Visit to the Fire Station

Firemen are awesome.

Today, we went to our local fire station. Technically, if you want a tour, you are supposed to call the administrative hotline and schedule a tour at least ten days in advance. That is probably a good idea if you have a big group, or older kids. But the very kind man on the phone told me that since I only had one little boy (and the baby), we were welcome to stop at our local station and just knock on the door.

Tutorial for this vest is coming up. You are going to LOVE it.

So we made a nice card and some oatmeal raisin cookies, and knocked on the door. I am pretty sure that if you bring a homemade card and some homemade cookies, you could get into Fort Knox.

But guess what? Firemen are the nicest people in the WORLD. They welcomed us right in and showed us around the station. They were super duper incredibly awesome. 

Also, the fire station is the cleanest place in the world. You could eat off the floor. Or, you could before the Bear spit up on the nice clean floor (sorry, firemen). 

Oooh, guess what else I learned? The female fire fighter told me that "fireman" was considered a gender neutral term, and could be applied to both men and women. She was super nice, too. And pretty. I wondered whether she wore mascara, and if it was heat-proof, because mine melts and sticks my eyelashes together every time I open the oven door. I should have asked her.

As much as he loves fire trucks, The Shark was terrified of the fire engine up close. Total freak out. On the way to the car, though, he couldn't stop talking about "so much fun!" and "Fiwer station!"

They gave us a kids' fire safety handout that we did when we went home, which talked about going outside when you hear the smoke detector. The parent is supposed to use the smoke detector test button, which I did. Guess what? Dead battery. So I changed it, and then did the test button, and we ran outside for our fire drill. If we hadn't gone to the fire station today, who knows how long it would have been before I noticed? Thanks, fire fighters!

Art Week! Cornstarch Goop.

Last week was Art Week! But I was sick, and then the Shark was sick, so we've been a little slow posting. But what better thing to do when you're sick (rather than run around all over the place)?

Several of the projects we did are from this book, called First Art:



This book has a lot of fun things to do for younger kiddos, ages 2-5. However, there are a lot of things that older kids would enjoy, too. For example:

I made this cornstarch "goop" for the Shark. He refused to touch it (to be fair, he had a terrible nap). However, I enjoyed it immensely. It is alternately solid and liquid—think mercury, but without the poisoning. While I won't be posting recipes from the book here (really, you should get the book), I will tell you that it's made of just cornstarch and water. Use about twice as much cornstarch as water, and go from there.

Here's a great youtube video that shows the goop in action:

Seriously - I couldn't stop playing with it. Just DON'T POUR IT DOWN THE DRAIN.

Art Week: Crayons and Water

This is an easy project for little ones. Have them color on construction paper with a crayon that is the same color as the construction paper. Red paper + red crayon, black paper + black crayon. We used black crayon.

You want them to color really hard, so it might work better for them to color on the floor so they can use their big arm muscles.

Then, spray the paper with water and watch the colors change.

Little ones like to spray water (and the color-changing action is pretty cool, too).

Butterfly Week: Link Love & the Butterfly Guy

The reason we chose to do butterfly week was because our neighborhood association co-hosted a butterfly event on Sunday with "The Butterfly Guy." Tony Delia, The Butterfly Guy, showed us some beautiful butterflies and butterfly plants, including tropical beauties like passion vines and plumerias.

There was also wine, capri suns, a porta-cool portable air conditioner (I must get one of these), balloons, and a bubble machine. The Shark was in heaven.

If you live in the Dallas area, Tony can do a butterfly presentation and event for your school. Pop on over to butterflyguy.org and check it out.

Unfortunately, I holding the baby instead of manning the camera, so there aren't any photos of the event. These lovely photos are from the interwebs (and are linked to their original websites, if you want to know where they came from).


Overall, a fantastic butterfly week all around.

I also wanted to give you some great links I found, in case you want to have your own Butterfly Week.

Here's some link love:

national geographic video: shows life cycle, the difference between a butterfly & a moth (and a butterfly getting eaten by a chameleon) http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/kids/animals-pets-kids/bugs-kids/monarch-butterflies-kids.html

a really cool PBS tv show episode about butterflies (elementary age)

http://pbskids.org/dragonflytv/show/butterflywings.html

great  website for older kids

http://www.kidsbutterfly.org/education

probably the best butterfly site of all, which didn’t come up in my google search: 

http://www.naba.org/chapters/nabasl/kids/web.html

For the young ones, some very cute ideas & songs

http://prekinders.com/bugs-theme/

good links – click through to each category for art, snack, & more

http://www.everythingpreschool.com/themes/butterflies/index.htm

 

 

Coming Up: Art Week

We had so much fun with Butterfly Week, and I've got one more post to do for that with today's outing, but I wanted to let you know that Art Week is coming up! We'll be focusing on visual arts and maybe on Van Gogh's Starry Starry Night. If you're playing along, you'll want to order a book called First Art from your favorite bookseller.

Hooray! We're looking forward to it.

Butterflies & Anthropologie: Mommy Time

I did such a great job with butterfly week, I got myself "a little sumthin-sumthin."

You know it.

It's a gorgeous candle WITH BUTTERFLIES ON IT. I know. Too cute, right? 

It smells like jasmine. I love jasmine.

 
It's a lovely sage blue-green color. And it was on sale, so that was hard to beat. Not sure what I'm going to do for train week, but this works for me.

Butterfly Conservatory: Texas Discovery Gardens

We went to the butterfly conservatory here in Dallas, also known as the Texas Discovery Gardens.
It was great!

See the brown butterfly? Sorry that I don't have a totally awesome zoom lens. YET.

We arrived just in time to see a butterfly release!!

 They had two big laundry hampers (maybe they were fancy butterfly transportation devices?) full of butterflies.

So pretty! Can you see the red & black butterfly below? It's called a Small Postman. I am not making that up.

And my baby's chunky hand as he tries to grab it? (No butterflies were harmed.) He loved watching the butterflies fly around.

It was a beautiful place, but it was SO STINKING HOT. Apparently butterflies like warmth. And humidity. And it was 95 degrees outside. And even hotter inside the conservatory.

Perfect for butterflies, if a bit warm for us. It would be lovely and tropical in the winter, I think.

The Shark ADORED it. He wanted to stay and run about wildly on all the levels and bridges. Sadly, he had to behave, and was not allowed to run about like a monkey.

 

The gift shop at the Texas Discovery Garden is AWESOME for butterfly and bug stuff. We didn't get anything there, because the kids were melting down and my husband was just melting. But it had every possible butterfly-related item you could think of, including a zillion different sticker books for $1.50. You can pop in the gift shop without paying admission, if you need to stock up or something.

We recommend the garden, though, and will probably come back another time! In the winter, that is.