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.