DAY 4

Yesterday, we spent most of the day at home. It rained intermittently all day, a perfect excuse to go nowhere. What did we do? We drew pictures. We ate a snack plate for lunch. We made play dough. Not this is not revolutionary, but it certainly is fun. Making things yourself is so much more satisfying then buying them. And.... it saves money! It also creates an additional activity for you to share with your child. Its empowering for them to be involved in projects--it gives them a sense of mastery over their universe. Its also satisfying to make the colors you want to make with adding food dye. I love the two colors we made: bright mustard yellow and internal organ pink. Everything I made with the pink one made me think of the stuff inside our body.

Here is the recipe we used which we found on the web:

2 cups flour

2 cups warm water

1 cup salt

2 Tablespoons vegetable oil

1 Tablespoon cream of tartar (optional for improved elasticity)

food coloring (liquid, powder, or unsweetened drink mix)

scented oils

We didn’t use the scented oils. But it’s a good idea! You are supposed to heat all ingredients in pot and mix until it looks like mashed potatoes. Then you wait for it to cool and then knead with your hands to make it smooth. You can keep it in the fridge to prolong freshness. We made half the recipe--it came out a little lumpy, but next time I’ll use a smaller pot and less heat and I think it will work better.

The other thing I did was draw spider webs because I want the Web Map page of this site (each link will be in the center of each web) to be hand drawn. It was very fun to draw spider webs--I had never done it before. But I am not yet happy with it as the web page. I might try again and create more space between each web cluster. Here’s what I did:

I wanted to find a spider, put it on top of the drawing, and take a photo, but my husband thought that it was not a good idea as there are some pretty poisonous spiders out there. We’ll see...

We did have a good gecko sighting near our palapa--which really is a daily occurrence. Sometimes they attack each other.