Doldrums
There is nothing like a quick glance at the blog calendar to highlight my winter doldrums. Every winter I find it difficult to post regularly. Every March I complain about being weary. I see a pattern…
However! Just because I am not blogging does not mean I am not Doing Stuff. Lots of stuff. The children are busy, busy, busy.
Last week, we made Puffy Paint, using this recipe:
Poppy (18 months) and Grace (2.5) spent a solid 40 minutes creating a mere three pictures each. That’s over ten minutes per picture! I’ll be doing this again when all the children are here.
We made PURPLE playdough, using this … oops. I have no idea where the recipe came from. I shall have to post it. It’s superb! So velvety silken soft and smooooooth. Here, Jazz practices the pinch technique I’d just shown them. FUN!
In fact, given that Valentine’s day is coming up, I was aiming for pink, but the teeny vials of neon food colouring are not labelled all that well. I could’ve sworn that lid was pink. SURPRISE!!! But purple is fun. Way, way fun. (It also stains their wee hands, but not, happily, their wee shirts.)
We did puzzles. The big ones are very much into puzzles these days, which means the little ones (that’s Daniel’s so-blond head you see there) must try it out, too! (This is modelling and peer pressure at its best.) Daniel doesn’t really get the whole “fit it in the hole” part, but he very much enjoys the fine motor challenge of picking them up using the tiny peg in the middle of each piece.
So there you are. I may be a winter blogging dud, but I am not a winter daycare dud. 😀
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It's Not All Mary Poppins 
My playdoh recipe uses a package of dry KoolAid powder for the color – and scent! I’d just mix it in w/ the flour and salt before adding the water and oil. I’m sure you could use it with whatever recipe you’ve uncovered.
I do love the deep purple!
Yes, the colour was a surprise, but not an unpleasant one! I’ve heard of using KoolAid to make scented playdough, but since Poppy still tries to eat it (and then looks disgusted and indignant — how dare I trick her like that???), I think I’ll not confuse the poor child by making it smell delicious!!! That would be a dirty trick. Maybe in a couple of month.
So glad you enjoyed the puff paint! 40 minutes…what a dream!
We did. We ended up using little baby spoons instead of the piping bag method, as the girls found the bag too difficult to coordinate. That didn’t stop them from having a whole lot of fun. Yes. 40 minutes… wow.
I am going to try the puff paint with my brood, can’t wait!
Let me know how it goes!
I hear ya Mary! I feel the same way in January and even though I (with some misplaced optimism) decided I would start blogging again, have only managed three pitiful posts this month! Oh well, I am enjoying reading what everybody else has to say and may just find my inspiration yet!!
Winter is tough, and this hasn’t been a particularly harsh winter! This only underscores the fact that it isn’t the cold so much, that brings me down, but the lack of light. Still, the days are indeed getting longer. My energy will return!
Oooh puff paint. I wonder if the boys would do this for more than 15 minutes at a stretch. We have the winter doldrums mixed with lots of changes in the daily routine over here. Oof.
I hope it works! I only had the two of them here that day, and they both love crafts. Rory doesn’t much like crafts. (Not because he’s such a manly man, but because he’s squeamish about anything remotely sticky/goopy. Doesn’t like to get his pweshush likkle fingers ikky, don’t you know.) 😀
My playdoh recipe also calls for dry Koolaid but is also cooked with cream of tartar. Like this one: http://www.grouprecipes.com/22202/cooked-kool-aid-play-dough.html
I’ll have to try those, in a couple of months when Poppy isn’t trying to eat the stuff any more. She already views it as a nasty trick on my part that it looks so good and tastes so nasty. I figure no fair making it smell delicious, too!
Owl just got one of those puzzles as a gift. He loves to pick them up, but putting them back? Not so much.
Yup. That’s pretty typical for the age, yup, yup, yup.
[…] and March are my lowest-energy months. Everything’s a little harder in March. I don’t feel sad. My life is absolutely worth living. I take pleasure in things each day. […]
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[…] the winters, I do that sort of thing more often, and eventually, I find myself wandering around in a bit of a grey malaise. A child does something cute, I smile. Now? A child does something cute, I laugh. I’m […]
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