Before we knew it...

The spring has come, it means more time at the park, earthworms  waking up, birds singing...and new window display:-)

The Best Season of All 2013- 1st week of December

It's this time of year again!
This year we are continuing our tradition of activities-filled advent calendar.

This year even though I planned making something really stylish and unusual for a calendar, I ended up drawing a tree by popular request from kids. Under each ball there is an activity written for us to do. This year instead of mostly crafts I went for "special moments", this way none of us will be worn out by the end of the month.

Day 1: We made our traditional window display, coffee filters colored with metallic watercolors. This time we cut out gigantic snowflakes.

Day 2: We put some lights on the bush outside our window

Day 3: Baking cookies together!We made also out long time favorite chocolate cookies recipe here
Day 4: Lego Christmas trees:

Day 5: T-shirt decoration, I bought some white cotton t-shirts in Michael's (adult size too :D) and some fabric paint. We did our best painting some holiday pictures on them, kids had lots of fun and now wear these tees to bed and around the house.

Day 6: We attended Polar Express Story Time in local bookstore

Day 7: We made an attempt to create a snow jar. I was inspired by this pinhowever, kids didn't want to use any of their small animals and by the time they made up their minds it was too late to go hunt for new ones :) So D. just made a penguin out of playdough (weird color is due to the fact that all black dough was gone for some reason), a small fir was picked outside. Just add Epsom salt and here we have a snow jar (rather a candidate for "nailed it" meme I think) that kids pronounced "weird, but Christmassy"

Day 8: Snow!, so much snow outside! Kids are looking forward to rolling in it and cleaning the sidewalk. We are supposed to attend a concert today too, but I'm no sure about driving so far away, so we might not go after all 
We ended up going to see Denver Young Artists Orchestra and we had a marvelous time! Harry Potter suite was wonderful and put us in a holiday spirit.

We are reading books from Holiday List I made last year. So far kids watched "Chronicles of Narnia: the lion, the witch and the wardrobe" and Russian "Snow Queen" movie.

Happy Holiday Season to all!

Our May at a glance

We had and incredibly busy May, finishing 1st grade, sorting various troubles at home etc. Nevertheless we had fun too. Here are our activities at a glance: We made candles using kit by Shure. Nice, calming activity, although there was some struggle for who gets to hold the blow dryer to warm the wax:

We learned about Japan

We visited giraffes:

Created pinball machine for marbles (Thanks to my amazing friend for hosting this activity)

We started our Ancient Greece unit, D. is absolutely mad for myths and heroes. His passion may be best seen in his M.O.C. -Minotaurs'  labyrinth:

We read a lot, check out our May round up post for reading at my book blog.

We made another summer-y window display

We planted a container garden, our caterpillars from Insect Lore have arrived and now we are eagerly awaiting their transformation.


Looking forward for fun June!

The best season of all- day 1

Easing into winter and first little door in our calendar is open. We woke up to a delightful gift from Mother Nature- snow, so much snow everywhere!

We did some school, and pulled out our coffee filters and window art paints and created this year's window display. It's getting dark so early in our parts (it's night by 5 pm) that I barely had time to take a picture :)

It was sort of "Breakfast for dinner" event today as well and we celebrated the beginning of winter by eating raspberry-chocolate filled aebelskivers. Recipe found here.

We read "One Snowy Night" by Nick Butterworth (I wrote about this lovely book in Sleepy books post recently)



Great day!
Today's soundtrack : 



Movie for me tonight :)

Autumn...

Our autumn was especially beautiful this year. Now all the gold is almost gone from the trees, but I still want to share it here.

We did a window display again. Last year we did the most beautiful watercolor leaves out of coffee filters for our window. This year we decided to use tracing paper and wax crayons for more "cartoonish" effect. The result is a very cheerful window :)

Happy Friday to friends and visitors!

Butterflies

It so happens that May is always the Butterfly month in this house. It became an annual thing as it is third year in a row that we raise butterflies. This month caterpillars were a courtesy of D.'s co-op. We also had a trip to the Butterfly Pavilion with D.'s class.
Some books we enjoyed:
Backyard Bugs by DK publishing- lovely pop-up book that has interesting facts about insects

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is always a favorite, this time around we also read French version (we just started to learn French) "La Chenille Affamée" (or "La chenille qui fait des trous") power point presentation can be found here.

 Monarch Butterfly by Gail Gibbons is also great

Our trip to the Butterfly Pavilion was great, kids got to meet interesting critters and talk to one of the keepers about all kinds of creatures that live in the Pavilion. Afterwards we had a walk among the butterflies.

Macley's Specter Walkingstick

Chocolate Pansy

White Morphs

When we got home we found that both of our butterflies have emerged from their chrysalis, joy joy joy!

We made another window decoration to celebrate :

Tissue paper over clear contact paper cut into shape of a butterfly and voila :)


D.'s impression from the visit to the Butterfly Pavillion:

Flowers on the window

Our window display is blossoming :)

Spring Window display

Another window display.
This time we decided to make a "stain glass" leaves.
We cut out leaves from construction paper and then cut out middle par leaving only "frames". Then we applied frames to clear contact paper. Spring colored tissue paper pieces went inside.

window display- Valentine's edition

We loved the idea of having window display so much that we updated it yet again.
Same simple work- paint cofee filters with pretty valentine colors ( D. tends to lean towards purple :D), cut out hearts, attach with scotch tape and voila :)

The best season of all: day 2

A little crazy today, more work for me, more fun for kiddos :)
It was really warm today too, a decent snowfall is long overdue and I'm craving it.

Today we have winterized our window display (Valerie at Frugal Family Fun Blog had some great ideas), we made snowflakes and birdies out of coffee filters , and we made "lights"  using paints from Paint and peel window art kit.

I'm planning to see "Sun Valley Serenade" later tonight, great winter movie, not much of a plot but the music is great.