More time for the fun stuff

I'm finally finished with my classes. The summer holidays started officially a week ago but those who didn' t pass had to have extra lessons this past week. I had a few students who didn't pass English and I was at the school Mon-Fri giving them extra lessons. I was so relieved when they all passed on Friday! I still have to drop in on Monday and we have a lunch for all the personnell on Tuesday but officially my classes are over. I've talked to the director and he said he'll try to get me a contract for next year so fingers crossed!

We made a finger puppet theatre with the kids. Simply cut off the bottom of a box, added some paint and curtains and there you are. Got to see several funny plays the same day.

Most of my good crafting ideas and other activities are waiting for January as the Christmas and New Year festivities will be over and life will take a more mellow course. We're right now waiting for my sister to arrive (three more nights to go, YAY!) and enjoying my mum who's been with us for already a month.

We're focusing on Christmas now and are reading the whole story little by little from a children's Bible doing some crafting as well. I know I'll enjoy things slowing down a little bit and will throughly enjoy the holidays until the end of January.

No time for the fun stuff

I started a new teaching job some weeks ago and all of a sudden I have no time for the fun stuff with my kids... I work almost every afternoon and come home when it's almost time for the kids to go to bed. I'm at home in the mornings but that's when they're at school. That leaves us the weekends but as I'm working and we don't have anyone to clean the house and wash the laundry we end up spending a lot of time on Saturdays doing household chores. I'm not very happy about the situation but I realise that it's also good to work and get some experiences from here in my CV. Thankfully summer holiday starts soon enough (end of November for the kids and a little later for me), my mum is soon here as well as my sister and I've already got lots of nice ideas for the long holiday months (two if the kids continue in the same school and three if they go to a public school).

The kids did get to paint their faces and loved it! They got inspired after they saw the paintings my students had made at school (did I mention I get to teach one art class apart from all the English classes and I'm LOVING it!).

We also made loads of bead bracelets for a birthday party that I worked at last weekend. Luana was such a great sport about this; the beads weren't mine and she helped me making the bracelets without getting to keep one for herself. I did promise her we'd buy lots of beads for the holidays...

Here are some of the bracelets we made.

Basically all homeschooling activities are on hold at the moment and we're really looking forward to December when my mum and later on my sister will be over here and we'll have lots more time to spend together.

Teachers' Day

Today was Teachers' Day and the kids had no classes. They had a small celebration at school yesterday and we made these portraits for their teachers Mariana and Edna. Both kids drew themselves with their teachers. Luana also wrote "teacher, I like you." :) I then cut hearts out of EVA and glued them on small magnets and we were done! I especially liked the fact that Lucas drew a halo above his own head. I bet he's a little saint at school! :D

Brazilian flag

We made these Brazilian flags with the kids at the orphanage. The small flags are simply cut and glued from coloured paper and the big flag is painted on fabric. I painted the kids' hands with different colours using textile paint and they painted the flag with their hands. They thought it was great fun (all ages enjoyed this) and I love the way it came out! :)

Been busy

Last week and weekend were really hectic. We had our monthly birthday celebration in Sunday School and as I'm the only teacher in my group at the moment I was the one who had to bake the cake. The very same Sunday there was a baby shower at the orphanage. One of the girls is going to have a baby boy soon and it was also her birthday. I had volunteered to bake two cakes; one for her and one for the baby. Saturday and a good part of Sunday were then spent in the kitchen. You can take a look at the cakes in my foody blog over here.

We spent last week cleaning up the house and emptying our guest room. It had turned into my husband's little office full of computer parts and tools. We needed the room empty so that our niece could move in on Monday this week. Her parents moved to the countryside but she's in her final year of high school so it's best for her to stay here and finish off her studies instead of changing schools at this stage.

In addition to the cakes I also prepared little birthday gifts for Sunday school (first picture) as well as small baby shower favours for the orphanage (second picture).

This week has been a lot calmer although the kids have kept me busy as they're extremely excited over having their cousing living with us. We'll get back to Outdoor Hour challenges and other homeschooling stuff next week.

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.

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 :)

Glittery fun

I was hugely inspired by the Glitter issue of Kids' Craft Weekly so we did glittery crafting this week. First we tried out the glitter and glue prints made with cookie cutters. The kids loved them and went on dipping their fingers in glue and painting their own figures and then covering them with glitter.

Yesterday we made our own glitter-glue-paint. So little was needed for so much fun. The kids absolutely loved this and I also painted some small things for decorating cards later on.

Obviously the inevitable happened - when my kids see paint and paintrbushes they ALWAYS end up painting their hands, legs, tummies etc. This time was no different and it was glitter paint all over :)

We had recently talked about the birth of Jesus and they both painted a scenery of the pastors in the field (stars in the night sky and cotton for lambs). After that they went on painting lots of different things. And they went on and on until all paint was finished :)

Luana painting Lucas' hand :)

Green Hour challenge 15

It's been raining hard for several days and this morning was no different. I've been postponing this challenge for a while now because it's been impossible to go out and draw anything. Today I decided we'll do the challenge no matter the weather. So we took a virtual tour of our garden and looked at the pictures I've taken of our flowers.

We counted the petals and looked at the different shapes. We first drew the flowers with pencils and then coloured them using water colour pencils (you colour normally with the pencils and then paint over them with a wet paint brush in order to create a water colour effect).

Blogger unfortunately turned the pictures around but I guess you'll get the idea :)

First works

We finished our first jars on Friday. The one on the left is my mum's and the one on the right is mine.

Our hands are itching to get new forms, colours and empty jars! :) We'll learn new things on Wednesday and will buy some new colours on Tuesday. There's supposed to be a fairly good shop with crafting supplies in a town about 40 minutes from us and we're hoping to visit there soon.

Cold porcelain

Yesterday I was invited to a friend's house to learn how to make cold porcelain (or biscuit) as it's called over here in Brazil. This is a technique that apparently started in Argentina and is very very popular in Brazil. There are some Brazilian websites here (she also has things in English), here and here. The paste is extremely easy to make (the link above has a slightly different recipe from the one we used but I'm sure that'll work as well) and it can be moulded by hand or using small silicone molds.

You have to excuse me for the quality of the pictures. The light was all funny and somehow the macro wasn't working as I wanted it to... I'll post more pictures as I get something done myself. We'll have our following lesson next Wednesday and I have some homework to do :)

It's great fun and highly addictive. I borrowed some molds off my friend but I'm dying to get my own already! The opportunities are endless and we just bought a magazine full of great ideas and models.

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.

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.

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.

Pastels with the kids

After the charcoal I thought some colours might be in place. So we tried pastels with the kids today. They again enjoyed smudging the colours and getting their fingers (and faces and tummies and legs) all colourful. We didn't really draw much, mainly just experimented with the colours to see how you can use them.

Charcoal with the kids

This was their first time with charcoal and they loved it! We drew some insects inspired by one of the Green Hour challenges we did last week as well as lots of other things too. The kids watched in awe as I first explained to them some of the different techniques one can use with charcoal. They loved the part where your fingers get all black and it's completely acceptable! :)

P.S. Blogger turned the pictures around quite a bit but it's too late now and I can't be bothered to start messing with that at the moment...

Painting stones

The kids have been asking for ages to paint some stones and we finally did that.

Look at that concentration!

Dia Nacional de Alfabetização

We practiced writing Luana and Lucas' names last week. I gave the kids some black paper and these super soft metallic crayons (photo below). They are such a delight to draw with and they look great on dark paper! When they were done drawing on their papers (i e when there was no black surface left) I cut the letters to form their names and we glued them on light yellow paper.

Day of Culture

November 5th was the National Day of Culture over here. We talked briefly about what culture is and focused on the art side of culture. There were several paintings and drawings that the kids had done while in Finland and we decided to create an art exhibition so that daddy could see all of the artwork too.

I told the kids how in art galleries you usually have a little party when a new exhibition starts and we organised our own gallery and served some light refreshments as daddy arrived home from work.

This is the artist discussing one of her drawings with daddy.

Some artwork was hung on the clothes line.

And most of the bookshelf was taken over by the paintings and drawings.