Thursdays are usually outdoor school days. Saige goes to outdoor preschool and then I quickly drive Blaise and Laine over to whichever park location their outdoor school is that day, which starts 30 minutes after Saige. Baby and I kill time in Redmond before we do the back-to-back kiddo pickups. Why does this matter? It doesn’t. Only for memory sake when I wonder why the hell we were painting pots on a Thursday in six years from now… the kiddos really enjoy looking back on all the pictures I post on here.
On Pot Painting Thursday, it was spring break. No school. We made plans with one of Blaise and Laine’s friends—who is also in their Thursday outdoor class—to come over and paint pots. Bonus, one of Saige’s preschool friends came with them. In my head, I had this elaborate plan to incorporate a plant lesson but that didn’t happen. Eh, we’ll do it one of these days.
Pot painting led to juicing oranges and watermelon which led to baking banana bread. Makes perfect sense, right?!
Pot Painting
I bought small terra-cotta pots for 75 cents each, with saucers also 75 cents. That’s where they stick it to you, haha. Dang saucers. We used tempura paint and went to town. My kiddos painted much like I figured they would: Blaise mixed all the colors together resulting in an abstract cluster; Laine painted methodically and had a vision; Saige painted the pot a little before mixing all the paint on the paper plate together; Baby painted very daintily.
The artists, all painting as expected.
Blaise’s pot.
Laine’s pot.
Saige’s pot.
Baby’s pot.
All dried and ready to fill with soil and seeds.
Filling with soil and seeds.
Orange & Watermelon Juicing
While the pots dried, the kiddos busted out Blaise’s juicer he got in his Easter basket. After becoming obsessed with Top Chef Junior, Blaise and Laine are into everything kitchen. When I was shopping for Easter baskets, I decided I’d toss a hand juicer in there since it was a kitchen gadget we don’t already have. Blaise asked me to pick up a bag of oranges at Costco. Laine had made watermelon soup the day before so we had half of an enormous watermelon left over. The juicing commenced.
I love Blaise’s face in the second picture. It’s the moment he had the idea to juice watermelon. They decided watermelon wasn’t very much fun to juice and ended up eating it instead.
Banana Bread Baking
The juicing became quite popular… the little ones wanted in on the action. And by wanting in, they wanted to take it over. And by them, I mean Saige. After they juiced a bit, I sidetracked them with asking for their help making banana bread. Mashing bananas? Heck yeah. Even the big kiddos’ friend wanted to get his mash on. They mashed and took turns adding the ingredients to mix. After everyone had a turn mixing, Saige helped me get the batter into a loaf pan and finally in the oven. I let her put it in the oven; she did a great job being careful. Brian would have been freaking out that I let her do that if he were home. He’s Mr. Safety.
Makes me wonder where our next arts and crafts day with friends will lead us!
Jumping Raccoons 