8 days: Christmas felt

Years ago I made Calvin a simple felt/flannel board so that he could play librarian at home. Little did I know that four years later we'd still be creating sets. In fact, our smaller travel board is one of the best travel toys we have—the sets pack up easily in ziplock bags, they are quiet in the car, and they are replaceable if the worst happens. This year Calvin asked for a Christmas set, so I made him some pieces for St. Nicholas Day, including a house with stockings to hang by the chimney with care.

The timeline is expanding

Where before it was confined to our upper hallway, now it has taken over one wall of the front entryway as well. We found, albeit appropriately, that the Cenozoic Era on the standard timeline just wasn't big enough to hold all of the felt creatures Calvin wanted to have, so we created a "zoomed inset" and hung it on the downstairs wall. The labels aren't on it yet, and only some of the creatures are done, but these may be some of Calvin's favorites so far.

Prehistory continued

After what turned out to be almost a full week of celebrating Halloween/All Hallow's Eve/Samhain/what have you, I think things returned to normal today. Laundry, park walk, leftovers...all the good stuff, including prehistory. About a week ago we finished the Paleozoic and Mesozoic Eras, and by finished I mostly mean that we designed and created the felt for those eras and we've read all the books we could find at the library. We've also meandered into the Cenozoic Era, enjoying Walking With Prehisoric Beasts and a number of library books, but I'm behind on the felt. In fact, with all the creatures he's designed for me to make we're considering an additional timeline, zoomed in on the Cenozoic. Not a bad idea as we get into Walking With Cavemen, and the A Day With... book series by Fiorenzo Facchini (Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, Neanderthal Man, and Sapiens—books we seriously love). Next up: the land bridge and occupation of the Americas. We're having a really good time with this.