We woke up to our first bit of Montana snow this morning. It had started around 8 last night as what was reported to one of my friends by a cashier as The Storm Of the Century. The wind was howling and the snow was coming sideways. In the end there was only a thin layer of snow on the ground this morning. If that was the storm of the century this is going to be a nice calm winter and I’ll be so happy.

Somehow after getting over her initial excitement about the snow Lil’s attitude deteriorated and we spent the first almost 30 minutes of the morning in tears (hers) and grumps (again hers) and frustration (both of us) so I decided to change my plans for school today. I was originally going to do language and reading practice and some math in the morning. I changed my mind to do fun creative art type stuff. Lil is so creative I figured the creative outlet would help get rid of the grumps. It worked like a charm.

First I gathered some snow in a 9×13 cake dish and set up Lil’s water paints.  While she molded the snow into a snowman (shocking) and then painted it I worked on making some playdough. She loves painting snow and spent quite a bit of time making a whole scene out of the pan. The she decided to see if she could make ice out of the snow by putting it in water. We talked about the science of what happened when she put her snow in the water and it was very interesting.

I was trying out a new playdough recipe and was still working on it when she finished her painting. She proceeded to dance around the kitchen counting to 118 for me and then counting by 10 and then singing the days of the week. This is the stuff I love about homeschooling Lil. Even when we aren’t doing a real lesson there’s still learning happening all day everyday, it’s awesome.

I made this huge batch of playdough by the recipe because I wanted to see how it worked out naturally. Let me just say I should have gone with my intuition and made a 1/2 batch or something because I have a huge mountain of orange playdough with orange glitter. Normally I make my playdough plain and then separate it into smaller amounts and then add the food coloring to it before I knead it. This works fine with my normal recipe, but like I said I wanted to make this recipe the way the author intended first. So I only made one color and Lil chose orange. I should mention that this is a 5 cup of flour recipe, it really did make a mountain of dough. Before I kneaded it and it became smooth it looked like someone had dumped a bunch of sweet potato mashed potatoes on my counter (and added glitter). I really do like the texture of this recipe and will be trying it again, but my way to see if it works out. Of course my way ends up with me having very colorful hands for a few hours, but I’d rather that then so much of one color.

With Thanksgiving being around the corner I decided to have her make a playdough turkey. I cut a (really bad) turkey body out of brown construction paper and she added to it. She loved it!

Then she made a turkey in her hand, I think it’s suppose to be like when you do a hand outline to make a turkey. That’s my best guess.

Then she made a dog.

After the dog she asked me what to make next. I don’t know where it came from, but I told her to make a ostrich. She said she couldn’t because she couldn’t remember what they looked like. I pulled up Google on my phone and found her some pictures. I think she did a great job with it.

He’s hopping if you couldn’t tell. I think she made a hippo in a pond and a bunny that I didn’t get pictures of. I’m sure more playdough fun will be happening soon.