DIY Day: Homemade Bath Paints and Cardstock Mini-Shelf

Yesterday was a day of spontaneous do-it-yourself projects around here. As an afternoon project we tried making a cardstock mini-shelf per the tutorial on the Family Fun website.

Ava chose the pieces of cardstock she wanted to use and the configuration (a flower). I did all the cutting and gluing. She helped me tape the tubes together. She seemed delighted at the finished product and loved putting it up in her room.


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I also made some homemade bath paints using small squeeze bottles I keep around for various projects (colored glue, colored water on the light box, colored vinegar on the light box). I filled each bottle about 2/3 with liquid hand soap and added food coloring. Then I tossed in a tsp. or so of cornstarch and mixed it all up. Voila! Bath paints. The kids had so much fun with them.

Seven Favorite Read-Alouds

Here are seven of our favorite read-aloud bedtime (and naptime) stories in this house. These are all books we own and have read and enjoyed many, many times.

These are listed in no particular order of preference. They are all wonderful.

1. Barn Dance! by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom fame. I love this story. The rhythm of the verse is infectious, the illustrations are beautiful, and the story speaks to curiosity and adventure. Anyone with a bit of bluegrass or country in their background will particularly enjoy the animal square dance at the heart of the story.

2. The Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst. I love reading this as a sequel to The Gingerbread Man (Read the Gingerbread Man first!). This story picks up some time after the poor end of the Gingerbread Man with the old couple's second attempt at making a gingerbread cookie. This time things turn out differently. The story is such fun to read. My children are delighted every time I pull it out. One small warning - it has an unfortunate use of words ("dumb", "airhead") when the fox first meets the gingerbread girl and I choose to switch those words for "silly" when I read it to my children. I would definitely NOT let that stop you from picking up this book.

3. The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth and Barbara McClintock. This, by far, is my favorite telling of the gingerbread man tale. The rhythm and rhyme are perfectly written so that this is incredibly fun to read and to listen to. The verse repeats many times during the telling of the story and my children love to chime in and tell the story along with me.

4. The Clock Struck One: A Time-Telling Tale by Trudy Harris. This is a creative extension of the nursery rhyme/song Hickory Dickory Dock. The book is fun to read (sing) and enjoyed by both parent and child. As a bonus, if you take only a few seconds to show the kids, they will learn how to tell time to the hour.

5. The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson. This book is a tale of a clever mouse taking a walk through the woods avoiding predators using his wits and telling a tall tale about an imaginary creature called a gruffalo. Imagine his surprise when he runs into the gruffalo and needs to quickly use his wits again to avoid becoming the gruffalo's meal. The rhythm and rhyme make this book fun to read and the story is interesting enough to hold up to repeated readings. There is just enough scary to make the children enjoy pretending to be afraid without actually scaring them. I also enjoy watching the children come to understand just why the mouse's tricks worked.

6. Stuck in the Mud by Jane Clarke. This book tells, in rhyme, the story of a mother hen trying to get her chick out of the mud. She becomes stuck and then her would be rescuer becomes stuck. And then the next and the next until the entire barnyard is stuck in the mud. The book is fun to read and the twist at the end always gets a giggle. It also happens to be a great book for working on final consonant deletion.

7. Egg-napped! by Marisa Montes. This is a tale of what happens when Gabbler the goose and his wife find their beloved egg missing and all the forest animals try to help them get it back. Again, it is the rhyme that makes this book so much fun to read. The story is full of fun, adventure, a bit of suspense and danger, and a satisfying ending.


Does anyone have some favorites of their own to share? I'm always looking for great new books to read with the kids.

The Weekly Review: Week 57

SLP Idea of the Week

Land of Nod sells a wooden tic-tac-toe board (which I do not own). I think the board looks beautiful and appears to be sturdy. I also think you could cut my printable speech cards to size and put them in the holes and then have the children play speech tic-tac-toe. You could also draw a tic-tac-toe grid and just deal a card into each of the nine spots and play speech tic-tac-toe without purchasing the beautiful wooden playing board. I wonder if my three and four year old children could play the game?

Favorite Blog Post This Week

One of my absolute favorite blogs to read is Swistle. She consistently writes well thought out posts about topics I find interesting and just seems to be a genuinely good person. This week she wrote about children and swearing (the little swear words like "hate", "stupid", and "sucks") which fortunately aren't much of an issue yet for me. I liked her idea that using them is a privilege based upon the user's ability and wisdom to use them in moderation, appropriately, in certain settings, with specific audiences (not in front of small children, or in front of grandparents for example). That gets around the do as I say, but not as I do contradiction most people get into when they simply forbid the use of such words. Anyway, it was a well thought out post and you should check it out if it interests you.

Ava this Week

Ava's really perfected crocodile tears this week and oh-my-gosh is it driving me crazy. At first, she only used them when she got a minor scrape or bump, or during small altercations with her brother and so it wasn't immediately obvious that the crying was completely fake. So I reinforced it with lots of snuggles and hugs and by immediately fixing her problem. From her point of view, this was great. So then she moved on to bursting into sobs every time I tell her no.

For example, yesterday morning I put her hair in a ponytail. Once we were done she asked if I had done a braid and when I said no she started sobbing. The performance included real tears. She hadn't even actually asked for a braid and I hadn't actually told her no. I told her I wasn't even going to listen until she stopped crying and asked nicely. And then I left the room. It took her a minute to turn the tears back off. She asked nicely and then got her braid. I feel a bit mean and heartless walking away from my sobbing 3 year old, but I will not reinforce that behavior any more. She's also taken to responding to simple requests (please put on your shoes) with a simple, one word, reply: "no". I'm nipping that one in the bud too. Fun times in Avaland lately.

Weekly Michael

Ahh how the behavioral tides rise and fall in this house (read - currently rising). Michael is experimenting to find out what level of snarkiness (mild backtalk) will be tolerated. Fortunately he isn't pushing too hard. A relatively mild redirection usually works. He'll say something slightly rude. I'll tell him that wasn't an acceptable way of talking in our house and model a more appropriate alternative and he'll correct himself. Gotta love experimentation.

Ava's and Michael's Weekly Home Therapy Notes

Other than our nightly readings of the articulation practice booklets there has been little structured speech practice this week. I've been solo parenting in the evenings all week due to a huge work thing going on for my husband and so I've been taking it easy in the evenings with the kids.

Weekly Homeschooling

We're working with math, handwriting, and reading. We get in about two 20 minute lessons during an at-home morning (M, W, F). So Monday we did math and reading. Wednesday we did handwriting and math. Today we'll do reading and handwriting. I call the lessons "special activities". We do one activity. Then the children go off and play a while. Then I call them back for the second activity. We fit in breakfast, lunch, outside time, and other random projects in too so the morning flies by.