Glue and salt Pysanky art project

There is a craft project that has passed through my fb feed a half dozen times in which one uses glue to make a design, then sprinkles the glue with salt, then decorate with watercolor paint after it dries.  At the beginning of the homeschool year I had been wanting to plan a field trip up to Seattle to visit Mr. W's friends the Hs so Mrs. H could teach us how to do Ukrainian eggs as a homeschool art project. Now that we have to shelter in place, not to mention how hard hit the Seattle area has been with the corona virus, I needed to modify my egg decorating plan. I decided that we could try out the glue/salt/watercolor project with traditional Easter egg patterns.

I found some Pysanky coloring sheets to use as a guide and paper clipped them to half sheets of watercolor paper so the children could trace the pattern. Then they copied over those lines with the glue. I'm not sure what type of salt was recommended in the fb post, but we were all out of kosher salt (thanks, pandemic) and resorted to iodized salt. We had to let that all dry overnight. Then we set up watercolor paints today and did the dabbing technique shown in the video which results in the color bleeding out through the salt.

The dabbing was a little tedious for one child so he asked for another sheet of watercolor paper and painted a rainbow instead.

While they were painting I read to them from Jesus Speaks to Me About Easter by Angela M. Burrin and This Was The Day! by Ann Kmit. The latter was one I picked up at the Polish fest in the fall along with a red egg.

Easter Egg Tree

My mother has a table top Easter egg tree to display her collection of hanging eggs. I was inspired to maybe start a collection myself and during the 5th week of Lent I decided to look into purchasing a little tree. But then I found this article about Ostereierbaum, outdoor German Easter egg trees. I decided that our young cascara tree would be a good place to start. Another part of my inspiration was the little tin eggs that were offered in the Emma Bridgewater Easter line, so cute!

When I saw the pictures of live trees  covered with eggs I figured it was a good way to use up the bag of plastic eggs I have in the attic. I prefer to do egg hunts with real, hardboiled, decorated eggs and yet I have accumulated all these eggs from church egg hunts and it was the preference of my cousin for Easter Sunday. Too difficult to have my kids sit out just because I think it is too much candy. This is a good way to fill out the tree with eggs since I can only afford a few of the EB eggs. :D

I decided to use ribbon that I threaded through the two holes in the plastic eggs with the center of the ribbon inside the egg so that there were the two loose ends outside which I could use to tie around the branch. This cascara is already leafing out so I knew I could not rely on slipping a loop of ribbon over the baby leaves without damaging them, or worst yet being able to remove them later once the leaves have really filled in.  I used the thinnest ribbon I could find in my ribbon stash and used a wooden skewer to finesse them through the little holes. I started with a small quality of eggs this year as a test run.

I woke up early and was able to get out an hang them while they were all still sleeping. Now I wait for them to wake up so we can bring in the new little chickies for our Easter surprise!

When you’ve been in quarantine too long

I bought chickens.

Technically I have been considering this for a few years. There is some degree of overlap with rabbits  that I was exposed to when I was doing all my bunny prep research. And we do go through a fair amount of eggs. Mr. W was not totally keen on the idea and I was content to see how things went with the rabbits. But a couple of times when we’ve been in farm stores in early spring we have heard the siren song of the peep peep peep and the children and I have contemplated life with chicks. But I read that due to salmonella concerns that it isn’t advised to have children younger than 5 handle chickens. That might not be applied by rural, homesteading families, but for a city dweller it seemed reasonable enough and a good reason to hold off ‘til your youngest is older.

Little Miss is 6 now. And we’re under quarantine. There are mad rushes on toilet paper and yeast. Could eggs be next? During the early days of the pandemic when the schools first closed we had a morning meeting welcoming our returning and new homeschool students to our class. We forecasted what we would like to do during the remainder of our homeschool year; in addition to planting our vegetable garden, raising chickens came up. I totally support that idea and we brainstormed what we would need to undertake and be responsible for so that Principal Daddy would agree to our proposal. And he was open to the idea!! The corona fears were getting to him too.

I love a good surprise for my children. I dreamed of storybook and movie quality surprises as a child and that was just not my parents’ thing. Since the shelter in place orders were happening during Lent it just seemed a given to gift chicks to the children on Easter Sunday. We are allowed 3 city chickens, and we have 3 children so that is where we will start. I picked them up on Good Friday, which might be when I picked up the bunnies from a 4H family 3 years ago, and then had to keep them hidden in the garage for a day and a half. Because we made the final commitment this week we had slim pickings for what varieties of chicks were available for pick up. I did want a variety so that each child's pet looked different and it is easier for me to tell them apart. The varieties we ended up with are a Barred Rock, a Blue Hamburgs, and a Cream Brabanters. Ultimately I think that will be a good mix looks wise, hopefully temperamentally too. I'm excited to see which child picks which chick and what they will choose to name them.

Meanwhile I'm stealthily sneaking out to the garage frequently so that I can snuggle them. I cannot wait until Easter Sunday to see their little faces!

Quarantine Good Friday and Tomie dePaola Tea

What a week! A second full one of trying to homeschool three children of three different grade levels, two of whom have distance learning parameters, one of which has special needs, another or which is a grumpy tween, and it is Holy Week. Whew! I'm tired! Fridays have mostly been a day for field trips, special projects, and such for us  this home school year. Today my goal was to make both Lenten pretzels for the last time of the season and hot cross buns for our tea time snack. The pretzels were supposed to go with a vegetable cheese soup at dinner time, but the way things worked out we just had tea time with both and skipped dinner entirely.

We always do some of the pretzels to look like arms crossed in prayer, but it is also an opportunity for the kids to get creative. Deuce likes to cut them into pretzel bites. T-Bone decided to make a pretzel man, which was fine until I I got to the step where I need to boil them for 30 seconds. I felt a bit guilty. While they were rolling out and shaping their creations I read Brother Giovanni's Little Reward by Anna Egan Smucker like I always do.

In between the mixing of the dough and waiting for it to rise I did some reading from Minecraft Holy Bible and Catechism of the Seven Sacraments by Kevin and Mary O'Neill in which the illustrations are all lego pieces while the children did coloring sheets. We did this yesterday for Holy Thursday too although I didn't mention it. The boys were remembering all the plagues that they learned about earlier in the year when we were studying Egypt and Moses. This format does a good job of keeping their interest to illustrate the stories.

And today we finally had our Goodbye, Mr. dePaola Tea. The children helped to set the table. Little Miss brought down her crucifix she scored while antiquing, Deuce arranged the two crystal crosses.

And I assembled a stack of all my copes of his books including the two new ones I ordered Quiet and The Birds of Bethlehem. We went through the stack and everyone said which ones were their favorites. We ended up reading from The Knight and The Dragon, The Legend of BlueBonnet, St. Patrick, and the Good Friday pages from Bible Stories.

Deuce made some tiny pretzels and Little Miss thought they were perfect for American Girl dolls so Mary got to join our tea party. So cute!

Deuce's pretzel bites that he topped with cinnamon and sugar.

I just like my pretzels as original recipe with salt and the basic shape.

And the tulips I planted last fall have bloomed in our front triangle. So cheery. I love the ones that have the more traditional Turkish shape.

Quarantine Holy Thursday

I have mostly been staying at home in part because I was so sick at the beginning of the shelter in place order. Mr. W got into the habit of running the family errands and since I am more of a homebody than him we have just kept that arrangement. But as I have been doing my spring weeding and pruning I realized that the best solution around the pond is to dig out the dirt that is full on endless weeds, add new soil, and then top with bark dust. This meant that I needed to go to the plant nursery. Mr. W had thought about going on the weekend, but he said the line was crazy long that he did not want to attempt. It was strange; we had to wait in line in the parking lot on little paint marks and get a pep talk/lesson on how to shop. There were signs everywhere about the social distancing and everyone was wearing masks. So creepy, yet so necessary.

All I needed was the dirt and bark dust, so I could have gone straight to the register line, but I wanted to add some yellow-eyed grass for the spot in front of the pond. I have planted two clumps of it in the past, but when I was weeding I only found one had returned. I don't think my passionflower made it through the fall and winter either, but really did not want to spend time browsing during quarantine so I went straight to the native plant section, grabbed the very last yellow-eyed grass and returned to the check out line.

Look how nicely the camas is self seeding in the native hedgerow around the fig tree.
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My dinner plans were very simple this week and I had planned for grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, and dandelion salad. We didn't end up having any lettuce in the house though so instead Mr. W used the recipe for sautéed dandelions with onions. I think the trick is to chop it up nice and small, last year I had a hard time chewing the pieces because they were so stringy. Also I think he used a lot of butter, which makes everything delicious.
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We were so behind in our scheduled that we missed the live stream of Mass. Instead we washed each other's feet. The kids thought it was weird, and commented on not wanting to be each other's slaves, but we tried to direct the conversation toward humbling ourselves before each other and showing each other how much we love we share by this act. Little Miss really enjoyed doing it and asked to wash her dad's other foot. And the boys both enjoyed the feeling of the foot washing so each of them washed their own second foot. 
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Quarantine Palm Sunday

As the pandemic persists we are still being asked to shelter at home, the governor has closed the schools and the archbishop has cancelled all the Masses. I was so heartbroken when I learned that Easter was essentially cancelled this year. This has truly been the lentiest Lent that ever lented. But it has been an opportunity for people to get creative so that we can continue to lead our lives and celebrate our traditions with those with whom we live.

Many Catholics around the country suggested marking our doors with palms or whatever branches we have on hand to celebrate Palm Sunday. My parish additionally recommended to tie those branches with a red ribbon since it is the liturgical color of Palm Sunday. What do I have a lot of that I can spare? English laurel. Our parish also emailed out a worship aid for how we could begin to worship before we live streamed the Mass. I was very pleased when T-Bone offered to be the lead reader. There were opportunities for everyone to have a reading part.

I had started pruning the perennial bed yesterday so we used some lavender cuttings for our individual 'palms' for before and during the Mass. AS much as they whip their palms around normally I felt like if nothing else at least the family room will smell nice.

He also was pretending to be one of the dads we see regularly at Mass who had a baby recently. He's bouncing and rocking his bunny like a baby.

Mr. W was totally sweet and had done a little research a couple days earlier and looked up some recipes for Palm Sunday. I don't actually have any ear marked for this day so I was so thrilled and flattered. He started with a hearts of palm salad which was really good. He also made chicken with roasted grapes. Little Miss really loved those roasted grapes.

Lenten Poetry Tea

Since Little Miss has joined out homeschool she has been asking and asking to have another Poetry Tea. She put it on our list for the week on Monday. I had three brown bananas that needed to become bread so it seemed like a reasonable request to fulfill. But T-Bone took it upon himself to lead the baking of the banana bread himself earlier this week; he is into baking. I was not allowed into the kitchen while they prepared it. I thought it was very sweet and was quite proud of his leadership. But then they woofed it down before we even had a chance at setting up tea. I felt the pressure at our morning meeting to pull of the tea today since it is Friday. After our Quarantine Stations T-Bone and I make quarlesami the Italian lenten biscotti. He paid nice attention to detail, even during the process of removing the filbert skins. First they are baked into logs shapes and then they are cut diagonally and baked a bit longer.

Little Miss wanted to read a couple of the Bear Snores On books which I felt could qualify since they have some meter and rhyme. She also was so excited about the tea that she wrote her own poem earlier this week and she shared that too.

Deuce had some sensory overload at the time and didn't want to read anything aloud, but he did recently finish XX a children's version of the Iliad and the Odyssey so we talked a little about Homer being a poet and how the meter and rhyme would help the storytellers memorize the the epic poems. T-Bone brought Shel Silverstein to share and I read from Robert Lewis Stevenson's Child's Verse illustrated by Tasha Tudor.

Mr. W also joined us in our tea; he shared Robert Burns' Ode to Haggis and Walt Whitman's Oh, Pioneer.

Quarantine Stations of the Cross

My big plan for the week was to take the children to The Grotto today to do an outdoor Stations of the Cross. I have done it before and I figured that it would be okay since we are still allowed to go for walks even the though Governor Brown has the state in a Shelter In Place order. But when I decided to double check that we could get into the grounds at The Grotto today their website stated that the grounds are closed too in addition to all the regular Masses being cancelled. Sigh!

So what to do? I really needed to get these kids out of the house for some sort of field trip. I decided to quickly cobble together a Scripture/Marian Garden Stations that we could do in our own yard. Some of my ideas I don't actually have in our garden so we did some substituting. And keep in mind I whipped this together in about 30 minutes while being asked "when can we play video games?" about 47 times. Sigh!

1. Pilate Condemns Jesus to Death @ the laurel hedge. Pilate was the Roman governor and Romans liked wreaths of laurels, right? So technically mine is English laurel and not the bay laurel of the Romans.
2. Jesus Accepts His Cross @ a cedar, pine, or cypress tree. The Wood of the Cross is said to have been made from these three trees. We have none of them so we met at a Doug fir sapling.
3. Jesus Falls the First Time @ T-Bone's vine maple. I have three children and our landscape designer specified 3 vine maples for our yard. Naturally I named each of the trees after each of my children. We met at the oldest tree. I think if one has 3 of anything in their yard it would be good for consistency, especially if it is deciduous and has leaves that 'fall' in the autumn.
4. Jesus Meets His Sorrowful Mother @ the Statue of St. Mary. This is self explanatory, yes?
5. Simon Helps Jesus Carry His Cross @ the Statue of St. Francis because I figured he would be a good substitute. St. Peregrine statues would also suffice.
6. Veronica Wipes The Face of Jesus @ a patch of veronica or other purple ground cover
7. Jesus Falls the Second Time @ Deuce's vine maple
8. Jesus Speaks to The Women @ the fig tree. I went out on a limb here. 🤣 Fig trees are definitely part of a Scripture Garden and since we happen to have one I wanted to include it. Eve eats the apple in the Garden of Eden getting them thrown out of Paradise causing Adam and Eve to realize they are naked and they use the fig leaf to cover themselves. Then I sprinkled a little patriarchy on top and got fig leaf = women.
9. Jesus Falls for The Third Time @ Little Miss's vine maple.
10. Jesus Is Stripped of His Garments @ the rose garden. He was left with just a cloth and that Crown of Thorns. A holly, Oregon grape, crab apple, barberry, or other thorny plant would work as a substitute here or for station #2.
11. Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross @ primrose (or other 5 petaled flower.) The five petals represent the five wounds Jesus received during the crucifixion. Alternatively one could use lily of the valley which is Mary's tears, but mine hasn't even sprouted yet.
12. Jesus Dies On The Cross @ the dogwood tree. The dogwood the Good Friday flower because there are 4 petals like the cross and the tips of the petals have what look like little rusty nail holes on them.
13. Jesus Is Taken Down From The Cross @ a patch of dandelions. Dandelions are Mary's bitter sorrow, also the leaves as a good food to eat during Holy Week.
14. Jesus Is Placed In The Tomb @ the door under the front porch. This is the most cave like place I have in our garden. I also considered meeting by the passion flower  for this Station, but I haven't weeded over there yet and I'm not sure how that baby plant is doing yet. A rock garden could also be an alternative. My first thought was the garage door, but thought better of it. 

Tween super excited about Quarantine Stations. Laurel is so hard to manage; I always feel like I'm in the trash compactor in Star Wars with the hedge pressing in on me. Hoping we can get this all removed this summer.

The T-Bone at his vine maple for the 1st fall.

At the Marian garden for the 4th Station. (I still need to dead head those hydrangeas!)

At the fig tree for the 8th Station. We're starting to get a little silly here. I told the younger two they could bring out a stuffed animal as long as they didn't get distracting.

The rose garden for the 10th Station. (Totally needs to be weeded and pruned.) We decided to switch up our cross bearer at this point.

The nice thing is that we did a lot of walking back and forth between the front, back, and side yards so they got some energy out. This is the dogwood tree for the 12th Station. It is right outside of Deuce's window where his school desk sits so we have been tracking the little blooms to see if they will be fully opened by next Friday. (I'm guessing not this year.)

Fortunately (unfortunately?) we always have dandelions in the lawn so I knew this would be a possibility for the 13th Station.

We used under the historical front porch for our tomb. Roll away the lattice? 

The Virtues

In February I had started to teach Deuce about the Theological and Cardinal Virtues as part of religion class. And then we got side tracked and now we have two new students in our school so I have needed to modify my original plans a bit to accommodate 1st, 3rd, and 6th grade levels. Initially I was using these definitions as a concise explanation. I struggled to find something at a 3rd grade level, most things seemed geared towards high school students and I'm not sure if these concepts are mostly taught to those going through the sacrament of Confirmation and learning about the gifts of the Holy Spirit? Eventually I found and printed out this younger kid friendly packet on the virtues.

Because I feel like sometimes I don't have their focus and because some of us are visual learners I also looked for some videos to accompany them. Everyone has been raving about Formed, and I have an account through my parish, but they didn't have a lot geared to the younger ones. But then I found the Tomkin and Blaise videos that EWTN puts out on youtube. They are each about 2 minutes long and are definitely helpful for the 1st grader, a bit childish for the 6th grader, but they are short enough so I don't lose his attention entirely.

Before the pandemic I had checked out several books on ancient Greece and happened to find this beautiful book about the saints, The Loyola Treasury of Saints by David Self. It is nicely illustrated, well organized, and at a higher content level than some of our books about saints that are geared more toward the younger readers. I liked it so much I added it to my recent order from Powell's Books. (Save your local bookstore during the quarantine; avoid purchasing from huge online retailers if possible.) I have been using this books to have the 6th grader read aloud and then we discuss some of the virtues we can think of that the saint exhibited. We also read the page about St. Thomas Aquinas since his work is quoted so much in our studies of virtues. Since we have been studying the ancient Indus valley and the Aryans who settled along the Ganges river and the caste system I also introduced St. Teresa of Calcutta the virtues she reflects. The book was published before she was canonized, but it is still very useful. Formed did have an animated video on St. Boniface which we watched as well.