Outdoor Hour

This post is long overdue... I recently started a teaching job twice a week and that together with some other English and Spanish lessons at a private language school take up most of my afternoons. So homeschooling (and many other activities) have been on hold for some time now. I'm hoping things will calm down once I get more used to planning my lessons and I'll have more time for our usual activities.

We won't be following all the tree related challenges as the trees over here are quite different. I will try to look for some pines so I can introduce the kids to the notion of evergreens. However I chose to start with our own back yard examining the trees we have over there. This time we took a look at acerola, lime and guava (in the picture above acerola on the left, guava on the right and lime somewhere behind those two...).

We've been able to enjoy acerola fruits until recently and the kids just love eating them fresh. We all really like the juice too.

There were still some tiny flowers on the acerola tree. They're so small and fragile but oh so pretty.

Luana sat on the swing and drew the trees after we observed their shapes and their differences.

OK so she was in a bit of a hurry with this one :D I tried to encourage her to colour the picture but she had something else interesting on her mind at that time. She did write down the names of the trees though.

We also talked about vitamine C that all of these fruits have plenty of and I explained very briefly a few things about vitamines in general.

Birthday present

I painted a wooden picture frame and a small wooden box and glued EVA flowers on them. These were a birthday present for an 8-year-old girl.

Thoughts about a week without TV

We spent last week without watching TV and it was a really good experience. The kids did ask for a certain program a few times but were happy not swithing the TV on most of the time. The first days just flew by with especially Lucas getting really creative and just playing non-stop with any object he'd get his hands on. He also started to draw a lot (which is something he does on and off).
I had to work some afternoons but I tried to get creative with the kids and always leave them with something to do when hubby or their cousin was taking care of them. We finally thought of at least something to do with the cardboard that comes in apple boxes! These are drawn by Luana and myself (picture above).

All the creativity seemed to be contagious and my husband came out with this tractor for Lucas using a small carton and some cardboard. Lucas was so proud of the tractor and showed it to everyone. And I just loved my hubby's recycled piece of crafting! :)

Lucas is interested in insects and always wants to observe them with a magnifying lense. I'm so glad he's taken an interest in them instead of wanting to step on them or pull their wings or anything like that. He either observes them where they are of gets a piece of paper and tries carefully to get them on the paper so he can take them inside. I think he needs a magnifying glass of his own...

Here's Lucas' own shot of that insect.

All in all a very good week although we're back with the TV... I talked to the kids about it quite a bit and we agreed to reduce the time used for watching TV and be careful not to have it switched on when no one is actually watching anything.

Finger puppets at the orphanage

These are some of the finger puppets that the kids at the orphanage came up with last Friday. I had sewn the puppets and the decorated them as they wished. Some of the kids really got into it and would have made more. I was especially pleased as one kid with very little concentration planned and made his puppet from start to finish by himself.

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! :)

Independence day

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.

EVA crafting

These cute little things will become bookmarks and travel to a very special family in the US. I hope they like them!

And this is a decoration for my sunday school classroom. There are still a few bits and pieces missing but I guess you'll get the idea.

Inspiration for all of these comes from this creative blog.