150 weeks in the daycare infographics

150 Weeks In Daycare Infographics

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.

150 weeks in daycare infography

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’ giftrainbow frog crayon as goodbye gift for the childrenrainbow 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!

Rainbow frog crayons

RainbowFrogCrayons

We have decided to make “rainbow frog” crayons as a goodbye gift for our son Gabriel to give to his friends in his daycare center. The reason for this theme is is that he’s leaving the rainbow group in his current daycare and is going to the frog group in the kindergarten (he’s a big boy now!). To do so, we started by  taking the paper out of the crayons and then cut them in small pieces. We wanted to have a sort of rainbow effect so we cut them with the size of the silicon form where we later melt them and then filled the form with keeping the rainbow order of the colors. We let them melt in the oven at 120°C for around 15 minutes and then let them cool down. We made two of them for each kid which took a lot of time because the form only had two frogs shapes… We then put the crayons in a small plastic bag with a paper holding it where a message said “goodbye rainbow, hello frog”. On the back of the paper, a personalized message was written for every child. Gabriel was quite proud to give the crayons to each of his friends and of course, he also  got two for them. The crayon is very fun to use because of its different colors and the frog shape!

3 Easy watercolor techniques for kids

3EasyWatercolorTechniquesForKidsOur 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.

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 🙂

  1. Print the letters/image you want to cut in an inverted manner (mirrored).
  2. Tape the sheet of paper on a window with the printed side against it and tape the backside of the letters.
  3. 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)
  4. 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)
  5. Separate the letters in masking tape from the first layer of masking tape.
  6. Stick the letters on the paper and start painting!

Souvenir de Bretagne (recipe included!)

SouvenirDeBretagne

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.

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

before and after

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!