The Lilting House Archive

From the Files: Auto Mad Libs

I was visiting Becca's lovely blog, And Together We Learn, and saw there a mention of a game I wrote about at Bonny Glen almost two years ago. I'd totally forgotten about the post, but the game is alive and well—it's still one of the girls' favorite car pastimes. Thanks, Becca! (And I sure do hope your gang is enjoying the read-aloud! Hee.)

The Purple Cow Hula-Hooped Boisterously

This is a game we played in the car yesterday, all the way to town and back. I assigned each of the girls a part of speech: noun, verb, adjective, adverb (one girl had to take two parts in each round). From there it went something like this:

Me:  Miss Noun, what is it?

Beanie: A giraffe!

Me:  Miss Adjective, what kind of giraffe?

Jane: A hungry giraffe.

Me:  Miss Verb, what did the hungry giraffe do?

Rose: It bounced!

Me:  Miss Adverb, how did the hungry giraffe bounce?

Jane: Enthusiastically!

All together:  THE HUNGRY GIRAFFE BOUNCED ENTHUSIASTICALLY!

Wonderboy:  Huh?

In Becca's post, she shares her own car game, which sounds like fun.

While driving we played an animal classification game where they had to tell me if something was a mammal, bird, reptile or amphibian. We talked about the qualities of each class, and did a little with some of the different orders—mostly primate and marsupial. The girls loved this one. We'll have to make this a car time staple.

 

 

O Automated Voice Answering System, How I Despise Thee

Welcome to Aetna Member Services!

To endure an assault upon your sanity, press 1.

To waste approximately 23 minutes of your precious time, press 2.

To speak to an actual live human being who has any interest in hearing about the problem you are desperately trying to solve...

Call your mother.

Wonderboy Paints

A few people wrote that they were unable to view the video at the bottom of the last post, so here it is in a different format. Let me know if this one works for you!

                 

My boy sure does love to paint.

Watercolor Painting: How It Happens Here

I have often remarked to close friends that for me, logistics make or break everything. I can have the best idea in the world, but if I can't figure out how to pull it off on a practical level, it is no more useful to us than a cloud: something pretty to look at, but impossible to take hold of.

Painting is one of those "nice ideas" that floated airily overhead until I worked out a system to make it feasible on a regular basis. My pal Sarah asked me for the details, and I thought I'd share them here. There's nothing earth-shattering here, but you should know that I am the easily frazzled type who really must think things through on the most basic level or else my plans go all kablooey.

I use high-quality watercolor paints, the kind that come in little tubes. These are very rich pigments and a little goes a long way. We used to use paint jars but they took up so much storage space, and the lids fell under the table and rolled away, and there was always mess involved.

Then I found these cute little plastic paint palettes at Michael's for 99 cents each. They have six wells, perfect for mixing colors. I put a dab of the three primary colors in one well each, and a smaller dab of each in two more of the wells, so the kids can mix their green, orange, and purple. Each child gets her own paint palette.

I have written before about investing in good watercolor paper and brushes. (Here's my long art supplies post from Bonny Glen, and its sequel.) These tubes have lasted us for over a year.

For painting boards, we use some markerboards (dry erase boards) I bought on clearance a long while back. I had actually ordered an official painting board from Paper Scissors Stone, and when I arrived I smacked my forehead because it was—a markerboard. But way more expensive. Doh.

Here's a tip from a Bonny Glen reader for another inexpensive kind of painting board. Whatever you use, they sure do make painting a lot easier to clean up. The boards wipe right off, and we stack ours near the closet when they're not in use. Voila—nice clean table.

We use pickle jars for water and a cloth diaper for drying brushes. Oh! And here's a great tip from—I think—Donna Simmons of Christopherus Homeschool Resources (whose First Grade Syllabus I'll be reviewing here later this week, by the way, and whose work I praised in my Waldorf series in the spring). If this wasn't Donna's suggestion, it was a speaker from a Waldorf homeschooling conference on a DVD I watched a while back. I should tell you more about that, too, sometime. But I digress. The great tip I was getting to: it's a sweet way to teach children to properly care for their brushes. You take the brush and tell a little story about a gnome who doesn't like his beard to stay wet. We never leave the brush sitting in the jar of water because that beard will be soaked and oh, what a sad little gnome. And we mustn't push too hard and bend his beard every which way. He doesn't like that at all.

Ever since I told this tale to Rose and Bean, they have treated their brushes with special care. No more leaving them soaking in the pickle jar. They carefully dry the "beard" on the cloth and smooth it into a point. It's nice.

I explained to the kids about the expensive paper, and how in order to use it for our paintings, we have to take great care not to squander it. They understood. They've painted on plain white copy paper, and they can feel the difference.

Rose says she "needs to paint at least two pictures a day" or she just doesn't feel right. She finds it a calming, peaceful activity. Here's a painting she says was inspired by a poem called "The Little Rose Tree" by Rachel Field:

(As you can see, we don't bother to tape our paper down flat, as most watercolor technique books recommend.)

When they were younger, I usually wet the paper with a sponge first, per the wet-on-wet watercolor technique you'll hear about in every Waldorf resource. My very little children, like Wonderboy now at age three, loved touching a brushful of paint to the wet paper and watching the paint swirl around the page. But past the age of five or so, I find that they much prefer to have more control over where their colors go. They know how to use water (either before or after applying paint to paper) to help the paint go where they want it to go, and to blend colors. They love to keep wetting the brush and "pulling" paint from one darker section across a wider area, making a rich blue sky or a lush green meadow.

Sarah had some great art-supply advice of her own to share:

Here is the address for the discount art supplies I was telling you about:

www.millerpadsandpaper.com

The company reminds me of Rainbow Resource only it is (nearly) exclusively
art supplies.  I have bought things in person at conventions and ordered by
phone and online.  I highly recommend them.  The prices are hard to beat.  I
purchased my class supplies for VBS this summer from them.  Even with
shipping they were the least expensive alternative (and I always love
supporting a small business anyway).

One of my favorite items is their sketchbook journals.  They have all sizes
in both 60 and 80# paper.  They are $3 for a 6x9 size which are perfect for
little laps in the car.

Always good to know where to stock up on more supplies. We get very excited about painting around here, as you can see. (Kindly ignore the girls squabbling in the background.)

(This clip doesn't keep replaying every time you load the page, does it? It isn't supposed to.)

The Promised Planner Post

Updated with more information!

I know, I know! It's practically September! I would assume you've all bought your planners already, except every day I'm getting zillions of hits for "planner for moms"-related phrases. Some of you out there are still shopping.

Catholic Woman's Daily Planner

The ever-popular Catholic Woman's Daily Planner by Family-Centered Press is in fact so popular this year that the small size, the one I like best, is already sold out. In the school-year format, that is. The 2008 Jan-Dec calendar is still available in both sizes. The school-year version is only available in the 8 1/2 x 11" three-hole-punched size. If you use a binder for your planner or home management book, you'll definitely want to take a look at Michele Quigley's lovely pages.

Two page weekly spread with daily mass readings, all feast days & solemnities plus a daily rosary mystery reminder. Two page monthly spread with the Holy Father’s prayer intentions and all major feasts & holidays. Daily prayers, prayer journal, address book, web log & year-at-a-glance.

All styles have the full color cover page and include 13 plastic permanent stick-on tabs (12 printed months -1 blank).

You can also order menu-planning pages and lesson-planning pages. I've used this planner (the small spiral-bound version) for two years and I really love it. I did wind up wishing I hadn't gone for the extra lesson-planning pages. I liked the menu pages very much, but I just don't have a need for lesson-planning pages. What planning I do happens right here, in blogland. I use a planner for scheduling our bajillion doctor appointments and for recording—after the fact—what we did, read, ate, saw. "Planner" is probably not the right word for my purposes—"chronicle" would be more accurate.

Michele's planner made a lovely chronicle. And I love having the saints' feast days printed on every day.

Here's my glowing review of last year's Catholic Woman's Daily Planner.

Price:
8 1/2 x 11" edition, $24.99.
With menu planning pages, $28.98.
With lesson-planning pages, $29.48.
With both menu and lesson pages, $33.47.

Also available: a men's version. The Family-Centered Student Planner is already sold out for this year.

Oh—and I love Michele's lovely nature journals, only $5 each!

MomAgenda

Now, you may recall from last year that I wound up with both the Catholic Woman's planner and the deliciously pretty MomAgenda. The MomAgenda's soft pastel pages and satin ribbon still make me swoon. And I still think the format, with sections for mom and up to four kids on each weekly spread, is brilliant. You can read what I wrote last year if you want to know more about it. 

What I wound up not liking, and one of the reasons the Catholic Woman's planner won out in the end, was the binding. In the beginning I actually thought the sewn binding with its sturdy-yet-attractive shantung cover would be a big mark in this planner's favor, especially with the ribbon sewn in to mark your place. I am a sucker for ribbons.

But I discovered I really, really have to have a spiral-bound planner. I need to be able to fold the cover back; I need small and wieldy. You know, as opposed to big and unwieldy.

Now that's just my preference. The 7-hole-punched Franklin Covey-style planners in nice leather binders have never worked for me either. They wooed me with their nifty pockets (I got a used one on eBay a few years ago), but you can't fold them back like a spiral.

Well, I'm in luck. I may have been too late to snag the small-sized spiral bound Catholic Woman's Daily Planner, but MomAgenda has a spiral-bound version, too. They sell it alone for $19.95, or in a perfectly gorgeous (and fearfully expensive) leather binder.

The spiral (sold as a "refill") has a sturdy plastic cover, metal (not plastic) rings, and those same pretty, pretty blue calendar pages with the special kids-and-mom format. In the back are also some planning pages (green) and note pages (purple). The month-at-a-glance spreads are all together in the front of the planner, which I love, instead of spread out through the year in front of each month's weekly pages.

This is an August 2007 through December 2008 calendar. So is the bound version, which they call the "desktop" model.

Here's a look at that clever layout (click to enlarge):

There are quotes at the top of the weekly pages, and last year one or two of the quotations were not the sort of thing you'd want your tender young readers to grab hold of. MomAgenda creator Nina Restieri responded to customers' complaints with concern, and my guess is that this year the quotes were chosen a bit more carefully. If you can't leave your planner out on the counter all day, what good is it?

Price:
Spiral-bound planner, $19.95.
Spiral-bound planner in leather binder with pockets, address book: $119.50
Desktop planner with sewn binding: $42.

 

The BusyBodyBook

I reviewed The BusyBodyBook last year (here's my post, which was quite detailed), and this year's version is similar, with some improvements. Like the MomAgenda, the BusyBodyBook provides a weekly grid with space for five separate people. It's a totally different layout from the MomAgenda, though—the people columns are vertical and the days of the week are horizontal. Like this:

The left-hand pages are for notes and lists, and the weekly grid is on the right.

I quite like the light brown shading on the weekly grids (though not nearly as much as I like those blue MomAgenda pages), but this year's covers don't do much for me.

 

Actually, the striped one isn't bad; it's just that my taste tends to run more to vintage botanicals. Or anything Lesley Austin makes.

Last year I complained about the photos that decorated the bottoms of the left-hand pages, and what do you know? This year they're gone: big improvement.

There are six-month-at-a-glance pages up front, covering July 2007 through December 2008. I like the idea of seeing six months at a glance, but of course in putting that many months on a spread, the grids must be much smaller, and these are probably too small for my purposes. The month-at-a-glance part of my planner is my most-used part. The rest is for notes and jottings. It's that monthly calendar that keeps all my balls in the air.

In the back are some extras, including perforated to-do lists (nice touch!), note pages, address pages, and a pocket. (There's a front pocket too.)

What strikes me about this planner is that it would work really well for scheduling lessons and activities for multiple kids. I like its 7 x 10" trim size and spiral binding. The cover is heavy card stock. The planner covers August 2007 through September 2008. (There are 2008 calendar-year versions available as well, with fun, funky covers.)

Price: $16.95.

BusyBodyBook also sells a 7-column magnetic Fridge Grid Pad. You write the names of each family member across the top and their activities through the week. Here's a peek:

More planner posts:

Small Meadow Press: A Circle of Days
The Mom's Daily Planner
Reader suggestions
More reader comments

Elsewhere on the web:

How Ann uses planners
Kim's home management binder
Stef on the Levenger Circa paper/digital system
Free planning resources at Donna Young
Jen on her Teacher Plan Book

If you've got a planner post, send me the link!

This Just Made My Day

Someone clicked on this post* today as a result of an Ask.com search for "how to fit five booster seats in a Honda Odyssey."

Glad I could help!

Doesn't it make you feel warm and fuzzy to know you've posted something useful? What's your favorite "Ooh, I helped someone!" moment? From your own blog, or in real life, either one. I bet you have some good stories.

*(Bad link fixed.)

By the Way

The R.L. Stine ad in the sidebar is driving me crazy, too. Let's just say I am NOT a fan.

Maybe I Shouldn't Have Said It

But I did.

I took the kids to the San Diego Museum of Art today, for Free Tuesday. Admission to the various museums and gardens in Balboa Park is free one Tuesday a month on a rotating basis. We plan to hit them all, eventually.

To our delight, we arrived to discover the museum is hosting an exhibit called Giverny, featuring canvases by several well-known Impressionists who came together to form a little artists' colony in the rural French village of that name. We met Monet in person for the first time today. I had goose bumps. I'll write more later about the paintings we saw today. I have lots and lots to say about our outing, but for now I'll just tell this one story.

We stopped by the museum gift shop on our way out. It's long and narrow, and the free-Tuesday crowd was clogging the aisles. I parked Wonderboy's stroller in a nook by the door where no one would trip over him, and I left Jane to keep watch over him while I bought a few art postcards. The register was in the middle of the store where I could keep an eye on the kids while I stood in line.

On the whole, they were being pretty patient, I thought, and well-behaved. But Beanie reached out to touch something on a shelf and Wonderboy let out a screech. He can be quite strict with his sisters. He had seen me issue instructions not to touch anything while I was in line. Thus the screech.

Two women happened to be passing behind me at that moment, and one of them rolled her eyes at the other.

"Why do people let their kids scream like animals?" she muttered.

I couldn't help it. I had to say something.

I turned to her with a big bright smile. "That animal," I said, "is DEAF. He's doing the best he can."

Her face blanched, and she choked out an apology as she hastened past, hurrying far, far away from the poisonously sweet mother of the screeching animal. I'm pretty sure she hid in the back of the store until I left. Poor thing; she had a long wait, for the line was long.

Heh.

Okay, so maybe it was a cheap shot. In truth, his shriekiness probably has more to do with his being a high-strung three-year-old than his being hearing impaired. And yes, he's only partly deaf. Medium deaf, if you will. Not all the way deaf.

I just get tired, sometimes, of how intolerant our culture seems to be of little children. I feel like I'm always shushing my brood, reining in their high spirits. I love to take them places, love piling in the car for another adventure in nature or art or history, but there can be so much tension in the role of the mom who is on don't-annoy-anyone alert.

They are obedient and pleasant children. We get plenty of smiles and compliments when we're out and about. We also get lots of stares, and sometimes frowns. If you're walking behind us on a narrow path, we'll try to get out of your way because I know we can be painfully slow to be trapped behind, but I can't always pull it off. My stroller wheels stick, and I'm preoccupied with keeping Beanie from walking every wall like a tightrope and Rilla from picking my pocket from her perch in the sling. And whoops, there goes Wonderboy's sippy cup under the stroller. And Jane wants me to look at a new species of butterfly she just spotted. And Rose requires a detailed explanation of exactly why we couldn't buy the $60 framed print we fell in love with in the store.

Bright, happy, eager, reasonably polite. Doesn't that balance sometimes inconvenient and occasionally noisy?

Of course I know it does. I'm not really angry about what that woman said. "Like animals" stung a bit, perhaps, but I know words like that cannot have been uttered by anyone who has walked ten steps in my shoes. And I don't know what her own shoes feel like. Perhaps she has bunions.

She certainly does not have my screeching, high-strung, hard-of-hearing animal, who sees me taking off his baby sister's clothes at bedtime and trots off down the hall to fetch her pajamas, unasked, chuckling with the joy of the task, and delivers them with a kiss for the baby and another for me. She does not have those skinny arms around her neck, that gaptoothed grin, those busy little fingers flashing and twisting to shape words in accompaniment to that funny, nasal, charming, tuneless singing.

One woman's animal, another woman's heart.

I Don't Generally Get Too Excited about Shoes

But these...oh, I am smitten. Both with the adorable sneaks and the clever makeover.

Followed the link to Rockin' Granola from Like Merchant Ships. Meredith has a good many other nifty links in that post...I especially liked the little jars of ocean at Green Bean Boutique.

And from Rockin' Granola, I followed Kara's link to another new-to-me blog, Angry Chicken, where discovered its companion blog, Tie One On, and swooned over the chicken-scratch apron.

Angry Chicken's piece about toys is, as Kara noted, well worth a read.

Amazing Art with Mark Kistler

I've written before about how much Jane has enjoyed working through the drawing lessons in Mark Kistler's Draw Squad. When I saw that Mark Kistler himself was offering a summer art camp right here in San Diego, I jumped at the opportunity.

"Hey, Jane," I said, ever so casually, "would you be interested in taking an art class with Mark Kistler?"

"WHAT??????!!!!!!!!!!!" she shrieked, puncturing my left eardrum. (I think I counted the number of exclamation points correctly, but there may have been more.) "REALLY????!!!!" :::pop:::: There went my other eardrum.

"I take it that's a yes?"

I couldn't hear her response, but fortunately I have learned a lot of sign language. I interpreted the jumping-up-and-down and maniacal grinning as a yes, and signed her up.

On Day Two of the camp, Rose demanded to know why she wasn't part of this experience. She fit the age range, so I'm not really sure why I didn't think to sign her up as well. Perhaps my powers of thought were thrown off by the shrieking and the ruptured eardrums and whatnot.

Happily, Day Two was "Bring a Friend Day," so I was able to sign Rose up for the rest of the week-long camp.

We could have signed up for two sessions—"Draw! Draw! Draw!" and "Beyond Pencil Power"—but I had some scheduling conflicts with the larger chunk of time, so we (to the children's disappointment) limited our participation to Draw! Draw! Draw!, a one-hour session five days in a row.

They have had the most fabulous time.

They love Mark Kistler. He's a great guy, every bit as engaging and funny as his books. My girls love his sense of humor and his energy. They come out of class full of laughter and stories—and the drawings, my word, the drawings.

Mark teaches the basics of 3-D drawing. His style is cartoonish, which appeals to the kids. His technique is rock solid, and the concepts they have learned will serve them well for a lifetime of drawing: foreshortening, shading, finding where light would hit the object you are drawing. The kids walked out of the very first class with impressive and delightful drawings. They are thrilled. They are bubbling over with excitement. They are distraught because today is the last day of class.

Never fear!, I told them. We can take Mark Kistler home with us. Of course we already have the cherished copy of Draw Squad, and now (thanks to a little bartering action, heh heh—Mark has a young daughter who is just the right age for Little House) we have his Imagination Station book as well, along with a couple of his drawing-lesson DVDs, which contain episodes of Mark's popular PBS show of the same name.

And then there's his website, which is loaded with good stuff.  You can download art lessons and even sign up for Mark's online drawing school. There are some free lessons to give you a taste of how it works. It's a nifty format, with animations to walk you through each step.

My girls couldn't wait to try out the new DVDs, and I have to tell you, I was blown away by the drawings Beanie—six years old, you know, and the only one who did NOT attend Mark's workshop (next year, I promised her, if he offers the camp here again)—produced after watching the show: a whole page of 3-D cartoon ghosts chasing each other around.

My point being: Mark's methods are highly effective, probably because they are so much fun. I only wish I could sign up for the class myself next year. (Actually, parents can sit in on the classes for free, and there's a kids-and-adults mixed session in the evenings. I couldn't swing it, what with the baby and the toddler, but the opportunity was there.)

I'll just have to content myself with watching the DVDs. These kids are having too much fun. I've got to get in on the action.