October Crafts

Art group was based around the book The Lost Words, they had black ink and lots of leaves to print with or create whatever design you fancy.

Then onto some printing, Ls view is you should say yes to words, not remove them from the dictionary.

Halloween crafts, including a black cat made out of a paper plate.

Bats made from cardboard rolls and enjoying trying out new pens on black card.

Watercolour night sky.

Birds are enjoying our new bird feeder.

Birthday

L turned 7 and M turned 16, M's birthday was easy to do, she was happy to have a friend over, share cake, go shopping and then have a sleep over. L wanted dragon themed party, based around How to Train Your Dragon, so just a little bit more work!

I have been saving all the cardboard boxes to cover the veg patch for the winter (we do no dig gardening) as well as any art project, lucky really, as it was decided shields was one thing she wanted to make, hubby cut out all the shields and I made dragons out of paper plates.

The cake had to be Toothless, according to L I did a really good job, huge sigh of relief, he wasn't easy to make! Please excuse the slight blurred image, I didn't realise till I uploaded the photos there was a small fingerprint on the lens!

So on party day we also had some homemade gingerbread eggs, for the children to decorate, a couple of dragon themed word searches, dragons to colour in

shields to paint. It was fair bit of prep beforehand but so worth it all the children had a lovely time.

We also had a trip to Marwell Zoo, as L really wanted to especially see the red pandas. As well as the giraffes. 

the meerkats

You don't want to know how excited L got when she spotted her first real red panda, even if they were very well hidden!

Then one of them got up and decided to go for a walk, so we really got to see them, they are beautiful creatures and I can see why L loves them so much.

Catching Up

Hopefully will now get back into blogging regularly, have lots of photos and things to share, then the computer dies on us!! Now have it back from being repaired and caught up and all the jobs that need to be done. Recovery from op is going well, loving getting out and having at least a 30 minute walk daily, still doing my physio exercises 4 times a week, its great but been busy as trying to do all those jobs I wasn't able to do before my op.

So going back to before Christmas I offered to have a couple of L's friends for a couple of art and craft sessions, this went so well that they asked to come every week! So more than happy to share my time with enthusiastic children, so in January we started to meet weekly, using the Greek myths as our theme, will share those in another post. Any way back to December we started with the story of Wilson Bentley and how he persevered until he he was able to record the beauty of the snowflakes. We also read Curious About Snow, which has some beautiful pictures of snowflakes and talks about the science behind them, how humidity and air temperature change their shape. The girls made up their own little booklets with some snow facts in then, then had some fun making gingerbread snowflakes to decorate later.

The girls work so well as a team, I can stand back now and let the 3 of them get on with the cooking, other than dealing with the oven, they are fairly self sufficient with their baking.

Mary Azarian who illustrated the Snowflake Bentley book, makes woodcut prints, I don't have the right tools or knowledge for this so we used the florist oasis blocks instead. They girls carved pictures into them, a pencil works really well for a carving tool, then printed on some brown paper I had saved from various deliveries we had to create their own wrapping paper.

Our second session was based around the story of the little fir tree, well two different little fir tree stories, we started the session of with the girls telling us what they knew about fir trees and deciduous trees. Why they loose their leaves in winter, why fir trees don't, the design of the fir tree and how this benefits the tree when it snows lots. We talked about how the little tree wished his life away, was this a good or bad thing? How much did he miss out on by doing this? Do we ever do this and why do we feel that way. In my Christmas sort out I found some wooden fir trees so they set to work painting and decorating their own xmas trees and made some paper plate wreaths.

 

We also made some origami fir trees, the instruction video can be found here

They also made some salt dough decorations to hang on their trees at home, we made them a few years ago with cornflour to give the whiteness to the shapes, using this recipe.

 A little bit of Christmas sewing, a gift for my Aunt, can add she loved it.

I finally finished L's Rosebud jumper, it wasn't the easiest pattern to follow but she loves it and that is what counts.

Polare bear cupcakes made by hubby and L

 and of course homemeade mince pies.

Easter

Happy Easter everyone, we've had a lovely but very busy couple of weeks, we joined a friend for a visit to the Living Rainforest, the armadillo was out and about this time, which was great for the children to see. This months Eco Kids magazine has been on plants, lots on meat eating plants, so great for L to see the pitcher plant in real life and I had fun talking about and demonstrating some of the other meat eating plants. At home we spent some time watching some you tube clips on the venus fly trap and sundew as well as reading the rest of the magazine. We've also been reading Enid Blyton's Nature Lover book, monthly nature walks with Uncle Merry, I know I can see the difference in the dead nettles and a true nettle and how animals avoid the dead nettle as they think its a stinging nettle. This week we learnt that the stem of the dead nettle is square not round, luckily we have some in the garden to look at explore the stems and compare carefully to the stinging nettles. Just love the fact that I am learning alongside my children and then we cans share that learning with others.

We were trying to decide if this was the tortoise yawning or will you all please just go away and leave me in peace face, what do you think?

We also finally got to spot the sloth.

We went to the local vocational college last weekend for their open day, looking ahead for M, they do a wide range of sport, out door pursuits, animal management, horticulture, actually a wide selection of vocational courses, set in a lovely rural setting. The classes are small, they don't have a bell ringing for classes, they try and have a calm learning environment. We had a lovely chat to some of the team for learning support and feeling positive that this could very well be the right environment for M, as long as we can get all the support in place and in writing before she starts. For those that didn't know she did try school when she was 11 years old and it went very horribly wrong, she couldn't cope with the sensory overload, the lack of support for her and it sent her into sensory overload daily and her anxiety through the roof. So I really need to get the support in for her before she starts college so we do not have a repeat of school. I am trying not to worry but I am, its so hard at times when you know what support your child needs and how well she can do with the right support but it seems so hard to get it in place for her. Just looking at her drama, she managed a merit in her exams, she had fantastic support from her teacher, he was there just before her exam to run through any questions with her and to go through the results with her at her next lesson. They had lots of mock practises, everything was written down or emailed to her so she knew exactly what was expected of her etc, I am now crossing fingers that we can get the support in place for college. M is looking at performing arts or media studies, performing arts means she gets to use her dance and gymnastics at times, which she loves. Oh and L is ready to sign herself up for animal management course, she's not impressed she has to wait till she is 16 to do it!

L and I have been looking at plant life cycles, she has loved making these paper plate life cycles, she asked for more, so we now have on on sunflowers and turtles too. A nice way to look at and compare the life cycle of different plants and animals.

At some point towards the end of last year I lost my vibrantly flowering erysimum, haven't found any locally and decided to take a risk and buy some unseen on ebay, pleased with them so far, we have Night Skies and Paintbox. They look so pretty and took me a while to decide on which ones, there are loads of delightful colour mixes. My kitchen window sill has been taken over by them,along with kale, broccoli and tomato seedlings and the normal selection of herbs!

Some Easter painting, used the inner of a cardboard roll, cut in 3 and stuck together to make a rabbit out line, L has loved printing the rabbit shapes and creating scenes for them, they are her rabbits Rosie and Lucy.

Wet felting some eggs, they never quiet work out for me but the girls enjoy trying and maybe one day we will get it right. Today the girls had an Easter egg hunt in the garden, L has now hidden 10 little eggs around the house for M to find later, I am wondering how long it will take us to find them all, editing to add that as of bedtime tonight we still have 3 eggs to find and L isn't giving any more clues away. Easter cards made and a visit to grandparents this afternoon.

More recipe trying from Madeline Oliver, these are her falafel burgers, also made the kidney bean burgers, lovely but may need to buy a big food processor, mine is a little one that is great for blending baby food but a bit small to batch make burgers! We are loving sweet potato wedges at the moment the family cannot get enough of them.

 Ocean Waves is of the needles and blocked, now back to the baby knitting, though L has a list of things she would like made as well. Really need to look at my fabric stash and plan some sewing too.