Election Day

Thursday turned out to be much like Tuesday, where thanks to Katie, my planned projects were shelved for a much more interesting activity. This time it was election day. Katie, Eden, and Josephine decided to run for president. They planned the election, made posters,

created separate voting booths out of manila folders,

created ballots and a ballot box, . . .

. . . and the two older girls composed speeches.

The girls also made little trinkets to be handed out to the kids after their speeches.

Eden's speech:

Katie's speech:

Josephine's speech:

After each girl gave her speech, all the kids all rushed into the dining room to vote. In the end, there was a tie between Katie and Eden. There was then a runoff election, and Katie emerged the victor. Everyone was very pleased with the result, even Eden, who was then declared vice president.

No School . . . Butterflies and Other Bugs

It's 3 a.m., I can't sleep, and I'm two months behind on the blog, so what better activity right now, eh?

We had no school this week, and it is a typical cold and rainy February. To take advantage of the rain and help to nudge spring along, the children made coffee filter butterflies. They took coffee filters cut out in the shapes of butterflies, colored them with washable markers, and set them out in the rain.

The rain transformed them into gorgeous tie-dyed butterflies.

Here Claire and Josephine are filling up little pots with dirt and grass seeds. In about a week there should be some beautiful spring-like grass.

And then later in the day we made soap. I had a bunch of leftover orange soap from a previous pumpkin soap stint, so we made shapes using ice cube trays, and then we buried some plastic insects as well--reminiscent of amber.