Projects...again...sigh

Okay, so morning projects still abound. That is being really really generous to myself, because I still SUCK at projects. I hate to say it, but 10 times out of 10 I would choose to read books to the kids, or turn on the tv, or even play a pretend game. But in the interest of broadening horizons (read: kill time), we are trying to branch out into an occasional craft or project. Ugh.

Last week we took an old pizza box and made our own board game. Colossal fail. 5 year olds are not capable of making up rules to a game. Next time, I'm going to see if they have printable board games on-line that I can tape into our pizza box. Ugh.

Also last week, we had a really good time making a chart of the colors in a bag of Skittles. I got mucho "cool mom" points for making the project about candy. ;) He dumped out a bag of Skittles, we made a graph with a piece of graph paper, and then we ate the Skittles. Notes for next time...make Andrew write the words on the graph. He needs so much practice with his writing, and I always forget to make him do that part. Duh.


Lily got a bag of M&Ms. Her graph was a little less...mathematical...and pretty much more like faces. I have no pictures of Michael...I was bribing him away from the graphers with his first taste of M&Ms. He was our product tester. He gave it two chocolaty messy thumbs up!


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Our house is woefully undecorated for Halloween. Halloween...I'm just not that into you. But today we made paper plate spiders. Hate. The instructions said to color the plates with marker. Fail...markers don't cover the plate before drying out. It said to color the back side of the plate so it will hang correctly. Fail. Try convincing children to color on the back. Crinkle the legs...Fail. Andrew got frustrated that he couldn't do the folds evenly. This child is so destined to fail out of school once he gets to something that doesn't come naturally. I should have done a sample before, so they could see the final result. Here it was...
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Lily making a pink spider. Which she ended up just making faces on anyway.

Andrew trying to fold his legs...just after this shot, he ripped it in frustration and threw it on the floor. Ahhhh, crafting fun!


Andrew decided to curl his legs instead. And he was so proud of himself that I got to hear this "Mom, isn't it cool that even though I couldn't fold it I thought of a different way to do it. Don't you think this is a great way to do it? Don't you think the curling looks really great? Even though I couldn't fold it, I found another way to do it." Repeat 1,245 times. Crafts are fun!

Michael was originally stationed with a bagel in his chair. That was NOT satisfactory. So then I gave him a marker and a piece of paper in his chair. Soon he was eating the blue and coloring all over his chair. I let him down and cleaned him up (washing hands is AWESOME), and then he was climbing on the table, grabbing the loose spider legs, and making Lily scream as he reached for her plate. Crafts are fun.

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Eventually I discovered that he was perfectly content taking the markers in and out of the marker tower. No mess. Content baby. Live and learn. Unfortunately he was so content that I left him like this while playing dinosaurs with the older two (actually I am STILL playing dinosaurs...just calling out directions while I type...don't be jealous...we all have talents). As I was saying, I left him and he fell off the chair. Ouch. Crafting is fun!

The end results were satisfying for the kids, though. Here is Andrew being attacked by our spiders.

Lily wanted a shot with her spider as well. Looks like she needs more exposure to nature if she thinks that is a spider ;)

She also wanted to do a scared face like Andrew did. Looks like we need more exposure to scary things as well. I think they could both be accomplished with a trip to the insect house of Philadelphia. ;)

Anyone else have fun things they've done this fall? Anything with pine cones? There are thousands of beautiful ones by our bus stop.