Fun blocks

Differences

Rachel needed to do a Brownie project where she collected 5 weeds and did something nice with them. The girls collected these weeds a while back and they have been drying in my flower press.

Today was the day for making the cards. This was Ruth's creation. I should have taken a photo before I laminated it. :( Hopefully I will remember in the future.

Ruth was a great help today in sorting out Dad's work socks. For some reason I missed his weekly wash and so ended up with almost two weeks of socks in one load. At least I know he has enough for two weeks. :-) She did a great job in matching them up as some of them are very similar.

Chocolate Truffles

The girls made Chocolate Truffles for our afternoon guests today. At first they both wanted to do the white chocolate and then Ruth said "ok - you do the white chocolate because you are white and I will do the brown chocolate because I am brown".
Such a sweet girl. :-)
Melt 100g (4 oz) plain or milk chocolate (or white)
with 3 tbsp double cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
and 15g (1/2 oz) butter

Once it's all melted and mixed together let the mixture cool. Then put it in the freezer. Stir every 5 minutes or so until the mixture is thick and fudgy.

Roll a teaspoon of the fudge mixture into a ball in your hands (quickly so it doesn't melt). Then roll it in cocoa, coconut, 100s & 1000s or choc chips.

The 100s&1000s and choc chips were our favourites. 

Giant Paper Poppy

Ruth did a really good job of cutting out.

She enjoyed helping me use the glue gun.

We are all very happy with the end result.
For instructions on how to make them go here.

Bubble paper

One of the activities in the "decorating paper" kit that we received from the Correspondence School was to use bubbles to decorate.

Rachel enjoyed joining in and they had a great time.

The results were really good too. Click here for full instructions on how to do it.

1,500 done and other stuff

Ruth completed her 1,500 piece puzzle today.
This is a video of the progress over the last 25 days. I took a photo almost every day. She did about 60 pieces a day. She only had about 30 to do today - so it did not take her long to get some more puzzles out.
A picture of the finished puzzle. I look forward to getting it framed for her room.

And just so you know she does not just build puzzles - here she is with Rachel "blowing dye".
She struggled to blow on her own so I ended up holding the end of the straw and moving it around for her. You can see the effort it took. I thought afterwards that I should have cut a shorter piece of straw for her to use. We will have to try it again another day.
She really enjoyed seeing how the colours mixed.
Here she is on a 100 pieces. 30 pieces obviously is just not enough for one day.

And before Ballet she quickly got started on the round 100 piece. So much for thinking we would have a break from puzzles with the dog one finished. She ended up building at least 230 pieces today.

Senses part 3

The girls enjoyed the painting they did yesterday and today. The focus again was on different animals and their senses as compared to ours.

They had painted the shapes for the faces yesterday and today they attached the ears, nose and eyes (and I drew on the mouths). We stuck the ears and noses onto Styrofoam pieces so they are at least 1cm higher than the faces - so the effect is lovely (a bit lost on a photo).

Pattern fun

Ruth has so enjoyed this simple puzzle. Here she is putting the pieces into the original pattern.

Here are some of the many designs we all came up with. Often just trying to get all the pieces back in - in a different way than before. Or just for a pretty pattern. It's funny that I don't have a photo of the way the puzzle came - with big blue around the outside of the square and then working in to the yellow middle (similar to the middle left picture - bottom half).

Autumn crafts

Last week we started collecting items from the garden for our Autumn crafts. The girls were so excited to start with something, so we got busy on the acorn cups. The coloured them in and I put clear drying glue in each one.

The next day we made pretty bangles out of them and the girls were so impressed with their creations.

That kept them busy while our leaves dried in the flower press. A couple of days later we got the leaves out and the girls made place mats.

Ruth's first design of just filling the page with different colours was by far the most popular and so Rachel, Ruth and I made another one each with in that style so we could have a set of 6. The girls were so excited about using them that night at dinner.

This week we got busy on our joint project. First we drew white wispy clouds with white crayon and then we painted over that with blue.

Using the girls fingers (biggest to smallest) to create our branches.

And then sticking on the leaves. First the green one, then the yellow one with leaves starting to fall.

And then the red one with most of the leaves on the ground. We are all thrilled with the results.

Correspondence School Started

Ruth was so excited when she saw that a bag had arrived in the post today from the Correspondence School. I was so pleased to see we don't even have to pay for the return postage when we are done with the bag.
Within in no time she was busy with the puzzle. She has not had much experience with ones like these - so it took her a little while to work it out the first time. We had to direct her a little on the first one by saying things like "try put the beak in, now put the eye" ect.

As soon as I got all the little dots cut out she was placing them on the butterfly. She got a bit frustrated with the ball puzzle as the frame kept moving. I held that still for her and she quickly worked out how to get all the others in. With the colours all together too - you can see how on the left she has split the reds. We told her that was fine (her big sister had pointed it out and said it was wrong). But we explained that there was not right and wrong with this puzzle. It was for experimenting and trying different things. It's great that these games are now ours and she can often come back to them and try different things.
Hannah and Ruth checking out the books that came with the pack too.

Then the family had a game with the butterfly. Throwing the dice and then putting that coloured spot onto the butterfly. Hannah does not know the names for black or white but was also able to match them up nicely. It's not a struggle for Ruth at all, but she is more likely to make a mistake with the colour name. I think often it's because she does not look properly. Once she looks and things about it she always gets it right. :-)

It was great to see her understand the idea of just doing different things with these shapes.

While playing around she put them together like this and I told her they looked like cat's eyes.

And hour later she was playing with them again and this time decided to match up the colours.

She has already had so much fun with all the new games (and she only started at 4pm).

Geostacks

Ruth was excited when I got this game out this evening. Sorting colours was no problem.
Then sorting by shape.

Then finding a shape in a specific colour.

Then putting two bits of information together.

Then to put two shapes on top of each other. She decided to use just one colour for each set but I had to show her that there was only 1 of each, so the squares on the left had to be different colours.