I’m sure it doesn’t surprise any of you that we’ve had some mud recently. Not after our flooding last week. Actually my kids have managed to find mud for a while, there’s a little bit after the sprinklers are done.
They started off making mud homes for the various insects and worms they’d found. Apparently insects like to live in mud structures attached to stone walls.
It progressed to mud sculptures on our outside table. Featured here are Princess’ mud castle, and Batman’s (though, it’s Superman’s shirt) mud creation. I may be wrong on that being Batman. Maybe.
Can you guess which Star Wars Clone Wars characters are modeled here?
As I mentioned earlier this week, we had a lot of rain, and our backyard flooded. Jeff and I took that as an opportunity to teach the boys some engineering. We challenged them to create a dam to stop some of the water.
Some of the challenges were the white waters in the stream, and the water flow was rapid enough to take away many of the building materials they could create.
They started by weighing down the big bucket with some rocks, then they remembered the huge pile of bricks in our backyard, but transporting them one by one is tedious and boring.
But a wagon…….. That’s easy and you get the amusement of pulling it through the water.
Eventually this is what they came up with. It’s an odd combination of bricks, buckets, watering cans, and what have you, but it raised the water level on the upstream side about 6 inches, and the downstream side was significantly lower.
All in all a good spur of the moment engineering lesson. Let’s see what others did this week:
Each week I’m spotlighting a few posts that were shared previously. Many posts get linked up later in the week and they don’t always get as many clicks as they deserve, so I’m trying to spotlight a few every week.
We read about Lewis and Clark ages ago and we’ve had a field trip planned to explore and map out a new playground since that time, but we kept having things get in the way of our ability to do it, illness, inclement weather, you name it.
Finally we made it there. I turned them loose in the park with the instructions of younger kids had to draw 10 things in the park to make their map and label them. Older kids (which was the other family) had to draw 20 items, label them and create a map key.
Of course the boys had to bring their guns, because they remembered that Lewis and Clark both had guns to protect themselves and to hunt thanks to a video recommendation from Phyllis over at All Things Beautiful (Lewis and Clark part 4 post).
I loved the variety of maps they came up with. The younger girls had smiley faces and pictures of people playing at the different parts of the park.
While the boys……..
They did the assignment. Exactly, they did draw some parts of it. But as they got to thinking more and more about playing in the park it became more and more of ……
well, squares with letters in it.
Oh those cries of outrage as I made them draw more. You’d think I announced the end of desert with my requirements.
In the end they got quite a lot of playtime, so I don’t know what they were complaining about.
Oh, and if you’re in the Austin area and you haven’t been to the “Play for All Abilities Park,” then you NEED to get there!
Step 1: Fill a large bucket (or cooler) full of water and sponges. If you’re fancy make these from Inner Child Fun (what I originally bought the sponges for).
Step 2: Grab as many water filled sponges as you can.
Step 3: Start throwing sponges as fast as you can.
You’re guaranteed to be told, “Did you know that you’re my best Mommy ever?”
Of course if you’re participating and trying to get pictures at the same time, that means you get lots of pictures like this:
And after all is said and done, take some time to build with the sponges and swing on your swing.
The 1st Monday of each month: link up your "Kid friendly summer activities"
The 2nd Monday of each month: link up your "Kid friendly summer crafts"
The 3rd Monday of each month: link up your "Kid friendly summer receipes"
The 4th Monday of each month: link up your "How to stay cool in the summer heat"
I’m sure this will totally shock you, but it’s hot here. No really, it was over 100 at the beginning of this week.
I was all set to show you my favorite game from VBS that we do every year for water day, and then this was what happened to the games:
Yes, that is wild pandemonium as 200 kids all throw as much water as they can at each other. Time ran short to play the games, so instead they just opted for the always popular throw water at each other…….
I was hoping I had pictures from earlier years, but I don’t……
So, here’s the two games, hopefully I explain it well enough you understand.
Drip, Drip, Drop
This is essentially duck, duck, goose with water. The “ducker” walks around with a cup of water. As they get to each kid they say, “drip,” and drip a little bit of water on the kid. The person who is chosen to be it, you say, “drop” and dump the entire cup of water on them. If you get tagged you sit in the “mush pot,” which is usually a baby pool full of water.
I’m sure you can see people don’t really run all that fast, and are eager to get tagged.
Relay race
Supplies: 2 clear two litter bottles, cups, buckets of water
Divide the kids into two teams. Have them line up a good ways from the end point with a bucket of water, and each team has a cup.
At the other end one of the teens leading the club would be laying down with a two liter bottle on their head. The kids run up and try to fill the bottle before the other team. Ideally, they don’t pour too much on the teen. Yeah, the “poor” teen gets soaked. I mean completely and 100 percent soaked.
The horrors.
Hopefully these explanations make sense. Maybe I’ll have my kids reenact the games………
And because I know you were dying to see how water day was at my club in video form, and a quick shot of me serving food (stay tuned tomorrow for an actual write up of clubs).
I can’t wait to see how ya’ll stay cool. I have some fun ideas coming up, one that I’ll have to warn Jeff about……..
Pathfinder Mom had showcased a game her son loves and then commented this would be easy to do with sidewalk chalk and music (sorry no exact link to the post). Well, I took that and ran with it. So, here’s our game:
Supplies needed: chalk, hyper kids that need to burn energy, and a sunny day (that last one is key)
Prep work: write numbers all over your sidewalk, this could also be whatever else you’re working on.
How to play: Call out a kid’s name and call out how they should get to the number. Ex: Superman hop to 17. Princess run to 5. Batman tiptoe to 12.
Happily play the game and trick your kids into learning.
Play as long as the weather or your kids’ attention span lasts.
Game called on account of rain! Apparently our rain dance from the other day was successful, if a little late.
So, this happened a few weeks ago when I was being good and not posting, but these pictures are just too cute not to post.
They'd been on me for a while to "play farm" with them outside. Here's how you play farm as I learned.
You dig dirt to make soup. Watch out for swinging shovels that's how I got the "Mommy, Princess is red" incident.
Then you eat the soup. Now I know why my outdoor table is always so messy. Apparently they eat dirt soup straight on the table.
You push your "baby" in the swing. The baby changed a lot, sometimes there was a puppy, actually a lot of times there was a puppy.
You water the plants. I also discovered that day the basil I had planted this summer went to seed, and the weeds I was pulling was actually little baby basil plants. Which of course won't survive the winter.....
Of course lots of water must be spilled to create a nice big mud puddle. This also does explain why they need so many baths after playing outside.
Then you climb up to your bed and go to sleep.
Everyone sleeps, including Peter Pan doll. Then in the "middle of the night" while it's dark a monster attacks. Which of course we must fight.
Then we get up because it's no longer dark. It's light now, and they take turns pushing dolls in the swing.
And that seems to be the great game of how to play farm
