Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

You know that old joke about kids on Christmas morning only wanting to play with the boxes? I'm not saying it's exactly true, but it pretty much is. There are a lot of different styles of teachers out there, and we've been blessed to know many fantastic ones over the years. This is a near perfect example of the kind of open ended play that we try to champion whenever we get the chance. Give the kids some materials, provide a framework in the form of a story or discussion of interests, let the kids work through to their own personal, logical conclusion. The results were often very cool and exciting.

A few weeks ago, the girls made play doh, and it turned out terribly wrong. Chemistry is amazing. It became a fantastic sensory experience though, as both of the kids wanted to play in the resulting goop, squishing and stretching and pulling and plopping it. Serious fun for about an hour.

Three Year Olds

Today's strip is finally up, only 12 hours late! Go Team!

One of the things that made the transition from working to being a stay-at-home dad and freelancer is that we kept Abby in preschool a couple days a week for the first couple of months. It gave me and Olive time to get to know each other, and to establish a routine. We also got started on some long term projects during that time. It was amazing to me that the house could actually function without someone there every day to do cleaning and maintenance. Work was also slow at first too, which made it possible to get things done and to figure out how to live on a budget. More on that later though.

My friend Tommy from Top Hat Sasquatch posted this photo on Instagram of some Muppet drawings I did for him. They look pretty great in frames. I'm hoping to do a lot more little drawings of the things I love this year as part of the Watercolor Warm Ups I've been doing. If you'd like to follow along, I post the paintings on Instagram as I work on them each day, or on our website as a Watercolor Wednesday feature in our blog and shop.