We're Going Places

Finishing my quilt for Quilts for Kids this week put me in the sewing mood, so I finished a project that I have had for a while, made a Christmas present sample test, and sewed a simple tote bag.

 Here is the Tiny in her new World Quilt. Before you get too excited, the actual map is a print, and I just quilted it through the longitude and latitude lines onto some fleece. Tiny has been trying to snuggle this blanket for weeks, and now she finally can. Last night as we were going through bedtime stories, we talked about how each color is a different place, and then spent a couple minutes with her pointing to countries while I told her the names.

 Here's the Christmas present test. I need to make a pencil roll for my niece and a car carrier for my nephew. Pencil rolls are pretty simple, but the car carrier needed a bit more thought, so I tried one for the Tiny. These are special smaller cars from one of the quiet books that comes with toys. Now, I just have to get sizing for some matchbox cars, but I think I have the concept down. I even got to try some new techniques, such as novelty stitches for quilting and button holes, though I sewed the buttons on my hand, and I won't be putting buttons on my nephew's. 

So here is a list of my projects, both sewing and knitting, that I have to make by Christmas, or have already started.

Sewing

• Colored Pencil Roll- Christmas
• Car/Toy Carrier- Christmas
• Desk Organizer- Christmas
• Twin sized quilt for the Tiny- Still in the cutting process
• Queen sized quilt- I've had this fabric for years, but now I shared the layout plan with the Hubby and he nixed it as too busy, so now I'm on the lookout for some background fabric.

Knitting

• Sock Pattern
• Pi scarf- Yes, a scarf with the digits of pi. I've actually started two of these...
• Free Form Sweater- I'm working on a sweater without a pattern. I tried this with a sweater for Tiny, and it worked out alright until I got to the hood.
• Long Sleeve Bolero Sweater- I've been working on this one for about two years. I got halfway through the first time and realized I didn't have enough yarn to finish. The yarn had been discontinued so I had to unravel it to the cuff and tweak the pattern, now I'm almost done with the first sleeve and am still on my first ball of yarn.
• Short Sleeve Bolero Sweater- This is a lace pattern, but some of my yarn is back in New York...
• Blanket- Working on a modern log cabin type style, but still in the very early stages
• Requested Tiny Mittens

So, I've got alot of work to do.

Leaf Unit

 

Tiny and I read this book today. It has great information and goes through all sorts of trees and how the leaves look different. In the back there is even a page about where leaf color comes from, it even uses the chemical names like anthocyanin, so be prepared for that if you plan to read it.

We also read The Little Yellow Leaf. It is a story about a little leaf who is too afraid to fall off the tree. It nicely goes through several "milestones" of fall before the Yellow Leaf finds a Scarlet Leaf on the same tree and they decide to drop off the tree together.

 

To go along with these great books we did some crafts. I cut out a tree shape a glued it to a background page, and then Tiny put yellow leaves on.

 Here she is working on the second "Mommy Tree" after having completed the original "Daddy Tree" below.

For this project and others I have been letting her use the Creatology Glue Pens- she is holding one in the picture of her working. I love them. They contain liquid glue- which allows the glue to stay wet for long enough to work with, but have a sponge cap at the end- which limits the amount of glue that can be used. The sponge tip can be unscrewed for when larger amounts of glue are needed, like in a Calm Down Jar (which is why I originally bought these, sooo glad I couldn't find and regular clear glue that day).

Previously we have worked with glue sticks, but she can never finish her project before the glue she has put down dries. We've also used regular glue, but we had the usual problems of too much glue causing problems and making a mess. An additional bonus is that it is a cylinder which allows her to practice proper gripping skills. We are going to be getting these for a LONG time. They come in a pack of three pens, and I got them for less than $2 at Michaels!

Previously, we had gone out and collected an assortment of leaves and a couple days ago, we decided to sort and count them. See, Daddy is an engineer and is not fond of pictographs, being a former math teacher, and currently working on my master's in education, I don't see any reason in making things simpler than they need to be because adults think kids can't understand. Tiny had a great time sorting our selection of leaves by color and counting them. I then drew the bars, and you can see that she colored them. We even talked afterwards about how big rectangles mean lots of leaves and she told me that there were the most yellow leaves!  It's not something I expect her to do on her own, but it seems as good of an introduction to graphs as many others.--Daddy was very pleased with it when he got home too.

  Here is a shot from the first day of our Leaf Unit with a few of our books spread out and some light-weight foam oak leaf shapes. We sorted them by color (Tiny loves to sort and arrange things, I blame Daddy and his side of the family :p, though it only becomes a problem when she starts to rearrange displays at the store), and then worked on some patterns for the first time. She did pretty well with the concept of an ABAB pattern, and we tried and ABCABC pattern, but that was a bit too much. Then we used the colored leaves to make "picture patterns." 

We've got more days of leaves ahead!

Photo Fest

So, I've always been bad at the daily aspect of a  journal/diary. Here are a few photos that I will put stories with...soon I hope.