LEGO Challenge #14

**This was borrowed DIRECTLY from this site.**

Quest #14 - Ancient Monument

This weeks challenge is to re-create or be inspired by an Ancient Monument.

An Ancient monument is an early historical structure worthy of preservation.

There are Ancient Monuments found all over the world, I look forward to seeing which one inspired you!

Be sure to tell me which Ancient Monument you were inspired by and why. Where this monument exists in the world and anything else you'd like to add about your creation.

-- So I changed this challenge a little bit. Jacob has had a tiny bit of exposure to Egyptian pyramids but other than that, we haven't really learned about anything "ancient." So I just called it the Monument Challenge, and said that a monument was a historically important building to a country. 

"Gingerbread" Houses

I love decorating gingerbread houses with the boys. It is so much fun. Plus we get to eat a bunch of candy as we go. We use graham crackers for two reasons: I don't have to bake anything and they taste better than the store-bought gingerbread house kits. Truthfully, I've never even tried to bake real gingerbread. 

Merry Almost Christmas!

We are finally starting to feel the Christmas Spirit in this house. So why not celebrate with some Christmas tree pizzas? Delicious and festive!

May you also find the joy of Christmas!

I Have a New Kitchen

My new kitchen is mostly brown, but it's a great space to bake up some treats for my boys!

I made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. I think the kids liked them...

Don't Rain on My Parade

So I planned to have summer vacation, I really did. But when I told Jacob summer vacation was starting he was not impressed. "But I like math and I want to learn about thunderstorms." And then he proceeded to detail the way he forsaw learning about thunderstorms. So here we are, in August, starting a new unit study on STORMS. We began by making rain clouds. This activity shows that when clouds get too heavy with water, they rain....

It's a shaving cream cloud! We filled the glasses with water and then added the cloud. We put food colouring on top and it makes its way through the cloud and rains! So cool!

Then, of course, we made purple and red rain too!

This was so much fun we actually used up all of Jeff's shaving cream.

What's new? BIG NEWS.

What's new? It's been awhile since I posted...

Jacob lost his first tooth, now he has a Goofy smile. He swallowed the tooth and was completely unaware it was gone, until Jeff noticed.

Samuel can stand up and walk along the furniture and he is always yelling for snacks.

Daniel still makes us all laugh with his antics; here he is a watermelon for sale. Yes, I will buy you.

And the BIG NEWS?

The Blue Kitchen is moving. 

Bonne Fête!

He's four now! We had a great day to celebrate Daniel with sunshine, friends, and cake.

Worms and dirt cake. Delicious and disgusting.

Wearing his new super hero cape. "It's a bird... It's a plane... It's SuperDaniel!"

Happy Birthday my amazing Daniel! Hope you had a wonderful day.

Ontario - Yours To Discover

So, obviously, the CN Tower is the tallest building in Canada. That's cool, I think, and worth learning about! But do you think I could find any CN Tower kids' crafts on the internet? Nope. I found two colouring pages. Lame. Anyways....

I printed out an outline of the CN Tower at 800% so it would be quite tall. After looking at some real pictures (including some oldies of me and Jeff) I gave them the pieces and had them build it like a puzzle. Then (not to scale, though my math brain really really wanted me to figure out how big the houses truly should be) we pasted on the city buildings. Daniel drew the Skydome. And of course it was stormy and the poor CN Tower is getting hit by lightning... many times. They loved this fact about it. And also that there is a spinning restaurant they could eat lunch in. 

And just for kicks... I took a picture of a picture that was taken before I owned a digital camera. 2001.

Inukshuks - Rock People

So in my research somewhere I read that "an inukshuk is essentially a pile of rocks shaped like a human being." But they are really so much more! They can represent welcome or warning and even tell you where the good caribou hunting is at. They represent the human spirit. I think they are beautiful. I wanted so much to make some with the boys, but I just couldn't see trying to glue rocks together going well. So after reading about them and looking at MANY pictures we did this:

They kept going after this picture and then gave all of them colourful block hats. Isn't it neat how each inukshuk is unique and yet you can still tell it is supposed to be a person?

I sacrificed a few blocks to create stamps. I simply used double sided scotch tape and scraps of felt to do this. Once dried, I peeled the felt off and tossed the blocks back in the box, a little painted but still usable. The boys used their block Inukshuks as inspiration to do these paintings:

Ok, I love these so much I put them up in our hallway. When the paint was dry I carefully outlined the Inukshuks so they would stand out better against the background. A truly fun project.

Dinosaur Fossils

Well obviously we made dinosaur fossils. Here's the recipe I used:

1 cup cheap table salt

2 cups flour

1 cup warm water tinted brown (I used the instructions on the back of the food colouring box)

I also mixed this in my stand mixer since it called for 5 minutes of kneading and I thought the kids would lose interest. Also, the brown food colouring didn't work so good, it looked pinkish when it mixed up, and you can't add food colouring after the fact, it just blobs up. I'd like to try coffee grounds, but I'd have to steal them. 

Roll out, make Dino imprints, and bake at 300 for at least 2 hours. Warning: it smells kind of weird while baking. 

Cool completely then paint them! The more colourful, the less realistic, but whatever, I tried to let go. Can you guess which one I painted?

I think we will bury them in the sandbox and then dig them up! It just needs to warm up a little bit more.

Bork, Bork, Bork!

Here are the boys pretending to be the Swedish Chef. Awesome.

"New" Toys!

This was a fun, all morning, activity... TOY STORE! The boys helped me price everything. Then I gave them each a shopping bag and a container with 25 pennies. They took turns making a purchase until they ran out of funds. Then they had to go play for a bit while I replenished the stock at my "store." When I was ready I let them have another 25 cents. I think we did this four times. And then they took it all into the living room and made their own toy store and sold to each other! The best part was when Jacob ran out of money and Daniel offered to buy him "one more car." So cute.

"Is it ready yet Mommy?"

Counting his money.

My associate doing the books.

Baby Likes Cookies

I made my favourite mint chocolate cookies again... And Samuel loves them. I can't eat one without him trying to steal a taste. Good thing he doesn't have teeth yet!

I Challenge You To A Joust!

So I found this book at the dollar store (for 2$)... It took us most of the morning to colour and cut out all the knights and stuff. Then the book pops out into a sort of 3D castle. The boys loved it.

Bubble Boys

What do you do when you wish it could be summer right now?

Starting Solids

Here is Samuel trying his first bowl of rice cereal...

He wasn't so sure about it but he sure is cute!

Homemade Sand

Are you on the sensory bin craze? If you don't know what a sensory bin is you can google it for about a million ideas. It is basically an "invitation to play" in a bin. Usually thematic. Usually based on the idea of encouraging imagination. Usually considered educational. Usually tries to improve fine motor skills. All good things, I suppose. I have not been on the sensory bin band wagon, for several reasons... 

1- it looks like ALOT of work.

2- I think it would entertain the boys for five minutes and then I'd be annoyed with all the aforementioned work I put into it.

3- I'd need to invest in a bunch of miniature toys.

4- I'm not so sure kids need help with their imagination.

Well, today called for an emergency activity... So I made cloud dough (me and play dough don't get along, but that story is for another day). Essentially 7 cups of flour and 1 cup of oil. I used canola oil because then I don't have to worry about when they eat it, because they will. You can use baby oil if you don't have this problem. I used some old old rye flour and so it has a nice sandy colour. I added a little peppermint extract to make it smell good. And dumped it in a small tub with some dinosaur toys and Popsicle sticks. Um... It has now been half an hour and the play is still going strong. Granted the original "dinosaur habitat" idea has degenerated because now there are alphabet magnets, spatulas, and tractors involved. But whatever. In conclusion, this was fun but I am not going to start setting up a new one daily, or even weekly. Hopefully the dough will last awhile, but first I have to find the lid to the container! 

Choo-choo!

Another book project! "Freight Train" by Donald Crews is a favourite in our house. If you love trains and rainbow colours and fantastically simple artwork then get this book. 

In the summer I was given two huge old rolls of newsprint paper. Huge. And I thought this book would make a perfect collaborative art project with the boys. We had a snowy, no school holiday, so I finally pulled a roll out of the shed. The inside of the tube is full of spider webs and dead bugs, but the boys thought that was cool, so whatever. Anyways, I let them pick a page from the book to copy (thankfully they both wanted the same page, so there was no fight) and off we went. The boys painted the background on their own (I traced a trestle bridge for Jacob to paint over) and then I cut out each train car, in the correct colour, and the boys each picked three to complete. They carefully copied the cars in the book. Then we did the tender and engine together because they did fight over who was going to do the best part. After it was hung on the wall it was noticed that we forgot the steam so I let them sponge it on with strict instructions to NOT paint the wall. Surprisingly they didn't paint the wall. 

Here it is:

Afterwards Jacob insisted on making a smaller pencil drawing all on his own. Here's a cute picture where he is working on it. It turned out fabulous, by the way.

I told you it was cute! What a little sweetie!!

Blown Away

So when I heard of this great kids' book called "Windblown"  I knew I just had to request it from my library. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves (mostly).

Jacob copied every page in the book. The snail and chicken were my favourites. 

Then he got creative.

A cement truck. 

Then Daniel decided he wanted to get involved.

A baby lamb.

So much fun. I saved the pieces to play again another day. 

Note: We are drawing using dry erase markers on clear page protectors.