St. Patrick's Day Kid Craft

I've never really thought much about celebrating St. Patrick's Day... It was just a random holiday between Valentines and Easter on which I tried to remember to wear green. Last year, I read this blog post and realized that it is another holiday with Christian roots. I loved this activity and bookmarked it as something that I wanted to do this year with my kids.

We followed Janna's tutorial pretty much exactly and read Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland before we did the potato stamping. Clayton thought that using the shamrock to teach about the Trinity was pretty neat, and Drew loved getting to paint. Everyone was a winner! ;)

The Finished Product :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you!

Boredom Buster #6

Okay, so this boredom buster made me realize with 100% certainty that I am, indeed, a Boy Mom. :)

When my sister and I were little, my Mom taught preschool and was the Preschool Director at our church. She was always super creative and great with little kids. She came up with fun crafts and activities for the children that she worked with - many involved painting with odd materials (marbles, matchbox cars, dry noodles, etc.). I remember that the favorite means of painting a piece of paper, for the boys at least, was always earthworms. Yes, you heard me correctly, my Mom would help the kids dip the worms in paint and then watch them squiggle across the page. It was always a crowd pleaser amongst the male preschoolers.

So... the other day, when we were buying worms for Wade & Clayton's fishing adventure, I had flashbacks to my preschool teacher Mama. I told Wade to grab an extra box for Clayton & I to paint with. He said, "You're gonna what with them???" I'm pretty sure that he didn't think that I would ever follow through with that plan.

Well, I did in fact follow through. One day last week, I gathered up all of the various disposable (um, yeah, I wasn't about to reuse anything that those worms touched!) supplies, along with all of the courage that I could muster. I was determined not to touch any of the worms! There are certain lines that shouldn't be crossed, and that was my line. :)

I squirted out all of the paint colors, instructed Clayton on how to wash off the worms before putting them into the paint, and let him go for it.
He was absolutely giddy when they started wiggling all over the paper! He said, "This is the best craft ever!!!" Ha ha!


Yeah, I'm pretty sure that I racked up some "cool Mom" points that day....

Just so that I don't get hate mail from PETA, no worms were harmed in the making of this boredom buster. We released them back from whence they came - to the dirt!
Family Fun had a little blurb about no-mess finger painting in this month's issue. It suggested putting tempera paint into a Ziploc baggie, removing all of the air, and then zipping it shut. I figured that was much more up Drew's ally. So... he got to no-mess finger paint while we painted with worms. ;)


Although painting with worms isn't really my cup of tea (the no mess finger painting was more my style!), my Boy sure did love it! :)

Spring is in the Air

It's Springtime - Yay! We've been enjoying this beautiful sunshine and the warmer temperatures.

We've been:

* Riding Bikes - Actually, let me rephrase that... the boys have been riding bikes. (Me, notsomuch. Bikes and I don't get along so well. ;) ) Wade bought a trailer for his bike for Drew to ride in.

As you can see, he likes it. :)

* Wearing Shorts - After just one week of wearing shorts, there are 4 skinned knees among my offspring. Good gracious! What are their little knees going to look like by the end of the summer?!?! Boys...

* Raising Butterflies - A while back I bought a butterfly habitat at Target (HERE, apparently it is available online only now) for Clayton. He has been begging me to order the caterpillars. I finally broke down at the beginning of March and ordered them. They arrived on March 19th as teeny tiny itty bitty caterpillars. The company guarantees that you will end up with at least 3 painted lady butterflies. Lucky for us, all 5 of our caterpillars became butterflies. It was so fun to watch them change grow, change into chrysalises, and then emerge as butterflies. Clayton really enjoyed watching the whole process. He would check on them as soon as he got up each morning and several times throughout the day. I would highly recommend it for little ones (it would be a fun birthday gift to give, too).

Yesterday we had a butterfly release in the backyard. Good times...

* Making a Bird Feeder - Today we used the instructions from Family Fun (HERE) to make a bird feeder. It was easy to make and cheap - an old orange juice container, 2 wooden spoons, and some bird seed.

Clayton is pretty excited about his feeder. I hope that he gets to see some birds tomorrow. :)

I hope that y'all are enjoying the beginning of Spring, too. Summer's just around the corner.... Yipee!!!!

The Highlights

This week has been crazy busy. It was one of those weeks where there just wasn't any time to blog. But... I thought that I would sit down and do a quick recap of the week. I'm just going to hit the highlights. :)

Monday was President's Day. I was looking for some educational activities to do with Clayton while Drew was napping, and I stumbled upon this Presidential powdered wig tutorial. It was too funny to pass up. So, Clayton and I made one. He loved it! He wanted to wear it all day. Hysterical...

You can't truly appreciate it without a full 360 degree view.

Ha ha!

While we were making the wig, I explained to Clayton that when George Washington was the president, all of the important men wore powdered wigs. He said, "So, does Barack Obama wear fake hair?" I about fell out of my chair laughing. ;)

Much to my surprise, they observed President's Day at preschool on Tuesday, too. They made an Abe Lincoln hat/beard.

I don't know whether Clayton makes a better George Washington or Honest Abe. Hmm....

For Valentine's Day, instead of getting the boys gifts, we bought a family membership to the Ft. Worth Museum of Science and History. They recently remodeled the Children's Museum and it is awesome! I'm quite certain that we will get our money's worth out of our membership. I think that the boys would be perfectly content going every week. We've been twice and we still haven't seen it all. It's huge!

They had a 4D movie about the Barnett Shale. It was a little over Drew's head, but he sure looked cute in the glasses. ;)

We had to take a few pictures in front of the 30-foot model of a drilling apparatus for Papa D. My Dad is a petroleum engineer, so it was fun for Clayton to see the kinds of things that his grandpa designs. I'm sure that my explanation didn't do it justice...


Both of the boys really enjoyed the Dino Dig area. Clayton had a ball looking for bones and Drew felt big carrying around the tools.


They had an interactive baby area that Drew really enjoyed.

Clayton loved the grocery store,

and the balancing area,

and the microscope camera projector (yes, I totally made up that terminology!),

and driving the ambulance.

Drew was content to snuggle with one of the babies in the hospital area. I said, "Give the baby some love" and he hugged it. Sweet boy...

Then he poked it's eye. Ha! Guess we'll be focusing on gentleness this week...

You stood in front of this giraffe and it measured your height using a laser. It said that Clayton was 3 feet 9 inches, which I think is pretty accurate.

Lockheed Martin was there for the Museum's Engineer's Week. They had a pretty cool exhibit that Clayton LOVED.

He got to do their fighter jet simulator and shoot at a target.

He said that was his favorite part of the day.


We had so much fun at the museum. If you live anywhere near there, you should look into a membership. It really is a good deal! That's my little spiel...

I'm so sorry that this turned into a really long post. Y'all know that I have a tendency to be, ahem, long winded and to pick too many pictures. I'm going to work on that. I promise. :)