Snow Dough

Last week we made snow dough.

The kids had so much fun creating things.

Maria made a carrot.

Lincoln didn't want to touch the stuff.

But all the other kids had a blast.

It was really fun to see Libby working so intently on one thing for so long.

I used this recipe from this website to make the snow dough. It turned out really well.

The kids had so much fun playing with the snow dough it was the first thing they wanted to do the next morning.

Because sometimes

you just need to eat dinner by lamplight.

Painting

Painting is always fun. And always messy. This was a couple of weeks ago when the kids were painting the first letter of their names to put on their standards.

This was Lincoln's first time painting. He loved it.

This was Lincoln's response when I told him he had to share the color he was using.

I'm not sure how this happened.

The kids had so much fun. The letters are cut from cereal boxes. They loved painting on the cardboard so much I went through the recycling and cut up more cereal boxes. The cardboard was great to paint with, paper is so flimsy and it's easy for the kids to paint a hole into it.

It was a crazy afternoon, chaos and paint everywhere. The kids had a blast.

First Snowfall

The first snowfall is magical, isn't it? Children in pajamas, watching out the windows from their darkened bedrooms in anticipation of the morning. Snow lightly falling, making the ground white with each flake. Some remember winters past and their's is excitement. Others, the babies, watch in wonderment. What is this quietly falling from the sky? So soft, so still.

Then morning comes. Slowly. Quietly.

And then the children play.

Jardine Juniper - Revisited

This last Friday we went back to the Jardine Juniper trail that we visited this spring. It was very different in it's autumness. And still, very beautiful.

Flowers have been replaced by berries. Tall grass hides the sagebrush. Instead of green, browns and gold. Late autumn splendor.

Standards

Today for school we made standards and talked about what it means to be a standard-bearer.

I got the idea from our new history book, The Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer. Because we finished our first year with the fall of Rome, we began with Volume 2: The Middle Ages. We haven't been doing Bauer's history for very long, but I'm already loving it. It was a good change for us. She has several fun activities suggested for each chapter and making standards was a suggestion for chapter one in which we've been reviewing the fall of the Roman Empire.

The kids really enjoyed making these standards. It was so fun, I wanted to share the process with you.

We began by poking a stick through a wrapping paper tube and added a couple dots of hot glue for good measure.

We learned that the Romans decorated their standards with metal disks. A week ago we made our own metal disks. I cut out about 20 circles from cereal boxes then we covered them with tin foil. This was a very easy task that even two-year-old Libby could do.

The Roman's metal disks were carved with figures of animals, the emperor, or such things. We used a ball point pen to "engrave" our disks. The kids drew many different things. For example, Hudson did the first letter of his name, a baby (he loves his baby doll), a mountain, and sharp teeth. You can see Maria's disks in the picture.

While the kids were working I talked about standards, or signum, and what they meant and what it meant to carry one. It was a great honor to carry the standard, and it was a dangerous job.

You can see the standards now, at this point, with all the disks hot glued on. A couple days ago I cut the first letter of each kids' name out of a cereal box and they painted them. We put those on our standards as well.

At this point I told them the great story of an important standard-bearer from the Book of Mormon: Captain Moroni. I told them how he made the Title of Liberty, what it stood for, and how it inspired others to action.

Here are the pictures of standard-bearers we looked at. All the pictures except Captain Moroni (which comes from the Gospel Art Picture Kit) I got from a Google image search.

Because Moroni had written of God on his standard, we put a picture of Jesus Christ on our standards. Then we made our own flags.

Here is Hudson's flag. It's made from an old t-shirt I'd saved long ago to become a rag.

When they were done with their flags we tied them onto their standards.

Maria's flag has family on it because Captain Moroni wrote of family on his.

Here's Maria's finished standard.

And everyone together.

They had a lot of fun and really enjoyed making standards. I feel blessed to be able to teach my kids at home and talk to them about how they can be standard-bearers in their lives.