Photocopied Toys

Yesterday, while I was printing out some pages for the boys to color, I thought that it would be fun to surprise them by making photocopies of their favorite soft toys.  Our printer has a built in scanner/copier on top, so I made some quick low quality black and white copies of their most beloved stuffed animals by laying the toys directly on the glass of the copier.  They were so surprised and happy about these prints!  They really did look fantastic.  Ruben wanted to color his in, so we got out some watercolors, and he set to work.

After he painted it, he drew some thorns and a cape on it, but eventually he cut it out without these additions.  It is now on the wall by his bed, and I'm looking around the house and thinking about what else I can photocopy for them.

It might be fun to copy some other toys, or to do these soft toys again enlarged at 200%.  We haven't even started copying hands and feet and faces, but I have a feeling that soon we will have a LOT of fun doing that!

Strange Characters

I think I've mentioned a few times that our boys like to dress up.  We've got an overflowing bin of capes and scarves, homemade Halloween costumes and strange antique dress-up bits (wigs! cowboy vests! lederhosen!!!).  They often disappear for long stretches, shouting "DON'T LOOK!" every few minutes.  When they reappear, they're wearing something like this:

Or this:

Or this:

Diego was the designer of all of these wild get-ups, aren't they amazing?

Oh, Those Dinosaurs.

Kids aren't the only ones into costumes around here.  Just look at what I found our plastic dinosaurs wearing:

Maurice Sendak

 Thank you and goodbye to the best of the best of the best.

Maurice Sendak  (June 10, 1928 - May 8, 2012) 

  

Illustrations from just a few of our many beloved Sendak books: In the Night Kitchen, Chicken Soup with Rice, Alligators All Around, The Wheel on the School (by Meindert DeJong) and Little Bear (by Else Holmelund Minarik) all published by HarperCollins.

More Fun with Superhero Paperdolls

Do you remember this post from a long time ago?  It turned out that it was just the beginning of our continuing adventures in paper hero-making...

We keep coming back to this project over and over.  The kids do love to play with these figures.  Since they are all laminated, they have withstood quite a lot of heroic crime-fighting action.  And, as we all enjoy making them, we now have quite a collection!

Here are a few (easy to make) special add-ons and accessories that have made our characters even MORE fun to play with:

As you can see, the boys have learned to draw some of their own, relying on me for just a little help with cardboard cutting and laminating, and that has made some of our characters even more weird and wonderful.  They have fantastic names, too, like: Dr. Eye-Distance, Star Chest, Thumper, Glow, and Captain Red-Flash Thunder-Side.

These two were added last weekend:

                                                                                   "Glow" by Diego, and "Robot" by Ruben

You can go back to the original post here, for the basic instructions and a printable template.  If you do make your own, please link to your pictures in the comments.  I'd love to see them!

Wooden Robot

Ruben and I made this lovely toy robot last week:

After building some robots out of blocks, and then taking them apart to move them a few times, Ruben asked if I could help him glue the blocks together.  He had some specific ideas about how he wanted them stuck together, pointing to each joint and telling me, "Hot glue here and here and hinge this so it swings like this and hinge this so it bends like that..."

I love it when we make toys together.  While he drew on the face and body, I figured out how to make the joints that he wanted.  I drilled some holes and threaded elastic through them. 

This would probably be a lot prettier if I had attached the elastic to some buttons or something like that, but we were on a roll and wanted to play with it as soon as possible.  I tied some sloppy knots, and it worked just fine.

I got the idea to wood burn Ruben's drawings onto the blocks from this post on Made by Joel, and I think that this is the best part of all.  It was so easy, too; he drew on the blocks with a pencil, and I carefully traced his lines with the wood-burner.  (If you have a chance to do this with a child's drawings or handwriting, please do it!  It looks so good, and I'm sure it will age beautifully.)

Ruben and I are both so proud of this spontaneous project!

Praying Mantis

I could imagine a farm life with cats and dogs and chickens and a goat.  Maybe rabbits, and horses too.  I know that living with animals is good for all people, and the responsibility of daily maintenance and witnessing the life cycle especially abound with deep lessons for kids. 

But, this is no farm life, so we do what we can.  Just a few days after releasing Ruben's caterpillar-turned-butterfly, we took our second tentative step into the world of pets with this graceful praying mantis that Diego found on our front lawn:

She is an elegant insect, don't you think?