Zealots at work - Tissue roll Christmas Tree!

Zealots! Now that is one word that would describe this mommy and baby duo best. Because, frankly, even if I show enthusiasm for a lot of activities and if A wasn't interested the activities might as well be forgotten. But luckily for me, (touchwood to that over and over again!) A is a hightly enthusiastic and easy going child and  is game for most ideas that are put in front of her. It is totally to her that I dedicate the inspiration behind me 'pinteresting' so much. I haven't done any of these activities as a child ( who had the time to stay indoors then?) and this doesn't come to me naturally. On many a cold, gray wintry evening, A and I have created quite some colourful crafts that are now recorded in this blog for posterity!

This is an idea that I picked up from Creatiful Kids. There is hardly anything different that I did from the idea suggested, except some decorations. We used -

15 tissue rolls for the tree
2 rolls for the tree trunk (this was my error - one should suffice)
Christmas Baubles - single, double or multicoloured; we used red, but differently textured ones
A Christmas star to adorn the tree top
Embellishments, ribbons -  anything to decorate your tree

An important part of indulging A in any activity is to ensure that she has enough to do. She starts singing, somersaulting and everything else if I am the only one working. She is not big on observing, like some kids are. So most of my activities are chosen with this in mind. This one ensured that big time; she coloured all the rolls green which took quite some time! ;-) Almost 2 days! The 2 rolls that form the  tree trunk were painted brown.

My job was only to even out the colours on the rolls and then to stick them together to form a tree. I formed a pyramid, with 5 rolls at the bottom rung, then 4 on top, then 3 and so on till there was one on top. I stuck the 2 brown rolls at the bottom for the tree to stand on. Now this was very silly of me, no tree looks like that! But I made a miscalculation with the weight and when I put one roll, the tree wouldnt stand. Maybe I should have worked around with something else. But I just went ahead with this. 

I picked up the richly coloured christmas baubles and inserted them in the rolls. There was no need to use glue or tape, because they were the exact size! You can also used smaller baubles and hang them from the rolls for a different look. 

I finished it with satin ribbons at the base of each line of the pyramid. For the big star on top, I used a plain paper, coloured it gold and stuck on top of our tree!  :-)

And all of these came together to make the prettiest Christmas tree!! It made us so so happy!!! :-) 

I loved this artwork greatly and so did A - she had done so much work on this (emptied out the green in our supplies too!).  It is a great idea with minimalistic work and fantastic results!

Isn't it beautiful? :-)

Yap, Yap... Tell a tale!

Yap, yappity, yapp... now that is something that I have a PhD in ;-) And I have great pride in announcing that A takes after me in that regard! Hahaha! She has always loved to listen to stories or hear them being read out to her (which kid doesn't?) and now she makes tiny stories and tells them to me first thing in the morning. She has decided that she wants to be a story-writer when she grows up! She takes keen interest in the author's and illustrator's name when we are reading together and recalls them when we read the book again later. 

That is why when Little Readers' Nook (LRN), a themed reading and early literacy program in India specially designed for children in the age group of 2 to 6 years came up with a 'Tell A Tale' contest, I immediately discussed with A. She was a little confused with my explanation, but she agreed to play along when I said that she will get to live her dream of being a story-writer!

The contest was for the whole month of April 2014 and we could send in as many entries as we wanted to. LRN provided PDFs of the characters, props and settings that we were allowed to use for the exercise. The pictures that were given were - 

To spin a tale, we were to pick one setting, 2 characters and one prop. We were not to include any other characters or props, but we were dealing with pre-schoolers here, so there was no fixed rule. When we started off, A also  added characters, but as we progressed, she understood the activity. Though she limited her story to the characters and props involved, the length of the story was a big problem - my chatterbox just couldn't put an end to the story! 

I have attached a few stories that we wrote. It was an effort for me to not poke my nose into her story to improvise or try to give ideas. It seems like a task to get your little one to make stories without any help. But you will be surprised - they manage very well. After all, it is an exercise in using imagination, why wouldn't they? The stories here are completely hers and at most, I have, at places, only tweaked the sentences in the end to complete the story within the page.

YELLOW DUCKLING STORY

Once there was a boy who loved to skate.  He went skating to school.  There was a Christmas party in the school.  So there were lots n lots n lots of Christmas caps.  So he put on one Christmas cap on his head and he enjoyed at school till it was time to go home.  He was skating back home when he saw a yellow duckling.  So he put the duckling in his hands and skated back home.  At home, he wondered if,  where could this duckling come from?  And then he wondered if this could be somebody's pet.  He asked a lot of people if this is your pet.  They said no,  this is not mine.  Til he asked a little boy, is this yours? He said,  yes it's mine.  So he returned the duckling to the boy and went back home and he lived happily ever after!

I loved the way she thought of the boy going to everyone asking if its their pet. Sweet!

A BIRD CALLED ANLEE

Once there was a blue little bird. His name was Anlee. One day Anlee noticed a beautiful garden and saw beautiful flowers and beautiful butterflies. He went inside for a closer look. There was a purple butterfly that was bigger than all. He went even inside and had a closer look. And then he noticed a gift for him. And then he put the gift in his beak and flew home. And he opened the wrapper and then he saw a little toy king. He showed the toy to his owner. The owner said its very nice. And then they lived happily ever after.

I was actually confused about her choice of pictures here, but she managed a good story, I thought! This is another observation - because kids dont have any pre-conceived notions, they can imagine anything and spin a story anywhere! :-)

ELEPHANT STORY

An elephant saw a glider in the air.  It was making a sound 'Newwwwwwwww' because there was an emergency.  The pilot looked where to land.  He saw a forest and went down and pressed the brakes and came inside the forest.  He looked left and right till he saw a clown with 4 balloons.  The clown gave one balloon to the pilot and the pilot was walking to the glider again.  He pressed another brake to go up again and he went away. That was the end of the story.

This was a new word that she had learnt -'emergency'. And I also liked the idea of 'brakes' in an airplane. :-)

TEACHER STORY

Once a teacher was waiting in a classroom for her children.  She had a pet,  a blue bird.  When the children came to the class,  the teacher took them to a farm. The children played and had fun.  So the teacher told them,  we'll have a 2 min walk in the dried,  yellow grass and then we shall buy ice-creams for the children and me.  So they bought the ice creams and came back to the farm and all were licking and licking the ice creams.  They had fun and that's the end of the story.

Basically, she did not come around to the word, 'picnic' but managed a story similar to a picnic day.

FARM STORY

Once there was a farm. There was an elephant.  Elephants make noise like this - PAWOOOOO!  Then came a lion and he saw the farm.  He was a good lion so he did not go inside. That was a good thing to do.  The elephant saw a kite and holded it in his trunk so that it will not go away. He was walking to the farmhouse and ate his fresh green leaves and his tummy was full and that's the end of the story.  And they lived happily ever after. 

The lion did not go inside and that was a good thing to do! Indeed! Kids surprise you with their thoughts, really! :-)

BOY AND GIRL STORY  - ANLEE AND FACY

Once there was a boy called Anlee and a girl called Facy, because she liked to wear fancy dresses. They were walking on the road one day and saw a tractor. They climbed inside and started driving it. As they were driving they saw a tent. They walked inside the tent and there was a circus. The circus master asked if they had tickets and the boy and girl said Yes, we have tickets. They went and saw the circus and when the circus ended it was time to go home. So they got on their tractor and went to their cozy and warm home and lived happily ever after.

The girl was called Facy, because she liked to wear fancy dresses! I was impressed :-)

THE SCHOOL STORY

One morning, a school bus driver was taking the children to the school.He had a naughty dog who was bouncing and cheering with the children in the bus. After some time, the bus stopped. They were seeing a clown carrying 4 balloons. The children took the balloons and got back in the bus. The clown stepped inside the bus, shut the door and then the driver was driving and driving and driving and they reached the school. They stepped outside one by one. There was a brown door in the school and they opened the door, came inside and shut the door. They asked the teacher if she had a surprise and she said 'Yes ofcourse'. It was the birthday cake for the clown and all said yumm--yummmmmmm.

You can see how I struggled with the length - this was the first story we did! The attention to detail - opened the door, came in, shut the door. Though I hated to interfere, this was an instance where I had to butt in and ask her to not get into basic details. 

There are a number of obvious advantages to such an exercise - building vocabulary, sentence formation, grammar, imagination. Though we start off as getting into a fun, parent and baby bonding time activity, you will start noticing the above changes slowly and steadily. I have not taken all the stories that A and I did together, but only some and I could see a lot of change in the way she formed her sentences. For example. it became evident to me that detail was of importance to her - her sentences are always complete, as if she does not want to leave anything to the readers' imagination. She also loves to use newly learnt words in her sentences. This is an observation that I have received from her school as well - that she loves to articulate and expresses herself well. I have written the story as narrated by her, without any grammatical corrections or help in sentence formation. Her love for reading is also apparent in the way she forms her sentences.

This is a great activity that I would recommend in the 3+ age group. Not only is it fun, it also gives you other benefits as above over a period of time. I am already excited thinking about when A is all grown up and I get to show her these stories that she made when she was 4! What fun!! :-)

We thank Little Readers' Nook for this wonderful opportunity offered to encourage imagination and sentence/word building skills. It is a wonderful idea and was great fun for us!! :-)

Little Readers' Nook also offers subscription-based book delivery service across India and story sessions too. For more details, please check out the official site at Little Readers Nook. The work done at LRN is greatly commendable ( long required in India in the world of reading picture books!) and something that we highly recommend.

Xmas Crafts

This has been our first Christmas in the UK and we celebrated it in style! With our new found love and energy to create beautiful things at home, this Christmas involved a lot of craft! :-) Yes, most decorations on the tree were self-created between my girl and me. We had a lot of fun making them and we made full use of the 3 weeks of winter term break that we had from school!

So here goes our list of beauties!

1. Christmas buntings  - 

Simple and sweet... decoration with coloured papers! All we did was write out the letters in different coloured card paper and stick them on to contrasting coloured paper and cut them out to make them double-coloured. We strung them through a satin ribbon and hung them up with blu-tac!

For this, we cut different coloured papers in long strips and made circular bands while interconnecting them. I could have left them plain as they were colourful and pretty by themselves but since I wanted my girl to actively participate, I gave the strips to her to draw/colour/shade them as she pleased. If you looked closely, you will see smileys, cycles, gardens, flowers, snowmen, moons and stars and even people on them! :-) She soon got bored though, and so I connected the rest of them just plain.

2. Cardpaper Christmas trees - 

The first type is pretty simple - cut out a tree shape on green cardpaper and let your child drawout her favourite fruit/flowers on them. When done, insert the tree shape into 2 tiny slits on opposite corners of the topside of a tissue roll.

For the second type of tree, which I picked up from http://www.outnumbered.be/craft-creativity/paper-christmas-tree/,  my girl tried some folding which did not quite come out right so she ended up just sticking on the stars to the tree. All you need is a medium sized green cardpaper sheet, tissue roll cut in two with tiny slits on the sides and some glitter glue n stars or anything else that you might want to spruce them up with. Fold up the card paper sheet into small folds, join them at the top with strong glue and stick the fan end of the tree into the 2 slits on the tissue roll. Voila! Your christmas tree is ready!  Simple and beautiful, isn't it? 

3. Hand print wreath - 

This was again a very simple activity... A Christmas wreath - which people put up on doors to welcome visitors and offer goodwill, their circular shape representing a symbol of eternal life. Traditonal wreaths are made up of fir twigs and tiny branches, wild holly, pine cones, satin ribbons, what not! This is also a popular craft activity with loads of ideas on the internet. I picked one up with handprints on green cardpaper arranged in a wreath shape. I twisted the idea a little bit and sat down to make handprints of all the 3 of us on different coloured paper. Again, my girl was allowed to show her artistry on the cut-outs, before I connected them to form this beautiful wreath. I created the holly and the bows with foam pieces leftover after some other craft. Don't you like it too? :-) 

4. Painted pine cones - 

This seems to be a very easy job, but boy oh boy! This is a tiresome job! My girl played truant - she picked up a loadful of these pinecones from the garden and came home to colour. She didn't even finish a single one! I had to do them all by myself and had to actually sit up late one night. I used acrylic and metallic finish paint on them.The beautiful and romantic outcome at the end of it was what made the effort worthwhile! :-) You can hang them on your tree like decorations by sticking on a ribbon sling on top, though I also used most of them to decorate around my Nativity set (photo below).

5. Assorted traditional Christmas decorations -

These were my first experiments with felt, foam and..... sewing! Now again, I am not the kind of person who can sit in one place and do something that involves concentration and precision. Thats why sewing, knitting, crochet (I still know very little about the difference between knitting and crochet!) are not activities that I thought I will ever get close to doing! But there I was, sewing up stars, snowmen and X-mas trees, candy sticks and baubles! Though, I'll admit that there is very little sewing involved, and that too the kind with a decently big needle and yarn involved, which is relatively easy. And I was pleased with the results too! 

There wasn't much for my bundle of excess energy to do, so all I could let her do was to decorate the creations with buttons, embellishments and glitter glue. I just left her alone with the supplies and this is what they ended up looking like :-)

6. Farm animals with felt - 

This was my most enterprising work! Farm animals with felt! I even learnt a new sewing style, called.. ohh.. what was it called?! Ohh yes.. Blanket stitch! (at this point, I can actually visualise my mom's I-cant-believe-it shocked face! LoL). This idea was picked up from http://www.freekidscrafts.com/felt_farm_animals-e1943.html  I hope you can make out the animals / birds in these! :-)

7. Lady bug with Air Drying clay - 

I have put this up separately earlier on this blog here.

And this is how our lovely tree looked! :-)

It was completed with a reading every evening of the Nativity story and a reiteration of the wish-list from Santa :-) He even visited us in our dreams!! So, we decided to put up the Nativity set as well that we purchased only last year.

There are my pine cones making up part of the outside of the stable! 

Our Christmas was perfect when we met Father Christmas for the first time ever at nursery. A was so speechless, she could not answer Santa's questions! The previous night she had woken up dreaming about Santa and when he was right there beckoning her to come near and take her gift, she was totally tongue-tied! :-) She finally found her voice and asked him to bring for her a kitchen set. Speechless A, Part 2 came around again when she saw the shiny new kitchen set waiting for her on Christmas morning! :-)  It is so so beautiful to be a child at Christmas!!

And let me tell you what else is beautiful. It is beautiful to be a parent who gets to see the delighted face of his/her child, first thing on Christmas day, to want to believe that magic does exist in the world.

I do not think Santa Claus comes down the chimney - he comes in through the hearts of beautiful innocent children. 

We love Christmas!!! :-)

Winged Beauties - An afternoon with butterflies!

Spring break for us is 3 weeks long, as opposed to 2 weeks generally, as A is still in nursery and not in formal school yet. There are a lot of events that are scheduled in museums (not malls), parks ( not indoor play areas) and libraries (not gaming zones). We generally make it a point to visit 3-4 such events during such mid-term breaks as it gives us a good opportunity to go out and explore practical experiences and also spend a lot of fun time together!

This time, Natural History Museum had a 'Sensational Butterflies' event to ring in the advent of spring. They had set up an outdoor, tropical butterfly house, where they had hundreds of butterflies (species brought in from different parts of the world) alongwith caterpillars and eggs for the little curious kids to experience the life-cycle of the beautiful creatures.

It was a wonderful experience for A and me, especially for A, because she got to see the creatures outside of the book. This was an extension for her of her very favourite book, 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' by Eric Carle. I have written a record and review of the book at my blog, My Tiny Caterpillar, if you would want to take a look. She must have told me at least a dozen times that she LOVED the place. She pointed out multi-coloured and different sized butterflies with excitement and delight to me. She squealed with mischief when some of the butterflies that were flying all around us settled for some time on my shoulder or my bag. It was a great experience and I had taken loads of photos. This challenge gave me the idea to put the event up as a post for posterity. There are a lot of pictures in this post, so I hope this is more enjoyable than reading all that I write, most of the time ;-) And, yes, I want to bring to notice that I have not enhanced any of the pictures, they are all posted here just the way I clicked them! Nature's beauty in all its glory!! So here goes!

This was the green house structure that was made for the exhibition. The temperatuer inside was maintained at around 26-28 degrees, I would guess, as compared to the 11 degrees that was outside! Yes, that's spring for you - don't let the sun fool you, my India friends :-)

When we entered, the first thing we noticed were butterflies! Fluttering around everywhere!! And they were really large ones.  My little A almost started shrieking whenever any butterfly came within arm's distance of her - it took her a while to get friendly with them. She loves them, but they had never been so close to her! Haha!

This picture below shows the eggs under the microscope. Enchanting, isn't it? Look at the picture of the Camberwell butterfly with dozens of eggs on the stalk!

Now, have you ever seen any of these for real? We did, for the very first time in our lives! :-) The people at the exhibition had to show us where to look, we would never have found them ourselves. They are really tiny. And they do not look to your eye the way they look on that picture above!

Don't they remind you of the little thermocol balls that you use to fluff up the bean bags? We were fascinated. 

The caterpillar inside the egg, when it is ready to come out, uses its jaws to gnaw through the egg. 

The next was a placard placed amidst shrubbery saying, 'Can you spot something interesting here?'. We looked and looked, but couldn't find anything. I again had to go looking for the organiser, who came back with a friendly smile and showed us these lovelies!

Oh my God! I had not seen A so excited in a while! This was the most exciting part of the exhibition for her. She gazed and gazed at the creepy crawlies and was fascinated. She looked at me and said, 'Amma, I love this exhibition!'. My sweet little adorable girl! :-) 

I really liked the way the below information was given about who are friends and foes of caterpillars. The top circle referred to the creature spoken about (ants, squirrel, birds and caterpillars - from left to right) and the bottom one asked 'Friend or Foe?' on one side. When you have guessed your answer, you need to flip the circle to check your answer! Perfect to hold the interest of kids! :-)

We all know that caterpillars eat a lot of food, again thanks to Eric Carle and his lovely book. But what happens when it gets too fat for its original skin? Read on!

Check the caterpillar shedding its old skin in the above picture! 

The caterpillar then one day, builds itself a chrysalis and hibernates inside to become a butterfly. 

In our dream world, we thought butterflies just fly out of the chrysalis one day.. flutter, flutter... just like that. Well, thats not how it really happens. The butterfly comes out little by little and the wings are pretty much stuck and squished up. They are wet which the butterfly has to dry once it's out of the chrysalis. Behold, the beauty of nature and the phenomena of metamorphosis! :-) 

Just like I expected, A was disappointed. She really thought the butterfly would come flying out in all its brilliant colours. She was not very impressed with these images. I, on the other hand, was singing inside! It was sheer beauty! I was amazed at the hardened rock-like texture of the chrysalis and at the idea of a large creature coming out of something so tiny!

The organisers had brought in not only butterflies from all over, they also had brought in chrysalis'! So many of them, which made it possible for us to see this wonder of nature right  in front of our eyes!

Isn't it totally mind blowing!?!?! There were so many butterflies coming out it various stages of the process. We could even see water dripping out of the chrysalis. I was so glad we decided to come to this exhibition!

Some information and some trivia!

Ohh.. we haven't seen any butterflies in here yet, have we? :-) Here goes!

Let me tell you something fascinating. The two left side butterfly images are of the same butterfly! Yes!! It is called the Blue Morpho Butterfly, with this amazing blue shade when it opens up its wings. It has this brown underside with false 'eye-spots' to warn off predators! Coudnt't get that, could you? Me neither!

Right side images, from top to bottom, are of the Wayward Hawaiian butterfly and the famous Swallowtail Butterfly. I am not able to recollect the name of the green coloured beauty.

The Blue Morpho was very clearly the star of the show. They were present in large numbers and in the below photo, you can see a bunch of them feasting on orange and banana peels.

I have never been a nature gazer or a nature enthusiast; I have not participated in any such activities in my growing days that I can remember, even from school. This was one reason I was particularly happy I took A to this exhibition. It was a beautiful experience, knowing for real the life-cycle of these winged wonders. I am really happy to share this with you too! :-)

Hope you all really enjoyed this long post!! Do keep a check on any such exhibitions that come to your city. I guarantee a great experience!

Volcanic Eruption at home!

There are lots of experiments on this that you will find online, and very enterprising ones too! There are many enthusiastic parents and guardians, I must say! Most experiments that I saw online invoved even making the volcanic mountain from scratch - materials involved clay, dough, soil and containers, paper, foil or such other materials. I tried a short-cut version, one that did not involve a lengthy process of making the mountain but ensured total fun and learning.

My little A has been learning about volcanoes and tornadoes and our education sessions stretched from dramatic action sequences at home to You Tube videos. I finally decided to take it up another notch by doing this experiment at home. I liked the version of the mountain at this link here. They used easy tape to make the mountain and then coloured it brown; I cut the process further more by using brown duct-tape ;-)

What you need for this experiment -

• A quarter plate or any flat circular object
• A small plastic container - disposable jelly or flavoured yoghurt ones are perfect
• Duct Tape 
• Baking soda
• Vinegar

I made the folly of not taking pictures from the beginning on how to make the volcanic mountain, but the link above will be able to guide you through it. In my version, though, I took a quarter plate  and placed a small plastic jelly container over it. I then took brown duct tape and started pasting lengthwise from the inside of the container to the base of the plate. This way, little by little I covered the entire build up so that it resembled a tiny mountain with a gaping hole at the top. This is how it looked -

Pretty simple, though I apologise for not having pictures from the beginning. Once you are ready with this, all you need to do is put some baking soda inside and when your protege is ready to be amazed, pour the vinegar over the soda and W-A-T-C-H!

When vinegar comes in contact with the baking soda, it creates fizz and comes bubbling and fizzing up the top and overflows from the sides of the mountain, just like lava coming out of a volcano. I purposely used coloured vinegar at first to make it darker, but this came out like Coke ;-)

My little one screamed with glee when she saw the fizz all coming out; she was like, 'Amma, its hot lava!'. I believe she even backed off a bit to save herself from the deadly eruptions! Haha! 

The second brainwave that I had was even more disastrous.. I used yellow food colouring thinking that the fizz might be the colour of molten lava, but it ended up looking like an egg yolk cooking! :-(

Moral of the story - use some shade of dark orange or red to get a colour that resembles molten lava. Definitely not yellow!

Now for some serious science - Acetic acid (vinegar) and sodium bi-carbonate (baking soda) come together and make carbonic acid. This acid breaks apart immediately into water and carbon-dioxide which creates all the fizz as seen above and ultimately trickles down as liquid.

It is a great fun experiment and informative at the same time. If you are doing this as a proper summer break activity, you can even make the mountain with green forests and brown soil with craft items; there are lots of ideas online that you can try. It would make for lovely quality time with your young ones. Its really fun while it lasts and even when it was over, A had some fun by herself with the mountain and the water. She messed up the table big time and as she was playing with it another idea struck me. The mountain covered by water all around reminded me of the Indian mythological story of 'Samudra Manthan' (churning of the ocean) where the demons and the gods churn the mighty ocean for nectar. Since A was also familiar with the story I asked her if she wanted to try churning our ocean. She nodded excitedly. Our serpent king, Vasuki, was a long, not-in-use USB cord which i coiled around our Mount Mandara! LoL!

This was our fun activity for the next 5-10 minutes! :-)

Science and mythology in one instance...now, isn't that a great idea? :-)

Upcycled Tin Art!

Indian mothers and grandmothers typically share one common trait. They never like to throw things out, especially fancy looking, useless stuff. The common explanation is , 'you never know, they might come in handy someday'. I have never seen the sense in it before, nor do I do now. I mean, I understand recycling, but the idea of stacking stuff in a closet for someday and something to happen is beyond me.

Now in this avatar of mine, where I am this zealous mommy with loads of extra time, I tried it once or twice - stacking things that I have seen being used on Pinterest and stuff. But after a while, it just used to gnaw at my head - the junk! Ultimately I used to just put them all together, and dump them in the trash can. Then I worked some things the other way round. This made more sense to me. At least I am not stacking. I earmark things to do and then when the materials come around, we sit down to create something. I mean there is millions of stuff to do, so nothing is running out exactly, is it?

This craft idea out of tin cans was created in this way. I had stumbled upon an Italian site where there were loads of stuff to do with tin cans. There were mostly farm animals and clocks and pen holders, but I liked the idea of creating an alien. A and I had a new favourite book those days, 'Aliens love underpants'. You can read our review of the book here - Aliens Love Underpants. And it was perfect timing since I knew she would like a follow up craft to the book. 

I got A to paint the tin can with an acrylic colour of her choice and she picked green. Now if you know tin cans, you  know that they can be sharp at the area you cut off the top. My can opener is one which cuts from the inside, so the top is smooth. There is nothing that you need to do on the inside, so it's perfectly safe. If the can is opened such that the top has sharp edges, I wouldn't have gone ahead with this as it is not safe. You will invariably cut your fingers. 

Once the can was painted and dried the next day, we sat to make the eyes, mouth and nose. All from scrap ;-)

I made the eyes with  milk-carton caps and stuck googly eyes on them. For the nose I took a clip from an old clothes hanger that I found lying around in A's drawer - this was A's suggestion. And for the teeth, we took buttons of different sizes. A wanted the eyes to hang from the top, so I attached them to pipe cleaners and fixed one end to the inside of the tin, so that they eyes wobbled on top. Some colourful yarn for the hair, again A's suggestion, and we were done!

Look at our friendly alien :-)

I am particularly happy with this as quite a few of the suggestions came from A. I followed her idea just as she instructed :-) 

Tree of Love for Valentine's

I came across a number of Valentine's Day crafts on Pinterest. A's school got the kids to make a heart out of air drying clay and painted it red. They sent it home to us, after placing a tea light holder in the centre of the heart. 

Though back home, I had never seen anyone involve kids in a Valentine's day celebration; the school's involvement here made me hunt for some crafts. I have a friend in the US, whose 2 sons had to each make 30 valentine day cards for their school mates and some more for their teachers as well. My friend, who chose to make the cards at home, instead of simply buying them from the store, swore that this was her first and last time at it! ;-)

So I thought, why not, let me give it a shot too - at least, I had no such commitments at school, so we made it a home project. I looked up a number of crafts and the 'Valentine Tree' interested me. Though what I saw was a miniature craft, a thin branch of twigs arranged in a small pot and hung with decorations, I ended up making just something else altogether! I wanted to use the tissue paper rolls which we had begun to save up, by default - just in case, a craft caught our fancy! So I set about making my tree from scratch.

I picked up 2 kitchen tissue rolls that are almost double the length of the standard toilet tissue rolls and fixed one on top of another vertically to make the trunk. I then cut a dozen regular tissue rolls to flatten them up. I asked A to colour all of them dark brown with water colours. Once they were dry, A and I drew bold branch shapes on them and I later cut them out. I stuck the branches on either side of the tree trunk so that it resembled a tree. I tried making bark shapes on them with crayons and chalk pastels. This is how the first cut looked -

 

I wanted to jazz it up a bit, but couldn't think of anything, so this is how our tree looked for almost 3-4 days. And then, as I was punching coloured paper one day for some other craft, I had an idea. I picked up 2-3 different green coloured sheets and punched them quite a bit and stuck all the green dots randomly on the tree. I liked the look, here it is - 

For the hearts, I picked up another recycling idea; you would probably laugh if i tell you this! I cut out hearts from plastic milk cartons! Hahaha!! I got this idea from a mommy online who made suncatchers with these - they did not seem like a very bad idea. A and I got to work with doing patterns and decorations on the hearts. We used everything and anything from buttons to felt to foam to beads to stars to even paper! A glimpse - 

All the decorations were done by A with glitter glue and regular glue. I just did the cutting work wherever required! We took about 2 days to dry all our crafts and when they were ready, I punched a hope at the top middle of the hearts and drew red satin strings through them. When everything was ready, we put up the hearts on the tree and the decoration was done!

This is our tree of love - 'Appa, Amma and Me' :-) We presented this to Appa when he came home tired on Valentines' day evening - as expected, it was perfect to brighten up his evening! :-) Followed by a special dinner too! Heart shaped pasta! Yay! :-)

Happy Valentines'..... always! :-)