Front Garden

I often post photos of our back garden, but rarely the front. We don't do as much in the front yard, we'll just go and pull weeds occasionally. We've got some nice, hardy plants that don't need much care. Two of our yukkas recently flowered at the same time.

Our little pomegranate is looking nice, too.

Not bad for a little twig of a plant that we thought had died. This is the second year that we've got fruit.

-Polly

Chinese New Year

February 10, 2013, began the Chinese year of the snake. Leading up to this festival season, I thought would be a good time for a "China" theme. We did some Chinese New Year themed colouring pages and quite a few themed crafts. E learnt how to find China on her globe and how to say "Ni Hao". We made a few paper decorations, like the "fu" banner to the left.

We learnt a bit about some Chinese inventions, including the abacus. E had lots of practice counting on her's. I also made a cardboard tangram puzzle for her to try and she has been having fun with it ever since. She also did a simple Chinese flag puzzle, but that wasn't nearly as fun. We made (and ate) some Chinese style foods including spring rolls, noodles, and a sweet & sour stir-fry.

Thanks to an idea from lightly enchanted, we made some goldfish kites (see right) to hang up around the house. E loved this craft and wanted to make more and more!

Lastly, we made some dragon puppets to dance around with. For these I simply printed the dragon head and tail pieces to colour in. Then we cut them out and glued them together with a long piece of folded paper in the middle and taped on a couple of pop-sticks to hold.

-Polly

Pancakes

Look at our yummy brunch:

This morning, E requested that we make pancakes. Instead of instant pancakes-from-a-bottle or plain pancakes, I made up this quick recipe. They were really tasty.

Blueberry-Yoghurt Pancakes

Ingredients:
1 cup SR flour
pinch salt
1 egg
1 cup almond milk
1 Tbsp olive oil
175mL (one single serve) berry yoghurt
1/2 cup blueberries

Method:
Use electric beaters to mix together all ingredients except for blueberries.
Stir in blueberries.
On a hot non-stick pan, cook 1/4 cup-fulls of batter until golden on one side. Flip and cook other side.
Serve with butter and maple syrup (or your favourite toppings).

Makes about 10

Easy as that. :)
-Polly

Hearts and Crafts

Did everyone have a good valentine's day? It's not something we celebrate around here, but I couldn't resist a few love-heart crafts.
First I collected up some craft supplies in shades of pink and red and set them out on E's table:

I included some papers, foam shapes, shredded crepe paper, cardboard hearts, pipe-cleaners, pom-poms, wrapping paper, tulle, felt, pencils and crayons. E was excited for all the pink. It's been a while since we've done a colour theme.

E used the wrapping paper to wrap and unwrap imaginary presents. She thought it was a fun game. The rest of the supplies were used for collages and ornaments.

E also did some painting and learned how to make pink by mixing red and white paint together. We painted her feet and made heart-shaped footprints:

When it was dry, I drew the heart around the footprints and cut it out for her. It was added to a painting/collage that included hand-prints, brush-painting, crayon drawing, the words "E Loves Daddy" and a photograph. E gave it to her Daddy as soon as he got home from work and she was very proud of it. She also spent all evening saying "I love you, Daddy," which was adorable.

I did set up one other 'heart' activity. E is currently learning to spell her name, so I cut out some more cardboard hearts and wrote one letter from her name on each heart. I then got a long strip of paper and traced around the right number of hearts as a template for where to place the letters. E had some fun with this. She loves finding the letter "E" everywhere.

-Polly

Baking Australia

As part of our recent Australia studies, E and I made a shortbread map like the one by the kids at Creekside Learning. We used the basic shortbread recipe from "Cookery the Australian Way". Here's E checking the instructions:

E got her hands sticky rubbing in the butter and then she rolled the dough flat.

I helped to get the right shape using a printed map and cling-wrap. There was just enough dough left over for E to use cookie-cutters to make her name. Then we baked it all in the oven.

E wasn't up to adding landforms or state lines like the cookie made by the Creekside kids, but at least we included Tasmania. E chose to make purple icing and we spread that all over our shortbread.

We added smarties in the approximate positions of each capital city and E had fun covering the whole thing in sprinkles...

and then we invited Daddy to help eat it. Yum!

-Polly

Tea Party

We've all had the flu this week, so a lot of our time has been spent "camping out" in the lounge-room (on an inflatable mattress and lots of pillows) and watching tv or sipping hot citrus water and resting. It's not all bad. We don't just sit and watch the telly very often, so it's given us a chance to learn new things from how to make Chinese food to flaws in Newtonian physics and of course the all-important lessons from Dora the Explorer.

I do have some activities to share from before we all got crook, but haven't uploaded the photos yet. Today I'll just share some pictures of E hosting a tea party for her dolls. This was a couple of months ago now, but I don't think I've posted the photos before (sorry if I have).

I hope everyone else is well... and keeping cool. It was 42°C here yesterday and it's not forecast to get any cooler for the next couple of days. Good thing we have that air-conditioner to help us stay comfortable inside.

-Polly

Puppet Show

E had a little, plastic Spongebob Squarepants toy that was always getting lost and has a broken foot, but she liked it because it was her only Spongebob toy. One day when she was looking for her toy, I decided to make her this set:

I printed pictures of some characters from the show, stuck them on cardboard and added some pop-sticks to make puppets. I added black outlines to the Patrick and Sandy puppets after the pictures were taken to make them more cohesive.
Here's E putting on her Spongebob Squarepants puppet show:

It was even better than the television show.
-Polly

Little Kickers

Just look at this cutie:

Yesterday, E attended her first official soccer lesson at a club called "Little Kickers". She has a new uniform which she is showing off in the photo. It even has her name and number on the back. I think you can tell by that smile that she had a great time.

-Polly