Playing Farm

The farm set has come back to play in a big way in our house. That is a hay elevator that Adam made going into the barn you can see above. And he has the manure spreader backed up to the barn, just like we do at home, to collect the manure and spread it out over the corn fields. Last week one of our cows had been pregnant too long or something and gave birth to a still birth calf. The heifer was wild so my father in law couldn't get a hold of it to help it or something. This was the first thing I heard about when I got home that day. There was a dead calf in the drop and Papa took the calf out with the tractor bucket. You can be sure that scene was re-enacted here with the farm set. But such is farm life I guess. I like that they are playing with the farm set again and using their imaginations. I thought that hay elevator was pretty clever.

Swimming lessons

We have put the boys in swimming lessons at the Lodge in Rock Hill after church on Sundays. I am very happy with the program. This is real instruction opposed to a program we have done in the past where you basically walk your child around the pool for a free swim half an hour. You can see in the one picture above, it is one instructor per like 3 kids. And I don't even have to go in the pool for this one! The pool is very warm as well, otherwise my kids would not have even attempted to go in. They walk right in so I am happy about that. Van of course is sort of a free spirit. Today he shimmied himself along the side of the pool to the other end and they had to sway him back. They put flotation devices on their backs and teach them how to swim properly. Adam can swim, but he does this side to side motion to keep him afloat. I want him to learn how to do it correctly. They enjoy going and I probably will put them in another semester.

The 'hide-out'

This is what I found in my pan 'drawer' today.

Making Crayons

My pictures are posted backwards but that's ok. We decided to make crayons today. I got this idea from my favorite website over a year ago:



http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2008/12/best-of-2008-count-down-2.html



And today we decided to make the crayons. I got candy molds from AC Moore as the blog creator suggested and they were like a buck or so each. Then as you can see, Adam and I (Van wasn't interested) gathered all of our 'bits' of crayons and sorted them by color. Surprisingly, some of the bits were REALLY hard to get the wrappers off of. We put them in the foil cupcake wrappers as suggested. Some people said the paper ones didn't work so well but the foil worked just fine. We put them in the 220 degree oven (and the website didn't say for how long but I timed it and it was about 20 minutes.) I took them out, the foil was cool right away, and poured them into the molds. They didn't take that long to cool I didn't think. Maybe it was an hour but it didn't seem like it. And they came out wonderfully. I totally recommend this project and will probably do it again.