Camping...for a month Day 1

We're getting work done to fix the chipping and peeling lead paint problem in our house. Again.  I"m not even going to get into the problems we had with last year's contractor.  Onwards and upwards, right? So we needed to move out for another month.  With all the work to be done around the farm in the Spring we crazily decided to camp in the back yard rather than rent or stay somewhere else. I finally have the laptop up and charging, and as long as I don't shift it at all I think I can give you all a visual of what our life is like.

First morning, "camping is fun!"

The kitchen

All set up!

Might not be pretty, but everything is in!

Braeden's 'nook'

The storage corner

First day faces

Color sorting, Cursive letters, and Japanese

The other day Braeden had a bit of cabin fever, and Kelan had a cold.  I didn't like the idea of dragging Kelan out into the below zero wind chills so that Braeden could burn off energy.  Instead I thought up something to occupy his mind for a little while after nap.  I combined color sorting, cursive letter recognition, and Japanese.  I wrote both the color names in romaji, so that anyone can pronounce it, and katakana so he can see the symbols.  I feel equally rusty in writing both cursive and katakana. 

 

I started off with a pile of pompoms, an empty egg carton, colored pencils, scissors, glue, and construction paper.  I had 8 colors of pompoms, so I cut off two rows of the egg carton.   

 

To close up the egg carton, I cut off the top with an approximate extra inch and a half. 

Cut two slits into the top, folded them in and taped it.  

 

 Cut the center out of each of the bottom sections next.  This egg carton was set up perfectly to accommodate this.    

 

Each section was then covered with a color of construction paper that coordinated with the pom poms. I glued the papers on, then reopened the holes.  Doing it this way ensured that I wouldn't make the holes too big.  

 

To make boxes I cut rectangles from the construction paper, slit the corners about 1 inch in, 

 

glued each corner, 

 

and patiently held them until they were dry.  

 

On more construction paper I wrote the color in English cursive, romaji which is the romanized version of the Japanese language, and then in katakana at the bottom.  I glued each of these sheets onto the bottom of my boxes and filled them with their coordinating pom poms.  

I managed to get it set up just before he woke up. 

Here he is after he matched all the colors, sorting them back into their boxes to start over.