The best season of all 2012- second week of December

Our quiet holiday preparations continue. As I've written before, I have toned down on crafts this year and try and vary activities. So the second week of December we:

Day 9: We read "Buying mittens" by Nankichi Niimi, since it became a holiday tradition for us of sorts. Kids traced their hands and decorated mittens using wax crayons.
D.'s creation:

Day 10: Christmas lights gazing. We drove around looking at pretty lights.

Day 11: Kids unwrapped new books in the morning. For C. it was "The Beasties by Jenny Nimmo, plus a chapter book for D.

Day 12: We went and bought our holiday tree. This year due to our home library (uncontainable) growth there was no room for a big tree, so we just got a tiny tree to put on a table

Day 13: Family movie night - Harry Potter! We also did some cute paper flowers for our trees with friends:

Day 14: D. and I tried our hand in origami again, and yet again were not quite successful. My dream of having a paper crane mobile in the kitchen is still far from reach it seems. We did have fun though (mixed with frustration) and managed two not quite pretty paper tables. We decided to make it our goal next year to master origami.

We listened to some holiday music, here is our favorite song of the week: Mika Nakashima-Yuki no Hana (Snowflakes)

Our books this past week can be found here, some holiday reads included.

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!

Last days of winter

With all this warm weather (minus today's icy drizzle) spring is really in the air. There were a few of winter books though we had to finish. So we decided we'll squeeze in one more winter art project.

We read Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner and talked about lives of animals in winter. The artwork in this book is really nice, it shows very nicely how animals spend winter under the snow.
 



This book prompted us to talk about our winter, how we spent it (lots of fun times outside and inside). We decided to keep a "window" opened to winter with a special round drawing. The idea for this project came from Discovering Great Artists: Hands-on Art for Children in the Styles of the Great by MaryAnn Kohl. We drew a big circle on a white sheet of watercolor paper tracing a pot lid. D. cut out this circle and drew his favorite moment inside using oil pastels (sledding downhill with friends). We then glued our circle drawing on a piece of black construction paper, D. also added snowflakes around drawing.

Snowy evening

Today we woke up and found spectacular snowfall outside. D. had wonderful time shoveling snow on the patio and we enjoyed some hot cocoa in the afternoon.

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to read more poetry, especially to kids, so today we read Stopping by the Woods on the Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. After reading and discussing the poem we did a little art project. The inspiration came from a handout for art teachers my mom brought for me from Motherland.
Here's the process
1.Child paints winter evening background on a wet paper with watercolors. D. used blue and some purple.
2. Fold a piece of card stock and draw half a tree on the fold. Carefully cut the tree out creating a stencil.
3. We used Faber-Castell gel sticks and gouache paint, but I think kid's paint will work fine too if not too diluted to stencil trees. We used black for trees standing further away (higher on the sheet), blue for those in the middle and brown for the closest trees. We added accents with metallic colored gel sticks and white paint.We also added falling snow.

Fun and simple art project.

the best season of all- days 6 and 7

Yesterday awe had a lovely, quiet day. I skipped baking on account of my mom's (we all live together) getting yummy treats from her student. So delicious!

We spent the day playing board games. D. loves playing chess with grandpa- such a special time for them both. D. made up his own, winter festivities inspired board game- rules are chaotic but we had fun racing from one site to another- castle, Santa's village and get away from aliens' ship too of course :D

We had such a warm autumn that yesterday was the first time we lit our fireplace- so nice and soothing!

Today we made some more holiday cards- this time for D.'s teachers from co-op.

I made Almond Crescent Cookies, which also became a tradition for us.

We read from The Book of Christmas edited by Neil Philip

I was buried in bed with books all of yesterday :) , today though I'm planning to watch:
Christmas In Connecticut (1945)  

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 :)

Somewhat lazy Monday

Not working too hard today for sure.
We even changed our regular routine. Granted D. is a kindergartner so there's not too much pressure to keep up with "schoolwork".
We are skipping writing practice worksheets because D. just acquired some pen pals (kids of my friends from a message board)   for both languages and he was busy composing some notes. He managed pretty fine for his age and level I think. And he packed letters in envelopes before I was able to get a camera in my hands.
I didn't expect his English writing be this good, he really made progress. I think this game helped a lot

he's been crazy about it lately and it sure pays off.
***
We also learned a little bit about senses today, especially sense of touch. We did a simple experiment:
I hid some toys with different textures in a sack and D. had to touch them and guess what they were. Then he had to try and do it again this time with gloves on his hands.

The second part of this experiment was to cover his eyes with thick scarf and guide him around the house. I made him touch different things- banister (metal), couch (leather), cat (warm fur), stuffed animal (man made fur), dishwasher (cool plastic), sink (ceramic), dinner table (wood)- he had the most fun with this one I think :) We had to repeat it and this time he had to guess which toy he was handled and whose hand he touched (baby C.- tiny soft hands, mom- big coarser hands).

We had another decent snowfall yesterday and it's a magic winter realm outside.

We even had a visit from a little neighbor:)

2011 takes off

Happiest New Year to all!

Another fresh page. I hope we fill it with fun and lovely memories.

We had a very quiet celebration. During the day we made a New year's crown for D. and with leftover templates we made a festive house picture (inspired by German houses at paintedpaper )

My mom baked a "Zebra" cake (recipe below). It is extremely popular where I grew up and very easy to make.

It's very peaceful in our house right now, and outside is a best present of all- snowy whiteness- first decent snow this season.

Zebra cake recipe:

For the cake:

2 c of all-purpose flour

1 c of sugar

1 c of sour cream or greek yogurt

3 eggs

half a stick (50 g) of butter

cocoa

0.5 tsp of baking soda

Beat eggs well, add sugar, beat again. Add sour cream, beat well. Add flour and  baking soda, mix until smooth.

2. Separate mixture in two bowls. Add cocoa to one bowl and mix well.

3. Pour the mixture in the form my adding a tablespoon of each mixture on top of each other, starting in the middle.

4. Bake for 20-25 minutes until toothpick is clean when inserted in the middle of the cake. Set cake aside to cool.

5. Top with icing of your choice (I prefer yogurt with berries or condensed milk mixed with 50 g of softened butter plus nuts and bits of chocolate on top).

6. Let sit for a few  hours in the fridge or serve right away. Yum!