Outdoor Hour # 22

This week's theme was butterflies. I've been really lucky with dead insects lately (if you can call that being lucky...). I've collected a few dead houseflies, a butterfly, a moth and a dragonfly and kept them in glass jars for the upcoming Outdoor Hour challenges. I'm not much into insects but looking at the kids' joy when they study different things through the magnifying lense is so gratifying that it makes me want to collect even dead insects :D

This post is a little different in that the kids took all of the pictures. This is the dead butterfly that I found on the porch the same morning I had planned to do this challenge (and yes, that's Lucas having a mini melt-down on the background, can't remember what that was all about...) :D

We talked about the different stages of the butterflies and made a notebook page about them. These are the eggs that Lucas drew.

This is Luana's butterfly.

And this is Lucas' version of a butterfly.

We're planning to take on moths today. There's a dead one already waiting in the glass jar :)

busy busy busy

We (or I) have been quite busy the last couple of weeks. Some unexpected things happened also... Luana fractured her ankle walking home from a kid's party near our house. Initially we thought that she had just twisted her ankle real bad but the x-ray revealed a tiny fracture. So she'll have a cast for a month or so and there won't be any ballet for her for a while. Our Outdoor Hours have been reduced as well and I'm trying to do activities without having to walk anywhere...

We were left without water for over 30 hours last week... Something broke at the local water company and the whole town was without water. Luckily we have a well on the other side (the house that's rented at the moment) so we got some water from there. It was a good wake up call though and we've had long discussions about our water consumption with my hubby. We're going to make some improvements around the house and we've also been talking about how not to waste water with the kids.

Last week there was an international crusade in our church and I was the interpreter for three foreign evangelists. They came from Norway, South Africa and the US. It was really good as I like interpreting but haven't been able to do it for a while. The whole campaign was a real blessing.

Will be posting about the latest Outdoor Hour in a minute!

The Day of the Indigenous people

Tomorrow is the national Day of the Indigenous people (Dia do Índio). We started already today and did some painting. We looked at different facial paintings on the internet and the kids picked the ones they liked best. I then tried to recreate them on their faces...

The kids then proceeded to painting the rest of their bodies as that's what they love doing.

I'm planning a lapbook about indians for tomorrow...

First lapbooks ready

After our last Outdoor hour I thought we could study snails a little more. All of a sudden Luana asked if we could learn some more about snails as we had seen so many in the back yard so that was it :) I prepared lapbooking material and made some research about giant African land snails (Achatina fulica) and we set to work.

The lapbooks are green and they have a snail on the cover (surprisingly enough!) :)

Luana's lapbook on the top and Lucas' on the bottom of the picture. It's a little difficult to see some of the things as the background is brown. We however wrote down the maximum size and the age of the snails. On the two white squares on the top right there's the climate and the food the snails like. In the end we drew the kids' hands and wrote "wash your hands" on them. The the snails transmit diseases and that's why hygiene is really important. This highlighted the importance of not touching the snails with bare hands and always washing one's hands after playing outside.

We glued some snail "eggs" underneath a piece of brown paper as the eggs are usually under some kind of a cover.

I was so pleased with these and the kids really enjoyed doing them. I'm planning to do our next lapbook on Brazilian indigenous people...

For the kids' teachers

The kids decorated empty egg shells. With these little chicks we wished their teachers a Happy Easter.

Underwater diorama

We've been working on this for quite some time now. First we did some glittery fish, then another day the starfish and finally (already some time ago) the crabs. Then we painted some A4s to fit the underwater world and glued them on the inside of a cardboard box. We put some stones inside and I hung the fish and voilá! The kids were happy with the result and they proudly show it to anyone visiting our house.

All inspiration from the Underwater issue of Kids Craft Weekly.

Easter crafting and a sleep over

My friend's daughter (and Luana's best friend) slept at our house this weekend. On Saturday morning we did some Easter crafting with the kids.

Choosing the stripes for the Easter egg...

And this is how they came out.

On Sunday we did these little eggholders out of empty toilet rolls.

Outdoor Hour # 20

We went over to our neighbours' side of the fence and checked out our guava tree that we started studying earlier on. I asked the kids whether they remembered how the tree was back then and they remembered the parrots and the abundance of fuits.

This time we found one ripe guava (that unfortunately had some insects so we couldn't eat it) and LOTS of snails. I knew snails can get to many places but that they climb trees... I had to tell the kids not to use the swing that hangs from the tree as these snails spread diseases and even touching the slime can be unhealthy.

We also discovered many more snails in our neighbours' backyard and gave them a hand in getting rid of the ones we saw. The doggy on the other side of the fence is our 6-month-old puppy Oona.

On a more positive note then we realised that the marigold seeds we planted already some time ago are actually becoming flowers! I had already given up on them but hadn't thrown them away. Two survived the lack of attention and pouring rain/hot sun and we finally planted them in our garden. I'm not a gardener type at all but it sure is gratifying to see the seeds grow into flowers :)

This is the other one that survived: a gourgette also seems to want to bloom. If I ever get a gourgette out of this one I bet it'll be the most delicious gourgette ever! :)

I thought we should take a better look at the snails and learn a bit more about them with the kids. And to my surprise Luana suggested that we'd study snails tomorrow! Not sure if we'll have time tomorrow but some time this week.

Easter crafts continued

Today it was time for Easter cards bigger and small. I cut the shapes and the kids arranged and glued them. I'm planning some yummy treats for the neighbours' kids and I think these little cards will go with the treats.

Easter crafts started!

We made these super cute easter rabbits with the kids yesterday. Both took their rabbits to school today and Lucas left his for his teacher :) I also made these today in the orphanage with the kids there and they were quite a success. The idea is, once again, from Kids Craft Weekly.

Reading journal

As Luana now clearly can read I introduced a reading journal hoping it will make her want to read by herself. I drew a few lines on the top of each page so that she can copy the name of the book there. Underneath the lines I drew three faces with different expressions so she can indicate what she thought of the book. The rest of the page is for her to draw something about the story or for me to write what she told me about the book.

This is the very first book she read all by herself and it's called "A party in the school". She thought the book was ok and chose to draw a scene where the children act out the sleeping beauty. She also had a go at writing "in the school there was Sleeping Beauty". I thought it was cute and she's really excited about her journal!

Kids' cold porcelain jars

As soon as our new crafting table arrived the kids wanted to use it and we decorated some cold porcelain jars. I had made the biscuits already so they simply picked the ones they wanted to use. They told me which colours they wanted for the lid and I helped them to put the lids on. Then they made some decorations for the jars and glued everything on.

This is my jar from the same day. It was so difficult to take a picture of this one but it's a sleeping baby anyhow :)