Kid Crafts - Letter G and miscellaneous

"Five Little Pumpkins sitting on a gate..."  This is the only Halloween craft we did this year, due to long periods of inactivity again.  We did this on the fly, on Halloween itself.  Thankfully, it was easy to cut the shapes out and let him have at it.  We pasted them to a paper gate when they were all "carved."

Hubby painted a pumpkin to look like the superhero (villain?) Rorschach, and Zaxxon was fascinated by this, so I showed him how to make his own inkblot pictures.  He used eyedroppers to drop watered-down paint onto a paper...

...folded them over...

...and looked at the finished product.  He sees butterflies.

After Halloween, we briefly got back into the alphabet by introducing the letter "G."  He already knew this one because of Grammy, Grandpa, and Great Grandma, but now I've formally introduced it, along with a slew of other G words.

G is for Grapes.  I don't quite remember where I originally saw this craft.  It might have been Diapers to Diplomas.  At any rate, he painted a cut-up egg carton purple, and we made it into a bunch of grapes.

He cut out the stem himself, and insisted on using his zigzag scissors for it.

G is for gorilla.  I had it in my head that the letter G kind of looks like a squatting gorilla, so I tried to help Zaxxon recreate that.  I did several things wrong--I should have altered the shape of the G somewhat, and reversed the gorilla body parts before printing them.  Oh well, he still enjoyed it.



I've finally caught up on our backlog of crafts, therefore if we don't do any crafts this week, I won't have anything to report next weekend.  (Perhaps that will encourage me--although Christmas activities are already encouraging me.)  I'm linking up at tot school again.

November Stat Check and Six Months Old!

During the month of November, I wrote on all 30 days!
I spent most of the month editing my novel, though I also wrote the beginnings of three new stories
I made 9 submissions
I received 3 rejections
I declined to have a story published in a token-paying anthology after the semi-pro contract fell through, and resubbed that story
I queried a market (twice) as to the status of a story they've had forever, though I've not heard back yet.  In December, I shall have to decide how much longer to let them be silent before declaring them as non-responsive
I got caught up on submissions for the first time since mid-May (except for the fact that one came back two days ago, and isn't back out yet)
I have 8 stories currently in slush pile circulation (9 if you count the one that hopefully will be back out tomorrow)
I made 13 blog posts
I took no days off

Analysis
I had a very productive November.  I'm very happy to have gotten caught up on submissions, and I'm also pretty caught up on blog posts, photos, and various other odds and ends.  On the other hand, many of my writing days have only met a bare minimum of writing time.  That's unfortunate, but at least I haven't stopped.  There's only so much time in each day, and the boys like to use it all up.  So do holidays.

My goals for December are to keep up with photos and blogs, continue editing the novel, and continue writing the new stories to see where they take me.

Oh, and sleep.  Did I mention sleep?  No?  My goal is to get enough sleep again.  Kal'El has ceased sleeping through the night, whether because of teething or hunger or fighting off a cold, I don't know.  But it's been hard.  However, news!  He's exactly six months old today!  How did that happen?  Has he really been around for half a year?

Six months old means solid food, and solid foods might bring the promise of a return to nighttime restfulness.  We can only hope.  He'll have to take in a little more than he ate tonight, though.

The first bite.

Caught Up on Submissions!

Well, I've done it.  For the first time since Kal'El's birth (to be honest, for the first time since a few weeks before his birth) I have all of my ready-to-submit stories out to markets.  It took me nearly six months, but I'm finally back on track!

There are, of course, a few caveats to this feat.  One of my stories has been sitting with a market for well over a year, and I need to figure out what's going on there.  I sent one query through an online form about two weeks ago and have heard nothing, so I'll need to look for other ways to query.  If they're still holding it as a possibility that's all to the good, but I'd like to know (and I really REALLY hope this one wasn't lost as it would really stink to not have done anything with it for a year for no reason.)  I also have another story that is ready for me to format and start submitting but I just haven't gotten around to yet, plus two more that probably don't need more than another readthrough and possibly a tweak or two before they're ready, so I ought to get on those--though realistically that probably won't happen until a few Christmas projects are done.  But I just feel good to have submitted everything back out that should have been submitted (possibly numerous times) months ago.

Let the rejection letters roll!  (With hopefully an acceptance or two thrown in!!!  That is the name of the game, after all.)

Kiddie Crafts - HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

I took advantage of the doting attention of my parents two weekends before Thanksgiving and prepared a bevy of Thanksgiving crafts to do with Zaxxon.  I wanted him to learn the basic story behind the holiday as well as having fun and doing turkey stuff.

First we made a turkey out of his hands and feet.  I got the idea here.  He likes smacking crafts with the palm of his hand to make sure the glue sticks.

Attaching the eyes.

Zaxxon had already thrown two five-minute-long fits just before we did this craft, first when he realized he'd left his pumpkin sticker at the credit union and the second when he noticed his snowman stamp was rubbing off his hand--not to mention I knew he had a cough and a runny nose, and had gone to bed late the previous night, so I figured we'd be lucky to get through one project on this day.  However, to my surprise he wanted more, so we moved on to a Thankful Turkey.

We started by reading this book, Count Your Blessings by Patricia Reeder Eubank.  We've had this book for a while.  It's a nice little lesson:  Cuddlebear wants to know what Thanksgiving means, and his Mama tells him it means "thank you."  She then helps him realize that he has much more than presents to be thankful for.

Next we glued together the body of a turkey and I asked Zaxxon to name things he was thankful for.  I wrote them on turkey feathers and then we taped them to the turkey (meaning he got bored and wanted me to attach most of them).

He named pretty much every family member, and then came up with a few more things as I reminded him of what Cuddlebear was thankful for.

I liked the hand and foot turkey so much, I thought it would be a fun one to keep as a Thanksgiving decoration.  I thought doing it every year might be fun too, in order to keep track of the boys' growth.  So I made one for Kal'El too.

After the turkeys, I taught him the story of the first Thanksgiving.  After coloring and cutting-out, we did this craft in the hallway.  As I told him the story, I gave him the picture corresponding to what I was talking about and had him tape it to a big map of the United States (with the exception of the Mayflower, which I had him put in the water.)  I think he liked moving into the hallway--it was different at any rate.

I've seen my sister-in-law look wistfully at our craft wall from time to time.  I know she wants to do this sort of thing with her own kids, with the only problem being that they don't exist yet.  I can't give her children, but I can loan her mine from time to time. 

On this particular day I knew she was coming over and asked Zaxxon if he wanted to do a craft with his aunt.  He was so excited he wanted to do it right away (even though he hadn't eaten breakfast yet--not to mention the fact that his aunt hadn't even arrived either!) 

She helped him make a pilgrim hat and Indian headband.  Now he's ready for the feast!

I'd been thinking that the autumn leaves would make good turkey feathers, and were even the right colors.  So the next thing we did was to trim some leaves off one of our bushes, and Zaxxon glued them to a turkey as feathers (he was helping it get warm.) 

After it was done, we ironed it between layers of waxed paper so hopefully the leaves will remain yellow and red.  (I forgot to put a dish towel down first--and I'd wondered why the iron was smoking!)

Last year at around this time, we started attending storytime at our local library.  During the Thanksgiving session, the librarian broke out a felt board activity where each child helped put a feather on the turkey.  Zaxxon immediately joined in, despite the fact that he wasn't used to the librarian or crowds of children.  It was this library activity that made me realize he was ready to start doing crafts.  Here he is with the very first crafts he completed (he was so little!!!)

This year, the librarian did the same activity.  Zaxxon was capable of listening for his feather color this year, and he really enjoyed it again.  So I brought it home with us.  It involves a song (sung to the tune of Frere Jacques)

Turkey feathers, turkey feathers

Brightly colored, brightly colored

Who has a (fill in the color) one?  Who has a ___ one?

Bring it now, bring it now

The children (who had been handed a different colored felt feather before it began) were supposed to wait until their color was called and then put the feather on the turkey. 

At home, I modified it slightly.  I "hid" feathers around our living room, and then sang "Can you find the ___ ones, bring them now."  His eyes really lit up when we started this activity, and he loved running around the room looking for the feathers.  Then, once again, he helped the turkey get warm by gluing the feathers on.

He's so much bigger this year!

Lastly, we colored and stapled together a book called "Pilgrim, Pilgrim, what do you see?"  I found it online here.  He wasn't particularly interested in coloring much, but he liked making a book, and the finished product.

With all this preparation, along with some library books and a few other songs, I think Zaxxon was well prepared for Thanksgiving.  This was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to Christmas.




I'm linking up with Tot School again.  Check them out for great ideas for little kids (I'm sure there will be lots of holiday ideas this week.)

Happy Third Birthday Zaxxon!

Zaxxon has been three for a month now--I think it is high time I post some pictures to celebrate.

This year's theme was Toy Story.  I didn't do anything as involved as last year's favors and cakes.  The cupcakes still match the theme--they're the Toy Story aliens--but I didn't have to cut them to shape this time.

After a bit of free play, the kids played a couple of Toy Story games.  Pin the sheriff badge on Woody

And a Mr. Potato Head felt board.  I put this one together myself, based on the idea that kids LOVE the felt boards at library story time, so I was pretty sure they'd be eager to participate.  I was excited that the kids are old enough to play a few party games this year.

We served up lunch and then CAKE!

He's a neater eater than last year, but still made a bit of a mess

The party favors were shaped like Buzz Lightyear's spaceship.  These boxes were tinier than we'd expected from the picture, but they at least fit everything.

So we now have a three-year-old in the house.  It's been a fun age so far, however I do think he's more stubborn than he was at two.  His tantrums are worse, but he's also growing so much as a person and learning to communicate so much better.  His imagination continues to expand as well.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SON!!!