Easter Chicks

Happy Easter to those who celebrate and a good long-weekend for the rest of you. :)

This time of year, whether you celebrate Easter or not, is full of eggs, bunnies and chicks. We couldn't resist trying this cute chick craft found at 'a little delightful'.

I drew the template myself, although Bianca offers one at 'a little delightful' if you'd like. We used foam shapes for the eyes and beaks and pipe-cleaners for the legs and feet.

These two chicks are currently displayed on our fridge.

-Polly

Apples

E recently spent some time learning with and about apples. We spoke about different types of apples and I found a chart online with pictures of many of the varieties grown here in Australia. We went to a local shop and bought three different types: fuji, gala and granny smith. We cut some open to see the flesh and the seeds and had taste tests. E's favourite was the granny smith.

"Ten Apples Up On Top" by Theo LeSieg (Dr Seuss) was read a few times during our apple theme and is always good fun. E liked trying to balance an apple on top of her head like the animals in the story.

There are a lot of educational pages and packs online with an apple theme. We used this size sequencing activity from Confessions of a Homeschooler:

and this puzzle from the 2 Teaching Mommies Apple Tot Pack:

From that same tot pack, I printed two copies of the "apple match" page and we used them for some patterning as well as having extra pieces for colour-matching.

We had some fun in the kitchen and E learned how to use the spiral cutter:

We also made some apple pikelets using a recipe from a book called "Du jour: Easy but Glamorous Recipes for Every Occasion".

E requested an apple colouring page, so I found one at www.activityvillage.co.uk. We made our own little booklet sequencing an apple from fruit to tree. I also made some little vocabulary cards to go with our booklet, with pictures for E to colour. There were words such as 'pips' and 'core'.

There were more activities that we did on this theme, but this post is getting long so I'll share them another time. :)

-Polly

Seeds and Sprouts

It's just a weed, but isn't it cute the way that lupin sprouts and discards it's seed casing above the ground?

Over the past week or so, we have been looking at seeds. We collected different types of seeds for E to examine and compare. We found them in the pantry, in foods we ate, in the garden and in our store of 'to be planted one day' seeds. E liked finding weed seeds in the garden, but I think her favourite method was cutting open fruits to see what the seeds inside were like.

Seeds have been used for counting and for sorting. We collected and dried some rockmelon and chilli seeds from our garden produce to be added to our 'to be planted one day' collection.
I set up a tray with a few different types of seeds for E to play with. It had kidney beans, pumpkin seeds, red lentils, sunflower seeds and mustard seeds. I also included a few empty cups to encourage pouring and exploring. It didn't take long for it all to be mixed together.

Once E started to get bored with her seed tray, I introduced some playdough to the activity. The playdough became the base for seed pictures and creatures with seed faces and some seeds were tucked up into a playdough bed.

E learnt a little about growing seeds, too. We talked about how the plants in our garden started out as seeds and we planted some cress seeds in little egg-shell 'eggheads'.

I also pulled out the dried corn from a few weeks ago and we sprouted some of the kernels in a zip-lock bag with a damp paper towel (thanks to an idea from "Science is Simple" by Peggy Ashbrook).

We finished up by watching "Life of Plants" (narrated by David Attenborough). E liked the time-lapse scenes and pretended to be a plant growing up and up.

-Polly

Parsnips and a New Toy

Whilst in our garden the other morning, E and I decided to pull up the last of our parsnips. They were intended as a Winter crop, but ended up lasting us a whole year. Better than the swedes, which didn't grow at all. :/ Here's the parsnips we pulled that wouldn't fit in our basket:

We decided to turn them into chips using our new toy:

Our first ever food-processor is from the same series as our coffee-machine and juicer both of which we are very happy with. Perhaps we're brand snobs, but after buying a bread machine (of a different brand) that made a total of 2 loaves of bread before dying (and not being able to return it), it's nice to have confidence that each new appliance might actually do what it's supposed to do. Plus, it's kind of nice having everything match. :)

-Polly

Let's Play Outside

Now that we've been getting a bit of cooler weather, we've spent a lot of time in our backyard. Here's just some of the things that E likes to do:

Dig in the sand:

Draw in the sand:

Play on the swing and the slide:

Build sandcastles, sand-sculptures, flower gardens, treasure collections...:

It's also nice to simply sit outside for our morning tea or look at (and smell) the flowers or search for bugs...

What do you (or your kids) get up to in your backyard?

-Polly

Green Garden

Happy St Patrick's day. I don't have anything holiday-related to share, but I do have a 'green' post for you. :P

I love how the garden is refreshed after only one day of rain.

I had recently pulled out what was left of last year's silverbeet and left a couple of roots behind. Now we have nice, fresh silverbeet without having to replant.

We have a rockmelon that seems about ready to be picked. Not bad for a store-bought melon that we buried as 'compost'.

The second lot of chillies are fruiting at the moment (we've had jalapenoes for a while now). It's always nice to have fresh chilli to add some kick to a meal. We had a big, red one chopped up in our tacos last night.

I love Autumn. :)

-Polly

Mud Puddles and Raindrops

Yesterday, we finally got a rainy day! Above is a picture of E wearing my old slippers to check out the mud puddles. Last Winter's gumboots are 2 sizes too small.

To take advantage of our first rainy day in what seems like forever, we did some 'rain drawings'.
We got out the washable markers and drew pictures onto ordinary copy paper.

We placed the pages one at a time onto a large tray and took them out into the rain.

Then we brought them back inside to dry,

And that's how we made our rain drawings.

There seems to be no more rain today, but the weather is slightly cooler and the sky is still overcast. We spent the morning in the backyard, E playing on her swings and slide, both of us simply enjoying some much-needed outside time.

-Polly

Scitech

Last weekend we went on one of our favourite day-trips, to Scitech. We go quite often, as we purchased yearly passes when we took E there for her birthday. It's very hands-on and E gets really into all the exhibits, especially those in "Discoverland". I never think to take a camera along to take any pictures. I don't know that E would stay still long enough to take any decent photos anyway. I can share with you this picture that a robot there drew of E:

The robot will usually draw your portrait, that is, only your face, and it's not always very detailed. For some reason (probably because she was standing on the chair where you're supposed to sit) the robot couldn't find E's face, so she got a full-length drawing including all the little dots on her dress. :)

-Polly

PS. I've started another little blog, along with Morgan of Maple Syrup Molgen, to showcase some of our kids' art. Here's the link for you to check it out: http://duckartblog.blogspot.com.au/

There's a Wocket in my Pocket

"There's a Wocket in my Pocket" is one of E's favourite Dr Seuss books. It's often requested and rarely read just once in a sitting. She already understands the nonsense of it.
"Did you ever have the feeling there's a WASKET in your BASKET?"
E's standard response is "No"

Here's some activities that we did to tie in with "There's a Wocket in my Pocket".

The first was a toy for E. I drew a wocket on a piece of cardboard and cut around it. E coloured it with pencils while I sewed the pocket from an old pair of jeans onto a fabric-covered, cardboard page. We then added a stick to the wocket so that it could play "peek-a-boo" in the pocket.

I got the idea for our second "wocket" activity from "Make and Takes". I collected some photographs of objects that we have around the house and E made little collage and drawn creatures that might live on, in or behind the objects. She glued each onto a separate page and we made up names for all the creatures. I wrote in the words and stapled the pages together into a little book. E loved reading her own version of "There's a Wocket in my Pocket" over and over.
Here's the pages before I wrote on them:

There's a ZIANO on the PIANO and a FLOBE behind the GLOBE. There's a MIN in the BIN and a NENT in my TENT. There's a DOASTER on the TOASTER and a WATH in the BATH.

What's your favourite Dr Seuss book?
-Polly

The Cat in the Hat

I read somewhere that today is World Book Day. Perhaps E knew that, as for the last couple of days we seem to have been reading non-stop. It's a good thing that she loves books so much.

Last week, as part of our "Dr Seuss" theme, we read "The Cat in the Hat" and then made some cat-inspired hats. We had previously painted some cardboard rolls red, so we used those and glued on some strips of white paper. At first, E wanted to cover the whole cardboard roll in paper, but she soon got the hang of leaving gaps to form the ABAB pattern of the cat's hat.

We taped on circles (or, more accurately, doughnut-shapes) of white card to form the brims and they were ready to be modelled - on our own heads and on those of various toys. (See also the skeleton in the first photograph).

Then we read "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back" and made some hat-inspired desserts. Our desserts were simply raspberries and vanilla ice-cream layered in tall glasses. We made paper coasters to look like the brim of a hat.

As we ate them, the ice-cream turned pink - just like the "cat-ring" and the snow in the story. :)

-Polly

Back in the Garden

We finally got a cloudy day this week and decided to spend it out in the garden. Our garden had been a little neglected with all the hot weather, but mostly kept alive thanks to the reticulation. There were plenty of weeds to pull and veggie beds to prepare. It is officially Autumn after all. We still have a few veggies that we can use and we picked a zucchini and a bunch of beetroot. We still have chillies and parsley that we pick as we need them.

The flowers that we planted make the garden look nice and bright and they attract a lot of bugs.

E was singing one of her favourite songs this morning (The Itsy Bitsy Spider) and so we went outside again to look at some real spiders and their webs. There have been a couple of decent-sized spiders living in one of the veggie beds for some time now. I would have pulled all the celery already if it weren't for them. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of baby spiders now, too, but they are way too small to photograph with our current equipment.

Sorry for the weirdly focussed pictures. I'm still getting used to my new phone-camera, but it does take higher quality photos than my last one.

-Polly

Green Eggs and Ham

March 2nd would have been Dr Seuss's birthday, so there have been a lot of Dr Seuss ideas floating around the internet. E has a whole box of Dr Seuss books that we read regularly, but over the last week we have spent a few days doing some activities to go along with them.

After reading "Green Eggs and Ham" together, E had some fun balancing a green, plastic egg on a spoon and walking to different parts of the house. It took her a while to get the hang of it, but she was quite proud when she did. Perhaps I should have weighted the egg like Megan did at Coffee Cups and Crayons. Our egg kept breaking open when it was dropped, so that would have meant rice all over the floor unless I taped it shut.

We also made our own green eggs. Here's the recipe, although we didn't actually measure anything:

GREEN EGGS
Ingredients:
6 eggs
1/4 cup mayonnaise
handful baby spinach
small bunch parsley
1 tsp american mustard
a drop or two of green food colouring (optional)
salt and pepper

Method:
Hard-boil the eggs. Cool and peel.
Carefully remove yolks and arrange whites on a plate.
Finely chop spinach and parsley. Add to yolks in a small bowl. Mash together with mayonnaise and mustard. Add food colouring if you want a little extra green-ness.
Spoon or pipe mixture into egg whites and season with salt and pepper.

The verdict? E says "I LOVE green eggs!"
We didn't attempt green ham, but E did have a SPAM sandwich the other day which she rather enjoyed. Ew.

-Polly

Corn

Here is some sweet-corn that we grew in our garden this year:

Yesterday we had a "corn" themed day. Some of our corn was left until it was dry and I set these out on a tray for E to explore, with the cobs, husks and silk all separated.

She discovered that she could pull the dried kernels off of the cob.

I introduced her to dry polenta (ground corn) and we made some cornbread using a recipe from "The Joy of Vegan Baking".

E made some corn collages using little squares of crepe paper.

We glued on some real corn husks to finish them.

Some of the husks were also used to make this paper flower:

I thought this might be a good theme for the beginning of Autumn (according to the calendar). According to the weather outside, it's still very much Summer.

-Polly