March Creations

My wool project this month was making Laura a needle felted wool shaker ball.  I took a plastic egg and filled it with beans. After taping it shut I wrapped layers of wool around it and secured that layer of wool with yarn.  I then put the red wool on the outside and needle felted the ball until it held together.  Laura loves it.

We did another family play-dough moment.  Nathan built houses for the little animals and played with them for hours.  Emily created a planet and then added a ring around it to make saturn.

Nathan loved seeing the horse show at the state fair in Indiana last August.  Ever since then he has had a fascination with horses.  We picked up a few horse book and how to care for horses book from the library.  The kids devoured them and had us read favorite pages again and again.  Then they built horse and took care of it as the book detailed.  Down to cleaning the horses tail in a bucket of warm soapy water!  Of course they rode the horse too – but safely with helmets.

The Emily and Nathan built A LOT of houses out of all sorts of materials.  It is amazing what they come up with.  Sometimes they work together, but they are both equally likely to build one alone.  I’m amazed at how different each one is, and they are all elaborate.

One morning we made our neighborhood using masking tape on the floor to create roads.  Nathan built a fire station and Emily made our house.  They added bridges and cars and we left this set up for awhile.  Taking off the tape became another great activity later that they all loved.

When my family visited we went to Wintergreen Lake and saw ducks there.  A few days later the kids sculpted a duck family out of aluminum foil and had them swim in the bathtub.  It was the cutest thing to see all three kids gently handle the ducks and watch them swim.

Emily and Nathan built a boat that could carry cars.  When I told them that was a real thing called a ferry they were amazed.

Andrew taught soft robotics at a conference in Kansas City.  He brought home the robots to pack but first showed them to the kids.  We all got to take turns pumping the air to make the little robot walk like an inchworm.

We went on a family walk around the neighborhood collecting sticks (very easy in a New England neighborhood filled with trees).  When we got home we built a family sized birds nest.  Our 2nd Floor neighbor Keri told me later that when she got home from work she was “delighted” to see something so enchanting in our backyard.