Puddles and Mud: May 2012

Friday, 25 May 2012

"Not A Box" is a wonderful book written and illustrated by Antoinette Portis. Its about a little rabbit and his cardboard box and all the ways the box becomes something else, something wonderful, as he uses his imagination and tells the reader it's "not a box". Naturally, the children had to have their own "Not A Box" and luckily, I had one available!! They even made a "Not A Box" for the dolls!

Baked Cotton Balls, take 2!

Well......it appears if you leave the squishy cotton balls from last Friday in an open container for an entire week they do in fact go quite hard! Yay! Out comes the big hammer and SMASH go the fabulously coloured balls!! Excellent!

Friday, 18 May 2012

....another 'this moment'.....cause sometimes you just gotta have two!

Squishing baked cotton balls

Mix equal parts flour and water, add food colouring, soak cotton balls, and bake them for 45 minutes to 1 hour at 150 F, and then....wait for it....SMASH THEM WITH A HAMMER!!!!! Ours were kinda squishy so next time, we cook them longer.....

Right. Apparently, I was supposed to bake them at 300 F, not 150. And now I know! Better luck next time!!

So much messy fun! Soaking the cotton balls!

Just out of the oven.

Ashlyn hammers the cotton balls and discovers they don't shatter, but they do squish.

Aubrey tries the hammer first, then.....

in the words of the Avengers' Hulk "Aubrey SMASH!"

Riley tries a new technique

"Hey, wait a sec! This is still squishy on the bottom!"

Brenna tries her hand and the 'ol 'line up and smash'. "This is so cool!"

Making orange juice

Carefully cutting up the oranges

And the slices all go in here and we push this doomahicky here down like this....

Ashley took the pictures, that's why I'm in them all! The lessons we learned about making fresh orange juice is that a) it's very concentrated when it's put through a juicer, b) if you add too much water to balance it out, it gets "wow, now it's really watery, Christy", and b) you must add sweetener!!!!

It's not that loud

Just look at that COLOUR!!

Aubrey, Ashlyn, and Riley try a drink

Brenna's not really certain about this stuff

How does your garden grow?

Flowers are starting to bloom, strawberries are flourishing, carrots are sprouting, raspberries are starting to bud, even the purple potatoes are showing the first leaves! We'll be eating the fruits (and veggies) of our labours in no time (sorry, I couldn't resist that one)!

Carrots above and carrots below

Purple Potatoes, this pic and next

Strawberry bed, complete with Toad House in the corner

Strawberries and Raspberries

Biggest raspberry bush!

Lilacs with 1 cluster of flowers

Lilacs cluster of flowers!

Pine tree, grown by Riley

Tiny purple flowers, unknown name!

Apple tree


Strawberry pot

I just had to share this! "Because PLAY matters"

I found this on beloved Pinterest (dear parents and friends, if you haven't discovered Pinterest, you must get yourself to it right away....so sooooo addicting....and I get a LOT of daycare ideas from there, too!). I need to have it made into a poster and framed for the centre asap! Makes me happy!