Wowza!

I think I said on one of my recent posts that Wiyot has suddenly exploded with activity. So as before I felt the easiest option would be to photograph some of my favourite bits to share with you. Yesterday he wrote some lovely messages on our scrabble board, unfortunately I wasn't really having a good day and forgot to capture them on camera to share with you. :( Thankfully I've generally been more on the ball!

Sonic & Minnie, plus Daddy & Mommy asleep underneath.
Daddy has one eye open! lol

Mommy & Sonic, complete with his green eyes and red shoes.
The detail is increasing in his drawings :)

If you look at these you can see that his writing technique has already improved. Again he did all of these without any input from me, the letters are becoming clearer, generally facing in the right direction and also the spelling is getting slightly better. It's amazing to witness him literally teaching himself! :')

For those of you who aren't fluent in Wiyot-ese the last one says "and I Luv eevu" - and I love Eva (his aunty)

A message for Daddy:

I no les pla fitng aftu dinu
I know lets play fighting after dinner.

On the above message he attempted to correct a mistake by scribbling it out and putting a cross under it! Not sure where he's got that from?

A couple of cute little drawings:

The first pic is Wall.E and Eve (with her arm gun out) and the second is Darth Vader. I love the detail of Darth's mask :)

On September 9th Wiyot found an activity book in our bedroom. One of the ones you get at restaurants to entertain the kids... Well straight away he got out his crayons and completed all the exercises in the book. Seeing how much he enjoyed it, we tried to find him some more to do. Unfortunately the shops seem to have a fairly poor sellection these days... or we're looking in the wrong place? We did however find this fantastic book in WHSmiths. Here's some of the pages that he completed on September 10th:

All of the colouring pages are colour by numbers. Not great for creativity, but it is refreshing to see the lovely colourful pictures... you know not just RED! lol

The dot-to-dots and other activities where what we were really after. Unfortunately there was only these:

There are so many different activities, bellow are two he decided to do:

Drawing the ingredients on the pizza and filling in the missing letters. I was really impressed by the letter one, I didn't think he would do that one... It looked much better before he scribbled over it! Loving the zzZZ's for the "sleepy" person though! lol

As well as all of the above, there are many other things to make and do. The only one we have done so far is the cat mask:

Shone's been watching Cinderella and so Wiyot wanted to
make a 'Lucifer' mask

At this point it had already had a thorough playing with, so the fluffy nose is looking a little shaggy! He calls it his cat beard.

And finally, some little bits from today!

A message for me:

mumeey I am Hgreey soE les go get froot
Mummy I am hungry so lets go get fruit

Followed by:

I'm sure you can work this one out!

A pretty detailed drawing:

Wall.E
He tried to write his name on his belly too,
Wolee

And some construction work:

Building his Thomas Duplo train set

He built the entire set all by himself, including station (above), water tower, windmill, signal box and a tipper thing (I don't know what its called!). Again I forgot to take a picture... :(

I didn't want to leave out our littlest learner! Here's Shone showing me some of her latest works of art and holding them up to be photographed:

She liked the new coloured papers I bought and was matching the crayons to the paper colour! Bless :D

He's also been doing a lot of reading over the past couple of weeks. So much so that he has pretty much read all of the books in the library... at his reading level of course! I think we may have to venture to one of the other libraries to see if they have a different selection!

On September 9th (this day was pretty much the beginning of the learning spurt!) we went to the library to get some new reading books for him. In the car on the way home he said the most wonderful thing:

"Mommy!

When I've finished these books, can we go back to the library

 and get some more?"

:')

Very Happy Mommy!

September 12th

Have you noticed the moon tonight?

Tonight is the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, when the moon is said to be at it's brightest and, for one night only, perfectly round. 

This year we decided to go all out celebrating the festival. Out came my Chinese festival book and I decided what we were going to do.

The main activity is eating moon cakes... which we will get to later! The book also mentioned that families get together and watch shadow puppets telling the story of Chang'e and Houyi... I don't know whether thats true, but it seemed like a great project to do with the kids! There were directions in the book, but we decided to do it our own way! :D

1. Get a largish box and remove any tape so that it is open at both top and bottom. The larger the box the bigger your theatre will be, meaning you can do larger more detailed puppets and also you can fit more characters onto the screen at a time... assuming you can hold them all!

Here's ours.

2. Cut one of the large sides off the box.

3. Cut a window in the other large side. remember to leave at least an inch or two to support the rest of the box! 

The box with the removed pieces.

NB: This is "back stage" where the puppeteers will be!

4. Cover the window and your shadow theatre is complete! I used fabric from an old bed sheet, but you could also use paper.

I stuck the fabric on with sticky tape.

The front of the finished theatre.
Shone's dolly was performing at the back! lol

I'm hoping that at some point we will decorate the theatre, even if that just means painting it black! I chose to use fabric as it is obviously more flexible, meaning it is less likely to get ripped! I was also thinking it would be easier to remove when we're ready to refurbish the thea-e-tarrr! (said with a posh English accent! lol)

Next up was the puppets!

1. Draw your puppet design on a piece of paper, Wiyot decided to do a dragon. This is just a template so it doesn't need to be too detailed.

Wiyot demonstrating his ambidextrous tendencies!

You only need to draw an outline, Wiyot got a little carried away!

2. Carefully cut around the outline of your drawing.

3. Decide if there are any parts you would like to be moveable and cut those sections off.  For the dragon, which had now become Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon, we decided the wings should be the moving parts.

4. Lay the pieces on thick paper or card and trace around the edges. Remember to add extra where the movable parts will be connected to the main body. I added about 1.5cm.

You can just about make out the extra card at the edge of the wings.

As you can see above, I forgot to cut out the eyes and mouth on the template, so I got Wiyot to draw them straight onto the card. You can very intricate designs by cutting into the card, check out this image to get an idea of what I mean. Not something Wiyot could do yet, but great for older learners. You can also create more joints to the puppet to make the movements more realistic. For example, a human puppet could have a joint at the shoulder, elbow and wrist, a rod attached to the hand would then be able to control the movements of the arm. This youtube clip will give you an idea of what I mean!

Ready to cut out

5. Carefully cut out each of the puppet parts. I used scissors for the larger areas and a craft knife for the details. Wiyot hasn't had much cutting practice yet, which is why I did this myself! Also the card we used was pretty thick and so fairly difficult to cut.

6. Now you re-attatch the movable parts. Piece a hole through the pieces you are joining and secure with a split pin/brad.

BONUS: To add some colour to our puppet, we covered the eye and mouth holes with sweet wrappers. I'm pretty sure coloured tissue would also work, but I haven't tried it myself!

7. Attach rods to the back to allow you to control the puppet. The only thing that I could find (around the house) was bendy straws! They worked pretty well, not too dangerous for little ones, and also you can change the angle on them to help you control the puppet. The drawback being that they are not very strong, so not good for a larger (heavier) puppet. Also they are not very long, resulting in puppeteer-hand shadows if you are not extremely careful!

The finished puppet:

From the back

And from the front

NB, you can use whatever colour card you like and can also decorate the puppets. The shaddow will still be black though! lol

Peek-a-boo!

And now, in his debut performance...

Pretty cool, eh?

Oh yeah, you also need some sort of light to create the shadows, a multi positional desk lamp is good for this. I used my solar power one from Ikea. (Also comes in handy for knitting/reading in the car at night.... not while driving obviously!)

Behind the scenes!

The kids loved it! Wiyot spent ages acting out scenes with Toothless, making Shone roll with laughter! :D They then held various toys up to see what their shadows looked like, the dinosaur figures were a big hit! I think its going to be pretty versatile too, we can make props and scenery as well as all different characters. The kids can then act out their favourite stories, or create their own tales. I'm thinking it will be great for halloween too!

Lanterns are also popular for the moon festival. They are used as decorations, children carry them hanging on long poles and also sky lanterns are released. I really wanted to do the sky lanterns, but I left it a little late to order them (I wanted to get the more environmentally friendly biodegradable one's) so we just made decorative paper ones instead. 

The ones we made were from a kit I got free. The card is pre-cut and scored, plus all different colours of tissue are provided. They are very quick and easy to make, but look really pretty.

Shone sticking down her tissue

Daddy giving Wiyot a hand

Very proud of her creation

No surprises in Wiyots colour choice!

Pretty! :)

I lit them with rechargeable tea lights... less of a fire hazard!

And to finish, what moon festival would be complete without a mooncake and a cup of tea!

Lotus seed paste with two yokes

I'm pretty sure this is the first time Wiyot and Shone have tried mooncakes...

Say, "Mooncakes!"

Lets just say they weren't what they were expecting! Danny and I enjoyed them anyway!

Sorry about the rather looooong post!

Thanks for reading! xx

September 8th

Bloomin' 'eck! Wiyots been a right little busy boy these last few days! I was going to combine the last three days until I realised that the post would probably take a day to read. lol I don't know where all this activity has come from, but I suddenly find myself running to keep up. Don't get me wrong, I am far from complaining... It is amazing! <3

So for Thursday he started the day with a little colouring:

Postman Pat Colouring Book.

I know some people probably hate colouring books as it doesn't allow for much creativity... I agree in some ways, but for Wiyot it seems a great way for him to practice his pen skills. I think I've mentioned before, but it is a real pleasure to see that his colour choices have moved on from red... red hair, red shoes, red trousers, etc... I don't know whether you can make it out, but he has also added a little spider and a sun shinning through the window. Bless!

Here's some follow ups of the "I luv yoo mum" picture:

DAD i -------- Luv yoo

The blue character is Wiyot (as Sonic the Hedgehog) Daddy has a unhappy face as he is smelling some stinky shoes apparently! lol. Oh and the line between the I and Luv represents Sonic running really fast!

I Luv Shonee

Shone is on the left with the brown and black hair (her hair is slightly lighter than Wiyots) and he is on the right. The dotty line represents Shone running around the lounge, which is what she was doing while he was drawing.

Straight after breakfast Wiyot got out his LeapFrog Tag system. He spent the next however long going through 3 of his books cover to cover, even doing the exercises included in the back. I really need to link the pen thing up to the internet so I can get the rewards for him!

For the afternoon I had some cooking planned for us. I asked him if he wanted to help me in the kitchen, but he initially refused. Thinking he'd just done a pretty hardcore session with his books I decided to leave him playing with his Lego. A few days ago I found a recipe for steamed buns (mantou) and couldn't wait to try it. I began making them myself and soon found I had a little helper! Mainly I think because I called him into the kitchen to see the yeast producing bubbles.

I forgot to take photos of the early stages, but this is pretty much were Wiyot joined in (plus I was lazy and mixed the dough in my food processor!)

Rolling out the dough

Wiyot loved the texture of the dough, it was lovely and soft and also still warm from the water we dissolved the yeast in.

The second rolling out and getting ready to brush with water.

The recipe was quite specific on the size you should roll your dough out to... A great opportunity to get the tape measure out and do some measuring! BONUS! :D

Wiyot enjoyed cutting the baking paper squares for the buns to sit on and I even let him use the 'big knife' to cut the rolled dough into separate buns. I think he did a pretty good job, don't you?

Rising in the steamer.

Excited and slightly floury :D

Let the steaming begin!

All done...

and ready to eat!

:9

I had to change the recipe slightly to the one I linked to. I used 400g of plain flour and 100g of corn flour  (I didn't realise I was short of the plain flour until it was too late!) and added some milk as well as water (I read here that is helps to make the dough whiter... Not sure it worked, guess I'll have to try again without milk to compare! ;D) The buns tasted really good, pretty authentic I thought. The kids ate 3 each and wanted more... I guess they liked them too! lol! I did find the texture slightly heavier than commercial buns, could be the recipe alterations though.

Lastly, a little message written on our scrabble board:

DOO YOO THINK SANTA WIL GET THE LIZ A BA - Do you think Santa will get the lightsaber?

Lets just say he's looking forward to Christmas this year! lol