Our Day at the Artisan Fair and Recipe for Licorice Play Dough!

Today we brought some hand made goods and crafts & toys to the artisan fair at Laughing Buck Farm.  We had a wonderful time!

Rowan helped me prepare yesterday by sanding a bowl that I was to sell as part of a kids' kitchen set.  Thanks, buddy!

And Fynn helped make popcorn so we wouldn't starve while getting all our craft fair stuff ready.  I can't believe how helpful these kids have been lately. Sheesh!

When we first arrived this morning, Cinnamon, the chicken hopped in our car and buried herself in Rowan's blanket.  Fynn thought that was hysterical! Which is amazing, because last time we came he was scared to death of the chickens (and dogs).

Once out of the car, Fynn and Rowan were free to run around and discover, and watched out for each other pretty well.

"I really love this pumpkin," Rowan said.

Our table set-up.

Custom made primitive shoes.

Rico's hand carved spoons and dinosaurs.

Wooden hamburger.

Kids' kitchen wooden knives.

Kids' kitchen spoons... happily sold to our good friends, Jesse and Meadow!

Pumpkin hat & mittens.

We had the pleasure of being stationed next to Miss Misty Moon, hula hoop extraordinare! Rico and the kids had tons of fun playing with hula hoops all day. (I don't hula hoop, you see.)

Here is an interesting way to play with hula hoops...

Here is our Invitation to Play area ~ we had acorns in a basket, painted red, yellow and green for sorting, some books, some apple sensory dough, and the famous wooden letter blocks.  Between our play area and the hula hoops, our corner of the fair had a grand old time!

I gave a demonstration on how to make Spooky Licorice Play Dough, and it was so much fun! I'm pretty sure the kids had as much fun as I did :) We made spiders out of our play dough using googly eyes and sticks.

As you can see, they came up with some pretty cool creations! One kid even made a unicorn!

Here's my Spooky Licorice Play Dough Recipe:

1 C. flour
1/4 C. salt
1 tsp. cream of tartar
1 TBsp veg. oil
1/2 C. boiling water or water in which star anise has been steeped (star anise tea)
1/4 C. black tempera paint
a few drops anise oil (found in baking section of craft store)
more flour for dusting

Combine dry ingredients, then stir in veg. oil, boiling water or tea, and paint.  Next, stir in anise oil till it smells anise-y (licorice-y). Add more flour 1/8 C. at a time till it doesn't stick to fingers anymore, then knead into a smooth consistency.  Store in airtight container.  Crafts take a few days to dry, turn to dry evenly.  Even after they're dry, they will still smell wonderful! My house has smelled like anise for days!

***
Laughing Buck Farm is a wonderful place. We didn't even get pictures of the awesome Hay Barn where the kids can swing on swings and climb huge stacks of hay bales, or the orchard where our friend Jesse got to help press gallons and gallons of apple juice.  My kids (especially Fynn) have been doing so well this past week, and I think it's because of all the farm-visiting we've been doing.  And he's come such a long way since the Artisan Fair last year.  Last year he was paralized by fear of dogs and we had a really long, rough day.  Today, he did so many independent things and was really stepping up to being an almost-seven-year-old!  Thank God!

And thank you Miss Rosemary and Miss Angela and all at Laughing Buck Farm for running such a fun event!

~Beth

Exhaust th' Passion!

Exhaust th' Passion. 

Th' great thing about homeschooling, and follow th' child learning is that you get to take your kids' interests to the extreme. 

If they are passionate about something, your challenge is to use that passion for all it's worth. You take an interest and see how it applies to to all subjects, all areas of life. Th' kid decides th' subject, such as snakes, or trains, or whatever, and you get to apply it at th' kids level all across th' board. this way th' learning takes place in an exciting way, using th' childs interests, and he'll take in as much as possible. It's the opposite of institutional learning, where you learn individual subjects such as math, spelling, science, etc, one at a time, and rarely overlap them. It's a challenge i personally find very exciting. I'm constantly learning from my kids, and learning is exciting, keeps your heart and mind young. 

So, to follow up with Fynn's new found interest in spelling. 

Grandma and Grandpa found a box of wooden letters at a garage sale and bought it for him. He and Rowan were both very excited about the letters when they first saw them, they were big, and painted pretty colors, and they both lined them up like a train. 

But there were some letters missing, and few doubles, so spelling was limited to a few words. But that's easy to remedy. We found a piece of wood, drew letters on it, and cut them out.

 After we cut them out we had to paint them. Which of course was a blast in itself. We used milkpaint, which we mixed up together, laid out all our colors and got messy. 

 At the end we had a nice collage of letters, and Fynn was involved in every process of making his own letters from start to finish. Once they dried we were really able to spell some words, though i can see that we're gonna have to make more of these, and some numbers too. 

 We talked a little about vowels and consonants, and of course Fynn spelled silly words that i had to read. But that's ok too, because even then he's getting familiar with th' sounds of th' letters. 

 Can you read this?

We've had a lot of fun with these, and spent some precious moments together, just sitting around in th' grass, in th' sunshine, making good memories.

Big Fever is th' name of Fynn's pet toad

And Old Ro managed to spell a word too. Qonkur. Since he does everything Fynn does he is by no means missing out on his spelling lessons.

Until next time, follow your passions, follow th' child.