiosity.

So. After reading of the untimely end of the alphabet, we set out to create (rather than destroy) our own letters. 

I posted a letter craft on This edition of friday finds not too long ago, and was pretty excited to try it out. 

So, we rounded up some old wire hangers, 

a pair of wire snips,

a pair of pliers,

some tape,

glue,

and yarn.

I let the kids rummage through my stash, and pick out something that would make them happy. 

Then I set to work shaping the letters. I used my hands mostly, but brought the pliers in once or twice to make a neater corner, or flatten out the ends. 

Then I handed the letters (the first letter of each of their names) to the kids and helped them tie one end of the yarn to the letter at the topmost corner (or the closest I could get to the top, anyway) 

After that it was just a matter of wrapping the letters the way they wanted. (We used the glue on the sides to help keep the yarn in place.) This is where their personalities totally shone through. 

Max's letter was a beautiful mess. He also decided he wanted to attach an ink pen to the middle of his letter... (??) Odd things, bright red yarn, that, at the end, turned out looking like some sort of awesome spiderweb... that's my maxy. 

Annika's was neat and tidy. She got a little frustrated when the yarn got out of line, so I helped her get them all nice and straight. I love how hers kind of came out looking like a weird pair of pants. :)

And Owen spent most of the morning making his O into a rainbow-colored dreamcatcher. He wrapped the entire O in yarn, and then criss-crossed the yarn through the center to create the net-like part. Then he went out in the backyard to find some cool rocks, and hung those from the bottom of the creation. I love when the kids take a project and run with it!

While we were crafting, we made sure to talk about the letters, and their sounds, and to sing this little song alphabet song I made up to teach the signs for each of the letters. Signing the letters is very tactile, and it worked wonders with Owen and Max who have a hard time learning visually, when they were young. Here's the tune. (it's Jesus Loves Me) It incorporates the letter name, the sound, and the sign. 

** If you or your child don't know the signs for the letters, take a quick moment to learn. Not only is it helpful for learning the letters, but I use it almost every day when the kids ask me how to spell things. (They always seem to need to know how to spell 'hammerhead' or 'extreme' when I'm on the phone, or in the middle of a conversation. So I can just sign it to them, and reach a new totally awesome level of multitasking! Woo Hoo!!) 

Here's one final look at the letters hanging up in their new homes! 

Great Job Kiddos!

linking up to: