Preschooler Art: Recycle Art

I had no idea what she had in mind on Sunday afternoon when she asked me if she could recycle the empty tissue pack from which she’d removed the last sheet of tissue paper to blow her nose with.

What can one reuse a plastic tissue paper pack for?

Oh, unimaginative me!

Craft with Daddy: Papier mache shark

A project in progress, DH and the kids dipped old newspaper strips in a craft glue solution to make a papier mache mix, which was then moulded around a plastic water bottle to form the shape of the shark.

Currently finished in acrylic paint and awaiting the next free afternoon to work on detailing the sharks’ features.  🙂

Singapore National Day Craft: Loving Singapore Our Home

It’s been a long time since we did anything art and craft…so we whipped up something quick with the red and whites this evening, in preparation for National Day Parade 2012.  😀

If you’d like to do the same, you will need the following materials:
Red construction paper, white artblock sheet, scissors, glue.

1. With the scissors, cut heart shapes from the red sheet of paper. No need for uniformity, just freestyle it.

2. Mentally divvy up your artblock sheet into top and bottom half, in landscape orientation.

3. Paste the hearts in the top half of the artblock sheet.

4. Cut out a crescent moon and five stars from a white sheet of paper or artblock and paste on.

You’re now ready to use this for a flag, or poster or anything you want it to be for NDP 2012 decorations or props. 🙂

Christmas Craft: Make your own Christmas tree

We started making our own family Christmas tree from recycled materials about three years back, and it’s becoming somewhat of an annual tradition. It’s a lot of fun, especially now that the kids are older and more involved in the process. 🙂

If you’d like to try this too, you will need the following materials:-
An assortment of old magazines, scissors, four artblock sheets, brown acrylic paint, blu-tack, craft glue.

1. Cut out various green leaf shapes from the pages of the old magazines. The more variety of shades of green you can amass, the more interesting your tree will be.

2. Paint the artblock sheets completely brown. We use acrylic paint because it produces an interesting textured look.  Otherwise, regular poster paint will do just fine.

3. Once the paint has dried, cut up the artblock sheets to form the trunk and branches of the tree. Using blu-tack, paste the trunk and branches on to a wall.

4. Next, paste the leaves onto the branches using craft glue.

You’re now ready to decorate your own homemade woodsy Christmas tree.

We’re going to be decorating ours with ornaments and crafts the kids have been making in Sunday school, in the run up to Christmas, and items from our Advent calendar as well. 🙂

For more ideas, click here and here for our 2009 tree. 🙂  Have fun!

Bookmark Monday: My heart is like a zoo

“My heart is like a zoo- eager as a beaver, steady as a yak… ”

A colourful picture book of twenty zoo animals, each of the brief descriptions of an animal is linked to a primary emotion – eager, steady, hopeful, silly, happy, snappy, angry, bothered, gloomy, peaceful…

Written in simple and clear text accompanied by neat and colourful pictures, this book provides a useful base to talk to our children about feelings and emotions and how we can use words as a effective way of expressing both positive and negative feelings.

As an English language teaching tool, you could also talk about the adjectives and how they can be used to describe an emotion in deeper detail, e.g. crafty as a fox…frightened as a rabbit…jumpy as a frog…quiet as a caterpillar wearing knitted socks…happy as a herd of hippos drinking apple juice!

Using digital graphics, Michael Hall creates illustrations that incorporate layers of heart shapes to make each animal.  Which also inspires us to think of pulling out our craft supplies to go cut and make some heart shaped animals of our own. 🙂

Click here to view the official website and trailer.

Preschooler Craft: Dinosaurs

Inspired by their visit to the Science Centre, when we got home, DS asked to make dinosaur pictures. So we did.

Here’s DS’s flying bronto and exploding volcano.

And DD’s fierce stegosaurus vs. the hungry rex.

DD cut out her own stegosaurus freehand, and the plates and spikes for both her brother’s and her stegosauruses.  Considering I had to sketch the outlines of the ones I cut for DS’s sheet, it’s no mystery where the artistic tendencies lie in the family! 😀

Preschooler Craft: Family art time

We hadn’t done art and craft in such a long while that when DD suggested we get out the craft foam and scissors on Monday evening, everyone ran immediately to fetch the supplies and piled onto the carpet in a matter of seconds!

Cutting. Pasting.
Foreground. Background. Grass. Road.

Fire engine. Road divider. Speed bumps.
Pond. Big duck. One-wheeled truck!

Orange water. No, sand. Blue water. Green hills. Tou-tou-tou, tou-can.

Farm. Birds. Rooster. Hen. Chick.
Yellow bird with blue triangles. Many many triangles (except on the wings)!

A carpetful of snips and pieces.
Peace. Warmth. Family.

Preschooler Craft: Geometric Giraffe

When DD saw me sorting through our diminishing stack of coloured paper for a planned craft activity the other day, she asked me for a sheet of purple coloured paper to “cut something”.  Usually her “I want to cut something” moments end up in random bits and pieces strewn over the floor. Not incredibly keen on squandering one of the precious last few sheets for that purpose, I suggested she use some recycled paper instead.

Her face fell.

And then I remembered reading somewhere that for kids to produce good art, we should try to the best of our ability to provide them the best materials we can possibly afford.

Oh…well, it wasn’t quite as if I had an immediate need or purpose for the purple sheet of paper I guess.  And it wasn’t as if purple coloured paper was all that expensive to purchase more of.

I called out to her and handed her the sheet of purple paper. Her eyes lit up.

I watched her go, now joyous, skipping across the floor into her room.  I shuffled the remaining sheets back into the plastic wrapper and thought nothing more of it.

And then…DH and I saw her arranging this on the floor.

It was amazing – the usual random geometric shapes she cuts, but now cleverly positioned to form an inspired piece. We gave her a large yellow sheet to paste her arrangement on and mounted it on the wall beside her bed. And she’s really proud of it.

I’m kinda…no I’m really glad that I followed that little pricking to not hold back on the more “precious” resources.  Because maybe, just maybe we would have missed out on this whimsical geometric giraffe altogether. 

And that, I guess, would be the real squandering…

Born to be wild!

The past weekend marked the second wild iwonderbee weekend in our year – DS’s birthday, where we (okay, I…) completely max-ed ourselves out on our energy scale.

And the title of this post was meant to reference not my son, but his crazy mother.

Here’s how it all started.

On the National Day holiday week, I took leave from work. 

So on the 9th, we brought the kids out to Jurong Bird Park.  Because DS has been asking to go for three months.

On the 10th, we brought the kids out to the Singapore Zoo.  Because a friend blessed us with some free tickets.  And we didn’t get to feed the elephants the last time.  And…because I said yes without thinking too much about the number of plans I had mentally marked into our calendar for the week.  Heh…

I know what you’re thinking – two major outings in consecutive days in the current humidity…you mean, there’s more??

*****

On the 11th, I started to panic a little.  So after putting the kids to bed, I drew up my grocery shopping list for the parties on the 13th and 14th. Then I promptly fell asleep in a sitting position, of exhaustion from our Jurong and Mandai wildlife adventure in the past two days. 

But not before turning round to ask DH, “You think we might have overdone it a little this time?”.  I never heard his answer but I think I can make pretty good guesses. 😛

*****

On the 12th, I rushed home from work and immediately after dinner, started pulling out all the stuff needed to make the cake base for DS’s requested giraffe cake.  DD had asked to be involved in the making of the cake, so it had to be done after dinner and before bedtime.

We were both looking forward to this – and for me, it’s great fun to have an eager baking buddy who wants to do everything!

On a side note: Why do electric mixers have so many parts and little nooks and crannies to wash? Grr.

After the entire family had a chocolate junkie moment of ooh-ing and aah-ing and ‘don’t-touch-the hot-cake-tin‘ning, I hurried the kids off to bed, with solemn promises of chocolate cake in the morning, and hoped and prayed very hard that they would actually fall asleep dreaming of chocolate cake, and not stay awake thinking of chocolate cake all night.

*****

DH and I then sat at the dining table, sketching, cutting up and matching three-part puzzles of giraffe templates. and providing constructive criticism of each other’s taste in art appreciation.

“The neck is too short, longer a bit can?”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you first, so long cannot fit the serving tray…”

“I like the skinny legs version better. More refined.”

“Then your cake is going to be super small, won’t be enough to feed everyone?”

After we finally settled on a template we were both happy with, we looked at the time. 10:30pm.

“So…are we really going to frost the cake tonight?”

“Yeah, otherwise tomorrow where got time?”

“Aiyah…but then we’ll be up till 1am.” *And I’ll have to wash all the mixer parts, again!!*

“Howsabout tomorrow morning we wake up early, at 6am. We’ll have one hour before the kids are up.  We should sleep now.”

“Yeah, true…sleep sounds good.”

And so peace, descends upon the quiet household.  And all is well.

*****

Rise and shine! Bright and early!

Somebody remind me again, why I’m getting up at 6am on a non working day…The last time I checked it isn’t Easter Sunrise Service day…

I’m thankful that I’m only responsible for producing the cake for tonight’s gathering. 

Both DH’s parents are also up and early, and mom-in-law is already busy cooking up a  fragrant storm of popiah (Chinese spring rolls) filling in the kitchen.
I start putting the mixer to task while DH sets about carving the cake into a giraffe shape.

By the time DD wakes up, the first crumb coat is done, and I am trying to keep my grumbling down about not estimating enough buttercream…while DH calmly explains to an amused DD how mummy really dislikes sifting icing sugar.

By the time DS is up, we’re putting the finishing touches and doing airplane landings with the spatula on the orange cream frosting, and everyone has a slice of chocolate cake for breakfast!  Double YAY!

*****

In the afternoon, while the kids are napping, DH and I make our first attempt at melting chocolate to frost the outline, patches and facial details on the giraffe. We finish up by having a little mini chocolate fondue party for two – dipping biscuits, grapes and strawberries in the leftover chocolate. YUM YUM!

We’re surprised by a knocking at the door!  DH’s grandmother arrives early – she has taken a bus all the way across the island and walked a long way to get here!  In characteristic fashion, she fends off our questions about why she didn’t call so we could pick her up. Sigh.

It’s fun to have her sitting in the kitchen and chatting as we work, and giving us pointers on how to melt chocolate and to quickly work with it before it solidifies.  She has an amazing wealth of knowledge and conversation is always brilliant and entertaining with her witty repartee.

*****

The giraffe cake is a hit. The cousins are keeping the kids busy (actually, that’s the other way around…the kids are keeping our cousins busy), and we’re sitting under the stars drinking too much Coke, and eating popiah, fried chicken and prawn fritters to our heart’s content. Life is good. Very good.

DS has been on his best behaviour, going round to serve everyone a piece of cake, before sitting down to eat his own. My wonderful wonderful son, I can’t believe he’s three!

*****

Sunday evening and we’re all ready to party!  We’re doing a Cars-themed party and all the planning from a month ago is starting to come together…I’m very excited!

And more food…

We made shepherd’s pie, little scrambled egg and tomato tartlets (very cutely dubbed “eggshells” by one of the kids), homemade popiah, fried rice, and had grape kebobs, prunes and orange agar-agar jelly for dessert.

The kids made their own craft cars using TP rolls, black craft foam and paper fasteners.  And then we gave our cars customised paint (marker!) jobs.

They also played a stack-the-caps game inspired by Luigi’s leaning tower of tires. When we first thought up the game, we underestimated its value – some of the kids went back to the table to try and beat their previous stacking records!

And they were actually quieter during the game than the movie screening, which had them jumping, cheering, chanting as if the outcome wasn’t fixed years ago!  Totally precious.

Our friend, Ruth, calls this the deconstructed cheesecake.  😉

We made the cheesecake last night after the kids had gone to bed.

I’m really happy with how it turned out as I was cracking my head for two weeks how to minimise the use of artificial colouring.  If your site had cheesecake decorating tips and saw a marked increase in the number of views over the past month, that was probably me chalking up the Google search stats! 😛

It’s essentially a no-bake cheesecake in a cup.  The crushed graham cookie layer is in the centre, instead of the bottom, we then topped with a smaller sprinkling of graham cookies and strawberries.

The tier effect winner’s podium (conceptualised in a brainwave just about an hour-and-a-half before the party) is created by flipping a round baking tin upside down, wrapping a printed checkered pattern around the side and taping down a foil-covered cake serving base on the top. 

Each of the cheesecake cups has a tiny clear taster spoon, topped with a Cars-themed decal.  Serve, sing and eat immediately!

*****

And now that all the action is over, and we’re winding down for the night…

If you ask us whether we’d have done this again the same way, quite insanely, our answer would be a YES.  Yes, definitely.

Why, we get told, don’t you know that the same angelic face that thinks the world of you today may turn around and break your heart some day?

Well, just…because.

Because we believe we cannot and must not hold back the present in anticipation of the one day that that heartbreak may happen (although I hope it doesn’t).
Because we believe we can and must enjoy this present season.  This moment. Today.  

The ecstatic smile on the little face, rejoicing in being surrounded by the ones who love him and the ones he loves.

The animated chatter and happy sounds of children laughing, shrieking, playing, enjoying each other’s company.

The thousand and one times that I get stopped in the day to answer the same question, “Mummy, remember what we saw at the zoo?”

The candid thank-yous to God at bedtime prayers for family, and friends, and birthday outings, and chocolate and cheesecake…

And that, is more than enough inspiration to do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Countdown to Singapore’s National Day Parade 2011: Scene in Singapore

It’s day two of our NDP 2011 craft countdown.  Today, we’re working on a craft foam collage, leveraging preschooler scissor skills!

You will need the following materials: Craft foam, and coloured paper in various shades, scissors, white glue, artblock sheet.

I asked the kids to think about the Singapore landscape and what they remember of it. We looked at some photos we’d taken from a trip on the Singapore Flyer during the December school holidays last year, asked questions, and it took some time…but after a while, they started coming up with some ideas.

DD did a landscape – a forest (think Bukit Timah, Eng Neo Avenue…), cars on the  highway, an MRT train with ten wheels, a ship, the sea, the Singapore Flyer, and container handling gantry cranes at the Port of Singapore Tanjong Pagar terminal.

DS only wanted to create the sea, a ship and a single crane. 

The kids call these “giraffe cranes” and the port terminal “giraffe crane island”.  If you live in Singapore, hop on a bus or drive past any of PSA‘s port terminals, and keep a lookout for the quay cranes which have the boom lifted up in the air and you might see why!  😉 

If you’re an overseas reader, check out the PSA website and you’ll be able to see the mentioned cranes in the pictures on their website.  

There are a total of 190 cranes spread out over the five terminals at Keppel, Brani, Tanjong Pagar and Pasir Panjang, that’s a lot of opportunity for mechanical giraffe-spotting. 🙂