Pedigreed Housewife World

My kids are really into music these days, whether singing, dancing, or playing instruments.   One of my favorite pictures of Abby is one of her clapping and dancing at Bree’s cooking party – while everyone else is sitting and listening, and no music is on, mind you. Briana asks me if we can make instruments out of the blue this week, so we set out to do so.   I only wish she hadn’t asked me while we were in the middle of working on scales, which I had planned to blog about, but the excitement of making instruments trumps the excitement for making our scales and I couldn’t get the kids to focus after that.   Oh well, that happens with kiddies sometimes.   So I table our beautiful and half constructed scales until next week and move on to an unplanned activity about making musical instruments. I tell the kids that there are 4 kinds of instruments. 1.      Percussion, which you bang with a mallet, 2.      Strings, which you pluck 3.      Woodwind, like my clarinet,

Lately the girls are always asking me what things are made of.   This probably started because in order to expedite the ever-lengthening process of getting the kids in the car, I have made the rule with my two-year old that Mommy does the metal parts of the 5-point harness buckle and Abby can do the plastic parts.   This is primarily because once the metal parts are done, she can’t get out of the carseat, but it helps that the plastic part is easier, and hence faster, for her to do. Today I thought we’d spend a little bit of time being material girls, of the non-scantily clad variety.   In our case I was going to take the time to sit down and answer all of the “What is this made of?” questions. I started after naps (well, after creating an all white fruit salad snack by Briana’s request – mango, bananas, & apples with just a little red from their skins) by asking the kids what materials they thought things could be made of.   They came up with paper, metal, plastic, and