Life in Rondônia

New blog

2010-01-22T09:14:00.000-08:00

I've been re-organising my blogs and the time has come to move over to Casa Criativa. Over there I'll post in Finnish and in English about crafting and cooking. Welcome over!

Holidays (and lots of school related ramblings...)

2010-01-11T05:07:00.001-08:00

I had great plans about topics and themes we’d cover during the holidays with the kids. Well… My sister visited us for some three weeks over Christmas and New Year and my mum is still here with us until the end of January. So instead we’ve simply enjoyed holidays, which, I think hasn’t been that bad at all… We went to visit my sister-in-law in the countryside for a few days, went to a water park for a day and visited the state capital Porto Velho as my sister left. Above pictures from the water park and from Christmas.

December was spent pretty much at school for my part. I had seven students that didn’t pass English and had to take a week of extra classes and then another test. I actually quite enjoyed teaching only seven kids although they were from four different grades. We were able to play a few games and I was able to give lots of individual attention to each of them. It seems to have paid off: they all passed their test at the end of the week. In Brazilian schools teachers have an incredible amount of paperwork to do. There is a diary for each subject (in my case for each class) and you record what you taught and when as well as who was present that day. All grades go into the diary and at the end of the year you calculate the final notes and copy them to several different places inside that one diary. It’s not difficult but very time consuming and I must have spent hours completing all the diaries.

We did some homeschool work right in the beginning of December and just re-started today. I’m hoping to clarify some Finnish spelling to Luana as well as simple maths in Finnish. She’s simply out of practice with numbers in Finnish (although she does know them perfectly well) and she has only learned to write in Portuguese so now it’s time for Finnish. I’m also hoping we’d get back to the Outdoor Hour tasks especially now that the kids got a kids’ microscope for Christmas.

Luana will start English lessons at the same language school I teach in but that’ll be in the beginning of February. The kids have been asking for English lessons at home too so I might take a look into that as well.

The kids will change schools (from private to public) and will for the first time not be together in the same school. Luana will star first grade and Lucas still has two more years of pre-school left. The schools are right next to each other and they will take the same school bus there and back. I’m not worried about them being in different schools as they’re both very outgoing and definitely not shy. They’re both really excited about their new schools and new school uniforms. They will also get new backpacks this year and their old ones will go to kids that don’t have any. I think we might fill the bags with some stationary before passing them on to their new owners.

Today is a rainy day that will be spent indoors decluttering the house. I've already set aside clothes we don't use anymore and will tackle the kids' toys next...

More time for the fun stuff

2009-12-19T13:51:00.000-08:00

I'm finally finished with my classes. The summer holidays started officially a week ago but those who didn' t pass had to have extra lessons this past week. I had a few students who didn't pass English and I was at the school Mon-Fri giving them extra lessons. I was so relieved when they all passed on Friday! I still have to drop in on Monday and we have a lunch for all the personnell on Tuesday but officially my classes are over. I've talked to the director and he said he'll try to get me a contract for next year so fingers crossed!

We made a finger puppet theatre with the kids. Simply cut off the bottom of a box, added some paint and curtains and there you are. Got to see several funny plays the same day.

Most of my good crafting ideas and other activities are waiting for January as the Christmas and New Year festivities will be over and life will take a more mellow course. We're right now waiting for my sister to arrive (three more nights to go, YAY!) and enjoying my mum who's been with us for already a month.

We're focusing on Christmas now and are reading the whole story little by little from a children's Bible doing some crafting as well. I know I'll enjoy things slowing down a little bit and will throughly enjoy the holidays until the end of January.

Christmas cards

2009-12-19T10:33:00.000-08:00

We participated in the Christmas card swap organised by Kidscraftweekly as we did last year. It was such a thrill to receive the cards last year and I'm hoping we'll receive at least a few this year too. So far we haven't been lucky - our mail box has been empty - but I realise mail gets around slowly at Christmas time.

I love the Brazilian air mail envelopes with Brazilian colours!

And these are our cards this year. The kids had a good time making them and didn't need much help from me. I did the writing on the other side and they signed the cards. This year we sent cards to Australia and the US.

No time for the fun stuff

2009-10-26T19:14:00.000-07:00

I started a new teaching job some weeks ago and all of a sudden I have no time for the fun stuff with my kids... I work almost every afternoon and come home when it's almost time for the kids to go to bed. I'm at home in the mornings but that's when they're at school. That leaves us the weekends but as I'm working and we don't have anyone to clean the house and wash the laundry we end up spending a lot of time on Saturdays doing household chores. I'm not very happy about the situation but I realise that it's also good to work and get some experiences from here in my CV. Thankfully summer holiday starts soon enough (end of November for the kids and a little later for me), my mum is soon here as well as my sister and I've already got lots of nice ideas for the long holiday months (two if the kids continue in the same school and three if they go to a public school).

The kids did get to paint their faces and loved it! They got inspired after they saw the paintings my students had made at school (did I mention I get to teach one art class apart from all the English classes and I'm LOVING it!).

We also made loads of bead bracelets for a birthday party that I worked at last weekend. Luana was such a great sport about this; the beads weren't mine and she helped me making the bracelets without getting to keep one for herself. I did promise her we'd buy lots of beads for the holidays...

Here are some of the bracelets we made.

Basically all homeschooling activities are on hold at the moment and we're really looking forward to December when my mum and later on my sister will be over here and we'll have lots more time to spend together.

In our garden

2009-10-22T04:19:00.000-07:00

My husband covered the garden with a fine plastic mesh in order to create some shadow. This also protects the plants from heavy rain (rainy season is just around the corner so this is important).

Our broccoli never really happened. The plants grew very large and produced big leaves but never the actual broccoli. I have no idea what happened as I've never really gardened anything before. My husband's got more experience with gardening but he's never dealt with broccoli so we're clueless with this one... It's a shame though because broccoli is really expensive over here and I was really looking forward to growing our own.

Basil is doing great and that makes me really happy. There's no fresh basil sold here at all and I've really missed that.

We planted some strawberries that my sister brought from Spain. We're hoping this is a variety that tolerates heat well. Fingers crossed!

We also got some strawberries from a friend and they're all doing well. I have no idea when we might get our first strawberries though...

We're going through changes in the garden right now. Rucola and kale produced well and we'll plant them again. On our list we also have parsley, radish, lettuce and agrião (one type of watercress). We'll be eating from our garden by the end of the year again although gardens don't really thrive during the rainy season.

Teachers' Day

2009-10-15T19:25:00.000-07:00

Today was Teachers' Day and the kids had no classes. They had a small celebration at school yesterday and we made these portraits for their teachers Mariana and Edna. Both kids drew themselves with their teachers. Luana also wrote "teacher, I like you." :) I then cut hearts out of EVA and glued them on small magnets and we were done! I especially liked the fact that Lucas drew a halo above his own head. I bet he's a little saint at school! :D

Outdoor Hour

2009-10-15T18:42:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-29T07:46:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-23T06:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-20T11:56:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-31T20:55:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-14T18:40:00.000-07:00

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.

Outdoor Hour # 31 part II

2009-08-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

During our second outdoor hour last week we went to look at one plant in particular. I had seen it as I passed by and was curious to take a closer look.

It just happens that we have cotton growing around the corner by the street. I have no idea where that came from and I can't believe I've never seen it before but there it is now. The kids thought it was really exciting and we obviously picked some cotton to take home for an even closer look.

Luana spotted this pretty flower and wanted a picture of it.

Half-way through our walk we had something to drink at this tiny bar.

We some bananas growing by the river Mororó.

We passed through this quiet and cute street...

... and saw our own house (the white one) from a completely new angle. It took the kids a while to recognise it was actually our home.

This was such a nice walk. We had taken these route already before but that was ages ago and lots of things seemed different this time. The best thing during the walk was definitely the cotton :)

Outdoor Hour # 31 part I

2009-08-10T10:29:00.000-07:00

We actually did two nature walks looking at trees. This post is with pictures from the first walk when we mainly looked at what grows near our house and which trees can we actually name.

The one the kids always remember: papaya (carica papaya) or mamão in Portuguese.

Lucas spotted this achiote (bixa orellana) seedpod. In Portuguese the plant is called urucum and the name comes from the indigenous Tupi word uru-ku meaning red.

The kids also recognised these two: coconut and mango.

This is cashew tree (anacardium occidentale). In Portuguese it's called caju, which comes from the Tupi word of acaiu meaning "the nut that produces itself".

This is river Mororó, flowing very peacefully at this time of the year.

This horse was one of the favourite things of this walk.

Outdoor Hour # 30

2009-08-01T11:01:00.001-07:00

This was supposed to be weeds and seeds but we concentrated on the weeds only. At first I read the kids a story from this book:

In the story the kids shrink and are able to go and visit seeds underground. They see how carrot seeds start sprouting (above) and visit onion ladies (below). They also hear the weeds boasting about how they won't let the small carrots grow and they promise the carrots that they'll pull all the weeds out the next day.

The kids already know the story but don't mind hearing it over and over again. Apart from the story we also love the illustrations.

This is part of our garden. The picture was taken about a week ago when we did this study and the difference is already huge; everything seems to grow so fast! Closest to the camera are kale (Brassica oleracea Acephala group), then rocket (Eruca sativa) and closest to Lucas dill (Anethum graveolens). We also have spring onion, basil, broccoli, green beans and maxixe growing.

We pulled some weeds from the dill and the kids thought it was great fun. I picked dill for them to work with as the leaves are so clearly recognisable that I knew they would be pulling only weeds and not the dill :) They obviously also got to taste some dill and thought it was yummy.

We also took a look at the weed situation in the front yard and found some amongst the grass. We also marvelled at the blooming heliconia (above) and the almost ripe cherry tomatoes (below).

Crafting

2009-07-25T19:26:00.000-07:00

We went to a birthday party tonight and I made a little something for the 7-year-old birthday girl. I used a washed can that I had kept and covered it with EVA. The little notebook has EVA cover and it was bound at a copy shop (or whatever they're called in English...). Below there's a close up on the can. The idea came from here.

We created small notebooks with the kids at the orphanage a week ago. The kids made the covers with EVA and I had the notebooks bound for them. I think they came out really cute. Next time I'll put a cardboard or a plastic behind the notebooks though as they'll be more resistant.

Winter holidays

2009-07-16T18:52:00.000-07:00

The kids have two weeks off from school and we're all enjoying the winter holidays. After this it's school until the end of November and then they'll have a lot longer summer break. It's been surprisingly calm at home. I've tried to have something planned for them should they need an activity. We've done most of the things I had planned to do with them. Other than that they've played a lot outside enjoying their new swing that daddy made for them recently.

I added some new rhymes to the bag. It was painted by Luana when she was just over two years old and in nursery in Finland. The cards represent rhymes and songs and the kids get to pick them one at a time. We hadn't used the bag for a while and it was great fun; we went through the entire bag at one go! :)

Some sticker activities are always a hit. I just cut different coloured stickers into squares and let them go for it.

The kids washed their bikes with great care and attention. Playing with water is always popular due to the heat.

Yesterday they rode their bikes to visit grandma. Lucas still needs a lot of practice especially when the streets aren't paved (which is the case very often over here). He's not too good with brakes either so I have to be close by all the time...

I'm about to finish my motorbike and car driving lessons (the test is next Wednesday, yikes!) and I've got lessons every morning until then. It's been a little hectic because of the lessons but thankfully our niece who lives with us has been extremely helpful taking care of the kids, cleaning up and preparing lunch.

Outdoor hour # 28

2009-07-13T11:03:00.000-07:00

This week we took a closer look at dragonflies. We have plenty of these flying around but again it was so hot that we didn't do a nature walk. Dragonfly was the last in my collection of dead insects and now we'll move on to study trees. As we observed the dragonfly I told them about how they are born, what they eat etc. Even the kids' cousin joined us in our study today.

The kids were most impressed by the beautiful wings and the huge eyes.

The picture on the top is Luana's and the other two are Lucas'. I did draw their attention to the shape of the dragonfly's body but it still didn't really come out in the drawings. Bless them :)

Edit. I'm beginning to think this is a damselfly instead of a dragonfly. I bet they have different names in Finnish too but we simply used the one people mainly use when talking about dragonflies/damselflies...

Apostle Paul's life

2009-07-09T18:18:00.000-07:00

Recently we studied apostle Paul's life with the kids. First we sat outside and I told them about Paul's encounter with Jesus and how he was blind for three days. I blindfolded the kids and gave them different objects to identify. I then led them blindfolded to the library where we sat and took a look at the map of Paul's jorneys (now already without the blindfolds!). We drew some imaginary maps of our own and then I told them about Paul and Silas in the prison. We made pictures of the two in the prison with the stone walls coming down (Lucas' picture below).

The next day we talked about Paul's journey to Rome and before bath time I asked the kids to build a Lego boat with some passengers in it. Once in the shower we played the storm and the shipwreck and the kids wanted to do it over and over and over again :)

The following day we learned about Paul's letters and read some verses from the Bible. We then wrote letters to Finland (which I still haven't mailed...).

It was nice to do a study on three consecutive days as the kids remembered well what we had talked about the day before and it was easy to pick the story up from where we had left it. I had planned to do all of these activities on one Saturday but the kids' attention span just wasn't enough so I decided it was best to leave some of the activities for the next days. We might do this with some other Bible characters later on.

Outdoor Hour #26

2009-07-08T18:20:00.000-07:00

Ladybugs were a fun theme that the kids liked a lot. We saw lots of ladybugs in Finland last summer but haven't really seen any over here. We looked at different kinds of ladybugs on the internet and inspired by the images the kids produced the ladybugs above.

We also talked about their life cycle as well as aphids in general. The kids were amused by the relationship of aphids and ants.

The ladybugs below are about 20 cm in diameter and we stuck them on the wall by the blackboard in our library/study room.

Outdoor Hour #27

2009-07-08T17:58:00.000-07:00

I'm sooo behind in posting things and I just realised I'm posting in the wrong order... Ladybugs were supposed to be first and bees after them. But here goes...

We studied bees quite recently although we had made big cardboard bees with pipecleaner legs (first picture) already earlier. It's so hot outside at this time of the year that we don't really want to venture outside until much later in the evening. Hence our nature studies haven't involved a nature walk for a while. Instead we look at pictures on the internet, craft and talk about different insects.

We drew this beehive and the kids decorated it with small bees.

It opens up so that you can see what's inside. The kids practiced some hexagons, coloured some (honey) and again decorated with some bees that we glued on.

We also baked a honey cake and have been enjoying honey in general :)

Cute pegs

2009-07-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

I got the idea for these cute pegs from this creative blog. I prepared these four and we made lots more with the kids at the orphanage where I volunteer (I do crafting with the kids once a week). The material is EVA and I used a black permanent marker for drawing the eyes, mouths etc.

The kids at the orphanage loved these and asked for more. Next week we'll decorate pens and I'll come up with something else from the same material for them.

Been busy

2009-06-05T05:59:00.000-07:00

Last week and weekend were really hectic. We had our monthly birthday celebration in Sunday School and as I'm the only teacher in my group at the moment I was the one who had to bake the cake. The very same Sunday there was a baby shower at the orphanage. One of the girls is going to have a baby boy soon and it was also her birthday. I had volunteered to bake two cakes; one for her and one for the baby. Saturday and a good part of Sunday were then spent in the kitchen. You can take a look at the cakes in my foody blog over here.

We spent last week cleaning up the house and emptying our guest room. It had turned into my husband's little office full of computer parts and tools. We needed the room empty so that our niece could move in on Monday this week. Her parents moved to the countryside but she's in her final year of high school so it's best for her to stay here and finish off her studies instead of changing schools at this stage.

In addition to the cakes I also prepared little birthday gifts for Sunday school (first picture) as well as small baby shower favours for the orphanage (second picture).

This week has been a lot calmer although the kids have kept me busy as they're extremely excited over having their cousing living with us. We'll get back to Outdoor Hour challenges and other homeschooling stuff next week.

Outdoor Hour # 25

2009-05-23T11:11:00.001-07:00

This time we took a closer look at houseflies. It wasn't the most pleasant topic but it was good that the kids also learned about the importance of not letting flies close to your food etc.

We checked out the life cycle of flies from here. We also tried to watch the video of houseflies that Barb recommended but it didn't work for some reason. Might check that later on though.

Lucas drew a giant fly (on the left), a man that's looking after it (the one with the read hair sitting on a chair), a horse and a princess.

Blogger decided this picture looked better this way... Luana drew a woman riding a horse and a man walking. Oh, and there's a fly on the sky too :D

Recycling

2009-05-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

My husband started a degree in Environment Management (or Gestão Ambiental) earlier this year and ever since the environmental issues have been an increasingly popular topic of discussion at home. I've always been on the greener side of things and my husbans's never really opposed to anything ecological that I've suggested. Now that he's studying the field himself he's constantly learning new facts about the state of the environment and getting small wake-up calls I guess.

Recycling (as done in Finland for instance) is quite difficult over here. I do realise things are different in the bigger cities in Brazil but we live in a small rural town where many things are still unknown or total novelty. There's no organised recycling at all. You can take metal to certain small entrepreneurs that actually pay you for it. However no one recycles glass, paper, plastic or organics. My tactic is to reduce waste as much as I can as well as recycle everything I can inside our own house.

My husband now has to come up with a project that deals with recycling in one way or another. His group decided to renovate a few rooms at the local orphanage (where I also volunteer) and use as much recycled materials as possible. Needless to say the orphanage manager was thrilled at the idea and the group has now started working on it. Our yard looks like a recycling centre as most of the ten group members bring used plastic bottles and other things to be stored at our house... I keep telling myself it's for a good cause and it'll only be for a while :)

Seriously though we had a good time yesterday with the kids cleaning up the bottles and cutting some of them in order to make a prototype of a small seat out of the bottles. I'll post the step-by-step instructions as the first one is done!

The Simple Woman's Daybook

2009-05-19T08:30:00.000-07:00

FOR TODAY May 19th... (yes, I do realise it's already Tuesday...)

Outside my window... it's sunny with blue skies and a little windy; perfect laundry weather!

I am thinking... about spending most of the afternoon at home with the kids and doing some nice things.

From the learning rooms... insect study concentrating today on houseflies.

I am thankful for... every moment I get to spend with my kids. Now that I've got some busy afternoons I really miss staying at home all the time.

From the kitchen... I'm feeling a bit of a lack of inspiration at the moment... It'll be rice and beans for lunch today in a true Brazilian style.

I am wearing... leggings and a summer shirt. It's really hot as the rainy season is finally coming to an end.

I am creating... new ideas for crafting with the kids at the orphanage.

I am going... to teach English this afternoon.

I am reading... teaching material and still the theory booklet for driving school... The exam will be on May 28th!

I am hoping... my cakes turn out yummy for Sunday's baby shower at the orphanage.

I am hearing... birds in the garden and some cars passing by.

Around the house... some cleaning is waiting to be done :)

One of my favorite things... is to hang laundry when the weather is as gorgeous as it is today.

A few plans for the rest of the week: vol work at the orphanage, lots of nice stuff with the kids during the afternoons, yummy baking and some Spanish lessons at the language school.

Here is the picture thought I am sharing...

This is something we created with my husband during the weekend for our living room wall.

You can find more daybooks here.

Outdoor Hour # 24

2009-05-14T18:16:00.000-07:00

This time we were off to study crickets and unfortunately I don't have any of those in my collection on dead insects :) I knew some of our books happen to have crickets and grasshoppers in their illustration so I asked the kids to find them. Lucas went through two smaller books and Luana took the bigger book in order to find the cricket.

The kids made drawings looking at the books' illustrations and I told them about how the crickets lay up to 2000 eggs at one time. Luana was so impressed by this that she drew loads of eggs in her drawing :) Lucas decided to draw a mantis (that was a new word in English for me!).

We also talked about different beliefs involving crickets here in Brasil. Depending on its colour a cricket is said to bring illness, wealth or hope. They are also said to predict a pregnancy in the household.

And look what the kids found just outside our front door later on this afternoon! What a perfect timing!

Prayer request

2009-05-07T20:41:00.000-07:00

Please pray for little Noah who's dealing with some really difficult health issues. You can read his mama's blog here.

Homeschooling in May

2009-05-06T08:34:00.000-07:00

Butterflies related to our Ourdoor Hour theme the kids made last week.

Our homeschooling has been really irregular lately and I figured I should focus more on the planning (and actually executing my plans). So I thought I'd write down my expectations for this month.

Finnish:

May 12th is the day of Snellmann (a Fennoman philosopher and a statesman) and I want to use the opportunity to enforce the use of the language. We speak Finnish all the time but lately we haven't sat down to read, sing etc. as much as we used to do. So this month more reading, poems and songs in Finnish. I will encourage Luana to read one small book each week and to work on her reading journal. I discovered a great site that Luana can use by herself in order to practice writing and reading in Finnish (as well as a host of other skills) in here.

English:

I want to introduce the notions of singular and plural (the kids already have some vocabulary so we can practice those). I'm also going to work on "I have", "I like" and "I am". Depending on how that goes we might expand these into other persons as well. I'm actually curious to see how they'll handle verbs as we've only learned nouns until now.

Outdoor Hour:

I don't have any specific goals or expectations other than completing one task each week. Luana should have her cast off this weekend so we can do our nature walks again.

Bible Study:

I'd like to be a bit more creative with our Bible Studies. The children's Bible we use has great illustrations but I'm going to do some arts and crafts related to what we've studied each week.

Arts and crafts:

Crafting has been happening but not as much as the kids (or I indeed) would have liked. I think I've been a bit disorganised with my time during the afternoons. I'm hoping to explore more the idea of a weekly theme and I'm hoping that'll help me to supply the needs of my little craftaholics :)

This afternoon it'll be English with animals from the zoo for us.

Outdoor Hour # 23

2009-05-06T06:36:00.000-07:00

It was time to study yet another dead sample of my collection and this time it was a moth. We observed the moth with the magnifying lense and talked about the differences between butterflies and moths (which in Finnish are called simply "night butterflies").

I encouraged the kids to divide their paper in two sections and to draw a butterfly on one side and a moth on the other side. Lucas drew a huge sun and a butterfly underneath it (see it? It's his first ever butterfly and he was sooo proud!) :) On the other side he drew a moon (see it? It's his first ever moon and he was again sooo proud!). Later on he also drew a moth underneath the moon.

This is Luana's picture. We did discuss the colouring of the moths but the one on the right is however a moth (see the stars and the full moon that tell you it's night?) :)

Best part of this task was by far Lucas' joy of his new drawings.

The Simple Woman's Daybook

2009-05-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

FOR TODAY May 4th...

Outside my window... it's already dark.

I am thinking... about my friend's daughter who's having a difficult time coming to terms with her parents' divorce.

I am thankful for... all the chores completed today as well as for my first theory lesson in the driving school.

From the kitchen... I can still smell the chocolate cake baked earlier today.

I am wearing... shorts, tank top and socks (because of the mosquitoes, not the cold!)

I am creating... a menu for this week.

I am going... grocery shopping tomorrow.

I am reading... blogs that I've discovered recently, some teaching material for Spanish lessons and the theory booklet for driving school.

I am hoping... I'll get the necessary medical exams for driving school done this week.

I am hearing... loud cicadas (tibicen linnei) and our dogs barking at passers by.

Around the house... it's quiet.

One of my favorite things... is to sit down and relax with a cup of tea and read the Bible.

A few plans for the rest of the week: grocery shopping on Tue, voluntary work at the orphanage on Thu and Fri, ladies' dinner at church on Fri.

Here is the picture thought I am sharing...

Some flowers I received from the kids today.

This is the first time I'm participating in the Simple woman's daybook. You can participate here.

Outdoor Hour # 22

2009-04-29T06:52:00.000-07:00

This week's theme was butterflies. I've been really lucky with dead insects lately (if you can call that being lucky...). I've collected a few dead houseflies, a butterfly, a moth and a dragonfly and kept them in glass jars for the upcoming Outdoor Hour challenges. I'm not much into insects but looking at the kids' joy when they study different things through the magnifying lense is so gratifying that it makes me want to collect even dead insects :D

This post is a little different in that the kids took all of the pictures. This is the dead butterfly that I found on the porch the same morning I had planned to do this challenge (and yes, that's Lucas having a mini melt-down on the background, can't remember what that was all about...) :D

We talked about the different stages of the butterflies and made a notebook page about them. These are the eggs that Lucas drew.

This is Luana's butterfly.

And this is Lucas' version of a butterfly.

We're planning to take on moths today. There's a dead one already waiting in the glass jar :)

busy busy busy

2009-04-29T06:42:00.000-07:00

We (or I) have been quite busy the last couple of weeks. Some unexpected things happened also... Luana fractured her ankle walking home from a kid's party near our house. Initially we thought that she had just twisted her ankle real bad but the x-ray revealed a tiny fracture. So she'll have a cast for a month or so and there won't be any ballet for her for a while. Our Outdoor Hours have been reduced as well and I'm trying to do activities without having to walk anywhere...

We were left without water for over 30 hours last week... Something broke at the local water company and the whole town was without water. Luckily we have a well on the other side (the house that's rented at the moment) so we got some water from there. It was a good wake up call though and we've had long discussions about our water consumption with my hubby. We're going to make some improvements around the house and we've also been talking about how not to waste water with the kids.

Last week there was an international crusade in our church and I was the interpreter for three foreign evangelists. They came from Norway, South Africa and the US. It was really good as I like interpreting but haven't been able to do it for a while. The whole campaign was a real blessing.

Will be posting about the latest Outdoor Hour in a minute!

The Day of the Indigenous people

2009-04-18T12:51:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the national Day of the Indigenous people (Dia do Índio). We started already today and did some painting. We looked at different facial paintings on the internet and the kids picked the ones they liked best. I then tried to recreate them on their faces...

The kids then proceeded to painting the rest of their bodies as that's what they love doing.

I'm planning a lapbook about indians for tomorrow...

First lapbooks ready

2009-04-18T12:34:00.000-07:00

After our last Outdoor hour I thought we could study snails a little more. All of a sudden Luana asked if we could learn some more about snails as we had seen so many in the back yard so that was it :) I prepared lapbooking material and made some research about giant African land snails (Achatina fulica) and we set to work.

The lapbooks are green and they have a snail on the cover (surprisingly enough!) :)

Luana's lapbook on the top and Lucas' on the bottom of the picture. It's a little difficult to see some of the things as the background is brown. We however wrote down the maximum size and the age of the snails. On the two white squares on the top right there's the climate and the food the snails like. In the end we drew the kids' hands and wrote "wash your hands" on them. The the snails transmit diseases and that's why hygiene is really important. This highlighted the importance of not touching the snails with bare hands and always washing one's hands after playing outside.

We glued some snail "eggs" underneath a piece of brown paper as the eggs are usually under some kind of a cover.

I was so pleased with these and the kids really enjoyed doing them. I'm planning to do our next lapbook on Brazilian indigenous people...

For the kids' teachers

2009-04-09T11:05:00.000-07:00

The kids decorated empty egg shells. With these little chicks we wished their teachers a Happy Easter.

Underwater diorama

2009-04-09T10:28:00.000-07:00

We've been working on this for quite some time now. First we did some glittery fish, then another day the starfish and finally (already some time ago) the crabs. Then we painted some A4s to fit the underwater world and glued them on the inside of a cardboard box. We put some stones inside and I hung the fish and voilá! The kids were happy with the result and they proudly show it to anyone visiting our house.

All inspiration from the Underwater issue of Kids Craft Weekly.

Easter crafting and a sleep over

2009-04-06T19:08:00.000-07:00

My friend's daughter (and Luana's best friend) slept at our house this weekend. On Saturday morning we did some Easter crafting with the kids.

Choosing the stripes for the Easter egg...

And this is how they came out.

On Sunday we did these little eggholders out of empty toilet rolls.

Outdoor Hour # 20

2009-04-06T18:44:00.000-07:00

We went over to our neighbours' side of the fence and checked out our guava tree that we started studying earlier on. I asked the kids whether they remembered how the tree was back then and they remembered the parrots and the abundance of fuits.

This time we found one ripe guava (that unfortunately had some insects so we couldn't eat it) and LOTS of snails. I knew snails can get to many places but that they climb trees... I had to tell the kids not to use the swing that hangs from the tree as these snails spread diseases and even touching the slime can be unhealthy.

We also discovered many more snails in our neighbours' backyard and gave them a hand in getting rid of the ones we saw. The doggy on the other side of the fence is our 6-month-old puppy Oona.

On a more positive note then we realised that the marigold seeds we planted already some time ago are actually becoming flowers! I had already given up on them but hadn't thrown them away. Two survived the lack of attention and pouring rain/hot sun and we finally planted them in our garden. I'm not a gardener type at all but it sure is gratifying to see the seeds grow into flowers :)

This is the other one that survived: a gourgette also seems to want to bloom. If I ever get a gourgette out of this one I bet it'll be the most delicious gourgette ever! :)

I thought we should take a better look at the snails and learn a bit more about them with the kids. And to my surprise Luana suggested that we'd study snails tomorrow! Not sure if we'll have time tomorrow but some time this week.

Easter crafts continued

2009-04-02T18:04:00.000-07:00

Today it was time for Easter cards bigger and small. I cut the shapes and the kids arranged and glued them. I'm planning some yummy treats for the neighbours' kids and I think these little cards will go with the treats.

Easter crafts started!

2009-04-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

We made these super cute easter rabbits with the kids yesterday. Both took their rabbits to school today and Lucas left his for his teacher :) I also made these today in the orphanage with the kids there and they were quite a success. The idea is, once again, from Kids Craft Weekly.

Reading journal

2009-04-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

As Luana now clearly can read I introduced a reading journal hoping it will make her want to read by herself. I drew a few lines on the top of each page so that she can copy the name of the book there. Underneath the lines I drew three faces with different expressions so she can indicate what she thought of the book. The rest of the page is for her to draw something about the story or for me to write what she told me about the book.

This is the very first book she read all by herself and it's called "A party in the school". She thought the book was ok and chose to draw a scene where the children act out the sleeping beauty. She also had a go at writing "in the school there was Sleeping Beauty". I thought it was cute and she's really excited about her journal!

Kids' cold porcelain jars

2009-04-01T06:54:00.000-07:00

As soon as our new crafting table arrived the kids wanted to use it and we decorated some cold porcelain jars. I had made the biscuits already so they simply picked the ones they wanted to use. They told me which colours they wanted for the lid and I helped them to put the lids on. Then they made some decorations for the jars and glued everything on.

This is my jar from the same day. It was so difficult to take a picture of this one but it's a sleeping baby anyhow :)

Outdoor Hour # 18 and # 19

2009-03-30T17:55:00.000-07:00

We've been working on both pollen and seeds over the last week. Sometimes on purpose (like today) and sometimes accidentally (like the other day when I saw a bee as I was washing the dishes, captured it and called the kids to observe it so that we could release it as soon as possible).
This was the best example of pollen we could find in our garden. The beautiful flower reminds unknown but we like it in our garden :) It was easy to get some of that yellow pollen on our fingertips.

This is the bee I managed to capture in the kitchen the other day. The kids thought it was well exciting to watch it this close. It was just that the bee was probably so upset inside the jar that it was flying around so fast it was difficult to observe it with the magnifying lense (let alone take pictures of it!).

Yesterday we went to the countryside just a little outside the city and as I knew we'd be looking at seeds we collected some from there. On the top left are the seeds of that orange flower in the first picture, the ones on the top right are the seed pod and the seeds of urucu (although these didn't have any red colour on them anymore), the ones on the bottom left are of cacao and the top right ones of some unidentified tree. We'd never seen blue seeds and these are so incredibly blue it's almost untrue :)

Later on today Luana drew some seeds and we made a drawing together featuring butterflies, a bee and some flowers and their seeds.

Glittery fun

2009-03-20T04:42:00.000-07:00

I was hugely inspired by the Glitter issue of Kids' Craft Weekly so we did glittery crafting this week. First we tried out the glitter and glue prints made with cookie cutters. The kids loved them and went on dipping their fingers in glue and painting their own figures and then covering them with glitter.

Yesterday we made our own glitter-glue-paint. So little was needed for so much fun. The kids absolutely loved this and I also painted some small things for decorating cards later on.

Obviously the inevitable happened - when my kids see paint and paintrbushes they ALWAYS end up painting their hands, legs, tummies etc. This time was no different and it was glitter paint all over :)

We had recently talked about the birth of Jesus and they both painted a scenery of the pastors in the field (stars in the night sky and cotton for lambs). After that they went on painting lots of different things. And they went on and on until all paint was finished :)

Luana painting Lucas' hand :)

Outdoor Hour # 17

2009-03-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

We're still here! Last couple of weeks have been somehow hectic. We've been a bit
poorly (Luana even had to be admitted to the hospital due to a serious diarrhea) but thankfully we're recovering now. Homeschooling activities were suspended for a moment but I've got things organised again and we'll pick up from where we left a couple of weeks ago.

This time we studied leaves that we could find in our own garden. It's been really hot today so we didn't venture anywhere further than that :) This is what we found:

(top left) papaya, ixora, guava, some small unidentified leaf
(bottom left) tomato, "comigo-ninguem-pode" (dieffenbachia), manioc

We also sat in silence for a while and I asked Lucas to listen to three different things and Luana to identify five different things. First there was some laughter and I thought they wouldn't be able to sit still but eventually we managed. Lucas heard a motorbike and people talking. Luana heard a bird singing, people talking, a motorbike, some music and someone walking on the street.

Some other things we observed were the red and yellow ixoras that are blooming in the garden, our cherry tomatoes that are ripening, several East African land snails (a real pest that spread diseases over here) and even a small airplane flying over our house (something that very rarely happens as there's no airport in our little town).

Luana's entry for today. We did some leaf rubbings but she wasn't so keen on them. Instead she chose to draw a read ixora as well as a rose (which we didn't actually see today...).

All in all a very pleasant afternoon spent with the kids. They sure were happy to get back to the Outdoor challenges!

Today's jars

2009-03-05T12:42:00.000-08:00

I made these jars today. Some came out just the way I had imagined, some didn't quite :) It was great fun making these though. And yes, I do realise that the rabbit still needs eyes...

Blogger turned this one for me but this is the lid of the candy jar (see last picture).

EVA magnets

2009-03-05T12:39:00.000-08:00

I've got plenty of EVA at home as I use it for making flowers. The other day the kids wanted to craft "anything" so we made these small magnets. The butterfly and the turtle on the right are Luana's and she made them all by herself. I cut the car after Lucas' instructions (he picked the colours and the decoration). When we were done we glued a magnet on the other side and let the glue dry until the next day. Very easy and the kids would have made many more had we had time for that.

Around the corner

2009-02-28T18:59:00.000-08:00

We went for a walk around the block just to see the river Mororó flooding yet again (se pictures in my other blog). On our way home we found this big bush in front of an abandoned house. We went to take a closer look...

... and realised it's passion fruit. The flower is so interesting and different.

We also spotted lots of fruits that are't ripe yet. I'll make sure we'll get back a little later hopefully to pick some fresh passion fruit for a yummy juice :)

Ice cream

2009-02-28T12:35:00.000-08:00

This idea is yet again from Kids Craft Weekly and I've been meaning to do this for a while already. The kids have been into playing in their little kitchen so I thought this one would fit in nicely.

Cutting all the ingredients.

Lucas making ice cream balls.

Luana cutting decorations.

And finally the ice cream parlour opened!

My cone with strawberry ice cream, cherries, strawberries and a waffle.

Cold porcelain jars

2009-02-27T09:46:00.000-08:00

We made a cookie jar with our teacher last week. These cookies are made with forms but I made some at home by myself and they look quite real too.

These small jars are for my kids. I wanted to practice making little people without forms and I had as a reference two key chains that someone else had made out of cold porcelain. It took me ages (an hour and 40 minutes) to complete these two and there are still lots of things to do better next time... The kids loved them however :)

Green Hour challenge 15

2009-02-21T06:44:00.000-08:00

It's been raining hard for several days and this morning was no different. I've been postponing this challenge for a while now because it's been impossible to go out and draw anything. Today I decided we'll do the challenge no matter the weather. So we took a virtual tour of our garden and looked at the pictures I've taken of our flowers.

We counted the petals and looked at the different shapes. We first drew the flowers with pencils and then coloured them using water colour pencils (you colour normally with the pencils and then paint over them with a wet paint brush in order to create a water colour effect).

Blogger unfortunately turned the pictures around but I guess you'll get the idea :)

Cold porcelain with the kids

2009-02-16T06:33:00.001-08:00

On Saturday I sat down with the kids and let them play with cold porcelain. We had a couple of colours and my intention was to make play food. Lucas came up with super cute popsickles all by himself. Luana made a fantasy cake as well as some smaller things and I "baked" some cakes for small dolls. It was so much fun that we'll definitely do this many more times together.

First works

2009-02-16T05:50:00.000-08:00

We finished our first jars on Friday. The one on the left is my mum's and the one on the right is mine.

Our hands are itching to get new forms, colours and empty jars! :) We'll learn new things on Wednesday and will buy some new colours on Tuesday. There's supposed to be a fairly good shop with crafting supplies in a town about 40 minutes from us and we're hoping to visit there soon.

Cold porcelain

2009-02-12T09:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was invited to a friend's house to learn how to make cold porcelain (or biscuit) as it's called over here in Brazil. This is a technique that apparently started in Argentina and is very very popular in Brazil. There are some Brazilian websites here (she also has things in English), here and here. The paste is extremely easy to make (the link above has a slightly different recipe from the one we used but I'm sure that'll work as well) and it can be moulded by hand or using small silicone molds.

You have to excuse me for the quality of the pictures. The light was all funny and somehow the macro wasn't working as I wanted it to... I'll post more pictures as I get something done myself. We'll have our following lesson next Wednesday and I have some homework to do :)

It's great fun and highly addictive. I borrowed some molds off my friend but I'm dying to get my own already! The opportunities are endless and we just bought a magazine full of great ideas and models.

Green Hour challenge 14

2009-02-12T08:55:00.000-08:00

We finally managed to find some wild flowers (it seems this just isn't a good wild flower season in our neighbourhood...) and pressed them last week. A few days later we took a closer look at them and the kids absolutely wanted to use the magnifying lense again. We had three flowers; some species of clover, a flower from an acerola tree and a red unidentified flower. The acerola flower was so tiny and became so transparent after pressing it that it was hard to even see it properly so we ended up with just two flowers to take a closer look at.

We also observed the plants we planted a few weeks back. Now I really have to admit I'm no good for seeds, sprouts and growing things in general. I do like the idea but somehow I always manage to forget about taking care of the plants... :) We had planted marigolds, leek, basil and zucchini. Some of the seeds were a little outdated but we thought we'd give it a try anyway. Well, basil and leek never even sprouted but zucchini and the marigolds did. It was all very exciting and in the beginning we'd take the pots outside when it wasn't too hot and inside when the sun was too bright or the rain too heavy. We forgot them out in the rain a few (?) times and at the moment we've got a few sprouts of both zucchini and marigold going strong. I'm hoping to plant them on the ground this week.

We then took a look at what's happening in our garden at the moment. That same morning our lovely plumeria (or frangipani) had fallen all by itself and that had left a gap in the garden. Here's that lovely orange flower again, I still haven't managed to identify it... :)

Fortunately we have a smaller plumeria growing in the garden too and it's about to bloom for the first time. Can't wait as I love the way the flowers look and smell!

Several red ixoras are about to bloom as well.

And to our surprise we also have a yellow ixora. When my husband got them they were supposed to be pinkish but it turns out most of them are red and at least one is yellow :)

English

2009-02-11T08:37:00.000-08:00

We've had really good moments studying English. Especially Luana is enjoying it a lot and Lucas is picking up a few words as well. We've been going over the colours to start with. This is something they've also covered at school last year so they remembered some colours already. They both have their notebooks and I prepare some simple tasks for them. I try to speak as much English as I can and I give them all instructions (like "look", "listen", "draw") in English and use gestures as well.

This British Council's website has been great with lots of resources for teaching English to kids. We've already listened to a song about colours as well as a story in English. I have to say I'm amazed at how kids can cope with a new language. Before we listened to the story I told the kids something about it in English. "Billy and Splodge visit different planets that have different colours." Luana nodded. I asked her if she had actually understood and she said yes. What?! She doesn't speak any English so how on earth was she able to understand that? Then I thought how the same scentence would be in Portuguese and there are so many similar words: "Billy e Splodge visitam diferentes planetas que têm diferentes cores." So that explains. You can't do that with Finnish at all though, the same scentence in Finnish would be: "Billy ja Splodge vierailevat eri planeetoilla, jotka ovat eri värisiä." :D

Luana just had her English lesson at school today and she came home all excited about having finally learned a nursery rhyme they'd been practicing. It took me a while to understand but I finally got it: "Five fat sausages frying in a pan..." I had to look it up on the internet as I'm not that familiar with nursery rhymes in English :)

We have a small bag with nursery rhymes in Finnish that we use at home. There's a song that goes with it and after the song the child whose name was mentioned in the song gets to pick one card from the bag and that rhyme is read out loud. I'm thinking about having a bag like that in English too.

Homeschooling this year

2009-02-05T18:29:00.001-08:00

Over here the new school year just started and the kids have been at school for almost two weeks now. They have new teachers and some new classmates and they come home every day so excited about everything they've done that day. It's a joy to see that.

We continue homeschooling activites in the afternoons after lunch and napping. As the kids are still quite small I don't really have any academic goals for them for the year. What I want to focus on with my kids is giving them an understanding and appreciation of nature, teaching some basics of English, keeping up and developing their Finnish, doing a weekly Bible study and doing lots of arts and crafts.

For nature appreciation we use Green Hour Challenge and we usually do one task each week. We have all really enjoyed the tasks as they're simple and even the smaller one has the patience to complete them. Notebooking happens most of the times but not always.

I teach the kids English mainly because Luana really wants me to :) I hope that as they grow up they'll speak fluent Finnish and Portuguese as well as good English. Should they want to learn some other languages I'd be more than happy to help them in doing so (I also speak Spanish, German and Swedish and would be happy to teach them any of those or then find a teacher of another language). At the moment they've got half an hour of English at school per week and they love it. At home we've started to have a moment of English every day. We play games and do some excercises in their notebooks. I also try to speak only English to them during that time. So far they've been really excited about it and they ask me to tell them how things are said in English instead of speaking to me in Finnish. For example Luana wanted me to tie her hair so she asked me how to say that in English. Lucas had hurt his finger and wanted to know how to say that in English. I think it's so cute when they do that!

Finnish language is something we don't really "study" but I speak it with the kids all the time. Thankfully so far they don't even try to mix languages but always speak to me in Finnish and to their father in Portuguese. At the moment we read a lot in Finnish, sing a lot in Finnish and most of the DVDs and CDs we have are in Finnish. Luana just started to read today (as in took a book and actually read some of the words herself) and I'm obviously teaching her to read in Finnish. I don't want to rush her into reading but she's really keen to learn so I help her whenever she wants me to.

We do Bible studies at home roughly once a week. At the moment we use a lovely children's Bible with good illustrations and lots of additional information. We often do some crafting related to the story we read. I try to do this in the middle of the week as they get their weekly dosis of Bible study at Sunday school twice every Sunday (in our church we have Bible study on Sun morning and Worship service on Sun evening).

Arts and crafts is what we all like to do and I'm trying to come up with new ideas most of the time. I work around Brazilian, Finnish and international special dates, bank holidays etc. and always check them when I'm planning ahead. I like to have a weekly theme but that doesn't always happen. I'm planning to start arts and crafts lessons for kids aged between 4 and 6 (at least to start with) here at home and I'm hoping to start in the beginning of March. This means we'd be crafting with some other kids twice a week as well as doing our "own" crafting other days.

So this is pretty much what we do in our partial homeschool. I just read again what I'd written about homeschooling a year ago in here. Some things have changed in a year whereas some haven't at all. It was so good to write this all down. Even when everything's really clear in my head writing it down and reading it through makes it even clearer :)

Learning new things

2009-02-05T10:00:00.000-08:00

Luana learning to crochet with grandma. She's well on her way to become a craftster like me and my mum... :)

Baking tray prints

2009-01-27T11:01:00.000-08:00

This idea is once again from Kids Craft Weekly (I believe prints issue or something like that) and it was great fun. We put some finger paint on a baking tray using a paint roller, the kids drew with cotton buds and we pressed a paper over the painting creating fabulous prints.

We should have used more paint and we also should have had an own baking tray for both kids instead of just one. Next time we'll improve! Anyhow this was a big hit and I can see especially Luana going on and on with this one on her own.

Green Hour challenge 13

2009-01-19T08:48:00.000-08:00

We actually did this challenge a week ago, I've just been pants at posting about it... My mum arrived last week and her luggage is still somewhere on its way. So we've had a bit of a hassle trying to track down her bags and dealing with the very unhelpful staff of TAM (a Brazilian airline). One suitcase should be delivered this afternoon or tomorrow morning and the other one is still missing so we're waiting... And will be doing the next Green Hour Challenge today.

Lucas taking a close look at the sprouting zucchini and marigold.

This is how the marigolds looked a week after planting them (unfortunately blogger decided the picture looked better this way...). The basil and leeks unfortunately didn't sprout but I think the seeds were probably old.

We then proceeded to take a look at the flowers we have in the garden at the moment. First plant was ixora (ixora coccinea) or West Indian Jasmine. It has lots of other exotic names too, all available in Wikipedia.

Heliconia is my personal favourite as it looks so different from all the others. There are lots of different heliconias and the one we have is heliconia pendula. I wouldn't be able to identify the flower parts on that one though! :)

This is a pretty one that I don't know the name of... It grows quite high and has black seeds (picture below).

And then there's the charming sweet smelling plumeria or frangipani, not sure which species we actually have.

We talked about the different parts of the flowers especially with Luana. Lucas was more interested in just looking at the flowers through the magnifying lense. No journal entry for this one as Luana simply refused to draw anything. Maybe better luck this week... :)

Bubble painting

2009-01-12T12:05:00.000-08:00

We tried out bubble painting from the paint issue of Kids Craft Weekly and this was so much FUN! So much so that we ran out of paper and the kids just wanted to keep going...

They didn't want to stop at all so I sent them off to the shower so that they could continue making endless amounts of bubbles there (and so that I could wipe the floor in the library...).

It was messy, wet and fun. The outcome impressed the kids and as I said they would have kept on going had we not ran out of paper :) I'm thinkin we might use these prints as a background for some thank you notes we'll be putting in the mail soon.

Green Hour challenge 12

2009-01-10T08:32:00.000-08:00

After a few weeks without Green Hour Challenges we're back and started to focus on garden flowers. We have some flowers on our front yard and we'll take a closer look at those next week. We started off however by visiting two flower/garden shops nearby. The first one had wonderful roses by the entrance and Luana absolutely wanted her picture taken with them.

We talked to the extremely helpful owner of the shop and she allowed us in her garden where she keeps the plants (she only has a small shop in front of her house for attending people). Lucas was really happy to explore the garden that resembled more a mini jungle :)

We got to know lots of new flowers and learned the names of some. These are called amor eterno (eternal love). This is also a medicinal plant that helps with gastritis and some other stomach problems (the leaves are used for making tea).

This one is called flor da Amazônia (flower of the Amazon). It actually grows into a tree and the leaves surrounding the small flowers turn either white or pink so that it looks like there are huge flowers on the tree, a bit like poinsettia (euphorbia pulcherrima).

The names of these flowers are probably popular names as I couldn't find anything on the internet with these names.

And then there were obviously lots of gorgeous orchids. I didn't even start to take pictures of them as it would have been difficult to stop :)

Luana posing in front of some of the flowers in the second shop we visited.

Once at home we planted some flowers too. The only seeds I happened to have already were marigold seeds so that's what we planted. While we were at it we also planted some leeks, zucchini and basil just to see if they grow. Leeks are extremely difficult to get hold of in this part of Brazil as is fresh basil so I'm anxious to get them growing in our own garden :) The kids loved the way the seeds were so different. The ones in the picture are marigold seeds, zucchini had large white seeds and both basil and leek had small black seeds.

The kids have been taking good care of the pots with the seeds. Last time we planted things the dogs and some really heavy rain ended with our little project. This time the pots are safe from the dogs and from too much rain. And this is what Luana found this morning! The marigolds are already starting to grow!

This all was so exciting for the kids (and I really enjoyed myself too!) so we're looking forward to continuing with the garden flowers theme.

Painting

2009-01-08T16:34:00.000-08:00

This time we tried blowing the ink with straws. This was a big hit although Lucas lost his concentration quite quickly and started painting other things. The paintings come out so different and nice!

Lucas painted his Finnish grandma :) He likes to use a lot of dark colours for some reason.

Memory game

2009-01-03T16:57:00.000-08:00

I got this idea once more from Kids Craft Weekly. We don't usually have any plastic cups but these were used last week when we had people over for a BBQ. I wasn't actually even thinking about saving them and washing them as they're really thin and break easily but Luana wanted to keep them in order to use them for some crafting later on. I love it when she wants to recycle something before I even think about it! So we kept the cups and washed them and as I was browsing Kids Craft newsletters looking for something completely different I saw this memory game. We just used stickers inside the cups and the game was made very quickly. The kids really liked a different kind of memory game.

Christmas gifts

2008-12-27T10:23:00.000-08:00

This Christmas we did a secret friend with all extended family members. That way everyone bought just one special gift to a secret friend that was reveiled on the 24th at my in-law's. In addition to that we wanted to make a few little gifts to the kids' cousins.

A green felt bag with a few cars inside for little Eduardo.

Two felt bags with wooden bead armbands for Mariana and Bruna.

And a pink collar for uncle Gilmar's little dog. (I did buy the collar and just added the felt hearts and the beads).

Christmas in Sunday School

2008-12-22T10:11:00.000-08:00

Children's Day (Oct 12th) is a big date over here and it's widely celebrated at schools, in homes and in church as well. This year we arrived from Finland so late that I didn't have time (or energy) to organise anything special for my Sunday School group so I promised I'd have something special for them for Christmas.

I made a chocolate cake and put together small gift bags with sweets and these wooden pegs that we painted at home with the kids. Lucas was really good at this and he would have painted many many more. I did fortunately buy some extra pegs that will be given to relatives at Christmas. After they had dried I glued a small magnet on the other side and wrote a little note that says "Jesus was born in order to save you".

New Christmas cards!

2008-12-19T11:30:00.000-08:00

We received two more Christmas cards from California and Florida from the Christmas card swap. Thank you!

Green Hour challenge 11 - Luana's picture

2008-12-18T19:46:00.000-08:00

This is the picture Luana drew after our study of the guava tree. The tree with two green guava's is in the middle and the little dots on the left side are ants walking up and down the tree. The branck-looking thing is actually one of the roots as we observed that parts of the roots are visible. Luana is on the right in the swing. The one with the red shirt if Lucas and he's holding a ripe guava. I've got a camera in my hand.

Green Hour challenge 11

2008-12-16T09:42:00.000-08:00

It's rainy season over here and we've decided to postpone task number 10 until further notice. It rains a lot and even if it doesn't rain the grass is damp so picnic wouldn't be that enjoyable. So we moved on to task 11. Again, had to modify a little as the only seasons we have over here are rainy and dry. The trees do change however even if we don't get the spectacular autumn leaves over here. We decided to study guava (psidium guajava) which is on our backyard (although at the moment on the other side of the fence as our other house is rented).

Guava trees can grow up to three metres tall so ours is about as big as they get. The kids' swing hangs from the guava tree and the ground underneath the tree is full of half-eaten guavas that the green parrots drop from the tree. The other day I counted atleast 30 parrots flying from the tree! You can't really see them while they're sitting on the branches as they're green but you can surely hear them!

There are at least two kinds of ants running up and down the tree. It was sooo difficult to get a picture of them! The bark is soft and greenish brown, a lovely mixture of colours.

There are lots of different kinds of guavas but ours are yellow when ripe and deep pink on the inside.

This is the flower where the fruit then comes from.

Some curly leaves that Luana wanted me to take a picture of.

When we got home it was time to taste some... They're really sweet and yummy and contain up to four times the amount of vitamin C found in an orange. There's more information on guava's properties in wikipedia.

Pirate crafting

2008-12-13T08:46:00.000-08:00

The kids have been really into playing pirates this week so it was a perfect day for making these fantastic pirate hats. The idea is from Kids craft weekly from the second pirate newsletter. We didn't have any sequins to decorate the hats so we emptied the hole punch container and used the little circles instead of sequins. Worked out fine but the kids got tired of putting them on as they're so small.

Christmas tree

2008-12-11T08:46:00.000-08:00

We used some empty milk cartons that I had washed and dried. They have a lovely silvery colour on the inside and you can cut stars out of them. We also used some pipecleaners in order to hang the stars...

We then took a dry part of a tree in front of our house and secured it in a flower pot with some sand and some local semi-precious stones...

And we have a Christmas tree outside our house!

This was ever so quick to make and the kids thought it was such a great idea. We will probably come up with some more decorations later on but this is it for now. I'm missing terribly the scent of a real Christmas tree as well as the real candles that we always had on it. It was such a special moment when my mum would light the candles and we'd all just sit and look at the beautiful tree.

Christmas card swap!

2008-12-09T19:46:00.000-08:00

This year we participate in the Handmade card swap organised by Kids craft weekly. It was so much fun to make the cards and today...

We received four Christmas cards from Spain, UK and the US! It was just so exciting to see what unknown people had come up with and sent us. The kids were so happy about the cards too!

And these are the cards that left our home and are on their way to Australia, US and Brazil (yes, we actually got an address in Brazil on our list!) :)

Joseph in Egypt

2008-12-08T09:05:00.000-08:00

We've been reading about Joseph lately. After learning about the dreams he had we glued some shiny stars on black paper. These will later on be used in (Christmas)cards.

The kids got some rubber stamps from their Christmas calendar and we used the stamps in order to create an Egyptian scenery. There are some pyramides and lots of different animals. Lucas coloured his stamped animals and Luana wanted to leave hers as they were.

Green Hour challenge 9

2008-12-03T11:02:00.000-08:00

This is a vew of the rented side. On the left the lime tree, in the middle the guava tree (with the swing) and on the right papaya (the higher one) and manioc (the shorter one).

We just rented our old house (next the one we're currently living in) and just before the people moved in we went to "their" side (see picture above) and did the challenge number 9. This side of the back yard is more interesting than our side but still unfortunately there wasn't much going on...

The kids found:
three different kids of ants (huge, medium and small ones)
flies
grass
moss
small plants with leaves (unfortunately unknown)

After observing their squares we proceeded to the guava tree where their swing hangs from. Once underneath the tree we could smell the ripe guavas and as they were all high up the tree I had to climb. The kids watched with their mouths open as I climbed, got some ripe guavas for us and came down. They said they didn't know their mummy could climb a tree! :D

It's been raining a lot these days so we haven't been able to have our picnic. I'm just waiting for the next sunny day to do that!

For little Ruan

2008-12-01T17:25:00.000-08:00

One of the little cousins of the family Ruan is seriously ill with Werdning-Hoffman syndrome (I first posted about him here). His parents had initially thought about bringing him back home and treating him here with an intensive care unit built in their home. However they've now decided to stay in São Paulo in order to take care of him there. His grandma, one of his aunts and one cousin will travel over to see him and his parents after Christmas and I made this little thing to send over with them. It's hand-sown out of felt with a little filling and a ribbon to hang it from.

This is like a test version as I'm thinking about making more of these (and other things out of felt) and selling them here in the bushes...

Christmas crafting

2008-11-29T19:21:00.000-08:00

This was a fairly easy crafting and it gave Luana a chance to show off her skills with the scissors. I got the idea from a Finnish website but I can't remember for the life of me what that was...

We first cut a star and then a spiral. We then glued the star in the middle of the spiral and added lots of little stars. You could use glitter or anything you like to decorate this. We then attached a string on the top of the star and there you are! The kids really enjoyed these and even Lucas showed a lot of patience choosing which little star goes where :)

Pastels with the kids

2008-11-29T19:19:00.000-08:00

After the charcoal I thought some colours might be in place. So we tried pastels with the kids today. They again enjoyed smudging the colours and getting their fingers (and faces and tummies and legs) all colourful. We didn't really draw much, mainly just experimented with the colours to see how you can use them.

Charcoal with the kids

2008-11-25T18:54:00.000-08:00

This was their first time with charcoal and they loved it! We drew some insects inspired by one of the Green Hour challenges we did last week as well as lots of other things too. The kids watched in awe as I first explained to them some of the different techniques one can use with charcoal. They loved the part where your fingers get all black and it's completely acceptable! :)

P.S. Blogger turned the pictures around quite a bit but it's too late now and I can't be bothered to start messing with that at the moment...

Painting stones

2008-11-25T17:25:00.000-08:00

The kids have been asking for ages to paint some stones and we finally did that.

Look at that concentration!

First cards are ready!

2008-11-19T18:00:00.000-08:00

We finished off ten cards for the Christmas card swap. Luana glued the pressies under the trees. These were such fun to make (and easy too) that we might be making more of them... We're running out of pompoms though and I haven't seen any around over here but I'm sure we can think of something else to glue on the trees.

Green Hour challenge 8

2008-11-19T16:47:00.000-08:00

This was such a big hit with the kids! They just loved looking at things through the magnifying lense! We used and different lense that my husband uses for work. You can attach things to it so you don't have to hold them while you work on them. I just asked the kids to be careful with it and it went fine. I guess it was a good lesson of sharing and waiting for ones turn as well :) Seriously though I'm thinking we should get two magnifying glasses, one each.

I'm not a huge fan of insects at all but I found this one dead outside our door in the morning and it was just perfect for our study. It's a rather big bug but as it wasn't moving anymore and as we looked at it more closely the kids wanted to touch it. We were all amazed by the beautiful details we could see.

After the bug we looked at this flower and then went around in the garden looking at other flowers too.

Luana was greatly inspired and wanted to draw insects. She ended up with this great picture of two friends dreaming about the things that are drawn on their faces (insects and a tiger that is).

Dia Nacional de Alfabetização

2008-11-19T16:29:00.000-08:00

We practiced writing Luana and Lucas' names last week. I gave the kids some black paper and these super soft metallic crayons (photo below). They are such a delight to draw with and they look great on dark paper! When they were done drawing on their papers (i e when there was no black surface left) I cut the letters to form their names and we glued them on light yellow paper.

Green Hour challenge 7

2008-11-19T08:25:00.000-08:00

We did this challenge already more than a week ago but I've been lazy with posting lately... This challenge was called field guide but instead we did a field trip! Talking about slightly modifying the task... :)

We visited some relatives in the countryside (there are more pictures in my photo blog) and got to see some new plants as well as some old favourites.

My sister-in-law has two rows of pineapple (ananas comosus) growing and the first ones should be ripe very soon. So we didn't get to taste any but the kids liked the way pineapple grows - they had never seen the plant before.

I learned later on that the Portuguese name for pineapple, abacaxi, comes from an Indian language called Tupi. They call it ibacati which means "smelly fruit" (iba = fruit and cati = to have a strong smell).

I thought I hadn't seen this fruit before but when I tasted it I realised I had eaten it in Costa Rica many many years ago. It's called ingá-cipó in Portuguese and apparently in English it's called ice-crem-bean :) The Latin name for this is inga edulis. It wasn't quite ripe yet but we tasted some anyhow. You can eat the fruit around the large seeds.

And then there was our old favourite manioc (manihot esculenta) that we also have plenty of in our own back yard.

We saw lots of other plants too but these were the kids' favourites.

Christmas is on its way...

2008-11-12T09:41:00.000-08:00

My head is already full of all sorts of Christmas crafting ideas and I think we'll start today with the kids! I know it's a little early but Christmas cards have to be sent off early if I want them to make it before Dec 24th.

I signed up for the Christmas card swap. We get to make 10 Christmas cards with the kids and send them to 10 randomly selected families. In return we should receive 10 Christmas cards from other families. It sounded so nice that I just had to participate.

edit. We did start indeed! These little Christmas trees were ever so easy and quick to make. The kids could have made many more of them. I simply cut some tree shapes out of green felt and the kids glued small pompoms on them.

A new blog

2008-11-11T12:36:00.000-08:00

I finally started a photo blog that you can visit here.

Bible study - Isaac and Rebekah

2008-11-11T12:22:00.000-08:00

Our Bible study was on Isaac and Rebekah and first we read the story of how Rebekah became Isaac's wife and talked about it. Then we made some necklaces remembering the gifts Isaac's servant gave Rebekah upon meeting her.

Luana loves beads and Lucas likes them too. These just happened to be a little too small for his fingers. So I gave him another task - he moved the beads from the original tray to an egg carton and was really happy doing that! :)

Luana's necklace.

In the countryside

2008-11-11T06:33:00.000-08:00

We went to visit some relatives in the countryside this weekend. My sister-in-law is the teacher of a tiny village school and I had the opportunity to visit the school again (we were there in December last year for the first time, I posted about that in here). They don't have any crafting supplies so I took some with me and we did some stars for Christmas.

Luana and Lucas came with us to the school as did their little cousin. She's only 4 but she usually follows her mother to school and is quite used to being there. There are less than 10 students between grades 1 and 4. I love to visit them as I get the warmest welcome. Apart from the crafting my sister-in-law allowed me to teach the weekly religious education. It was just like teaching my regular Sunday School class and I enjoyed that a lot too.

I'll post some more about our trip soon regarding Green Hour challenge.

Day of Culture

2008-11-11T06:26:00.000-08:00

November 5th was the National Day of Culture over here. We talked briefly about what culture is and focused on the art side of culture. There were several paintings and drawings that the kids had done while in Finland and we decided to create an art exhibition so that daddy could see all of the artwork too.

I told the kids how in art galleries you usually have a little party when a new exhibition starts and we organised our own gallery and served some light refreshments as daddy arrived home from work.

This is the artist discussing one of her drawings with daddy.

Some artwork was hung on the clothes line.

And most of the bookshelf was taken over by the paintings and drawings.

Mudcakes

2008-11-03T13:14:00.000-08:00

Today was supposed to be another day for the Green Hour Challenge. However after their nap the kids went out and they're still playing there. I'm so happy and amazed that they've been going on for over two hours now without any major arguments or problems. I will have to spoil the fun at some point so that I get them washed and ready for dinner but I'll let them play for a while still, dinner can wait :)

Bible Study - Abraham

2008-11-01T14:15:00.000-07:00

I finally started "proper" Bible studies with the kids. We'll be working our way through the Old Testament using a really nice children's Bible (we've got the Finnish translation). We take time once a week to do this in more depth but the kids like the Bible so much that they often ask me to read it more often.

We had looked at the creation and Noah's Ark already before and done some crafting on the creation as well so we just read about them and moved on to Abraham. We then made this picture about Abraham, Sara and some of their animals. The kids coloured the pictures and we glued them on the cardboard. In the end we spread glue all over the brown parts and sprinkled sand on it.

Some more gardening

2008-11-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

This time the kids planted manioc with daddy. We got loads of manioc just from one plant a few days ago and yesterday they decided to plant some more on the back yard. You can check out the manioc harvest here.

The kids were again really keen to help and honestly did a great job. Daddy is also very good in letting the kids help. I think he's got more patience in that sense than I do :)

I was so happy to see the kids engage in a longer creative play yesterday. It seems all they want to do nowadays is to watch TV and if that's not allowed they don't seem to be able to come up with anything to play with. I simply can't be there ALL the time telling them what to do and how to play. Yesterday they were busy carrying wood and building things. I allowed them to play with the wood but warned them that they'd have to take everything back to where it was once they were done. It worked out so well - no fights, no arguing, just nice imaginative playing for a good while. And a very happy mama :)

National Book Day

2008-10-30T13:35:00.000-07:00

National Book Day was actually yesterday but the kids had a friend over for most of the afternoon so we did something book related only today.

I asked the kids to tell me a story which I wrote down just the way they told it. I then read it to them so that they could hear it and make changes if they wanted to. Then I let them illustrate their little books (simply an A4 folded once).

These are the covers. The yellow one is Luana's and it's called "Monica's ball". Lucas' story was about pirates, guns, fighting, cars, trophies etc.

Lucas' book from the inside. Luana actually drew the trophy for him but he did the rest of the drawing.

And Luana's book. There was a ball in a circus and she drew the circus tent and a princess on the left.

It took them a while to get the hang of this. Lucas started telling me the story and I helped him along asking what happened next and what did the characteres do. Luana wanted to tell me an episode of the Flintstones that she had seen in the school but I encouraged her to invent her very own story. Last time we did this with her she told me about Jesus and how He got lost in the temple and His parents couldn't find Him. This time she did come up with her own story and I think it'll be easier for the kids next time around. I plan to continue doing this every now and then.

Green Hour challenge 6

2008-10-29T07:30:00.000-07:00

Challenge number 6 was about collections. We went on our walk on Monday evening and it was already getting dark so I didn't take any pictures during our walk. I gave both kids bags and said we were going to collect anything they'd find interesting on the way. Both of them went for rocks :) Luana was also interested in flowers but didn't collect them. I think we'll collect and press some flowers later on.

On Tuesday we sat down outside and washed the stones so we could see their real colours as they were all covered in the same red dust we have absolutely e v e r y w h e r e :) (rainy season is starting though so soon it'll be red mud instead of red dust).

We then made good use of the egg and apple cartons that I had saved knowing that one day they would be used! We talked about the different colours and shapes the stones had. Some were all smooth and round and you could tell they'd been in the river for a long time.

The kids enjoyed washing the stones. I have to come up with more water-related activities as this is something they enjoy a lot.

And again, the pictures aren't in the order I wanted to have them but in the order Blogger wanted to have them... I've heard other people are having trouble with this too. Hope it gets fixed soon!

Painting

2008-10-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

Blogger seems to think it knows better in which order my pictures should be and I'm too lazy to upload them again... Anyway we did some painting with the kids today. It's been absolutely too long since the last time and we all had such a good time (and a good shower afterwards!).

We had burglars while we were in Finland and although they didn't take that much with them (the laptop, the printer and some jewellery) they did make a mess. Apparently they had turned every single box upside down including my crafting supplies. My husband simply put things back in boxes and everything's still in a bit of a mess. But I did manage to find the finger paints and that's what we used today.

Gardening

2008-10-23T05:47:00.000-07:00

I have to admit... as much as I love nature I'm not a gardener. Thankfully my husband is really into planting, mowing the lawn, cutting, trimming, getting new plants etc. I do give some ideas as to where I think a particular plant should be located but that's really it :)

Yesterday my husband came home with some new plants and asked us to join him in the front yard. At first I was going to decline but then I realised that I want my kids to appreciate gardening even if I'm not so keen on it. So I went along, took some pictures and ended up helping out quite a bit. It turned out to be a lovely afternoon all of us working together in the garden. I'm so glad I joined in!

Green Hour challenge 5

2008-10-23T05:01:00.000-07:00

So we recently returned from Finland and are now back with the Green Hour challenge. Before we left Brazil in the end of April we had done four challenges and focused on the little river that runs behind our block. For this challenge we did another walk to see the river and afterwards talked about the things we'd seen.

Luana drew a picture of our walk and included a chicken and another bird as well as us three walking. We then sat down and made a list of all the different fruit trees that grow either on our backyard or nearby. This went nicely together with our Bible study of the creation - we also talked about how God created everything including the fruit trees.

So we have on our backyard:
Papaya, Carica papaya
Acerola, Malpighia emarginata (even 100 times more vitamin C than in oranges!)
Lime, Citrus x limon
Guava, Psidium guajava (also more vitamin C than oranges!)
Manioc, Manihot esculenta (Luana wanted to include this although it's not a fruit as we have some growing on our backyard)

And nearby:
Coconut, Cocos nucifera
Jambo, Syzygium jambolana
Carambola, Averrhoa carambola
Cashew, Anacardium occidentale (this is actually an accessory fruit the real fruit being the cashew nut)

Our focus has been the river and I actually thought we'd do more things regarding that but I see that the topic is so huge that it'll probably continue on the background and we can return to it whenever we feel like it. At the same time we'll get a new theme and carry on with the challenges. The first challenges have been really good in the sense that they have got us out of the house exploring our neighbourhood with a purpose. I was looking at the coming topics and garden flowers will suit us nicely as I just discovered that we actually have some flowers in our garden! :) There used to be just green but now there are flowers too!

This particular challenge was such an enlightening experience for me personally. The kids are so small that they don't care about the Latin names of the fruit trees or whether something is really rich in vitamin C but I found the little research I did most interesting! I also see that I have to find some good websites concerning tropical plants. Books are quite hard to get hold of over here but I might even try to buy a book about tropical plants.

Looking forward to collecting things for the next challenge!

Back to Green Hour

2008-10-19T10:04:00.000-07:00

We played with these play dough animals on a rainy day last week. It's great to have been gone for several months because there are so many toys around the house that the kids don't remember anymore. These animals were one of those new-old toys.

Luana had been asking for several days to go for a green hour walk and we finally did that on Thursday. We went around the block behind our house as the kids wanted to see the river Mororó. It was also World Food Day so we tried to look for things to eat along the way. The only things we saw were chickens and mangos. The kids also drew what they had seen along the way and Luana came up with a really cute map of our walk :)

Later on we also talked about how usually one could drink water but the river is so polluted that the water's not good for drinking. Luana had some good ideas as to what pollutes the river and I think we can work on that later on as we continue talking about the river.

Water is really low at the moment as it's only the beginning of the rainy season. The river flooded a few times last year and I'm sure we'll see some of that later on as well.

There were so many mangoes hanging from the trees! We've already received some from my parents-in-law and we're all (especially Luana) really looking forward to the mango season to kick in.