Week’s Roundup: June 7-June 14, 2015

Another week went by, and suddenly it’s half of June gone just like that.

Photo of the week:

Despite my protests they managed to sneak a book each to the table 😀

What were we up to this week?

Week’s Roundup: Goodbye February 2015

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February is over and thank goodness it is. It was a good month, but it seemed long and heavy. Russians congratulated each other on the beginning of spring today. And even though here, in the US it doesn’t come for a couple of weeks at least, I think it is here already, lurking in the woods and soon will drive winter out completely.

Photo of the week:

nothing better than spending Sunday afternoon with my baby girl by my side, all nice and cozy

Lunar New Year

Our week flies buy in another blur of business, but we did have a little event for Lunar New Year yesterday.

First, we talked about why some people celebrate New Year’s arrival on the days other than January 1st  (such as Rosh Hashana, Russian “old style” New Year (January 13th) and Lunar New Year among them). Then we read D is for Dragon Dance by Ying Chang Compestine (affiliate link) to see the major elements of Chinese New Year Celebration.

Then we read about the legend of Chinese Zodiac animals in Russian (Легенда о Восточном Календаре. Мария Ершова, Игорь Олейников. Еще мы  прочли Нианское чудовище, тоже Олейникова иллюстрации)

and read our horoscopes for the upcoming Lunar Year, C. was delighted to find that she will have a very lucky year, D. was promised reward for his hard work, mine was more or less ok, my husband’s year is supposed to be luckier than the one that just ended. We’ll see 🙂

We did a couple of simple art projects

1. The idea for this finger print art came from this blog. It’s a simple and fun art project. First children painted their backgrounds using watercolor paints. Second I printed out some articles in Chinese (you can use newspaper too if available in your area) and children cut out buildings. Third, buildings are pasted onto the background. Children added cute panda stickers (affiliate link)  too. Then they put yellow and red blobs on the page (we used acrylic paint and brushes for that, but for tiny artists fingerprints would be more fun). After everything was dry, children connected their lanterns to create a garland, and added fireworks in the sky.

D.’s artwork

C.’s scenery

2. The second art project was to create a sheep- symbol of the new Lunar Year. Children painted the background -sky and grass, then painted the sheep- paying attention to the head and legs and just outlining the body. The body was filled in with pom-poms and cotton balls. Since it’s the year of Wooden Sheep they used some brown pom-poms in addition to the white ones. Oh, and don’t forget the googly eyes 🙂

D’s sheep

C. draws rainbows a lot nowadays, I love her sheep’s ears too 🙂

So, this was our little event for this Lunar New Year celebration. Hope the Year of the Sheep will bring a good fortune to everyone!

Learning about Galileo

Today is Galileo Galilei’s birthday, we decided it would be a good idea to learn about this amazing scientist and inventor.

Week’s Roundup: February 2-February8, 2015

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Another busy week flew by in a blink of an eye. It’s been so warm here, it doesn’t feel like winter at all!

Photo of the week:

I will never get tired of cotton candy sunsets here in Colorado

Mozart week in Sunflowerous House

This past Tuesday, January 27, was birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Sunflowerous kids love Mozart. It was first composer C. started to recognize without fail every time when she was very little. We listen to Mozart quite a lot. So naturally, we decided to celebrate the composer’s birthday in out own little way.

THE BEST SEASON OF ALL 2014: DAY 23

Merry Christmas Eve’s Eve everybody 🙂 !

Children are counting hours at this point, tomorrow at the same time they will go to bed to wake up to presents under the tree, and delicious special breakfast, and, who knows, maybe even snow.

Today’s plan was to make a paper village. Frankly, I was dreading making a town out of little boxes, so I looked online for some alternative, and then I stumbled upon a wonderful display of paper houses at one of the loveliest Russian blogs about children’s playtimes.

It looked easy enough to make, so this afternoon we sat down to try and create some magic

THE BEST SEASON OF ALL 2014: DAYS 21 and 22

Happy Winter Solstice!

Our first calm days were met by powdery snow! After a few weeks of warm temperatures and sun it’s a bit of a shock, but a White Christmas as a possibility is very very attractive!

THE BEST SEASON OF ALL 2014: DAYS 16-20

Closer and closer to Christmas…less and less days left in 2014. Another lively week for us, but, thankfully it looks like we are finally getting a break to just be before the year winds down completely.

So what did we do?

Day 16:

We were supposed to play games, and children did on their own. The adults in this house were in a whirlwind all day. But in the evening we managed to sit down and make some presents for kids’ teachers in co-op and activities. I was lucky to pick up last glass decorations in the craft store, so we filled them with good winter-y magic: some sparkly snowflakes, some “pearls” and bits of “Christmas tree”  needles.

so pretty and simple

BEST SEASON OF ALL 2014: DAYS 6-10

We enjoyed first 5 days of holiday season and the 5 that followed were just as delightful, although quite busy. So what did we do?

Day 6: Cookies day

We made our first batch of cookies, the absolute favorites- Oatmeal Cookies. This recipe came from the message board I’ve been a part of for a very long time, and I’m sorry to say I don’t know who was the original creator of this recipe. But it’s an absolute win every time (recipe below)

yum