Dinotopia at the Delaware Art Museum

We were looking for something fun to do with the kids last weekend and in my Googling around for events for kids, found that there was an exhibit at the Delaware Art Museum of original artwork from the book series Dinotopia.  My mom had actually given me a clipping about the exhibit a few months ago, but I had forgotten about it.

Anyway, we set out for our drive down to Wilmington via scenic Route 52 through West Chester, hoping all the way not to set off a bout of carsickness in Tater.  The boy is not so good on scenic roads.

Luckily he was OK (whew) and we made our way to a lovely lunch at the Cosi in Greenville and then into Rockford Park to the museum.

The kids and I had been to the Delaware Art Museum last summer (I think) to see a sculpture collection, which was very cool.  This time we skipped the other stuff and just went in to the Dinotopia exhibit.

We had a lovely tour guide who told us all about how James Gurney originally started doing paintings of this imagined world where dinosaurs and humans lived peacefully together and then started to develop them into stories.  The level of detail in his works is completely amazing, as is the amount of imagination that went into building this entire world.

The exhibit included original oil paintings, sketches, and models that were built so that Gurney could study how light and shadow would play off of his imagined creations.  The kids especially liked the stories about how Gurney would have his friends and family act out some of his ideas to see how they worked.

The "viewing of artwork" got a little tedious for the kids after a while, but they were troopers about the whole thing and really enjoyed seeing the world of Dinotopia.  Apparently there are a few books and also some movies about this imaginary world.  We are going to have to work on getting some of them so we can see what it is all about!


The Dinotopia exhibit is on display at the Delaware Art Museum until May 16th, so if you get a chance, you should definitely go check it out.

While we were there, we also stopped in to take a look at some photographs by Harold Edgerton, which capture things that the eye can't even see,  The kids loved these amazing photos, possibly even more than the dinosaurs!

Unfortunately, this exhibit is only there through April 25th, but if you get there before then, make sure to take a look!

Finally, we walked out through the Copeland Sculpture Garden, We think this guy belongs in our yard.  He's only about 40 feet tall. I think the neighbors would love that!

The Delaware Art Museum is a fun day trip and offers quite a few interesting collections and exhibits.  It makes for a less overwhelming introduction to art for little kids than a huge museum like the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  You should go.

Jell-O Suncatchers

Back before Easter, I was flipping through the newest issue of Family Fun Magazine and found this fun idea to make "plastic" sun catchers using gelatin and food coloring.  Fun, right?

I asked the kids if they wanted to try it out and they gave me kind of a hard time about it, but eventually gave in when I told them they could squirt in the food coloring.  Food coloring is fun!

So we gathered our materials:

• A box of unflavored gelatin
• Some food coloring
• Some glitter
• Some plastic plates
• Little bowls (make sure they are heatproof so they don't collapse when you add boiling water)
• Spoons for mixing
• And some boiling water (I was in charge of water).

First we put an envelope of the gelatin (which is icky smelling stuff) into each of our little glass bowls.

Then I carefully added 3 Tablespoons of boiling water to each.  The steam came leaping out of my Pyrex measuring cup at one point causing me to spill a full spoon of boiling water over my hand - ouch!  Be careful!

The kids diligently mixed until the gelatin dissolved in each bowl.  It got a bit lumpy here and there, but with more and more mixing, the lumps eventually went away.  I tried zapping one of the bowls in the microwave for a few seconds to see if that would help and - oh my - that was not a good idea.  There was a lot of frothing and bubbling.  Very frightening. I wouldn't recommend it.

Once we had the gelatin powder all dissolved the kids added a few drops of food coloring to each bowl and mixed that in well.  Somehow everyone ended up with very green hands.  Not sure whether that was an accident or intentional.

Then we poured each batch of colored gelatin onto an individual plastic plate.  I had these strangely shaped rimmed plates.  Bigger flatter ones would probably be easier to work with.  It was hard to peel the dried gelatin out of the corners of these.

Anyway, we spread the hot gelatin mixture out on the plates and then added a few drops of a contrasting color and swirled it around on a few.  We also dusted the surfaces with a little bit of glitter.

Then we waited overnight for the cooling, drying process to take place.

The next day I peeled the almost dry (it was still a little rubbery) result off of the plates and laid them out to dry the rest of the way.  You can see the swirls on the surface of the finished product and how they got a weird bendy, organic-type shape to them.  I think this was because of the weird plates.  If you had bigger ones and could just pop the dried disks off, I bet they would stay flat.

In the magazine, they said to cut the dried "plastic" into shapes.  But when I tried that with the blue one, it was too brittle and cracked all along the edges.  Maybe if I had tried when they weren't quite dry it would have worked better.  Or if I had a decent pair of scissors.  Or talent.  This picture is supposed to show the cracking.

I like the effect of the bendy circles anyway.  I think they have a blown art-glass sort of feel to them.  This one reminds me of the sun.

This was a fun project, but sort of dangerous and tedious for the kids.  They liked the coloring part, but the boiling water part was sort of nerve-wracking and the waiting-for-things-to-dry part wasn't fun at all.  But the final results were really cool.

Fun with Egg Cartons

Since we haven't done anything fun in a long time, I am digging back into old things I never managed to write about.

Which brings us to this guy.

Tater did this almost entirely on his own.  He found the idea in some book, I wish I could credit it properly, but it was months ago, so I have no idea where it came from.

He cut out a little cup from an egg carton.  Well, actually I did that part because he tried and it kept coming out the wrong shape and I was afraid he was going to start throwing things (like scissors) around the kitchen.  So I intervened.

I don't like it when people throw scissors.

Once we got the body to be the right shape, he used a permanent market to draw on the face and stripes.  We glued googly eyes on the face and cut another little piece of foam from the egg carton and glued it on for a tail. 

Voila - raccoon!

The book showed a cardboard-type egg carton, and that might work even better.  We had the foam kind and I wasn't going to buy some different kind of eggs just for the carton.  Stubborn, yes.

This could work for little cats, dogs, cows, pigs...really any animal if you embellish it properly.  Tater was really happy with the end result and proud of himself for doing it (almost) all by himself.

Inspiration

I apologize in a huge way for being MIA around here.  I have stumbled into some freelance projects that have kept me busy along with working on my resolutions project. 

I have a little pile of activity ideas that is growing on the counter, but we just haven't gotten ourselves together to do any of them in a while.  We are planning on some really fun Easter Eggs, but we can't do that just yet!

Today is a rainy day and the kids are home from school, so we are trying to figure out what to do with ourselves.  Tater says he wants to go shopping and buy a Spongebob Lego Set and that will be his "craft".

I don't think he is the spirit of things.

I was just checking out a website, which I think saw in Woman's Day Magazine - Instructables.com.  It seems like a great resource with wide gamut of different projects.  I just haven't figured out which one to do.  The magazine suggested Vegan Marshmallows, but the instructions include a bunch of ingredients that I a) don't have and b) don't know where to get.  So that's not going to happen.

I will have to come up with something stunningly original and exciting and reclaim my Fun Mommy title!

Stay tuned!

Kideos

My kids love to play on the computer.  And I have bookmarked all sorts of kid-appropriate sites for them.

PBSKids

Disney Channel

Nickelodeon

But my friend just found this kid version of YouTube and I think the kids will love it.  It's called Kideos and they have kid safe videos filtered out from YouTube.  Nothing rude or inappropriate, just a bunch of funny animals and cartoons.  The videos are divided up by age group, and go from baby to 10+. 

I think Sprout would like this one of the crowd at the Oprah show dancing to the Black Eyed Peas.

Tater would probably enjoy this one with a dog riding on a skateboard.

Of course they spent last night laughing hysterically at this guy - which is probably not at all appropriate.  Somehow he didn't get filtered into Kideo. 

Hmmmm...

Beady's

With school back in full swing, our chances to do craft projects and things are quite limited. Yet, Tater frequently looks at me and says "I want to do a craft."

Sometimes he does this at 8AM and I hand him the remote and tell him to go watch some Spongebob. Crafts in the early morning are not my thing.

But when it is a reasonable time, and the homework is done, and we have a few minutes to kill, it is nice to have some small projects on hand. This is why I scout the $1 bins at AC Moore and Michael's and stock up on little paint sets and foam stickers and these little "Beady's" projects.

I see them all the time at the stores, and yet strangely can't seem to find them on-line. The world is making no sense. Anyway, I guess you have to haul yourselves to the actual physical store (gasp) if you want to do these.

Basically, these are bead-stringing. But there are two strings and you cross them back and forth to make the rows. The diagrams that come with the kits are pretty easy to follow and the kids are now able to pretty much do them themselves.

We made some a couple of years ago and with guidance, they kids were able to stack the beads onto the one string and then I would do the crossing over parts and make sure everything was nice and tight. They still need a little help with the trickier parts (legs, ears).

Most recently, each child made a lizard, a mouse, and Sprout did a cat while Tater did a snake. I was remiss in my photo-taking responsibilities and only got a picture of the final product of the snake. Bad Mommy.

Tater has a couple of these hanging on his backpack. Sprout might have one, too. We also use them as keychains for our spare keys. It is unlikely that someone is going to lose a key with a beaded lizard on it. Like a bathroom pass in elementary school, but beadier.

They burned through my entire stash of these - a marathon beadfest. So I guess it is time to go revisit the $1 bins.

Maybe next time I will save one for myself - they are fun and it is hard for me to stand around and watch. My inner control freak wants to get in there and interfere. She misses little kids who need help and she can get a little grabby, so it's best to give her her own project.

Plus, you can never have too many keychain animals. Right?

Tiny Treasure Cubbies

We are paper towel tube collectors. They are one of the best craft materials.

We have made castles out of them.
We have made marble ramps out of them.
We have made other marble ramps out of them.

Last week the drawer was full again and so we made these little display cubbies. I found the idea, as I often do, in Family Fun Magazine. Love them.

First we rummaged through closets until we found two shoe boxes.

Then we rummaged through our gift wrap collection to find something fun, but sort of occasion-neutral. Stars seemed to work.

Then we wrapped each box in the paper, leaving the top open.

Finally, we cut our enormous stash of paper towel tubes so that they filled up the boxes. We got about 2-3 box-height tubes out of each paper towel tube.

There was one minor injury, Sprout cut the tip of her finger. Minor cut, thank goodness. But I did feel slightly vindicated for the heart palpitations I have every time I watch the kids cut towards their fingers.

Is that wrong?

Anyway, once the boxes were filled up with the tubes, the tubes held themselves in place. Tater was a little worried about everything falling apart, so we put glue on the bottom of his box to make things more secure.

Then we were ready to fill the little cubbies with all of the little mementos the kids have filling up their rooms.

Sprout filled hers completely. Finding rubber bracelets, bouncy balls, bug key chains and everything else she could fit to occupy each little space.

Tater left most of his open for later acquisitions. Although he did think it was a handy place to put his collection of (2) clown noses.

The best thing about this project was that it was completely FREE. All of the materials were things we already had and most of them are recycled.

Time to start filling the drawer again. I wonder what we'll make next!

Homework Helpers

The kids started back to school last Monday, and then promptly had a four day weekend. So now summer is officially, unofficially over!

In preparation for the first day of school we did our normal school supply shopping. Sprout is quite the connoisseur of school supplies, and is in possession of the world's largest collection of novelty erasers. I am thinking about submitting her to the Guinness Book of World Records. But regardless of how many pencils, pens and erasers (shaped like ice cream, and lipstick, and small animals, and hearts, and...) she has, there is always a thrill when "the list" arrives and we have to hit the Target to stock up for the year.

I have to say, I share in the thrill of the hunt for just the right notebook. And of course, an excuse to hit the Target is always welcome!

This year, we added some extras to our shopping list. I saw these homework cubbies in Family Fun Magazine and thought they might help the kids focus on getting through the dreaded homework hour (hopefully keeping it from becoming the homework four-hour-nightmare...)

We started with a cardboard presentation board and cut it in half height-wise (I did the cutting - utility knives + children + neurotic mother = too much for me to handle.)

After we had two half-height boards, I scored an additional line down each seam (described in the directions from FF Magazine, so that the cubby can be folded up with "stuff" inside.)

This picture shows Sprout holding the (closed) utility knife and ruler. Just to show you how...I did the cutting, but couldn't figure out how to take a picture of my own hands...

The lines are just scored through the top layer of cardboard so that the board can fold.

Like this...

After the cutting, we covered the inside of the cubby/board with contact paper.

Sprout was so traumatized by my inability to line things up correctly that she decided not to cover the outside of hers. Tater went along with covering both sides. We had to re-score the folds on his from the outside so it would fold with the covering on.

Then we used mounting tape to hang up hooks and supplies inside the cubbies. Each kid has a little white board to write down assignments or reminders, one side is covered with cork squares so they can pin up things, and they each have a pencil box mounted with Velcro so that they can take it down to get the pencils out.

Here is Tater's finished cubby:


And here is Sprout's. She is very excited about her protractor.


They were so excited when they finished these that they immediately went and got some workbooks to do a trial run. They were both sitting on the porch with their cubbies up, working on crossword puzzles or something...


Then they realized school hadn't started yet and they went to watch some Phineas & Ferb.

I hope these will be fun for them to use when they are doing real homework.

Maybe I need one, too. And some fun pencils - and an eraser that looks like a hamburger - and a protractor...

Coolest Mom - EVER!

Sorry...you need to click over here to my brand-new review site to see this most interesting and exciting post...

Spoon People

Sprout was sick this weekend and poor Tater was going so completely stir crazy that we HAD to find him a project. Luckily our new issue of Family Fun Magazine came and had some great ideas. Love that magazine!

We decided to make these spoon puppets. We had most of the "ingredients" on hand: felt, pipe cleaners, markers, yarn, glue and googly eyes (I love to say "googly eyes" - it just sounds fun...) We were all out of plastic spoons (we had clear ones, but unless we were making some strange version of invisible people, that wasn't going to work) so we did a quick run to the grocery store for white ones.

The basic design is:
1) Wrap a pipe cleaner around the "neck" of the spoon to make arms.
We had long-ish pipe cleaners so we snipped them in half first.

2) Make the clothes by cutting a long rectangle of felt and then cutting a slit in the middle (fold it in half and cut the slit). Then the hole goes over the "head". Make a belt with yarn or ribbon. I think they all look like little Jedis. Or monks.

3. Glue googly eyes onto the "face" and use permanent markers to draw on the rest of the face. Tater used a pom-pom for a nose on one of his. You could also use buttons or other little things. Go crazy!

4. Make hair out of yarn (cut a bunch of pieces of yarn to the right length and then tie them together in the middle - glue the middle part onto the tip of the spoon. If you were super ambitious you could style the hair - braids, curls. Since I don't do that for my real children it wasn't going to happen here...

Here is Tater's guy with the pom-pom nose. I also like his hair and his festive jingle-bell accent.

I think the guy in black is the Jedi master. He is clearly having some sort of hair problem. But he seems to be smiling through it all.

The young lady in green with the red hair is looking pretty fab, I think.

We were planning to make a shoe box stage for these guys, but Tater lost interest due to his burning need to go plant flowers in the rain.

Which was fun and all...but I don't have any pictures to share.

Puppies and Pinball

Well, no actual pinball - but Skee Ball, and video games!

Today we went to Dave & Buster's at the Plymouth Meeting Mall to meet Mike for lunch and play some games.

You are probably familiar with D&Bs, but the PM location is slightly smaller and more kid-friendly than the larger clubs I have been to in Philly and Chicago.

They have a good meal-deal, you can pick one of a selected group of meals and add on a $10 or $20 "play card" for the arcade. Mike had a double-cheeseburger (with very excellent fries) and got the $20 card for a total of $23.99. Not bad.

All told, I think we probably went through $40 in credits in the arcade (including some spent by Mike topping his personal best in Galaga) and ended up with about 300 prize tickets per child.

This, of course, resulted in the traditionally painful "cashing in of the tickets". Let me tell you, 300 tickets essentially gets NOTHING but some candy. And yet, my generally intelligent children felt the need to bring me every single item in the shop to see if they could afford it.

Can I get this huge stuffed animal?

Um, no...just candy.

Can I get this cheap radio?

Nope, candy.

How about this shirt?

Candy.

How about...?

CANDY...ONLY CANDY!!!

It is not in my nature to encourage the aquisition of candy, but about 15 minutes in I was picking candy up and shoving it into their hands. Please...Just. Take. The. Candy.

We left D&Bs and made our way to the other end of the mall to ride on the double-decker carousel. On our way we saw the Easter Bunny going up one of the escalators - which was sort of surreal.

Tater has been anticipating the carousel for many months, ever since he expressed a desire to return to Italy (we went on vacation a couple of summers ago) so that he could ride the double-decker carousel. When I told him there was one, not only in America, but within driving distance of home, he was ready to GO!!

He enjoyed it, riding on a horse on the top, as did I. Sprout, ever the rebel, sat on a bench. Woo Hoo!

Post carousel, we visited the Dairy Queen for some treats. Gotta love DQ.

So, to get to the point here - the Plymouth Meeting Mall has turned into the boardwalk, but less sandy. Very fun. And we didn't set foot in a single store!

There is also a place called Krazy City, which looked like a knock-off of D&Bs, right next to the carousel. It isn't open yet (according to their website), but looks like it could be fun.

We left the mall around 2:30 and had to make a trip over to the Frazer Zoo to visit the puppies. Tater and I went there on Tuesday and met the sweetest little pug/shih-tzu mix puppy and Sprout was quite desperate to check it out.

If you are unfamiliar with the "Zoo" it is a pet shop on Rt 30 in Frazer, right near the DMV. They have a selection of puppies and bunnies and a huge assortment of fish and lizards and things.

It isn't the classiest place, but the kids LOVE to go there to see the puppies.

I know we aren't supposed to encourage the puppy trade, but they are so sweet and love to have visitors (if the tail wagging is any indication).

We have to go in there with pinky-swears and promises that everyone is aware that we are not leaving with any pets. Otherwise things just get ugly.

So, we are keeping busy as Spring Break starts to wind down. We have tickets to the Hannah Montana movie for tomorrow and plans for our annual Easter Egg Eggstravaganza with our friends. Egg Hunt Saturday, another one Sunday.

It was a good week. I think we might survive the summer!

Great Wolf Lodge

On Friday night we drove about 2 hours up to the Poconos to spend the night at Great Wolf Lodge, and then on Saturday spent the day playing in their indoor water park. Lots of our friends have gone and we thought that a day of swimming would be an excellent way to celebrate Mike's birthday (which is actually today, but we have been celebrating in various guises for days...and will continue through at least this weekend!)

The room we stayed in was called a "Wolf Den" suite. The kids had bunk beds in a little "log cabin" and were set up with their own TV and game system (which unfortunately didn't work...but that was OK...)

We arrived right around 6PM and after unloading our stuff, we checked out the arcade for a bit. The kids love arcades. I am more of a return-on-investment person - I want to have a lot of fun for my money and feeding tokens into games that last 10 seconds doesn't do it for me. Sort of like slot machines - which to me are like broken vending machines - money goes in, nothing comes out.

But we enjoyed several rounds of Skee Ball, and the kids had a lot of fun. They each accrued about 200 prize tickets, which wasn't enough for any substantial prize, but respectable.

After the playing, we went in search of dinner. After the sticker shock of the buffet, which was the only on-site dinner choice, we loaded back into the car and drove about 2 miles down the road to Friendly's.

We returned to the hotel in time for Sprout and Mike to attend "The Great Clocktower Show" in the lobby. Tater opted out, since he isn't a big fan of animatronic creatures, so we went back to the room and read books. Sprout's first response when we asked how the show was was "Awesome" - but later, she said it was really creepy and weird, so apparently we made the right call in boycotting.

Then it was bedtime. Tater, as the most mobile sleeper in all the land, was put on the lower bunk for his own safety. Sprout quite triumphantly claimed the top. They had a hard time getting to sleep due to the combination of a) excitement b) away from home-ness and c) children running screaming through the halls until 11PM. Rude.

In the morning we passed on the in-house cuisine again in favor of a Dunkin' Donuts run. And around 10 we packed up our stuff and put it out in the car and went to the water park.

We had watched the action through the window the night before, and it was impressive from afar. But wow...it is quite the set-up!

There are 6 huge water slides (some of which snake their way outside the building), a wave pool, a hot tub, and a bunch of other stuff!

The kids liked the wave pool the best, but eventually warmed up to the slides and really enjoyed them. Over the course of the day, things got more crowded and there were some fairly significant lines for the slides. But they moved pretty quickly so there wasn't too much wait time.

All of the big slides ended in shallow pools - the deepest was 3 1/2 feet. And since riders go in big rafts and inner-tubes, strong swimming skills were not required to ride. Lots of inner tubes were available in the wave pool as well, so the kids always felt safe. There are also lots of lifeguards on duty and safety does seem to be a big priority (as it should be!)

The picture up there is of the area called Fort Mackenzie, which is a huge complex of sprinklers and buckets and hoses spraying water all over. The highlight is a HUGE bucket that holds 1000 gallons of water (!) and dumps over everything every few minutes. We were standing right under it when it dumped and oh my...that's a lot of water!

We played from 10 until about 3, going back and forth between the different pools and activities. Mike took a break to have an adult beverage and watch some basketball at the bar, and the kids and I had a snack break with little corn dogs and fries (such the healthy weekend!) We passed (again) on the "real" food. (I swear I am not completely cheap, but $9 for a sandwich that a kid will probably not eat seems wrong...)

When we were good and shriveled, we changed in the locker rooms (well, actually in the bathroom, since the locker rooms were monopolized by people doing a full-on makeover or something) and got ready to hit the road for home.

The kids went back to the arcade to cash in their prize tickets - mostly on candy. Then we made a stop in the gift shop, which was not as horrific as those stops usually are. I think all of the waterplay exhausted the kids to the point where they were incapable of begging for every single item in the shop. They each chose a huge lollipop with an itty bitty stuffed wolf. I got a fridge magnet. Big splurge.

The kids had hoped we would be able to partake of the MagiQuest game while we were there. This is a scavenger-hunt-like game where participants have electronic wands and a list of clues. The clues lead to items in the hotel and waving the wand in front of those items registers that they have been found. Apparently this is very fun. But we were out of time, so we'll have to save it for next time!

We made a stop at a Perkins on the way back and had our lunch (of breakfast food) around 4...so we were quite starving. Yum...pancakes!

I am sure we'll go back again. Sprout kept saying "This is the best day of my entire life" and Tater declared it to be "Awesome". I think next time we would go earlier on the first day, so that there would be time for the MagiQuest game. Guests are allowed to participate in activities on-site for the entire day of check-in and check-out - so a one-night stay could get you two solid days of playing.

Great Wolf Lodge, to me, had the aura of a kid-appropriate casino. Everything is big and dramatic, you have no idea what time it is, and you rarely run out of things to do. Not cheap, but definitely worth the drive and the investment!

Playing House with Pikachu

Tater was all fired up for a project this weekend. Saturday morning, right after his crazy-early basketball game, he got out our big books-o-crafts and flipped through them looking for a good idea.

After a number of false starts that required materials we do not have (note to self, get some wooden beads, and be on the lookout for berries in those retro plastic baskets)...he came up with a dollhouse made of tissue boxes.

Of course, no tissue boxes. But we did a quick scavenge, found some empty shoe boxes, and were ready to roll!

Sprout and Tater consulted on the appropriate layout (including a raised deck, which required some more advanced "engineering" than I was counting on). Then we broke out the big roll of packing tape and some scissors.

After lining up the "rooms" according to their plan, we figured out where to put doors and cut though both boxes to make gaps. Then we (I) liberally applied packing tape to hold everything together.

For the "deck" we used the lid of one of the boxes and made some cardboard supports under the suspended edge. And lots more tape.

After the shell of the house was together, it was time to decorate. Rugs were subcontracted to me. I made them with construction paper cut to different shapes (advanced ones like ovals and rectangles) and then colored them with rug-like designs using markers. I even did a fringe on one!

Tater mulled over some ideas for furniture (some of which required empty spools of thread - does anyone actually have those??) and finally settled on Lego.

I think this is one of the few times that the kids have built anything out of Lego (besides a tall tower one block wide) without explicit instructions. I feared they were totally ruined for free-form Lego-ing by their collection of Star Wars sets, but they really rose to the occasion.

They spent quite some time building things - bunk beds, a big screen TV, a big box for all the money (!), sofas, chairs, an airplane and boat. They even did some steps over the walls to the deck, which I thought were quite brilliant. A helipad was added later to house all of the vehicles.

And then Pikachu and a small red bear moved in. It's hard to make them out, but they are down there hanging out in the bed together (right next to the big box-o-money).



I was pretty impressed that the kids basically came up with this on their own and worked on/played with it for hours on Saturday.

Maybe they are not completely TV/Wii addicted after all!