In Which I Try, Clumsily, to be a "Fun School" Mom

There was a thread today on my favorite homeschooling board about whether or not you (the homeschooling mom) make school "fun." I didn't post, but I am not a fun school mom. Not that we don't have fun, because we do, but it is rarely the deliberately planned fun that goes with interesting, well-thought out projects and activities. In fact, we do projects so rarely that the children remember the ones that we do do for years. Kind of sad, eh? Anyway, this year I am going to try to improve my "fun mom" track record by doing a few more activities than we have done in the past (it is fairly easy to improve on a really pathetic record!). Today, as part of the My World Science lesson on lions as predators in the African savanna, we made plaster of paris casts of the children's teeth. The children found this vastly entertaining, and understood without being told why we made the impressions of their teeth in our rather grubby clay while Ed was upstairs showering (both T. and K. knew that we did Not want to ask Daddy beforehand what he thought about putting clay in their mouths -- smart children). K. made a very nice impression on the clay, but poor T. has so many teeth missing and his front teeth so tend to the horizontal that his impression was not very good at all. They also enjoyed mixing the plaster, and then finding creative uses for the stuff that was left over. K.'s "teeth" have already broken, and T.'s just didn't turn out that well, but this was definitely a case of the process being more important than the product. And I can check "do fun project" off my list for the week (or, perhaps, the month?).