Child Labor

For the most part my kids are pretty good workers. They help me unload the dishwasher, they put away toys after they play with them, my little girl wipes up spills quickly after they happen, and every night before bed they both pick up 10 things up off the floor. But their hands-down-favorite job of all is cleaning the car. Every Monday I get out the dust buster and two grocery bags (one for garbage, one for things that need to go inside like sippy cups or shoes that got left behind). They help me pick up, they help me dustbust, and then comes the favorite job.....wiping down the car. I bought interior car wipes for like $2 and they go to town with those things. I am so grateful for my cute little cleaners.

More Letters

Recently we finished D is for duck,

 E is for Elephant

 

and F is for fish.

Bath Fizzies

While the littlest one was sleeping, my daughter and I made bath fizzies. The recipe was easy.

-1 c. baking soda

-1/2 c. citric acid (I'd never heard of this. We bought this at Sprouts Market, but I had to ask where to find it. I thought it would be a liquid but it was a powder. Surprise!)

-1/2 c. cornstarch

-2 T. coconut or almond oil (we used coconut, also found at Sprouts)

-1 T. water

-food coloring (optional)

You simply mix all the dry ingredients in one bowl and mix the water and oil in a different bowl. Put the two together and mix, mix, mix. The consistency is about that of moon sand. The next step was to shape the mix into balls and place them on a baking tray.

This is the way my little girl lined them up. Later I learned that I needed to spread them out a little more because these puppies get a lot bigger.

They need to dry for 24-48 hours. It's really interesting to watch the process. First they get sticky, then they get dry and hard.

This was a really fun project and the kids love tossing them in the bath and watching them fizz.

Sun-Catchers

I just wanted to put up a quick picture of what we did with our sun-catchers. We put ribbon through each one and strung them on a string. Right now they're hanging over our window and they look so pretty when the sun shines through.

Catching Some Sun

If you are a Pinterest Junkie like myself, then you've probably seen these sun-catchers before. They are easy-peasy. You take a bunch of plastic pony beads, put them in a muffin tin (or if you are my 1-year-old then you put them in, take them out, put them in, take them out, put them in, throw them at your sister), and bake in the oven, creating a nice burnt plasticy smell, at 400 degrees for 25 minutes. The next step recommended is to drill a hole in each one and hang them up. I thought to myself, great, I don't own a drill. So I came up with my own brilliant (if I say so myself) idea. I simply put a metal rivet in each muffin tin before I baked them and they came out perfectly. They are now hanging beautiful over our back sliding glass door.

Flag Toast

This was our Patriotic breakfast:

And this was the result :

 

I put chocolate peanut butter on the toast to make the fruit stick a little better. That's what is all over this boy's face.

Splashing in Puddles

We recently had rain and the kids got a kick out of splashing in puddles. After the rain came several dry days that left the kids longing for puddles to splash in, so we created our own.

 

Yes, I did end up with my finger over the lens. No, I didn't realized until I had already downloaded the picture on to blogger. Yes, I am too lazy to pick out a better picture. 

While we were at it, we made water pictures with the wheels of some toy cars.