Sparkle writes and draws

Here are some of Sparkle's journal entries. I had been prompting her to include more descriptive language in her writing and here is the result.

 

 

I love how she drew each letter in the word "snakes" as a snake.

Glitter's Library

Glitter got it into her head to arrange the books on our little purple bookcase as her own personal library. She started straightening the books last night when she was really bored and I refused to let her play on the iPad anymore. She continued the project this morning as I did school with her big sister.

Glitter even added signs and a front desk.

Here is Glitter by the display she arranged and the stacks she made tidy.

 

Here are the signs. Note the opening and closing times. This library even does birthday parties with stuffed animals. Want to know more? Go to the front desk.

 

Here is the front desk. Look at all that paperwork! There is a birthday party sign-up sheet, slips for checking out books, a sign to ring bell for help, and pencils. Oh, and there is a very sweet librarian.

Storytime started at 2:15

 

 

Kids Quilt

I finally introduced the kids to quilting. Over the Christmas holidays we took a break from school and made a quilt for the new baby of a good friend.

Sparkle and Glitter picked out the main fabric, then I picked out the co-ordinating fabric for the sashing. I cut the pieces and explained how to put the pieces together. However, Sparkle and Glitter stitched all the seams. Well, Wander saw the girls sewing and wanted in on making the quilt, so he did one seam.

It is not their first times using my sewing machine, but it was by far the biggest project and they finally started to feel confidant at the machine. I attribute their progress to the sheer number of straight seams the quilt required. I didn't show them any shortcuts in piecing because I wanted them to have lots of practice on the little things like lowering and raising the presser foot, and dealing with thread tails. I also wanted to limit the number of long seams in case I had to rip any stitching. Overall, I am coming to think that piecing a quilt top is the idea introduction to machine stitching.

The design was my original idea. I wanted something relatively quick that looked good without having to match any seams. I am very proud of this design. A side benefit of the design was that it eased the girls from watching the needle / seam line to watching the edge of the presser foot. Soon they will be ready for a regular 5/8th inch seam allowance without an extra guide.

I ended up not using the speed limit feature on the sewing machine to slow down the kids. We kept having brown outs and I would forget to reset it. The kids did great in maintaining a reasonable speed on their own. I also ended up not requiring an extended "no finger zone" on the machine. I let them carefully have their fingers on the fabric right up to the foot, and they were really careful. It is so much easier to control the fabric that way.

 

Joint effort Haiku

Here is a haiku that Sparkle, Glitter, and I just wrote. Sparkle wrote a few words in her journal to capture the feeling of Glitter's piano practice. I decided to arrange the words into a haiku. Sparkle wasn't into the revision, but Glitter wanted in on the action and made her own suggestions to bring out how she felt doing the practice. Glitter let go of all her anger over the incident (both over the practice itself and her sister writing about it) and she eagerly grabbed paper, pencil, and eraser to participate in the poetry making process.

Here is the result.

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Piano practice
Screaming, rushed songs, I hate this!
Such terrible noise!

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Happy New Year at Home

We had friends over for the new year. We had lots of fireworks. Wander really likes fireworks.

 

I picked up a free new year's count down app so we could all count down together. It had fun fireworks. Nothing to compare with the multimedia live experience (showers of sparks, crackles and booms, and the omnipresent smell of smoke), but quite decent for a free app.

The evening ends with a sleepover.