Yesterday the Boo and I had a great day. The sort of day that makes me happy to be staying at home. We got lots of chores done in the morning, played a little bit of mario kart and a whole lot of trains. I even got some photo editing done. Later in the afternoon I was tired so decided it was time for a good cup of tea. The Boo decided he wanted some too! So we had a tea party.

Now, we’ve done this before and I’ve learned that many towels are involved. There’s one under his chair and one across the table. I put a tea bag in his teapot (an antique I picked up in England for one whole pound, of all things!) and I put out about 6 cups for him to fill up. Really a tea party is just an excuse to pour water into various vessels. We do drink the tea though, at first, and pretend it’s hot (because it’s just warm tap water) and has to be blown on, then drunk, then refilled.

What was different this time was that eventually the Boo fished out the tea bag and gave it a good squish. It broke and out came all the tea leaves. Mind you it was actually chamomile and not tea, but whatever.

So he exclaimed how yucky it was. I asked if he wanted to see dry tea leaves and he said yes. So we broke open a few bags and he examined those, and I told him how tea was actually leaves that grow on a bush, they get cut and dried and that’s how you make tea. I also told him that many people forego the bag part entirely and just dump the leaves in the water. So he did that.

He tried to drink it and declared it yucky. Then I had the inspiration to show him how to hold tea if you don’t have a bag since I have about 4 loose tea holders. He liked the mesh ball and dunked that in and out of the water about 50 million times.

Frankly I was pretty pleased with this whole expedition into the unknown! Even if it was just about tea :) I have no idea if he’ll retain the actual information part of our “session” — maybe I’ll give him a pop quiz today ;)

I love the suggestions in this article about toys to be found at the hardware store. I especially appreciate the squeegee and paint roller suggestions for my water lovin’ little guy. Now why didn’t I think of that? And this link to the duct tape club.

The next rainy day, we are totally hitting up the hardware store. And maybe I can get our screen door fixed at the same time.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but one of my sort-of New Years Resolutions was to be more proactive about activities with the Boo. What’s the point of being a stay at home mom if I can’t take advantage of staying at home to do cool stuff with the boy? Sometimes I wonder if he wouldn’t be better off in a high quality daycare if we never do anything interesting.

Therefore, I want to make a list of things to do and do at least one interesting, new thing per week. Here’s the list, and I’ll cross stuff off (and hopefully blog about said item!) when items are accomplished.

• Woodland Park Zoo (We have a membership!)
• Washington Serpentarium (aka Reptile Zoo)
• Northwest Railway Museum
• Snoqualmie Falls (conveniently located quite near the train museum)
• Seattle Symphony Tiny Tots concert
• Ballard Locks
• Maybe more zoos: Point Defiance (Tacoma) Zoo & Aquarium, Couger Mountain (Issaquah) Zoo
• Mount Saint Helens
• Mt Rainer
• Seattle Aquarium (Actually did this a long time ago but wasn’t impressed — time to try again!)
• Pacific Science Center (Did this once, was very impressed, need to go back. New dinosaur exhibit opening this summer!)

A separate list for hiking and park destinations since there are so many of them!

• Tiger Mountain
• Deception Pass
• Olympus National Park
• Discover Park
• Seward Park
• Magnusson Park

And a separate list for things to MAKE for/with the Boo!

• Felt board for days of the week
• Menu on fridge: days of the week AND food
• Felt balls and/or people, beads, etc.

I thought back in the New Year’s that I should make a concerted effort to do at least one new and interesting thing with the Boo every week. What’s the point of being a stay-at-home parent if you can’t take advantage of being able to go out and do cool things during the weekdays? Sometimes, on really bad days, I wonder if he would be better off at a cool preschool daycare center thingy; if he would be learning more there. I don’t want to wonder about this, so must focus on doing cool, useful, beneficial, and intellectually stimulating things.

My goal was one thing a week. Just one. We really outdid ourselves this week though — whew! THREE things! Three!

First up was the Washington Park Aboretum. We visited this for the first time last summer with my mom when we went to see the Japanese Garden, whereupon the Boo was so excited about the fish he nearly fell into the Koi pond. This time we avoided water and walked along Azalea Way. The azalea’s were not blooming yet, but the cherry trees were, and they were gorgeous. Why do I never remember the camera?

The Boo was sleepy and stayed on my back in our fabulous Ergo nearly the entire time, which was good since it was a bit muddy. He was fascinated with all the dogs people were walking and insisted on following them around. I hope no one thought we were complete freaks. It was a nice, but short, walk. Will do again when the azaleas are blooming.

Second up was a ferry ride to Bainbridge Island. Ostensibly we were going with our yarn circle friends to visit a very fabulous store, Churchmouse Yarns, but really the whole point was the boat. I just knew the Boo would love the boat, but I’d been too chicken up to this point to take a boat ride by myself with the boy.

We took the bus downtown with the Dad (an adventure in and of itself for the Boo because I’m chicken about buses as well), walked to the ferry, children under 5 are free (!!!) so it was a mere $6.50, then the half hour trip to Bainbridge. The boy spent nearly the entire trip playing on one of those car driving video game thingies that I refused to put any money into. Bainbridge itself is really nice. Cute downtown, walking distance from the ferry, a lovely park where said friends took turns watching the kiddos while other mamas shopped. They even have little red flags for crossing the roads at crosswalks. How clever is that? I spent way too much money, ate lunch, and we headed back. We saw a ginormous container ship on the way back, which was intriguing because now I understand why a moving guy several years back told us that sometimes they lose containers on ocean going vessels. For reference, we were shipping our meager belongings in a container from the UK to the US. Those containers were stacked remarkably high. Again… why did I not have a camera?? I’ve seen those ships docked but I’ve never seen one at sea. Cool.

Then we stopped by H’s work because oh my god I was tired. Exhausted. We still had a busride home too. Note to self: only one mode of public transportation when with the toddler at a time. Whew.

Then today we met up with the Seattle Homeshooling Group for some kite making and flying at Gasworks Park! This was novel — basically you take a paper bag and tie string to it. It catches the wind and acts like a kite. Of course there were decorations involved followed by much running, so holy crap am I tired. What a week!!

A very successful week though. I am pleased.

One of many projects to do for the Boo is a “menu” sort of idea both for meal planning and for learning the days of the week. I can’t remember how much of this I’ve written about before so forgive me if I’m totally repeating myself! Google isn’t helping here either.

I was originally inspired to do this by Kerflop and some emails that I saw all around the same time. The basic idea is that you have the days of the week as well some menu ideas done up as magnets, then the kids can help you plan your weekly meals and thusly your grocery list. I want to do photos instead of the written word, which presents the challenging part of this plan — it’ll take me friggin’ forever to remember to photograph our primary meals before they’re eaten, get those printed, and then put them onto magnet paper.

Then H had a stroke of brilliance the other day — since so much of our food comes from boxes (I know, I know) just cut out the picture on the box. Hurrah! Our picture of mac-n-cheese is ready and waiting for magnets. I need to print up Kerflop’s days of the week (or make my own) and we’re on our way to meal planning! Awesome.

The best part about photos? The Boo can help with the planning by picking what he wants to eat. His current pronunciation is such that mac-n-cheese sounds much like “match” so it’s hard to tell what he’s asking for! Photos should help, I hope! I also like some other ideas I’ve seen, where foods are color coded so you can make sure you’ve got different food groups at the same meal — brown for grains, green for veggies, etc.

My next idea for learning days of the week? A felt calendar with shapes that identifty certain activities that can, of course, be moved around. Like Daddy going to work on Monday, playgroup on Thursday, a special outing on whatever day, etc. Looking forward to it! If I ever get my butt in gear.

Mostly just a note to self here, but how cool are these crayon cookies? We have a huge bag of crayon pieces already and I think these look awesome.

Now.. I just need to obtain a mini muffin pan!

P.S. I’ve had a shitty day today for some reason. I am choosing to blame it on fluctuating hormones as opposed to my child whining “Mommy” incessently without explanation just to annoy me. Humph.

Check out this mini-tutorial on making colored rice for kiddos to play with. The whole idea sounds wonderful. Boo also loves to play with oatmeal (the flaked kind, ha) and I’ve been meaning to buy some specifically for him to play with so he doesn’t dig his hands in the ones we eat! We also have some little rubber animals which are currently in the bathtub but were originally purchased to bury in sand, so a similar idea.

I particularly like the little boxes with noodles. Must do that. Pronto! Maybe I need a category called “Now, why didn’t I think of that?!”

I learned about Kiddley recently, and saw this post about photo themes. They post a theme and you encourage your child to take digital photos of the theme throughout the week. Then you are invited to upload your photos to the Kiddley Flickr group.

This is a neat idea for several reasons.. 1) I like the idea of theme weeks as it is, I was already planning on doing this with letters, and 2) it’s a good introduction to the concept of internet communities (if you aren’t there already). You wouldn’t have to do it through this website either, you could either just do it spontaneously, you and your child could come up with weekly themes on your own, you could plan out a year of themes if you so desired, or if you have a homeschooling group you could do it within the group. Good idea, must save this one for later :)

We were browsing through a toy store the other day when we ran across felt toys. H said he and his sister used to play with things like these when they were kids. Basically they were cutouts of animal shapes (or any other shapes) in felt, and then there’s a felt board to put the shapes on.

I never had anything like that, and frankly I’m not sure how all that would work, but I’m not very creative in the play department so I’ll take his word for it! It looked very easy to do, another great thing for the “preschool activity” list.

And then I saw a “felt book”. It had 4 big pages with different backgrounds — I suppose one was a house, one was water, one had trees, etc. And then a page with pockets on it that held the felt cutouts. Chairs, starfish, etc. VERY cool idea. Portable fun for the car or plane, yes? Easy to make at home using real felt, of course. Will have to keep that in mind for the future too!

For lack of a better word, I’m creating a category called School. I suspect there will be many things to post here in the coming weeks, months, and years. We haven’t made any decisions regarding schools yet, seeing as there are so many options and the Boo is only two.

Nevertheless, lately I’ve been feeling… chaotic. The need for more order, more things to do, more focus. And since I’m feeling better, no time like the present to do something about it, right?

I’m starting to look into preschool type activities. We may look into some sort of co-operative preschool for the Boo, but I’m not overly driven to do that sort of thing. It still feels like paying for playgroup. But the co-operative ones aren’t too expensive and with a new baby it might be a nice change of pace, so will look into it at some point.

For now though I’m starting to look more into homeschool sort of resources. I’m a member of a preschool homeschooling yahoo group which I totally lurk on, and I’ve been saving interesting emails for a while now, but never really investigating them. Time to start looking at them, methinks!

I saw a really interesting idea from one email that suggested picking a letter a week, hanging up signs with that letter around the house and having activities around it, like tracing it, coloring it, finding objects that start with that letter, etc. Sounds like fun and focus, so now I’m looking for alphabet stencils. I would just wing it, but my lettering has always been atrocious. Maybe the Boo and I could even make an alphabet quilt. How cute would that be? With pockets for things that start with the letter?

Anyway in my internet journey today I ran across the Kaplan Early Learning Company which has about ten thousand things I’d love to have at my disposal. They even have parachutes. I totally want to get one of those for our playgroup next summer, loads o’ fun. And yes, they have stencils. Although I’m going to keep looking online because surely there are some for free you can just print up at home. For that matter I should be able to make my own with a bloody word processor. The fog is clearly, slowly, but surely.

And it occured to me there are a variety of things one could do with giant letters. Get a whole bunch copied, sorted into the alphabet, and made into glued tablets at Kinkos. Draw on them, laminate them, and hang them up. Cut them out of foam and lace them together, ideally into words, but we’ll not be too picky at this point. Put them on the floor and make a game out of finding the right letter. Match the upper to the lower case. Just plain matching, for that matter. Seems endless, really.

I’m quite happy about this train of thought. Sometimes I feel so uncreative, but then sometimes I just get the right energy and my brain just leaps off in new and unexpected directions. Nice change of pace :)