Brazil celebrates its independence day on September 7th. Today we took a look at how the declaration of independece was made and at the history of the Brazilian flag. In the end we made our own Brazilian flags (see last picture).
I have a small collection of these wonderful Brasilian history books. The ones we used today are called: "My flag has a history" and "Why Brazil is so big". 
And here are the flags.
I've got plenty of EVA at home as I use it for making flowers. The other day the kids wanted to craft "anything" so we made these small magnets. The butterfly and the turtle on the right are Luana's and she made them all by herself. I cut the car after Lucas' instructions (he picked the colours and the decoration). When we were done we glued a magnet on the other side and let the glue dry until the next day. Very easy and the kids would have made many more had we had time for that. 
We went for a walk around the block just to see the river Mororó flooding yet again (se pictures in my other blog). On our way home we found this big bush in front of an abandoned house. We went to take a closer look...
... and realised it's passion fruit. The flower is so interesting and different.
We also spotted lots of fruits that are't ripe yet. I'll make sure we'll get back a little later hopefully to pick some fresh passion fruit for a yummy juice :)
Cutting all the ingredients.
Lucas making ice cream balls.
Luana cutting decorations.
And finally the ice cream parlour opened! 
My cone with strawberry ice cream, cherries, strawberries and a waffle. 
On Saturday I sat down with the kids and let them play with cold porcelain. We had a couple of colours and my intention was to make play food. Lucas came up with super cute popsickles all by himself. Luana made a fantasy cake as well as some smaller things and I "baked" some cakes for small dolls. It was so much fun that we'll definitely do this many more times together.
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.
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.
It was great fun to watch (me and my mum were seated on the sofa and formed the audience) although Luana found it very frustrating when Lucas wouldn't stick to what they (or rather she) had previously planned. They overcame the difficulties though and the performance was cute and funny.
As I said the kids were well taken care of and they had their very own activities in a tent just outside the main building. There were several people working with them and taking care of them.
Together they produced this piece of art by painting a piece of white cotton.
They also made self-portraits.
Each child made one branch for this tree and in the end they put the tree together with all the branches.
P.S. There are pictures from Luana and Lucas' birthday party (held yesterday) in here and recent picture of the puppies (born on Aug 4th) in here.
I got the idea for this crafting from Kids Craft Weekly that featured sticky crafts in the latest issue. I thought my kids would have loved making robots and I showed them how they could make them but instead they wanted to do something else. Lucas actually wasn't that keen on doing anything at all so I ended up working with him (and for him) but Luana liked it so much that she wanted to do another one.
Here he is anyway concentrating on his work.
And this is the result. The black one is Lucas' (and mine...) and the other two are Luana's.
We went to a lovely garden party last Saturday. I had three days off and it was such a nice break. It seems I only ever go to work and come home tired when it's almost time for the kids to go to bed. I still enjoy my work a lot but being a full time working mama just isn't my thing :)
My father and my stepmum had both turned 70 earlier this year and now it was time to celebrate that in the garden.
Next to their summer cottage there's an old inn (by old I mean some 200 years old) and we were allowed to use their old stables and the garden, too. Birches decorate the entrance to the stable.
This is the stable door. You really have to watch your head!
One of the stable windows from the outside.
Wild strawberries at my dad's summerhouse. Almost ready to be eaten!
Lucas mowing the lawn with his grandpa. He was so excited that he was allowed to participate in something that involved pushing a very noisy machine! :D
The kids in the museum. They got to wear "medieval" capes and play with a medieval dollhouse.
After the museum we went to a big park that offers lots of things for free. The kids just loved it. They had to control themselves in the museum and now they could just let go and run, climb and play as much as they liked. This park brings back good memories as we used to play there with my sister when we were small and visited my dad. There are so many things to do outdoors and then there are arts and crafts available indoors as well. We didn't even go inside with the kids that day, there was plenty to do outdoors!
One of my favourite things about the park: there's plenty of water all over the place. There are places where the kids can swim and then other places where they can simply play with the water. That day was absolutely too cold for swimming although I did see some kids running around in their swimming suits eating ice cream...
Lucas was busy organising his mandarin today. I took a few pictures from behind and then he asked me to take one with his face too :) He was proud of the way he organised the pieces before he ate them!
P.S. More recent pictures in my Finnish blog!
One day it was rainy and I had the kids play in the balcony with the sticks and things we brought back from the forest the other day. I thought they would have loved the idea but in fact only Luana had more interest in playing at that moment. Lucas just wanted to get inside...
The kids (and particularly Luana) were quite upset because everyone else from the preschool got to go on a walk in the forest and they didn't. It didn't help that I told them there'll be another walk in the forest next Monday when they'll start preschool. It seemed like such a big deal to them that I decided we'd go on a picnic by ourselves. Tuesday I only started work after lunch so we had the whole morning to ourselves. We set off with backpacks filled with picnic stuff.
We saw some lovely flowers and I even got pretty pictures of them thanks to the macro :) The children liked especially the white one, which in Finnish is called metsätähti, star of the forest.
We also collected plenty of all kinds of sticks for crafting purposes as well as some other things we found on the ground.
Despite the bitter wind we managed to find a nice place between some rocks close to the sea and had our picnic there. The kids just loved it and it was a wonderful and relaxing morning for me too. We're so lucky that my mum lives so close to the sea. Usually it's only the really wealthy people who live by the sea but where my mum lives it just happens that they have plenty of "normal" people's (as in regular income people) houses and flats quite close to the sea.
