Snowmen

It rained/snowed this morning on the way to school. It felt warm out, but the precipitation coming down was snow which turned into rain after I got to school. Weird. I wonder if there will even be snow for Christmas...

During read aloud today my kiddos made the presents for their parents... those toilet paper snowmen. It was hard to squish the whole roll into the sock, but I'd gotten the biggest socks they had. Some unwrapped a bunch of the paper so the roll would be smaller. That helped. I had accidentally bought more socks than I needed and ended up with double, so they used their extra toilet paper and extra sock to make a second snowman. The problem: no more styrofoam balls for heads. Solution: crumble up toilet paper to shove in the sock for a head, use a tube for a head (and have a square-ish snowman), or use a pine cone. There was excellent problem solving going on this morning.

I've decided that's my favorite kind of art project. I give them basic instructions, they figure out how to do it on their own. Some wanted hats, so I put out sequins and fabric paint and extra fabric and let them go to town. Solution: cut off the bottom of the sock (the extra bit that gets stuck up in the bottom of the tube) to use as a hat and color it with fabric markers, glue cotton balls to side of head to make earmuffs, make a headband out of extra fabric and sequins. Like I said, excellent problem solving going on, much better ideas than I would've come up with!

There is a big mess in the room though. They cleaned up pretty well, but it took longer, therefore, extra read-aloud time. And there's still a mountain of mess on the lab table, but at least it's contained.  Plus, I don't know how many will want those supplies tomorrow, so I thought I should leave them out.

My church doesn't have Advent services, so I find a different place to go on the nights we don't have the usual ladies Wednesday night bible study. Tonight is one of those nights. I had planned to go with my farmer, but he has a cold and doesn't want to share, so I'll probably go to Redeemer in New Ulm. They have supper before the service, so I won't even have to cook tonight!