Apples and Artwork

The other day Benjy helped me core some apples for applesauce. We were lucky enough to get a bunch of apples from some church friends, so we spent the morning getting them prepared to cook. Benjy was super excited about making applesauce and kept begging to help. He actually turned out to be great at cranking the peeler corer thing. The coring attachment is a little loose and kept rotating away from the apple, so I would hold it in place while Benjy turned the crank. The apples came from our friends' yard so I let him munch on the "strings" (peels).

The kids have been making a lot of artwork lately. I feel like the kitchen counter is always brimming with papers and artwork Eli makes at school. Yesterday he brought home a "scary" Mayan mask he made at school. Benjy saw it and immediately wanted to make one too. So he made one with his own special touches, like the scary robot mouth. I don't know what I was doing when I was three, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't cutting and drawing as well as Benjy is. He cut out all the parts of the mask-- by himself (except for the little green scraps, which I cut and he glued on). After he finished, I tied some string on both boys' masks so they could be scary monsters. 

This is a picture of "Jackson"... Benjy told me the story behind it, but I couldn't remember it all and he wouldn't retell it, even when I feigned tears.

The last picture is of one of the worksheets Eli brought home from school. It asks what is one thing they learned from the John Smith and Pocahontas story. Eli wrote, "The indeens got sic frum the mscedos." That would stick with me too.