(Not) For Babies: Get Out the Map
Oh man, I heard this song on the radio this week and nearly died of happiness. The Indigo Girls were so central to high school/college for me and most specifically remind me of someone who was central to my high school life who recently passed away. I love being musically reminded of our best moments.
And hey, this is also a great song to sing with a kiddo or two.
Awesome Blossom.
I feel compelled to point out that one of my Virgoan quirks is to read the entire archives of every blog that I follow. I am not stalking you, I just… have completist tendencies. I must use every page in a coloring book in consecutive order. I must finish all books I read, even if they suck. I must own each part of a series – if I’m going to buy one, I have to buy them all.
So, the way that this relates to my blogging (and to specifically to Friday’s Awesome Blossom roundup) is that these might not be recent links. And if you’re wondering “How/why are you linking to this thing I wrote two years ago?! Are you mental?!” The answer is… well.. yes. Enjoy anyway.
(Worcester, MA. August 2007.)
- Want to introduce your kids to opera? AskMetafilter has some suggestions.
- I Love You Forever, Just Don’t Scale My House: Some thoughts on a children’s classic.
- Developmental Stages of Children’s Art: In case you’re wondering “What’s he going to do next?” No word on putting bellybuttons in all of your drawings though.
- Famous Muppet Doppelgängers. Sesame Street’s 40th Anniversary may technically be over, but muppets are always awesome. Some of these aren’t Sesame Street muppets anyhow – were you aware that Kermit is the only muppet to crossover from the Muppet Show onto the ‘Street?
- Fairytale Fashion: Sarah Von of Yes and Yes imagines what Disney Princesses might wear in 2009. Also excellent – the followup Fairytale Fashion Round 2 and Dr. Seuss Style.
- Deep Space Sparkle is an amazing blog – I wish I’d had Patty as my art teacher! (Though my art teacher was plenty cool and obviously did alright in the end. She was pretty eccentric and I remember rumors went around that she was a witch because she had long black hair.) Most are for kids quite a bit older than my charges, but the Eric Carle inspired projects might be fun to try with Thing 1!
Our House in the Middle of Our Street.
Thing 1 is going through a “House Period” in his drawings. Yesterday he drew my house, my friend “Nuna’s” house, my mom’s house, my brother’s house AND my imaginary sister’s house (being that I don’t have a sister, but he wanted to draw her house anyway, even though she doesn’t actually exist). Whew. The drawings are pretty awesome and kind of remind me of Paul Klee a little bit.
My friend “Nuna” and his “switching socks.”
My mom.
Me.
Wensleydale Wednesday
Stuff my cat is on: A pile of canvas bags on top of a box. She loves bags. And boxes. This is like heaven for the Dalish Cat.
(No, we’re not moving. This picture is from Boston last summer during the move back to Providence.)
(Not) For Babies: Hello, Goodbye.
All Beatles’ songs are great for kids, but my favorite that I bust out singing quite often is “Hello, Goodbye” which is also a great way to teach opposites beyond the traditional big::small.
Go! Paint!
Here are some of the results from Thing 2’s experiments with the Go Paint markers. They’re a huge hit – he loves them, his parents love that he’s learning to write ON THE PAPER and his brother… covets them. We’ve explained that they’re “Learning Markers” and that Thing 1 doesn’t need to learn, he already knows how to color on the paper, which helps. There’s nothing that can be done about sibling rivalry or Thing 1’s urge to direct all parties as his assistants in art creation (even if it is not *his* art that is being created), but the actual markers are working really well and the rest of the process will continue to get the kinks worked out over time. As you can see, the process currently involves my demonstrating that the marker draws *on the paper* and Thing 2 picks up on his own pretty quickly.
In case you were wondering… yes. The markers *do* bleed through to the other side of the paper.
The two big downsides to the “Learning Marker” genre (this holds true of Crayola’s Color Wonder markers too): #1) You can’t mix colors. #2) The drawings smudge over time. Here’s the same drawing a day later:
Nanny Tested: Mess-Free Markers
When I first saw commercials for this, I thought that it was one of the dumber things I’d ever heard of. Markers? That don’t make a mess? Why on earth are you getting markers if you don’t want a mess? Then I started nannying full-time. It is literally impossible to keep an eye on a child at every moment, and when you blink, that’s when you hear the shriek of the older sibling screaming “NO BABY! DON’T COLOR ON THAT!” Yeah. That’s when I got the appeal.
The Schmoops loved these coloring books – especially the Princess ones, of course. Mainly they were left to Schmoopette, though Schmoopelina had some special glitter pages of her own. Schmoopelina (age 5) loved to sit and draw pictures with marker, so it was awesome to have something to give Schmoopette (age 2) where I didn’t have to be breathing down her neck to keep her from drawing on the table (though I did encourage her to stay on the paper, even with the “magic” markers). I will say though that even more than most coloring books, these really inhibit creativity as there are “hidden” scenes in the backgrounds. Cute… but at the same time… what if you wanted to draw your own background?
The Color Explosion is a pretty much perfect mess-free pick-up anywhere art project. It’s awesome. Black paper that reveals to rainbow colors with the “magic” marker. Schmoopette and I made a bazillion designs on these and I wish I had scanned them – pretty much all designs look great with this, but the more abstract ones become totally, totally awesome.
Thing 2 is currently having a “drawing on the walls” moment and I nearly cried to hear the sentence “I guess we won’t be giving him crayons for a while.” He’s not up to pencils yet, and markers are certainly out of the question. I can’t possibly entertain an existence where drawing wasn’t at least an option for him, so I picked up a pack of Elmer’s Go Paint markers w/drawing paper. Like the Color Wonder, the markers are only supposed to work on the paper they come with. I did my best to find the most open-ended package (that is, one without pre-drawn scenes to “color in”) and hopefully, he’ll enjoy coloring with it and we can work on “drawing goes on the paper!” while also keeping the walls safe from re-decoration.
(Not) For Babies: In the Navy.
Babies love the Village People. YMCA is also a hit with the under 4 crowd. And EVERYBODY loves a good muppet. This may be the best muppet mash-up I have ever seen, but that could just be my Scandihoovian ancestry talking.
Nanny Tested: Hand Sanitizers.
NOTE: These reviews are based on usability of the product for the nanny. Do not use alcohol based hand sanitizers on kids’ delicate skin! Ok!
Given that it’s flu season and the only thing more ubiquitous than the little respiratory mask at the doctor’s office is tubes of hand sanitizer, I thought I’d share my experiences. I’m not pro-hand sanitizer outside of work, but when you’re wiping someone else’s butt and that someone doesn’t exactly allow you time to fully wash your hands before charging down the stairs… yeah, it’s a little tube of sanity.
CareOne/Generic Brand Lemon Scented Hand Sanitizer: This was in-stock at the Schmoops’ home. I guess MamaSchmoop enjoys having her hands smell like lemons. I do not. I don’t like lemon scented anything, really, and that’s just me. Other than that, it’s kind of drying – just like Purell – only more lemony.
Purell w/Aloe: Ok, so it’s like, $2 more than the regular 99c Purell/generic non-aloe alcohol-licious goo, but if you have extremely dry skin, it’s worth those $2. My skin? My skin it is so dry that it’s akin to sandpaper in the winters. This is my go-to.
CleanWell Non-Alcohol Hand Sanitizer: I bought this at Whole Foods thinking that it would be a good alternative to alcohol based sanitizers – it’s advertised as “kid safe.” Well, it would be, except that it smells like I just stuck my hands in a vat of Italian Seasoning. I guess thyme has anti-septic properties. This is great if you want your hands to smell like thyme, but if not, you’ll find yourself cursing the fact that you paid $4 for this. This is why you always use the tester first.
Awesome Blossom.
Providence, 2007.
- Stephen Colbert takes on Sesame Street and Pox News.
- Cookie Monster talks about the origin of “OM NOM NOM!”
- Last Sesame Street related post: in response to South Africa’s HIV+ muppet Kami, Jezebel wonders, how young is too young to teach children about AIDS?
- Susan Striker’s 10 Cardinal Rules for Teaching Creative Art. Excellent read about working artistically with kids! I do my best to abide by these rules, but I’ll admit that coloring books are my Achilles Heel. I’m 28 and I still have coloring books of my own, I love them.
- Frida Kahlo’s Studio Dollhouse: Perhaps the greatest dollhouse EVER.
- 1001 Rules for My Unborn Son: “Let’s get this straight before I get old and uncool.”
- Art in All of Us: Gallery of children’s art from around the world!
- Newborn babies cry with mother’s accent: I guess I’ll have some American crying babies. If they cried with their father’s accent… my future babies would be way sexier. *sigh* No Portuguese accent for you, babies, I’m sorry.
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