Preschooler Wrangling, a Pumpkin, and Some Trivia

We spent a few days at our daughter's house taking care of GS2 (who was in between preschools) so they could work.  He loves being outside and luckily for us the weather was still mild enough for us to get out there and play in the sandbox searching for buried dinosaurs and racing monster trucks.  We also got some yardwork done.

Yeah, not really, just raking up enough of the leaves to make a pile for some fun leaf pile jumping.  He loved jumping in them and while that pile didn't stay a pile for long, he did help gather up all the big "sticks" and throwing them into the stick pile.

I brought my box of kid markers, paints, and whatnot and he picked out an articulated wooden fish to decorate with markers.  He also did a rhino, complete with wiggly eyes, but I forgot to take a picture of that.  I give them the paints to use if they want, but these brush markers get a quicker and brighter reward as well as a shorter drying time.  

I wanted to do a printing project with him that I had seen demonstrated by Cassie Stevens on Instagram.  Unfortunately Papa (HWNSNBP) was on a work call during this event and there weren't very unmessy opportunities to take process pictures to show.  These are the ingredients:  a metal pie plate, some acrylic paint, a sponge brush, and some q-tips.  All purchased at the Dollar Tree.  Oh, and not pictured - paper.  I didn't have the white paper with me that day and forgot to get it when I was at the store but lucky for us, the Dollar Tree in Delaware is still using paper bags and I was able to cut them up for this.

So what you do is turn the pie plate so the bottom is up - that is what you will be printing from.  You add some squirts of paint onto the plate and spread it around with the brush, covering it completely.  Then you take a q-tip and make a design in the paint.  We were using orange paint and trying to make pumpkins.  Once you have your design, you lay the paper over the plate and rub.  It should be noted here that having a Matchbox car in your hand helps with this rubbing process.

When you peel off the paper - you have a pumpkin.  Like magic.  Believe me that this is really as round as the pie plate, the paper curled a little when it dried which makes it look distorted.

One of the first pieces of trivia that I remember learning long ago was that a pumpkin is a berry.  This is because a berry is considered a fleshy fruit that has many seeds, and yes, that also means that a pumpkin is a fruit.  And to totally confuse anyone still reading, it also is a gourd.  But as true as all that is, I was trying to segue to this next item with that fruit/berry theme.  

There's a raspberry in this container to show you relative size, but what do you think those green blobs are?

They're Kiwi Berries - my daughter saw them at Costco and had to try them.  As you can see below, when you bite into it it actually looks like a kiwi.  It does taste like a kiwi also.  The difference is the skin, which is not hairy like a typical kiwi, and it takes a little effort to bite through.  But all-in-all these weren't that bad.

I saw somewhere that Costco was also supposed to have something calle Pink Berries but we haven't seen them yet.  That would be nice for Pinktober though, don't you think!