The Fri way of life
This is the only artsy activity I managed to do this summer with Friboy. I wanted to do more clay masks from different cultures but he wasn’t into it that much. We made this one which is inspired by Romanian dance masks related to winter / end of the year traditions.
Autumn school break is over which means that for the past two days I have been binging on Harry Potter and Kambly biberli and taking long baths…in the bathtub. While our vacations have been getting easier because FriBoy has grown into a collaborative, easygoing and fun kid to be around, I still find it hard to manage his activities all by myself. We haven’t had grandparents here to help out in a long while, and those couple of hours a day, while they were in charge and I got to sit and do nothing, really mattered.
Last Wednesday was the earliest Earth Overshoot Day ever registered, which means we have used more resources from our planet than it can renew within a year, with still 5 months to go till the end of the year. This date happened to fall on the Swiss National Day – 1st of August, which made big news. According to Swissinfo, Switzerland is operating as if it had three planets at its disposal: it passed its country overshoot day on May 7. If everyone on the planet could afford the lifestyle of people living in Switzerland, as well as in many parts of Europe, it would be for a very very short time.
Half way through summer vacation and I feel like it has been another school year where I am the teacher. I had stopped drinking coffee a while ago, but vacation is not helping out with my resolution. Creativity is also fatigue, unless you take a break from it. And this has been our most intensely creative vacation, Friboy wants to create and build stuff every day, we even did it while vacationing in Latvia.
Continue reading “Monster challenge – paving the way to design thinking and engineering”
Since FriBoy figured out that he can design and make his own stuffed toys, this has become a favorite activity in our household. He also wants the most unusual animals which we can’t readily find in a toy store. This time he wanted a flying squirrel, now our 5th handmade stuffed toy.
Last weekend I saw a friend putting together a kite out of scraps of paper. I never flew a kite as a child and I thought it was absolutely awesome. I also remember my father telling me that it was a popular activity when he was a kid because there were no toys and children would play a lot outside, improvising all sorts of contraptions.
I am starting this post with the end phrase: this was super awesome !!! – because it really was a great activity, as neither of us have ever seen how those chocolate shallow figures are made. Plus last year for a “what do you want to be when you grow up?” art project at school, FriBoy painted himself as a Maître Chocolatier and I thought I’d make his wish come true for a day.
Continue reading “Artsy Wednesdays – Chocolate Easter Bunny”
Each year before a major holiday I plan to send postcards to our extended family members. Sometimes I even go buy beautifully illustrated cards that end up in a drawer instead of the post office, or other times I craft cute cards with FriBoy, that end up in a different drawer. Social media has done that to us, now we send memes and tag each other on facebook. But this year is going to be different. I will definitely send these cards!
Continue reading “Artsy Wednesdays – Easter Squeegee Painting”
For this week’s Artsy Wednesdays we made a family of paper peacocks. It was again one of those days where I was too tired to plan and think of something more interesting and I just googled quickly for an idea that is easy and fast to make. However, this proved to me that the simplest ideas are more captivating and equally spark creativity as compared to more complex projects. In fact, we have a history of activities that failed to make FriBoy interested up to the end because I used to think that complex is better, develops more competencies and keeps kids more interested. But that is so untrue, quite the opposite actually. So I’ve learned no to underestimate the easy ones.
This week for Artsy Wednesdays we played with letters. The purpose of this activity was to go through the french alphabet in a creative an artful way by making fingerprint animals for each letter. Continue reading “Artsy Wednesdays – Animals Alphabet”
