Let's Grow Vegetables!

We have given our garden a revamp recently and part of the garden was reserved for building an edible garden. So I thought it is a good chance to teach the duo about growing some vegetables and flowers, since they have been learning about Mother Earth (and always have tons of questions!) so the best way to learn is to experience it yourself..

They have been helping up in the garden on and off, but this time we will do it properly by maintaining a plant growth journal. 

After I havegathered the required materials, we started working right away, and I can't explain how excited they were when I asked them to help.. Both of them fighting for the gloves and watering can right away. *laugh*

Here's what we used:-

• organic soil / compost

• an empty egg tray

• a garden scope

• some seeds, fresh garlic or onion 

Why use egg tray? It is a recyclable material that will decompose itself without harming the environment. I will just cut the tray once they sprout and  plant directly into the soil. No waste, no additional cost, just extra nutrition.

This is how our nursery looks like. We have here some red onions, pumpkin seeds, lime seeds, okra seeds, mini cucumber seed, cabbage seeds, thyme seeds and 2 sunflower seeds that were not labelled.

Step 1: Sow the seeds

Fill up each slot with soil, make a hole with your finger and drop about 1-2 seeds in each slot. Onion and garlic are among the most fail-proof vegetables to grow, just peel off the outer layer and drop it whole into the soil, ensure they are at least 1/2 covered in soil.

Step 2: Label them

Cover up with some soil then label the plant. This way we would not forget what we've planted. (Yes, it happened)

Step 3: Water them profusely.

Make sure the soil is all wet.

Next, just wait for them to germinate, they need an airy and shady place. I will remind the duo to water them daily, this shall be their responsibilities from now onwards.. 

It shall take about 3-7 days for first sprout to appear and I intend to get them to record the progress in a plant journal. So stay tuned for more update! 

【updated】

Day 4- look who has popped? 

Cucumber, okra, pumpkin and few cabbages; even the shallots had grown roots too. The duo, especially E, were feeling excited as E has been watering the seedlings every morning.

The oregano and French beans that we sowed earlier are growing beautifully.  They sure love the sunshine and daily watering.

Look forward for more to germinate soon...

P/S: this is how our 2 week old garlic looks like, guess it is due for a "hair cut"..

What are you planting in your garden? Please share as I have a new found love in gardening!

[Updated] read our part 2 update  here!

Xoxo

PH

Copyrights © Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones, 2012 - present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any materials/photos within this website without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. 

Volcano Day!

The duo is fascinated over volcano, influenced by the junior encyclopedic that I've been reading with them. Since I'm now having much free time as I had began my career break, I decided to surprise them with a man made volcano... It's so easy & so much fun to make with the kiddos!

What you need:

• an empty bottle (or a kid's cup)

• a large tray (to hold the "larva")

• aluminum foil

• red food coloring 

• Soda powder / soda bicarbonate 

• vinegar - used the cheapest on shelf will do

Psss.... In case you noticed some differences in the pictures below, that's because our first experiment failed. I used baking soda instead of soda powder! Failed experiment gave a learning point too. ;)

First, we setup the volcano with the aluminum foil.

Next, added the soda powder.

Then, some red coloring.

Now, vinegar... And watch it explodes!

Little C started screaming..

"Volcano!", she yelled.

"Run for your life!!", screamed a villager.

Now, go try it with your little scientist wanna be. It's a simple experiment that cost less than RM5 but the little ones will super love you for it! 

Copyrights © Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones, 2012 - present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any materials/photos within this website without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

{Book Review} Cloudette, the small cumulus with big heart!

Does your kiddo often feel tiny, and that you wish you could encourage them more? This is one cute book that fits a preschooler whom you think need a little encouragement, or just to share laughter over a good read.

Cloudette, by Tom Lichtenheld

Cloudette is a small cloud, much smaller than the average clouds and he often wish he could do something big and important like the rest, such as watering the crop, making waterfall falls, helping at the fire station etc.... But he often got turn down (despite politely) that he's just too small for such big task.

Until... He came across a small pond that has dried up and he thought he could help the tiny froggie... And he DID!

This is how he pushed himself...

He's well liked by every cloud and they gave him really cute nicknames..

This is by far my little girl's favorite book, she just kept on telling the daddy about this book and describing how cute Cloudette is (and not knowing the fact that she too is darn cute! Lol)

What I Like about this Book? 

Little ones often feel little, because of their size and height. Adults may appear like giant next to them and fully able to do things that just seem impossible for them. But seriously, being small doesn't mean they can't help up, they too want to feel big & important. Assign them small task that makes them feel useful, such as setup the dining table, fold a hanky, throw the rubbish etc... and you can read them this cute little book too..

You can find more about Cloudette here on Tom Lichtenheld's homepage www.tomlichtenheld.com

Or read the reviews & buy it here, I got ours through Scholarstic which is only a fraction of the online price shown here..

amazon.com

goodreads.com

Guess what? I even found an audio book on the YouTube, check it out to decide if you like it!

http://youtu.be/cmTi-oleKd4

Now, go go go and get your copy of Clouddete today...

Copyrights © Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones, 2012 - present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any materials/photos within this website without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones with appropriate and specific direction to the original content

{Art & Craft} Clay Fairy Houses

It's our weekend art attack time, or as the duo called it,  Dirty Hands Time, as all of us ended with really dirty fingers & palms covered in paint. Lol, but the duo really loved it.

Here's our artwork of the day.. Instead of the original plan to make a castle, we decided to make some colorful fairy houses. 

Before painting, the naked clay houses, I dried them up in the oven at 120°c for about 30 minutes.

Freshly painted with acrylic paint. Aren't they looking adorable? 

My favorite -- the Tree House, got my inspiration from the hundred acres wood. Little C thought that it looks spooky although she still likes it.

The mushroom house, both kiddos' favorite!

The colorful fairy house, added brick effect on the roof and doors, quite happy with the outcome. I was having beautiful Santorini houses in mind when moulding these. 

Little C was so curios with these tiny houses, taking picture of the houses uninterrupted was quite impossible with her around...

We made some apples & carrot with the left over clay.. Just for fun and these made perfect project for little C, easy to handle with plain colors.

It was an enjoyable & peaceful afternoon, together we completed the painting in 1.5 hours, right before we got ready for the evening fun - the Swiss Dream Circus!

If you would like to do some clay art projects with your kiddos, this post summarized how we started and the tools/materials needed -- Clay Art Project with Little Ones

Keep calm & get creative! 

Copyrights © Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones, 2012 - present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any materials/photos within this website without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

{Book Review} The Gruffalo.. best read-aloud book!

We have got the Gruffalo and the Gruffalo's Child books since 2 years back, their uncle residing in overseas got them as Christmas gifts. I did not thought about writing a review as I thought the Gruffalo is so popular that it needs no introduction, most children shall have read it, or watched it as it has its own TV show and theater performance.

But, having been reading these 2 books over and over again for the past 1 week (see note below), and I thoroughly enjoy reading these books with them. I personally find they are the best read aloud picture book that I have came across so far!

The Gruffalo
Story by Julia Donaldson. Illustration by Axel Scherffler

The Gruffalo's Child
Story by Julia Donaldson. Illustration by Axel Scherffler

What do WE like about the Gruffalo?

• The story rhyme. How lovely they rhyme and my kids loved it whenever I read text like scrambled snake, Gruffalo crumbs in a spooky tone, they always giggle and nowadays they read along. For example, the opening paragraph goes like this..

"The mouse room a stroll in the deep dark wood,

A fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good."

• The story is smart & wicked (in a fun way). It's about how a small little mouse managed to leverage on others' strength to escape being eaten by the many predators it met. He cleverly used the Graffulo to scare off the fox, the owl and the snake and at the same time making the Graffulo think these predators are actually scared of him, the Big Bad Mouse. 

Little kids can certainly relate themselves to the little mouse (small & tiny compared to others) but they don't necessarily have to be weak & be bullied, not if they think smart. While many children books teach about mannerism and general knowledge,this is really about adaptive problem solving, in my humble opinion. 

Who would have guess an humongous monster would be scared of a tiny mouse that it could easily crushed with a single step? ;)

• Beautiful illustration. All 32 pages are graphically illustrated with great details, i especially love the full 2 page of the deep dark wood, with butterflies, ants, mushrooms, squirrels, fallen trunk, pine cones... Reminded me of our peaceful walk in the NZ's wood. 

Even my girl loves the prints.

If your child or nephew or niece or grandchild is between 3 to 7 and enjoys reading, I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND getting this book for him or her. Beginner reader may think it is too wordy at first (totally fine with more advanced readers), but read aloud to them and you may see the interest shift eventually. If they like the first Graffalo book, then most certainly they will enjoy reading the second book, the Gruffalo's Child too. 

If you are really interested to find out more or get some Gruffalo's merchandiser DVDs, you may want to visit the Gruffalo's official site here!

E reading to his little sister.. 

Note:

I have been practising a Book Week with the duo as we all love books. Every week we will pick 3-5 books to be covered for that week's bedtime story, I find that this way allows the stories to leave a stronger impression in their mind & also keep them excited when there is a new rotation. I usually purchase the books in bulk so we habe quite a number of books available for rotation. :)

Where to buy?
Read the review or purchase direct here:

• Scholastic
• Amazon (they have good discount for paperbag version!)

Reference:

Pictures included here are abstracted a from the following sites:
- the Guardian UK, they have an article on Julia Donaldson
-the Scholastic

Stay Calm 

& 

Read On

Copyrights © Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones, 2012 - present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any materials/photos within this website without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Clay Art Project with the Kids, Part 2

Finally, we are done with the clay art project.... (You may refer to part one on how we made the clay pieces here) Well, only some of them are done, but I can't wait to share as the remaining will have to wait till next weekend.

We applied multiple layers of acrylic colors directly onto the clay arts, diluted with a little bit of water. Started with plain color as the base, then slowly apply the different shade of green / red / brown. I let them apply the base coat while I elaborate with more details. What I learnt in my art class when I was 11 came really handy, not bad huh.

A little tree.

The little pea pod, I made this on my little boy's request and its actually my favorite among all.

Strawberries with different shaping technique. I like the first one better where I made the berry and leaf separately.

The acrylic paint we used for this project (this is a beginner set), got them from Popular book store but you can always get them from art supplies shop such as Art Friends, Spotlight or any major stationary shops. 

Acrylic dries up pretty quickly so you may want to squirt only a small amount each time so you don't have to waste them.

I worked on my cake runner, I find that this way allow me to manage easier without getting my fingers too messy (I put a layer of paper over the cake runner so it's easier to cleanup).

That's it, our easy peasy weekend art & craft lesson at home, and the kids are begging me to do this again next week. :)

Keep calm, and craft on

Copyrights © Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones, 2012 - present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any materials/photos within this website without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Clay Art Project with the Kids, Part 1

Big Guy came home with a packet of white clay and modeling tool. Yeah, time to get creative! Since its white clay, we decided to mold them first before painting them (I have a box of acrylic paint that had been waiting to be summoned...)

The next morning, after we had our simple breakie the duo just could not wait to get started on their clay craft project, the opened the packet of clay right away! So the 4 of us (daddy could not resist the fun too!) spent the next hour molding, rolling and shaping... and look what we came out with!

Little E designed a dice, sword, yatch and a leaf; he also made a hut after seeing mine, love the little "buttons" he added onto his little hut.

Zoom in on the dice. 

I designed the huts and little pea...

Some strawberries too. Hopefully they turn out nicer after coloring.

Big Guy was more artsy than any of us.. A lone man.

Little C was a little... undecided. She was busy, no doubt, very busy working along side us, but in the end she seemed to enjoy cutting more than moulding... LOL. Anyway, we thought that it's alright, as long as she enjoyed and we all had some jolly good time together.

We left the completed clay pieces in the oven on high heat (220°c) for about 30 minutes until they are all dried. Coloring shall begin the next day...

Clay project is really simple, all you need is some clay (obviously! You can buy the colored ones too from stationery shop) and some modeling tools. No special cleaning tool required, just water and soap will do.

So go on, have fun with your little ones!

Stay tuned for the next post on the colored projects... ;)

Updated, here comes Part 2!

Copyrights © Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones, 2012 - present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any materials/photos within this website without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.