This week is N week and we started off with a great project. We made a melted crayon artpiece of the Night Sky that I originally saw on Happy Hooligans. I took a large sheet of aluminum foil and covered two cookie sheets with the foil. Then I used Crayola Washable paint and dribbled it around the foil.
I used two shades of blue, a purple, yellow and a dab of white. Very important detail, don’t use anything that doesn’t say it’s completely washable. This can get very messy. The crayola paints wash off clothes and skin without a hint of dye left. So I placed the two cookie sheets on the table and gave each boy a sponge.
I love seeing how each twin does things differently. Lance smeared his paints around and immediately announced that he saw rainbows, in his most enthusiastic voice. James liked to dab and squish his sponge so that he created bubbles all over his page. Each boy had a ball playing with the sponge and creating a painting. When mom had enough of the mess, we washed up and set the sheets out of reach to dry for a bit.
The paint was still wet when we went back to our project. I handed the boys the crayon tub and I got them to fish out all the broken pieces of the white, blue, purple, yellow and black crayons. I used my kitchen grater and grated up the crayon stubs into a bowl then mixed it all up. I put the bowl in between the boys and set their sheet in front of them. I told them that they could sprinkle the crayon shavings on their artwork. Each boy took a few sprinkles at first. Then before I knew it Lance took the whole bowl and dumped it on his painting. It was a messy job spreading it around. 
Again we washed up and I put the sheets in a 250 degree oven for 8min. When I saw that the crayon wax had melted, I took them out to cool and harden. Be careful taking them out of the oven because the wax will run. When it dried, it gave a unique, starry night sky appearance. If I do this again, I would grate up much more crayon. I only had 1/2 a bowl full of shavings. But they still came out pretty. I trimmed the foil that wrapped the edges of the sheets and now they are hanging on my fridge. We talked about the sky, how dark it looks at night and how the stars look. We ended our tot school with singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
Instead of ending here and leaving you with the impression that our day was as beautiful as our art, let me explain how the rest of our day went. The art was done and hung. Earlier that day neither of the boys took a nap. They stayed in their cribs and talked the whole time. So when I got them up I immediately did the art project. After that, it went downhill. You know the days when the word no just doesn’t mean anything to them. That’s what happened and I felt like all I did was walk behind them saying no and slapping hands, spanking and holding for timeouts. So while you see my lovely artwork and all the fun of this activity, please remember that I too have moments that are less than ideal. I can look at my fridge in the middle of the chaos and remind myself of the great moments. For rarely are the days that are a complete wash. I can choose to find and remember the mercies in each day from God.
Mercies Raining Down 