No, I'm not talking about books ABOUT gnomes and fairies, rather books FOR gnomes and fairies. I got the idea from Michelle. When we talked about doing The Book Nook, I told her I wanted a banner. Something that people would come to associate with this feature. Like a good graphic artist, she gave me three choices; the one below was one of my choices.
Well, as it turns out, we decided not to have a special banner. Michelle loves to point out that much of the work of any graphic artist never gets used. So, I apologized for wasting her time BUT isn't the fairy reading a book about the cutest thing you ever saw? Well, I decided we needed to get more reading material into The Thicket. So I got busy, with the help of Britta, of course, and we created a stack of books, specifically for the children of The Thicket. The insides of the book can be left blank, as journals, you can use recycled text from magazines, or write your own story. You can learn more about making your own Gnome and Fairy Books HERE or with our FREE Patterns. Enjoy!

Is there anything more exciting and rejuvenating than the smell of spring? On sunny days, as the snow begins to melt, and day time temperatures soar to a whopping 45 degrees F, my head begins to spin with prospects of flowers and picnics. Here in the Midwest, a sure sign of spring is the tapping of the maple trees and the return of the robins.

The other day Pixie and Fairy snuggled close as we watched Michelle at the stove, mixing the boiling hot maple syrup, that would become maple candy. The smell in the kitchen was heavenly. While waiting, because it took ever so long for the syrup to reach the right temperature, I read the book, Grandpa's Sugar Bush, to the girls.

As I turned a page, I saw this:
"Grandpa says the first robin always sings on the day the sap starts to run."

Well, when everyone departed after dinner, I sat at my desk, and designed a Robin Applique Block. It only seemed right. Robins and maple syrup! As always, the robin was designed to fit on a 6" x 6" block but can be reduced or enlarged to meet your needs. The Robin Applique Block can be found HERE or with our FREE Appliques. Enjoy! 

It's March... and around here that means it is SUGARING TIME!!! We are in the middle of perfect sugaring weather... freezing at night but a beautiful 45 or so during the day. We took our first trip to the Sugar Bush on Sunday and then we came home (actually went to Gammy's) and made our own Maple Sugar Candy (click here to check out this yummy treat).

Mmmm... there is nothing quite like the smell of a sugar shack. Sweet sap boiling, firewood smoldering, fresh earth exposed (ie lovely March mud). Bug would spend all day peering into the sap pans if he could.

Did you know that it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup? You can collect 6-10 gallons of sap per Sugar Maple tree during sugaring season. To learn more about sugaring check out these great books Grandpa's Sugar Bush and Sugaring Time. Grandpa's Sugar Bush is a lovely introduction for the younger crowd and reading Sugaring Time is the next best thing to being able to help out at a Sugar Shack.

The Farm we visit sets up a Native American Sugaring Camp display for the kids... the kids favorite part... squishing through the six inch deep mud. ;)

Britta woke early, ready to nurse the twins and start her day, but when she sat up in bed, she felt a strange, ticklish sensation on her cheek. When her eyes fully focused, she looked around the room. It looked like a giant spider had woven a web throughout the whole room during the night! She highly doubted the existence of a mammoth spider in The Thicket, but was rather confident that this was yet another of the late night shenanigans of the leprechauns. Britta shook her head and counted off on her fingers; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Just eight days til St. Patrick's Day; just eight more days until the leprechauns would be leaving The Thicket.

But Britta had to smile. Although Axel stomped around the house during the day complaining about the foolhardiness of  those scoundrels, she noticed he slipped away each night, after he thought Britta to be fast asleep, and would join them at the campfire. She could hear his voice blending with theirs while they sang ballads and told stories.

"It really wasn't SO bad", she decided as she looked around the room plotting her escape. She decided she probably wouldn't mind the pranks of the leprechauns nearly as much if she could only deal with them AFTER her second cup of chicory tea! 

Next up from the Wee Folk Activities Archives is our Paper Mache Dinosaur Eggs. This time of year everyone is thinking about cute Easter egg projects and you can easily adapt this project to have an Easter flair if you would like. I had comments from readers the last time around that suggested tucking small prizes into their eggs for a fun treat. You can of course do this with smaller balloons too... if you aren't going for a Dino Egg.

Paper Mache Dino Eggs (part one) was originally published Feb 2009.
 

The kids decided that they wanted to make a dinosaur nest after reading one of the Magic Schoolbus books where Frizzle's class went looking for Maiasaurus eggs. So it was time to make some paper mache dino eggs.

My mom did this project in her preschool whenever she ran a dino unit. It can be quite messy... of course three kids at the dining room table is nothing compared to the year when I helped in her classroom with 24 students. Yikes! Preschoolers can easily do this project... though in my experience only about 1 in 4 will stick with it long enough to completely cover their egg.

I'll give you one guess which one of my kiddos completed hers and helped me finish her siblings... Pixie girl of course. You can't tell me that 2 year olds don't have amazing attention spans.

You need one balloon per egg, a bowl to set the balloon in, newspaper shredded into long stripes (my kids loved that part) and a basic mixture of paper mache goo (I used approximately 1 part flour to 1 1/2 parts water mix).

Be sure to cover the entire balloon with paper mache, leaving just the knot exposed. (You might want to cover your table first - ours is a second hand table that we plan to refinish at some point in the future so I generally skip that step). Using a bright colored balloon can help you see any gaps. Try not to make it too thick or it will take forever to dry but you do want solid coverage or the egg will collapse when you pop the balloon.

Once the eggs have dried hard (btw - flip them over in the bowl occastionally so all the sides get air) we will paint them... I will post more when we get to that part.

"Once there was a peddler who sold caps. But he was not like an ordinary peddler, carrying his wares on his back. He carried them on top of his head." So begins the tale of Caps for Sale, the lovely story of an unorthodox peddler and a tree full of pesky monkeys! Written and illustrated by Russian author Esphyr Slobodkina in 1940, it has remained a favorite amongst children for generations. I can remember when my kindergarten teacher read this book to our class. I immediately feel in love and have reread it many times over the years. Although the list is long and mighty, I can honestly say, this was my very favorite book as a child. Why? 

I loved the absurdity of the book; a man balancing 17 caps on his head, monkey's in trees wearing hats, and the interplay between man and monkey! 

I also was empathetic to the peddler's loss. Can you imagine losing your wares to a bunch of renegade monkeys!  
 

Well, far be it from me to give away the end of the story, suffice to say, I've always been a sap for an "all's well that ends well" read. As a bit of an aside... the peddler's frustrated, and sometimes angry exclamation of, "You monkeys, you", became a favorite exclamation of mine as I was raising my children, although mine was uttered playfully, and usually followed by... "Move it, monkeys!"

Caps for Sale is a perfect story for children to act out. The plot is simple, and if you reduce the number of monkeys, the cast is small. To that end, I have crafted a set of characters and props to help your children extend the story to their own imaginative play. 

Met the peddler. Ready to take a little rest under a shady tree.

 

Met the monkeys. Ready for a little mischief and mayhem.

Feel the frustration of the peddler, bested by the monkeys!

And, feel the exhilaration brought on by an unlikely turn of events!

The directions on how to create your own Caps for Sale storybook characters can be found HERE, or with our FREE Patterns. The directions for making the Autumn Tree can be found HERE. Enjoy! 

As many of you know, Michelle has closed down her homeschooling blog. With the demands of homeschooling, Wee Folk Art, and other creative projects we are involved in, Michelle has felt like she was spreading herself too thin. This made many people very sad :( Michelle had tons of great activities and projects she did with her children, plus some phenomenal units. So, for those of you that followed her, take heart. Many of her activities are very appropriate to Wee Folk Art. Because of that, you can expect to see some new additions around here.

For quite a while now we've talked about starting a Book Nook. I wanted a place to share some of our favorite books, from my childhood, my children's, and now, the grandbabies. So, from time to time we will feature a book. Sometimes, we might simply review a book we like. We might have anecdotal stories to share, there might be a craft or activity to do to enhance the reading experience. And sometimes, we will put together "baskets of books". These would be a collection of books on a particular topic, that we are using. They may not be individually discussed, but rather, simply shared.

We hope you will find this new corner of Wee Folk Art to be delightful, inspiring, or just fun! For our very first offering, I'm going to share my very favoritest book from my childhood, along with a special project. Hopefully it will be up tomorrow. We are very excited about this and we hope it becomes a favorite spot for your family.

Last year before Easter we did a number of egg projects. It seems like an good time to tackle eggs, with Easter and spring just around the corner. I wanted to pull all our egg projects together here, as a reminder, and for those of you that may not have discovered them yet.

To begin with, we have our Felt Fried Eggs and Bacon breakfast, with crispy bacon and sunny side up eggs. Perfect for the play kitchen.

Then, as the saying goes, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette... here we have a Felted Egg, ready to stuff with egg innards or special Easter treats for the basket. Make them white or brown for every day use, or use colored roving and needle felting to make beautiful Easter eggs.

We already shared our Traditional Felt Eggs that can be decorated for Easter, or left plain to fill an egg carton for the play kitchen.

And, finally, I would have been remiss if I hadn't crafted an Fried Egg Applique Block!

HAPPY EGG CRAFTING!

Some of you may have noticed that I have closed down my homeschooling blog Wee Folk Activities. It is just too hard to keep up with it all. But I want to make sure the most popular crafts and activities from that site were still available so I will be importing them here over the next several weeks. And of course, as we do more crafts I will continue to share our Kid Crafts here.

First up... several activities from our Dinosaur unit we did last winter. Here is our mighty Boxasaurus originally published Jan 2009.

Bug is totally getting into the whole "My Project" thing. We have recently moved into the world of dinosaurs and prehistoric animals. While pouring over some prehistoric ZooBook Magazines my mom lent him... Bug came up to me with a activity guide (which I didn't know was in the set) saying "this is what I'M doing next for my project." He wanted to make a Boxasaurus. Sure, sounds like fun!

We spent several days collecting boxes of various sizes. We raided the garage, basement, recycling bin, etc. Once we had a decent collection it was time to start designing the dinosaur. Bug spent some time just stacking and sorting until he decided to make a T-Rex (not surprising).

I helped him assemble the boxes. He did the glue and I taped the pieces in place to help hold them until the glue set. At this point his Boxasaurus project serendipitously tied in with this week's Unplugged Challenge theme Balance. The T-Rex was very front heavy and had to lean against the wall until we got the tail in place. What a great lesson in balance and a perfect hands on lesson as to one of the reasons why many animals have tails! He wanted a longer tail on his Boxasuarus but that in turn made him back heavy. In the end we found the perfect balance of tail length to support the head and arms.

Next came the whole family production (and I do mean PRODUCTION) of painting the Boxasaurus. Since painting outside was out of the question (neg 10 not factoring wind chill), we cleared the furniture from the kitchen, set down some plastic bags (lol) and set up shop to paint. Good fun was had by all. AND Thank goodness it was a weekend and Daddy was home to carry the kids directly up to the tub while I cleaned up. The floor was a showcase that would have done Pollock proud. Fortunately Bamaboo cleans up so well!

Once dry, eyes, teeth and glitter (hehe, a well dressed Boxasaurus) were added.

Lately I've been thinking about all the lovely new friends I've been meeting recently... many of them from the blogging world. It reminded me of this piece I had written for One Generation to Another March 9, 2008. So, for no particular reason, this is for all my friends... old and new!  

If you were ever a Brownie you know the song…

Make new friends, but keep the old,
One is silver and the other’s gold.

New friends are great! They’re kinda like a “do over”. I ran into a neighbor “boy” that was home visiting his parents. He is now married and he and his wife bought their first home. After we were chatting for a while he said, “Boy, I was a jerk in high school. I wish I could go back and apologize to a ton of people.” The truth is he was a jerk. He was a bully, and he and his friends terrorized many insecure classmates. A dear friend’s son was often the target of his cruelty. And perhaps not surprisingly, but totally irrational, this “jerk” was quite popular. I looked at this neighbor “boy” and I thought, “You know, I think you really have changed.” He was nice mannered, pleasant and very communicative. Anyone who met him now would have a profoundly different impression of him than his classmates and teachers did back in his high school days.

New friends fall into the category of “Variety is the spice of life.” As we go through our lives, interests change. Maybe in college you were the partying sorority girl. Now, by some cosmic hiccup you’ve become, of all things, a crunchy mom. How is that even possible? And although you hold tightly to your old friends, it’s wonderful to make new friends that share your present mindset. (There’s no way your still single college roommate who continues to party every weekend would give a flying leap that you found a supplier of organic diaper wraps!) So, new friends, with common interests, allow you to share a slice of your life…maybe, some day, they will become “old friends”, but for the time being, they enrich our lives and embellish our personal tapestry.

But this blog is really about “old friends”…those friends that have been with us through thick and thin. They’ve seen us at our best…and our worst. They may be people we talk to every day or just exchange annual newsletters with at Christmas time, but they are the people who “knew us when”. Several years ago I took an “old friend” to the community Bible study I belonged to. We’ve been friends since she was 16 and I was 19…so, hmmmm, OMG…34 years! Irrelevant, other than demonstrating that we’ve been together for a long time! Anyway, we were sitting in the pews of the church where a visiting speaker was talking about temperance. She was this little old lady, who was standing on a stool to be seen above the podium. She was waving her hands, slamming her fist on the lectern, talking about the evils of alcohol. Now, I can guarantee you, being raised Catholic, I had never once heard a sermon quite like this one. I think this is what Carrie Nation must have sounded like! Anyway, with a grin on my face, I leaned into my friend to make a comment, but when I turned around I noticed she had slid about 6 feet away from me. I whispered, “What are you doing?” And with a completely deadpan face she whispered back, “When the lighting hits, I don’t want to be sitting too close to you!” I faked a coughing attach, and made my way to the bathroom just in time to avoid wetting my pants! There wasn’t a single other person in that room who could have made that comment to me. She continually tells friends that the only time she ever got in trouble was when she was with me. When our children were young, her father always grimaced when she mentioned I was watching her kids and to this day he develops facial tics when my name is brought up! Old friends!

Every Wednesday morning I meet a group of “old friends” for coffee, aforementioned friend being among them. We’ve known each other for eons. I remember when we use to talk about “boys”, then babies and stretch marks. We’re still talking about stretch marks, but also about menopause, our husband’s heart attack, saggy boobs, and the grand babies. We also talk about politics, books, our children, and hot actors. (Quite true!) And we still talk about our youth. (Again, ask my pew pal about “chaps and the Marriot”…I think she blew the entire thing out of proportion…at least that’s what the guys in the band would say!) But, I digress…

But there you have it…our existence is a kaleidoscope of old and new friends, everyone adding a little to our life. As time goes by we find some of our new friends and acquaintances are temporary or “situational” friends, but some hold fast and become kindred spirits. I’ve forgotten the name of some friends I’ve made over the years, yet I am grateful that they were there when I needed them. But I must admit, I am every so grateful, and feel blessed, every time I think about my handful of close friends. The ones who knew me when…and to quote Simon and Garfunkel in their song Bookends…

Time it was and what a time it was it was,
A time of innocence, a time of confidences.

There is no overriding purpose to this week’s blog other than acknowledging the value of friendship. I wish all my friends out there, the old and the “new”, a lifetime of friendships that grow and flourish and bestow untold smiles upon your days!