Tree observation

December 6, 2015June 25, 2017Leave a comment

The excellent book Discovering nature with young children from The Young Scientist Series has finally made us do something we’ve been wanting to do for years: observe and document a tree in Autumn as the color of its leaves change until it has lost them all.

We have made it as a science project making it quite interesting for Gabriel: he was a scientist! We have chosen a tree which is just behind our house, because we wanted to have an easy access to it and we also chose one we knew would not lose its leaves too quickly so that we could follow its evolution, because it was protected by the surrounding buildings and trees. Having chosen it, we regularly went to observe the tree which soon became “Our tree”. Here’s the material we used for this activity

Markers
White card paper
Clipboard
Instant camera

Before leaving the house we would choose which markers we should take, having in mind the colors Gabriel thought the leaves would have. In order to document the changes, he made a drawing of the tree, focusing mostly on the leaves colors. Besides drawing it, we also took pictures with our digital camera and Gabriel also took pictures with an instant camera. The pictures were of very poor quality, but we though it was interesting for him to have another support besides the drawing.

Once at home Gabriel wrote the date and taped both the picture and the drawing on a wall, one day after the other in order to see the evolution. We have agreed to keep tracking of the tree’s changes when Spring comes and the leaves with it!

EnregistrerEnregistrer

Halloween party

November 23, 2015November 29, 2015Leave a comment

As we’ve mentioned in our last post, we have celebrated Halloween for the first time this year and have invited some of our friend families with children with the same age of Gabriel to a Halloween party.

We have made some scary (funny) food inspired by a lot of things we have found on the internet like a vegetables skeleton, spider pizzas or ghost cupcakes. We have also made bat cookies with this recipe which we’ll probably use a lot in the future because it’s sooooo easy and also quite good. We have also cooked a Jack o’Lantern pumpkin pie with a recipe we’ll share in a future post (we have made its eyes, mouth and nose out of chocolat cookies, as we did for the mouth of the ghost cupcakes. The eyes of the ghost cupcakes were bought on Amazon).

To decorate the living room we have made several paper garlands with Halloween motives. Our inspiration came from the black napkins and paper glasses that we bought at Amazon and which had spiders in violet, orange and green. To fit this color scheme, we made pumpkins and bats and cut paper circles with a circle puncher. We made garlands with only pumpkins and circles, a second one with only bats and circles and a third one with both motives. To put the paper garland together we have positioned the motives and circles alternatively on a surface in order to realize the effect before actually sewing it with the machine. We have also bought ballon with the same colors which were all over the place!

We have also organized a few handcraft activities for the kids. We have asked Gabriel to make models so that the children could see what they were supposed to do, so he was quite proud to do it for them! We found inspiration for this mummy on No time for flash cards where we always find such amazing ideas: such a great site! All kids took their mummy home which we hope will be a souvenir of the good time they have spent with us.

Easy Halloween costumes: spider and bat

November 4, 2015December 6, 20151 Comment

2015 was the first year we celebrated Halloween with the children. To do so, we needed to find costumes which would be easy to make make and still please him (Gabriel) and be wearable (baby André). So we finally decided to make a spider costume for André and a bat costume for Gabriel.

Almost everything we used to make the spider costume was bought at H&M, online (we find it easier to buy online when we look for something very specific and going to the store almost always means finding nothing of what we’re looking for!): we used a black hoodie, 3 tights (they came in packs of black and grey-black stripes so we actually bought 2 packs) and a black baby bodysuit. We started by cutting 2 of the tights at the crotch level which we then filled with wadding so that they look like legs. To hide the place where we sewed them at the back of the hoodie we used an oval of felt with a grey cross on it, so that it looks like a cross spider. We positioned the legs so they have approximately the same distance between them and the arms (we though the baby’s arms and legs count as spider legs, so we needed 4 additional legs). To make the spider’s face we used white felt to make the eyes as well as two teeth. André was wearing black-grey striped tights so that the color of the legs alternated from black (the arms) to grey, black and again grey. We have chosen to do this so that the costume doesn’t look to dark and this is also the reason why we sewed a grey felt oval on his belly. The costume was very comfortable (André wore it for 4 hours without complaining and he could moved as usual).

To make the bat costume we have also bought a black t-shirt and the pants online (it was amazingly difficult to find a simple black t-shirt with nothing printed on it!). We had adored this costume and we did almost the same for Gabriel. To make the mask we cut a stripe of black felt where we cut the eyes. For the ears we used black and grey felt which we have reinforced so that were stiffer. This however was not enough to hold the ears straight once they were sewed on the mask so we used a toothpick which we inserted between both felt layers and secured by sewing thoroughly with a zigzag stitch so that it doesn’t hurt when touching the skull (we also cut the toothpick ends so that they were not sharp). To make the wings we cut black felt with the wings shape and a smaller shape in grey. We sewed them together using black thread on the grey felt so that we could clearly see the seam (we though it made it look more real). Sewing the wings on the t-shirt was a bit tricky but at the end it worked out just fine! Gabriel was quite happy with his costume.

Our first Halloween celebration was quite successful and we guess it will become a tradition. Next costume sewing: Carnaval!

Welcome Autumn!

October 15, 2015December 6, 2015Leave a comment

It’s Autumn, Ines’s favorite season! The colors of the leaves change and have inspired us to make a paper garland with autumn colored leaves. To do so, we have cut different shapes of leaves in orange, yellow, red and some in green transparent paper (you can find the paper we used here. We advice to use paper with at least 90 g/m2). We have sewn them together with a yellow thread one after the other, changing a bit their orientation.

Other then leaves with amazing colors in Autumn time, we also love going to the Kürbismarkt. It is an event that takes place once a year in our city where they sell lots of pumpkins: for decoration (by the way, that’s where we bought the ones shown in the picture above), for Halloween, to eat… Although its quite a small event we always go there because pumpkins are less expensive and they also have huge pumpkins our son loves to watch. This year we could even see them being transported using a mechanical shovel which is something all kids love to watch!

150 weeks in the daycare infographics

October 6, 2015December 6, 2015Leave a comment

The thing we have enjoyed the most to do for the last day our son Gabriel spent in the daycare (called Lukids) was an infographics with some of the information we thought best represented the time he spend there. We spent a great time gathering this information and figuring out how to illustrate it in order to share it with his teachers:

Initial and final age (illustrated with a picture and his favorite book), total duration in weeks and days (represented by the number of Morgenkreise, the moment where children get together in the morning)
Main physical and cognitive milestones: walk, jump, become dry, draw and paint, ride a bicycle, count, write his name
Fun facts: 1 daycare move and 10 different teachers, more than 40 gathered sticks, 1 head injury, 16 new teeth, additional 10 kg and 32 cm, 2 Carnaval costumes, more than 20 times fever, the duration of his longest nap

On the backside Gabriel signed a thank you message for each of the teachers.

To do the infographics we used Inkscape (by the way, the free software we use for all graphic designs, which you can get here). In order to have Gabriel’s signature and one of his drawings in a vectorized format we have used Inkpad, a software to hand draw on the Ipad. We have also used some fun fonts we thing we’ll use a lot in the future because… they are great! There are the two stamp fonts KG Tribeca Stamp and Randy Described Eternity, the label font fmz Embossed Label Light and the beautiful Freshman font from Jones Design Company, all of which you can use for free for non commercial use.

This post closes a series of posts where we shared all activities around this big event which was Gabriel leaving his first daycare and which we particularly enjoyed to make! (easy watercolor painting as teachers’ gift, rainbow frog crayon as goodbye gift for the children, rainbow frog cupcakes). We keep an excellent memory of the time Gabriel spent in LuKids and look forward to the coming time in his new kindergarten: Auf Wiedersehen Regenbogen, Hallo Frosch!

3 Easy watercolor techniques for kids

September 16, 2015December 10, 20151 Comment

Our son Gabriel will soon leave the Krippe (daycare for babies) and go to the Kindergarten. This big event has been keeping us busy for a while now and we will soon share with you some of the thighs we’ve been doing. We have decided to help Gabriel make a personalized small present for him to offer to each of his teachers. Because we have appreciated so much doing this watercolor painting with him (we find it quite easy and love the result), we have looked for different negative watercolor techniques one could use to write the teachers name (read at the bottom of the post how we made the letters out of masking tape).

Gabriel found the first watercolor painting technique quite funny because it used cotton buds (here’s where we got the inspiration). He has chosen 4 colors and started painting dots all over the surface by pressing the cotton bud vertically on the paper. We had to insist that he makes more dots on the letters so that we could read the name at the end.

In the second technique we used rubber bands to partially covered the surface on which we had already sticked the letters (here’s where we have got our inspiration). We have also asked Gabriel to choose the colors he wanted to use and then let him paint the surface by pressing a cylinder of foam (actually a small painting roll like these) on the paper. We let it dry between colors and took the rubber bands out only when it was completely dry.

Gabriel painting the rubber band watercolor

The last technique didn’t quite work as planned although we also like the result at the end. It was probably Gabriel’s favorite technique because it implied using a straw to bubble a mixture of watercolor, water and dish soap on the paper or just bubbling it for the fun on the cup filled with the paint mixture (here’s where we got our inspiration). Unfortunately we didn’t take pictures of the different steps but we show here the pictures of another painting we did before the one with the name, to test the technique. We started like in the other techniques by sticking the motive on the paper. We taped 3 straws together that Gabriel used to immerse in the paint mixture and slowly blow on the paper. If no bubbles were formed, he would also try to slowly blow again on the surface of the paper which often made the mixture bubble. We let the paint dry between colors. We find that the colors effet looks great but unfortunately the paint flowed under the masking tape and the probable reason for this is the big amount of water we used every time. We like the stars painting even if the negative of the stars is hard to see but in the case of the letters it was quite difficult to read the name. For this reason, we have decided to cut the letters and put a sheet of paper in one of the colors of the painting behind it. A bit more work but it looks great!

We sincerely hope that Gabriel teachers appreciate these small pieces of art and keep them as a remembrance of the wonderful 3 years Gabriel spent in the Krippe with them! A big “Thank you” to them!!!!

This is how made the letters of their names in masking tape in order to protect the surface of the paper not to be painted. The technique we used to do it has evolved as made all three of them. Here’s are optimized method 🙂

Print the letters/image you want to cut in an inverted manner (mirrored).
Tape the sheet of paper on a window with the printed side against it and tape the backside of the letters.
With a masking tape of a different color, tape the surface of the letters (this will help differentiate this first layer from the following one(s) which is important because the first one could be hard to stick out of the paper)
Take the sheet out of the window, turn it and cut the letters (this will be easy because you’re now facing the printed side of the paper)
Separate the letters in masking tape from the first layer of masking tape.
Stick the letters on the paper and start painting!

Watercolor art

September 8, 2015December 10, 20151 Comment

We have been looking for ideas for nice paintings for a future wall gallery and we were inspired by this painting made by children. We have chosen a circle size (actually a masking tape…) and prepared the paper for the painting by dividing the surface so that the space between the circles is the same. We then drew the circles with watercolor pencils and let Gabriel do the rest! We love the result and look forward to hang in on the wall.

Colorful snapshots of our art moment..

Lego Duplo animals

August 29, 2015December 10, 2015Leave a comment

We’ve been thinking of buying Gabriel “normal” Lego (here’s already 3,5 years old and he has tried to built Lego this sommer and was quite interested by it) but there’s actually a lot one can do with Lego Duplo! Here are some ideas of animals one can very easily built. We used round stickers for the eyes. There’s another advantage to keep building with Duplo: they are safe for babies, which means both brothers can play together!

Girafe

Turtle

Duck

Snake

Whale

Souvenir de Bretagne (recipe included!)

August 16, 2015December 10, 20151 Comment

We have brought a souvenir for our friends from our last holidays in Bretagne, the local “caramel au beurre salé”, a caramel sauce with salted butter. I must say I really like this sweet treat, to spread on the bread or to eat a spoon of it (just one!)… The jars of caramel looked really sad, with their golden cover, so we decided to personalized them a bit. For each of the jars we made a tag with Bretagne’s flag on one side and a personalized message saying we’ve thought about our friends when we were out there on the other one (we used Inkscape to make them with Jenna Sue and fzm Embossed Label fonts to write). We cut both sides of the tag with a scalloped circle puncher, glued them together and made a hole with a hole puncher. We used a black and white dotted fabric for the cover which we cut in a circle and held with a white elastic band. To cover the elastic band we used a thin black ribbon which we passed through the tag hole.

materials

printed tag

cutting the tag

finished jars

It wasn’t a lot of work and we really like the personalized result!

before and after

This has also inspired us to look for a good caramel recipe (we like a quite viscous consistency and the one we had was too liquid). Here’s a recipe we have tested and like a lot, for a small glas of caramel (to make a bigger volume simply multiply the ingredients, but be aware that bigger amounts are harder to make, it’s preferable to make it several times…):

Ingredients:

180 g of sugar
100 mL of cream
80 g of butter
pinch of salt (if you used salted butter, you’ll probably not need the salt)

Start by making the caramel by slowly melting the sugar (no water needed, just make it really slowly). Once you have the caramel done (more or less brown, depending on your taste), slowly add the cream you have previously made warm (if you add it directly from the fridge it will strongly boil!). Add the pinch of salt. Once all the cream is well mixed with the caramel take it out of the heat and pour it into a bowl. Now add the butter in pieces and mix well until you obtain a homogeneous mixture. Pour it into a jar and let it cool. Enjoy!

Summer fruit garland

July 20, 2015December 10, 2015Leave a comment

Every Saturday we come back from the market carrying several kilograms of fruit! And how inspiring they are…

We have made a new paper garland inspired by them. To do so, we cut shapes of cherries, slice of ananas, strawberries, blackberries and slices of melon on a bright color paper with white dots. We displayed the different fruits on the floor before actually glueing them together and on the string with tape to make sure they look nice and symmetric. We also made a chain paper garland (each element is made with 2×10 cm paper stripes) with the same paper to hang on the branches we have on the living room buffet to go along with the fruit garland.