big city

Joshua has a subscription to Highlights High Five magazine. Last week he decided he wanted to go through them and pick out projects to do. So, he flipped through the pages to the back where the crafts are and when he saw one he liked, he set it aside. He then lined up the magazines with the projects he wanted to do on the kitchen table.

The first project was vanilla pops. We had done this before and while he kind of liked the pops, it wasn't the biggest hit, but I was willing to give it another go since he doesn't drink milk and the recipe called for dairy. The recipe called for vanilla soymilk, which we didn't have so we used regular ol' cow's milk and a splash of vanilla extract. To that we added six ounces of vanilla yogurt and a tablespoon of honey. That gets mixed together and poured into cups with popsicle sticks, or, if you're like us and found popsicle molds at the dollar store, into popsicle molds and then placed in the freezer. Joshua had a hard time waiting for the pops to freeze, but finally after dinner (we made the pops before breakfast) they were ready and he loved them. I don't feel at all bad giving him this treat since it's pretty healthy as far as treats go.

Our next project was the big city. The magazine called for stencils to be made out of manila folders onto which shapes had been traced and cut out. Brian and Joshua did the tracing and cutting and then headed outside with their stencils to create the city with chalk. They also had to take the magazine so they could get an idea of what this city is supposed to look like. By the time I joined them, they had created two mansions and a bunch of regular houses. They also made a hospital and a school. And then Brian made another house but it turned out looking more like a mausoleum, so we decided the city had a cemetery, which is just up Joshua's alley, being spooky and all.

After brian left for work, Joshua and I coninued working on the city and made two parks, an ice cream shop, a library, and a museum, along with more houses. Joshua loved it. He planned on adding a zoo and some skyscrapers but today it rained. Now we'll just have to start over.