Baking tray prints

This idea is once again from Kids Craft Weekly (I believe prints issue or something like that) and it was great fun. We put some finger paint on a baking tray using a paint roller, the kids drew with cotton buds and we pressed a paper over the painting creating fabulous prints.

We should have used more paint and we also should have had an own baking tray for both kids instead of just one. Next time we'll improve! Anyhow this was a big hit and I can see especially Luana going on and on with this one on her own.

Green Hour challenge 13

We actually did this challenge a week ago, I've just been pants at posting about it... My mum arrived last week and her luggage is still somewhere on its way. So we've had a bit of a hassle trying to track down her bags and dealing with the very unhelpful staff of TAM (a Brazilian airline). One suitcase should be delivered this afternoon or tomorrow morning and the other one is still missing so we're waiting... And will be doing the next Green Hour Challenge today.

Lucas taking a close look at the sprouting zucchini and marigold.

This is how the marigolds looked a week after planting them (unfortunately blogger decided the picture looked better this way...). The basil and leeks unfortunately didn't sprout but I think the seeds were probably old.

We then proceeded to take a look at the flowers we have in the garden at the moment. First plant was ixora (ixora coccinea) or West Indian Jasmine. It has lots of other exotic names too, all available in Wikipedia.

Heliconia is my personal favourite as it looks so different from all the others. There are lots of different heliconias and the one we have is heliconia pendula. I wouldn't be able to identify the flower parts on that one though! :)

This is a pretty one that I don't know the name of... It grows quite high and has black seeds (picture below).

And then there's the charming sweet smelling plumeria or frangipani, not sure which species we actually have.

We talked about the different parts of the flowers especially with Luana. Lucas was more interested in just looking at the flowers through the magnifying lense. No journal entry for this one as Luana simply refused to draw anything. Maybe better luck this week... :)

Bubble painting

We tried out bubble painting from the paint issue of Kids Craft Weekly and this was so much FUN! So much so that we ran out of paper and the kids just wanted to keep going...

They didn't want to stop at all so I sent them off to the shower so that they could continue making endless amounts of bubbles there (and so that I could wipe the floor in the library...).

It was messy, wet and fun. The outcome impressed the kids and as I said they would have kept on going had we not ran out of paper :) I'm thinkin we might use these prints as a background for some thank you notes we'll be putting in the mail soon.

Green Hour challenge 12

After a few weeks without Green Hour Challenges we're back and started to focus on garden flowers. We have some flowers on our front yard and we'll take a closer look at those next week. We started off however by visiting two flower/garden shops nearby. The first one had wonderful roses by the entrance and Luana absolutely wanted her picture taken with them.

We talked to the extremely helpful owner of the shop and she allowed us in her garden where she keeps the plants (she only has a small shop in front of her house for attending people). Lucas was really happy to explore the garden that resembled more a mini jungle :)

We got to know lots of new flowers and learned the names of some. These are called amor eterno (eternal love). This is also a medicinal plant that helps with gastritis and some other stomach problems (the leaves are used for making tea).

This one is called flor da Amazônia (flower of the Amazon). It actually grows into a tree and the leaves surrounding the small flowers turn either white or pink so that it looks like there are huge flowers on the tree, a bit like poinsettia (euphorbia pulcherrima).

The names of these flowers are probably popular names as I couldn't find anything on the internet with these names.

And then there were obviously lots of gorgeous orchids. I didn't even start to take pictures of them as it would have been difficult to stop :)

Luana posing in front of some of the flowers in the second shop we visited.

Once at home we planted some flowers too. The only seeds I happened to have already were marigold seeds so that's what we planted. While we were at it we also planted some leeks, zucchini and basil just to see if they grow. Leeks are extremely difficult to get hold of in this part of Brazil as is fresh basil so I'm anxious to get them growing in our own garden :) The kids loved the way the seeds were so different. The ones in the picture are marigold seeds, zucchini had large white seeds and both basil and leek had small black seeds.

The kids have been taking good care of the pots with the seeds. Last time we planted things the dogs and some really heavy rain ended with our little project. This time the pots are safe from the dogs and from too much rain. And this is what Luana found this morning! The marigolds are already starting to grow!

This all was so exciting for the kids (and I really enjoyed myself too!) so we're looking forward to continuing with the garden flowers theme.

Painting

This time we tried blowing the ink with straws. This was a big hit although Lucas lost his concentration quite quickly and started painting other things. The paintings come out so different and nice!

Lucas painted his Finnish grandma :) He likes to use a lot of dark colours for some reason.

Memory game

I got this idea once more from Kids Craft Weekly. We don't usually have any plastic cups but these were used last week when we had people over for a BBQ. I wasn't actually even thinking about saving them and washing them as they're really thin and break easily but Luana wanted to keep them in order to use them for some crafting later on. I love it when she wants to recycle something before I even think about it! So we kept the cups and washed them and as I was browsing Kids Craft newsletters looking for something completely different I saw this memory game. We just used stickers inside the cups and the game was made very quickly. The kids really liked a different kind of memory game.