glue sky » Ages 3-6

While sculpting the other day, Lou asked for a ball of clay. I rolled one. She began shaping it into a triangle. She said she was making a Totoro (A catlike creature from the movie My Neighbor Totoro.) She looked a little deflated that it wasn’t looking like Totoro. I said “Let’s get a picture [...]

Sorting Nature

On our walks we collect sticks, leaves and weeds. I read in one of my Montessori books to collect a bunch of twigs of different sizes and let the kids sort them by height. I have not had much luck with sorting. The kids love to sort, but they love to sort when it’s their idea. [...]

Milk Clouds

It’s a pretty cool special effect they used to use in old movies. We did this type of stuff when I was doing a claymation video game. High tech. Pour or drip, either way it’s great looking. I’m sure teaches some kind of science, though I am not sure what. Do tell if you know. [...]

Making Montessori Objects for Reading

We have our sandpaper letters, our movable type and a little carpet. Lou is eager to kick reading in gear. Now all we need are some Montessori Objects for reading. These are usually things Montessori moms hunt for all over, or they can be bought from Montessori Services. But I didn’t have the patience to [...]

Painting with Acrylics

My kids want to paint a lot. We don’t have one of those easels with primary colors because I am not a fan of giving little ones red, green, and blue in plastic jars. I think they will not enjoy painting if it’s always going to look like a mash up of red/green/blue on a [...]

Little Button Collaborative

A while ago I found a great tutorial at the Purl Bee on button making. We decided to give it a shot. I drew some circles on linen and asked Lou to draw whatever she wanted with the disappearing pen. She drew faces. Then she picked out some colors. Then I stitched the faces… We cut them [...]

Shelling Last Seasons Beans

I’m not sure if this is the right way to dry out beans, but it works for us. We just leave our beans up on their trellis, or in this case a fence, over winter. They looked dry enough so we grabbed us some beans. And these aren’t just any beans. They are Red Runner [...]

Flour and Water

Good morning water. Good morning flour. Let’s make a disaster. I read somewhere that to start your child cooking you can give them some flour and water to mix up. I thought “why would I ever do that, we make our own bread!” Well I tried it anyways. Lou loved it. We did it two [...]

Sink or Float

Always a good one!

Sculpey From the Kitchen Drawer

We have this cluttered art drawer in the kitchen. Lou and Ero love to dig through it and bring stuff out to work with. More times than not, Lou reaches for this pile of sculpey. This is what it looked like after Lou sculpted with it for a bit. It was glorious in its own [...]

Drawing from Reference

This morning Lou asked me to draw an airplane. (Note the paper above has a light pencil sketch on it by me that we are recycling.) I said that sounded great, and what we needed to do was to look at an airplane. So I went to the computer, googled “747 airplane” and set the [...]

Peeling and Cutting Carrots

Sculpting with Reference