"K week"

 This week, because we are preparing to fly up to visit my family, I mainly just did the chalk board and read some books from the library.  The chalk board took at least twice as long this time though for some reason.

Decided to hang the girls chalk boards on the wall too so I used pipe cleaners and twisted them all around so that I could hang them up when the girls were done with their drawing for the week.

The highest one is by my 8 year old and the one bellow that is by the 6 year old (She seems to be the most "into" it at the moment) and the scribbly one is by the 3 year old.  I asked her if I could make a "K" over her scribbles and she said yes.

Close up of the middle child's

kangaroo flying a kite with a King shaped like a "K" by the oldest

I'm trying out my desk by the piano now to open up the dining room.

And the finished chalk board... seems hard to find things that start with "K" and also making it all make sense, so I did a kindergarten class in costumes.

The king is saying "Hark ye kids, I know of a Kraken who tied himself in a knot."  My own opinion about that story is that the Kraken was trying to learn to knit.  :)

 So we talked about silent K words this week and the girls did a bunch of random crafts on their own.  I made cookies and turned it into a lesson on division and subtraction.  The subtraction was everyone's favorite part of that math lesson.

I'm really glad this chalk board is going to stay up for a long time but it took so stinking long... people aren't easy to do in chalk, but I really like how it turned out.

The 6 year old working on her visual journal.  She's painting over the crayon drawing that she did.. a portrait of her pink bunny she said.

 The other super fun thing we did this week was learning how to start our own visual journals.  My mother-in-law had taken a class on it and gave us some basics about it and we took off.  Gathering everything we could and making a mess of our books so that they will be ready for the trip (and journaling.)  I was feeling exceedingly energized and creatively renewed by doing this.  Random doodling and no pressure art of whatever I wanted in a book where "there are no mistakes.. it all goes."  Folding, tearing, punching, painting, letting the 3 year old paint or scribble with me.  It was super fun.

My 3 year old was especially impressed when I decided to pull out my old fingernail polish to paint up the pages with too.  It worked great though it made the house pretty stinky.

Here's the page I was working on in the last picture.  It's "done" except that of course I'll be journaling on it!  Maybe about something someone likes or just something about each person, but most of it is water color and just the sandals and toenails are the fingernail polish paint (with a few splatters here and there for effect) so I have lots of places I could write on it.  The part I'm holding in the middle is a mesh bag that had been holding the Kiwi I'd bought this week.  I sewed it to a page so that it could lay over one side and protect the pages from getting stuck together.  Anyway, just wanted to post this in case someone else is wanting to get their creative juices flowing. 

She painted on the fingernails of her traced hand.

We had some Kiwi this week and Kale chips (the Kale chips are a favorite of ours.)

And while I SHOULD have been doing something to get ready for the trip I suddenly was so excited about covering my exercise ball that I "Knit bombed" it!  Yep.. I'd knitted a super long rainbow colored blanket (garter stitch) a while back and it was the perfect size to wrap around the ball.  Note all the felt and junk on the floor.. ONE morning I tell you of my kids crafting and it gets like that!  And this was a lighter day.

 If anyone wants to do this too you might be able to find an afghan or something already made to sew on.  I hand sewed (with yarn and a yarn needle) the seems to make it fit right and left part of it un-sewn (though that part of it butted up nicely to itself) and then deflated the ball halfway (yes just do it right on the ball) sewed the seams on the machine and cute off the extra (you have to sew it on the machine so it doesn't unravel) then flip it right side out and stuff the ball back inside.  Pump up the ball and all you have left to do is use the yarn needle and yarn to stitch up the part you left undone.  I'd thought of putting a zipper in, but decided to use brown yarn to stitch it up so I could see it well enough to just cut the one section of yarn when I need to take it out again.

I'm just so excited about this.  It makes me smile every time I see it.  I'm wondering what old sweaters that I never wear anymore could be turned into a knit bomb somewhere else.  :)

I found this at the library for this week (among others) and it was a cute story.  Stories about Kitten's and Kings were popular choices for our "k week"

THIS show came in super handy while I was trying to go through all the kids clothes to pack and prepare our projects and so forth to take on vacation with us.  My oldest especially loves learning all the facts about different animals.  It's on Netflix instant right now, but we also found a bunch of new episodes that the girls hadn't seen on Youtube.