Catching Up

Here are a few pictures of art projects we've been up to these last few months.  You didn't think we were being idle, did you?

Bead-covered vases as Easter gifts

Crayon shaving Easter banner

Home-made Kentucky Derby hats

Fence murals

With summer vacation just three days away, I am scrambling to come up with other fun ideas to keep the kids busy.  There will be plenty of swimming and reading of course, but I am determined to keep the creative juices flowing.  More to come!

Happy Valentine's Day!

February's theme was easy to come up with.  Valentine's Day presents the perfect opportunity for kids to create special gifts for their loved ones, so I supplied stickers, construction paper, glitter glue, ribbon, and stamps, and I let the girls create on their own.  There were many evenings spent making secret Valentines for family members rather than the usual free-play.  They were very proud of what they came up with.  They even decided to wrap presents to go along with their Valentines, which usually meant wrapping an object each person already owned and surprising them with it on Valentine's Day.  Although Elliot took it upon herself to cut a Box Top off of a cereal box and wrap it for her big sister, whose school is collecting them.  So thoughtful!  Here are a few examples of what they came up with:

Then for the girls' school Valentine exchanges we used a project from www.artfulparent.com using melted crayon shavings with watercolor paints.  Superbowl Sunday provided the perfect afternoon to complete this project, which turned out beautifully.

Now I just have to figure out what March's craft table will look like.  Perhaps something having to do with the garden we will be planting soon?  Stay tuned!

Let It Snow

Just as this blog was started as a result of a New Year's resolution, so too I am here once again as a result of such a resolution.  While Elliot has the opportunity to do lots and lots of crafts as a part of her preschool curriculum, I have been feeling a bit sorry for Rebecca, who, currently in first grade at a public school, seldom does any.  So I made the goal to keep the workspace in my bedroom clear for ongoing art projects for the girls to do at their leisure, each month changing up the theme.  We might do an organized project together each month, or we might not (life is busy with three kids), but I really want the girls to be able to be creative in their own way when inspiration hits them.

We started the month with a special activity to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany.  I printed out black and white pictures of the three wise men with Mary and Baby Jesus, we colored the pictures with crayon, then we brushed them with canola oil to make the drawings more transparent.  The effect is supposed to be similar to a stained glass window.  I have seldom seen Elliot spend such a long time at and do such a detailed job coloring as she did with this project.  They turned out very nicely, though it took so long for the oil to dry we didn't actually hang them in the window until after Epiphany.  Oh well!

For the rest of the month the theme was snow.  Okay, so we don't happen to live in a part of the world where it snows, but in lots of other places people get to play in, admire, shovel and curse (that's for you Alaskans) snow.  I pulled out a bunch of leftover origami paper and let the girls try their hands at making paper snowflakes.  I was impressed by how many they wanted to make.  This lasted for weeks and weeks, and I am still finding pieces of cut paper that has been tracked around the house.  Eventually we strung them in the window near our dining table for all to enjoy, next to a few of Elliot's snowman projects from school.  I suppose the color in the designs make them less chilly, but it was good scissors and folding practice.

Last weekend we added to January's theme by making our own snowglobes.  The girls were sad when we had to put the Christmas snowglobes away with the other Christmas decorations, so I thought it would be fun to make snowglobes we could enjoy all winter.  I found a few babyfood jars that had been cleaned out for re-use, then I had the girls pick a couple of small toys that they hadn't played with in a while.  Rebecca chose a Princess Jasmine figurine along with some greenery from the dinosaur tub, and Elliot chose a little plastic sheep, to which I added a lego tree.  We glued the toys to the lids of the jars, added water and glitter, and presto!  Our very own snowglobes.  Aren't they cute?

Boo!

Halloween is always a fun time to get creative, both with kids' costumes and household decorations. The girls convinced me to pull out our limited decorations a couple of weeks ago, which include a fall wreath, cobwebs, and pipe cleaner spiders that Rebecca and I made last year.

After hanging those in our covered entry way, we decided we needed to add something this year. A trip to the pumpkin patch sent us home with a couple of sticker and marker decorated pumpkins, and then we came up with these simple ghosts. The girls really did most of the work, with the exception of a bit of stapling and cutting.

They glued on the googly eyes, came up with their own ideas for the ghost faces, and taped the crepe paper streamers onto the pre-cut pieces of white craft foam. We hung them in the entry, and the girls were so excited to see their daddy's reaction when he came home that evening. "Were you scared?" they asked him. Of course he said yes!

Oh, and here is a picture Rebecca drew of a haunted house.

Nature Collections

My kids are constantly collecting sticks, rocks, leaves and feathers, and for the most part I have allowed them to do so. We always have to have a conversation about leaving natural places intact when we visit National or State Parks, but on walks to school or visits to city parks it's not uncommon for us to haul a new stick or fancy leaf home. I figured we would do something artistic with all of these things they have collected, but the piles were getting so big I decided something had to be done. Plus, I thought it would be nice to have some way of knowing where different items were collected from, and when. For smaller items (leaves, dried flowers, etc), we created "Nature Books," full of plastic sheet protectors that they can tape their findings inside and document where they came from. Just last weekend after Mass the girls were thrilled by the red leaves on the ground in front of the church, so they each gathered up a handful and stuck them in their books. We even discovered a dead praying mantis on our back porch that the girls are anxious to make a page for.

With the larger items (pine cones, sticks, etc) I would like to build some sort of display that sits in our covered entry where they can show off their newest finds for a short while before they make their way to the green waste and are replaced by even newer treasures. More on that later. As for their collections up this point, well, they are sitting in paper grocery bags at the side of the house. Perhaps one of these days we will drag them out and rediscover all those things we have forgotten about.

Inch by Inch, Row by Row

As you can tell by the name of this post, we have a garden in the back yard, and after a slow start it is now growing quite voraciously. It's hard for me to keep up with during this season of school starting and being 29 weeks into my pregnancy, but we have been able to enjoy many helpings of tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, snap peas, and basil (Elliot loves green pasta). Butternut squash and pumpkins are finally growing, and I look forward to cooking with both of them as the weather cools off a bit.

Speaking of warm weather, while it has been a mild summer, one hot afternoon a couple of weeks ago the girls and I pulled out the watercolors and pencils and made a poster to document all that is growing in our garden. I brought in a few different kinds of tomatoes and a cucumber from the garden to help our paintings. Elliot mostly scribbled, but Rebecca was able to come up with some pretty good representations of both. I added a few of my own renderings to the poster as well. Take a look! We then cleaned, peeled and nibbled on our freshly picked snacks.

Valentines

Last weekend, other than watching parts of the Super Bowl, the girls and I made valentines. Using a marbled paper project idea that I clipped from our local newspaper last summer, we took shaving cream (thanks Dad!), food coloring, a squeegie, and lots of pastel-colored cardstock, and spent an hour in the back yard enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. Not to mention that Dad had an Ikea bookshelf to put together inside, so this was also a good way to keep us out of his way.

The process was very easy, though I recommend dressing everyone in playclothes because we all got messy. First, spray an ample amount of shaving cream onto a cookie sheet. Next, drop a few drops of food coloring into the shaving cream. Using a tool of some sort (a toothpick or a fork work well), swirl the food coloring around in the shaving cream to create an interesting, marbled design. Then press a piece of cardstock on top of the shaving cream, and after taking the cardstock off of the shaving cream, squeegie it so that all remnants of the shaving cream have been removed. What is left is a lovely marbled design imprinted on the cardstock paper.

At first I tried

to keep the process controlled, but before long Rebecca and Elliot were doing the whole thing themselves. They found the little bottles of food coloring to be absolutely irresistable, and when I let the girls have free reign over the quantity used in each successive swirling, the results were brilliant! We kept the hose nearbye for rinsing the squeegie of shaving cream, among other things. At one point Rebecca accidently stepped into the shaving cream cookie sheet, but she rinsed her shoes off with the hose, wiped dried them in the grass, and we were good to go.

After the paper dried, we cut it into heart shapes, glued the hearts to red lace doilies, and added a few heart stickers for effect. Now the girls have valentines to give to their grandparents, and Rebecca has plenty to bring to her preschool class on Friday.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Paper Princesses

During our most recent trip to the public library, we checked out a book entitled, The Paper Princess by Elisa Kleven. The book is about a young girl who creates a paper princess who is then separated from the girl by a large gust of wind. After many adventures, and after finding hair for her own head (the young girl hadn't yet added hair to the princess when the wind carried her away), the paper princess is returned to her maker. After reading the book, my girls and I decided to make paper princesses of our own. Using the book as a guide, I drew the outline of three princesses, brought out the crayons, pencils, and markers, and let the girls decorate their own princess. And yes, I did one too. Then I took out the glue and cut lots of strands of yarn, ribbon, twine, etc, and I let the girls choose which medium they wanted to use for hair. Finally, I cut out crowns from tin foil for each princess. It was great fun, and the girls have been playing with their princesses ever since. We even went so far as to make beds and pillows for our princesses, just as the girl does in the story.

More Resolutions

Another year is upon us, and I'm one of those people who insists on setting resolutions for the year ahead. This blog stemmed from a resolution to plan and carry out art experiences for my children on a weekly basis. While I didn't stick to my original plans completely, I'm still glad for the many art projects my kids and I created together. The following is a picture of the Advent Tree before the Advent decorations were removed and replaced with Christmas ornaments on Christmas Eve. It was a fun project, and decorating the tree on Christmas Eve added to the anticipation of Christmas in such an exciting way. Not to mention the fact that we weren't wrestling ornaments from the girls' possession for the entire month of December as we have done in years past.

I have two resolutions for 2011, and they sadly don't involve art projects at all. Instead I am determined to learn Spanish and teach my children Spanish, a language which my husband (and their father) teaches to high school students as a profession, and a language that is incredibly beneficial to know living in California. My other resolution is to organize our belongings. Our garage is starting to get out of control, and the closets in our house just might be crammed with kids' clothing and old toys that I need to go through and give to a consignment sale or pass on to another family. I of course still want to run more and cook more and finish paintings of mine that remain incomplete, but I have found that setting a few serious goals is more realistic for me than is setting multiple goals that I might loose track of and be defeated by.

Nevertheless, you can be assured that we will continue to pursue art projects, and that I will continue to blog about our experiences with those projects here. The next few photos are a recap of some of our Christmas-time crafts, including graham cracker gingerbread houses that the girls made at Elliot's second birthday party, as well as drawings I had the girls do of said gingerbread houses. So often kids spend their drawing time coloring in coloring books rather than drawing on their own, and they don't learn how to use their own mastery of lines (or lack of) to create images from what they see. I will definitely spend more time giving my kids a blank piece of paper and asking them to draw something that is put in front of them. I've already noticed that Rebecca has a standard human form that she uses when drawing people, including round circles with straight spokes sticking out of them for hands and feet. I'm not sure if she came up with this herself or if it has been adopted from one of her preschool friends, but I am determined to help her see past these simplified shapes to what things actually look like. A slow process, to be sure, but an important one just the same.

Advent Tree

The season of Advent is upon us, and Rebecca and Elliot are extremely excited for Christmas! They are singing Christmas carols and enjoying Christmas lights and decorations on the houses in town. Normally our family spends the weekend after Thanksgiving buying and decorating our Christmas tree, which we will then enjoy for over a month. This year, however, we will be buying a living Christmas tree so we can plant it in our back yard after Christmas. Living Christmas trees, unlike cut trees, are only supposed to be inside one's home for four to five days, but because we still want to have a tree brighten our living room and keep us in the holiday spirit, we have decided to do an Advent tree until Christmas Eve, when we will bring in and decorate our living tree.

Our Advent tree is a small, artificial tree that we inherited from Jared's grandmother. It is just the right size for our two girls, and it is the perfect precursor to what will replace it in a few weeks' time. Several times each week we read a portion of the story of Christ's birth from the Bible, and then we have the girls decorate an ornament for one of the important characters in that part of the story. The ornaments are simple, just coloring pages of Biblical characters (Gabriel, Mary, Joseph, Herod, etc). After the girls color their ornaments using crayons or markers or colored pencils, even glitter, they are mounted onto a piece of construction paper and placed on the tree. Our goal is to keep the Christmas story at the front of all of our minds as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas morning. We are using our Advent wreath, and the girls both received Advent calendars from their Godmothers, all of which are other ways to keep Advent holy and count down the days until Christmas, but I wanted to do something that my four and nearly two-year-old can actually interact with and make their own, so this is what we came up with.

Speaking of Christmas, I just finished our fourth knit stocking (above are three of the four), and it's about time too! I started it one year ago, and since I was unable to finish it before Christmas, I put it down and didn't pick it up again until last week. There's something about the holidays that makes me want to be knitting something, so I've decided to knit a tree skirt as my next project. We don't have one still after years of celebrating Christmas together, and it's about time we did. I likely won't finish it before Christmas 2010, but Christmas 2011 should be easy to pull off.

Fall Fun

So I guess we have dropped off the face of the blogging world, at least for the last two months! This is in part due to the fact that we have been BUSY! Between hosting out-of-town family, Halloween, Rebecca's fourth birthday, and now Thanksgiving, we have been up to our ears in planning, cleaning, cooking, and everything else. What's more, I have decided not to try and stick to my one art project per week regimen and instead work toward less frequent but more extensive projects. The truth is that between preschool, story time at the library, and our Church's child care, my kids do lots of art without me, and instead of throw together a quick project before the week's deadline is up, I want to plan projects that are more involved and more meaningful. With the holidays upon us there will be no shortage of ideas and opportunities for art experiences to introduce to my kids, and I am excited to see what we come up with.

For now I will share a few pictures of crafts we made at Rebecca's fourth birthday.

It was a chilly afternoon party, so we went with a fall theme. This picture is a leaf book that the kids at the party put together. I ordered plastic leaf rubbing forms from Oriental Trading, and each kid was able to create a collection of leaf prints to take home.

Also from Oriental Trading,

this second picture is a cardstock leaf with a paint-covered design the kids could reveal by scratching the paint away with little wooden sticks. Some simply scratched designs in the paint, while others decided to scratch all the paint off.

Finally, the third picture shows two contact paper trees I cut out and stuck to the wall of our covered porch. Rebecca and Elliot and I went outside and gathered as many different leaves as we could and put them in baskets for the kids to press onto the sticky contact paper. We found that the green leaves stuck better those that had already dried out.

Digital Photography

So it's been a while since my last post. A vacation to Alaska happened. And then the start of preschool happened. Now we find ourselves finally settling in to our fall routines, and I suppose it's about time to resume our weekly art projects. Even though this blog is short on posts, Rebecca and Elliot have not ceased dabbling in art projects. Rebecca's preschool class is making a paper vegetable garden in their classroom, and so far they have crafted carrots and broccoli to plant in said garden, not to mention their painted blue sky, brown dirt, and glittered raindrops. Elliot continues to scribble with crayons and colored pencils without end, and already she is using strokes that her older sister didn't try using until she was over the age of two (this is what happens when a child has an older sibling to imitate).

Before our trip to Alaska one of the girls' California grandmothers gave Rebecca a digital camera to use to take pictures. It was an older camera that she had since replaced, and it was red! Rebecca was in love and set to taking pictures immediately. We actually started Rebecca her own free flickr site on which she can post her favorites. Take a look!

www.flickr.com/rebeccasflickrphotos

Elliot has even taken her turn at snapping a few shots with the camera, though we haven't started a flickr page for her, yet. Let's just say that I just recently uploaded 71 pictures to our iphoto application, all of which Elliot had taken, and most of which were nothing more than close-ups of her fingers. Here are some samples for you to enjoy. And yes, the picture at the top of this post is a self-portrait that Elliot took of herself.

The Hole Punch

This week's project was another one that developed on its own. After a fun weekend getaway I was planning to spend the morning doing laundry and cleaning house while the girls played nicely with the toys they so missed while we were gone, but instead Rebecca decided to get into the art materials, and Elliot followed soon after. Still afraid to give up complete supervision of the art stuff, I decided to hang around and help as needed. Rebecca stumbled upon a kid-size hole punch

that came in a flower press kit she received from her aunt and uncle in Atlanta and was immediately intrigued. I showed her how to punch holes in paper and then string ribbon through the holes. At first she had a little trouble lining the hole punch up so that it made a complete circle for stringing ribbon, but after a little practice she figured out the technique. The ribbon stringing concept was also a bit tricky for her as far as weaving the ribbon in and out of the holes. With my help she was able to approach the first hole from the top and the next hole from the bottom, but when left on her own she preferred wrapping the ribbon around the edge of the paper and putting it through the top each time.

Elliot also had fun pressing the hole punch handle down with her palm, and after helping her punch several holes in a sturdy cereal box I tried to teach her how to string a shoelace through the holes she had made because, let's face it, she really does want to do everything that her older sister does. Instead of weaving the shoe lace she liked to pull it completely through each hole.

The hole punches were also a big hit. Rebecca used some of them to glue onto the papers she had strung along with pressed flowers from earlier in the spring, and Elliot enjoyed pressing the punches through the holes they came from in the first place, as well as scattering them around on the carpet. I guess laundry and house cleaning will have to wait until after naps today, with an unplanned but necessary vacuum job in order after this morning's art fun.

Sidewalk Chalk

The weather has been pretty hot lately, so I make it a rule to get the girls outside every morning while it's still bearable. This week's art project involved playing with sidewalk chalk. This activity isn't new to the girls, but to make it a little more interesting we brought out a small tub of water and a handful of paintbrushes as well. First I had the girls draw with chalk as they always do. Elliot scribbled and Rebecca tried to draw recognizable objects in an unrecognizable fashion. Next I set the tub of water out and encouraged the girls to dip their chalk in the water prior to coloring with it. The result was very exciting as the colors appeared brighter and smoother. Finally we dipped paintbrushes in water and used them to blend the chalk lines we had previously put down on the concrete. The brushstrokes transformed the chalk strokes so that they looked almost like tempera paint rather than dry chalk. Even I had fun playing with this technique!

Beach Fun

As was mentioned in the previous post, summer time has changed our routines a good deal, which has also allowed us to get out of town on the weekends. A few weekends back we went to Santa Cruz, where we played on the boardwalk and enjoyed the beach. It was interesting to observe two valley girls' reactions to scenery both in and around Santa Cruz. Elliot, who is usually more adventuresome than her older sister, was frightened by the waves crashing on the shore, and thus refused to do anything but be held by mom. Rebecca on the other hand happily strolled up and down the beach searching for treasures to collect and built sand castles with dad. The previous day, however, she too had been frightened by the giant redwood trees in a grove in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. I suppose it makes sense that a child with a large imagination who isn't accustomed to seeing such large trees would be so affected by their ominous presence, as well as by the darkness they cast on the trail below. My husband and I have a fondness for natural places such as these, so I guess with more exposure and a bit of education our girls will come to love them too.

But back to art. We toted home a small bucket full of mussel shells, driftwood, and other small fragments of things that Rebecca found on the beach, and just yesterday we finally got around to doing something with them. I pulled out the glue gun and put spots of hot glue on a piece of driftwood while Rebecca firmly pressed the shells and feathers into the glue as it dried. Elliot also got to try, though she needed a bit more help than Rebecca did of course. Rebecca was fascinated by the thought of putting glue in a gun, and she especially enjoyed playing with the little strings of glue that form as the hot glue is stretched. When all was said and done each girl had a souvenir from the beaches of Santa Cruz, and I had a small blister on my thumb from the hot nozzle of the glue gun.

Paper Collages

Our summer routine has left us little time for our regular activities, such as story time at the local library and morning outdoor park play. We spend most mornings these days watering our ever-growing garden and preparing for, attending, and unwinding from swim lessons. Today, when Rebecca woke up too ill to attend her lesson, we decided to take advantage of a "rest" day to get creative.

Rebecca has been quite intrigued by glue lately, so I decided to incorporate glue into this week's art project. I cut small scraps of various different kinds of paper, including newspaper, tissue paper, construction paper, etc, I placed each different kind on its own cocktail plate for sorting, and I gave each kid a large page to work on and a pool of glue with a cotton swab for spreading said glue. The girls then covered their pages with a collage of rectangular paper pieces. My directions were to dab glue onto the page and then place a paper piece onto the glue spot, but Rebecca soon discovered that she preferred to coat the back of each paper piece with glue before pasting it to the page. Elliot was a bit thrown off by this two-step technique and soon began scattering paper pieces on the page without the use of glue. As you might guess, when I picked up the pages to set them to dry, many of Elliot's paper pieces slid right off. Both girls were also taken by the little paper pieces themselves, and after lunch as I set to unload the dishwasher, I found a small stack of paper pieces inside the mixing bowl cabinet. Rebecca even tried to take a few into bed with her for naps! My new rule is that all art materials are to stay in the art room (aka nursery).

Elliot's creation is on the left, Rebecca's is on the right.

Chenille Stems

This week's art project unfolded quite on its own, which can be exciting and worrisome for a mom who likes to keep her house tidy! As was mentioned in an earlier post, I have made a lot of our art materials accessible to the girls, with the exception of paints and paint brushes. Yesterday I went for a short run and left the girls in dad's care, and when I returned I found chenille stems (formerly known as pipe cleaners) scattered across the floors in basically every room in the house. Rebecca and Elliot had found the unopened bag of 100 assorted chenille stems and quickly emptied the entire contents of the bag as they traipsed through the house, likely following the cat we are watching while grandparents are on vacation. After a quick moment of panic and a "What's going on here?" I realized that Rebecca was busy bending some of the chenille stems together into little creations. The following picture shows what she came up with.

The girls had also opened up a bag of beads and were stringing beads on the stems, or, in Elliot's case, stringing them on the stems and then slipping them off in rapid succession. For those with young toddlers like Elliot, chenille stems make an ideal material for stringing such beads as they are easy for little fingers to hold on to and the whole process is fabulous for strengthening dexterity. I have to admit that, while it sometimes makes me anxious to think about what can come from two young children exploring art materials at their own speed (this morning Elliot was putting colored pencils inside everyone's shoes), I am encouraged by the fact that they are starting to let their creativity take a life of its own! Yesterday for Father's Day Rebecca decided to decorate the house by stringing ribbons around all the door knobs, and she had so much fun doing it!

Candle Dipping

Last Friday our family took advantage of our new summer schedule and travelled up to the foothills for a day of hiking and enjoying Columbia State Historical Park. While at Columbia we enjoyed ice cream (much deserved after our morning hike), panning for gold, and candle dipping, and it is the latter that I am using for last week's art project. For $2 Rebecca chose a plain white candle and, with help from dad, dipped the candle in several different colors of hot wax, giving the candle a layered look. She chose red as her base color (no surprise here), and proceeded to add layers of orange, green and blue. Elliot made it clear that she wanted to take her turn as well, but I couldn't justify taking the chance of her sticking her little fingers into the pools of hot wax. Maybe in another year darling.

More Paint

In case you haven't noticed as yet, my favorite medium by far is paint. I think Rebecca's is also. The other day we were at a concert in the park when we found a bunch of magnolia leaves laying on the ground. I love how large and waxy magnolia leaves are, and as soon as I pointed the leaves out to the girls they immediately set to filling their little arms full of leaves. On the drive home we were brainstorming what we could use the leaves for, and Rebecca decided she wanted to paint them. So I pulled out the paint and brushes, put the girls in play clothes (or no clothes as in Elliot's case), and we painted the leaves. Rebecca diligently covered the entire back side of every leaf, while Elliot, noticing her bare skin, decided instead to paint her body.

I guess that should teach me not to let her paint unclothed! The funniest part was that she named each body part as she was painting it, saying "toes," "knees," etc.

After the paint dried I took thread and strung the leaves up as a sort of mobile, using two sticks that Rebecca collected on another trip to the park as the cross bars. The girls really liked the result. As the leaves twist on the threads you can watch the painted sides disappear behind the unpainted sides and vice versa. We might make a trip to the craft store and pick up some pastel-colored beads to string on the threads to dress them up a bit. Perhaps we should even look to add some different shaped leaves as well.

I Like to Eat Apples and Bananas!

This next project was entirely for educational purposes. I have been thinking a lot about the nutrition of my children recently, so I thought I would spend some time teaching Rebecca about the food pyramid and the different food groups. If she had her way she would eat peanut butter crackers and pasta for every meal, and while she likes plenty of other foods as well, these are what she requests when given an open-ended meal choice.

To start us off I went to www.mypyramid.gov and printed off a personalized food pyramid for Rebecca which laid out how many ounces/cups of each food group a preschooler her age is to eat in one day. Next we flipped through magazines and cut out pictures of food to match and glue on each respective food group. Now Rebecca loves to use glue sticks. Unfortunately she loves them so much that they don't last very long before all of the glue has been used up and we find ourselves opening the packaging of a new stick.

Finally we made up a chart to keep track of her daily food habits, which she fills in after each meal. I thought that by showing her what the requirements are and how well (or not) she fulfills those requirements it would give her (and me) a better idea of what kind of food choices to make throughout the day. The next couple of photos are what we came up with. The chart is a sample chart from yesterday that includes everything except for afternoon snack and dinner, which I am proud to say ended up completely filled in by the time those two meals had been consumed.

After three days of filling out charts I think Rebecca is a little weary of it, so I won't press it further, but her pyramid is posted on the side of the refrigerator as a constant reminder of balanced eating. Where was Elliot during all of this? I set her up at the little table with stamps and stickers, which she seemed completely content with. She is still too young for scissors, and with her fondness for chapstick I'd hate to see what she does with glue!