Kiwi Crate fun

February 3, 2015 by tam

This morning was full of excitement as the boys opened their first Tinker Crate by Kiwi Crate. I cannot even recall how I heard about these cool kits but shortly before I ordered this one a friend had just received their first box and their daughter loved it. So we took a chance.

I ordered the Tinker Crate for ages 9-12. One for both boys. They shared well as they took turns putting together the kit with the directions.

They got to make a Zoetrope and isn’t that the coolest first project!! We’ve been wanting to make one but just haven’t gotten around to it so this was certainly a treat.

The kit comes with everything you need to make it, except scissors. So it’s perfect.

There are marbles that go below the base of the zoetrope to help it glide along smoothly.

The kit even comes with pictures to place in the film holder and they are numbered on the back to make sure they go in in the right order. It also comes with three blank sheets for making your own!

We had to show a couple of videos just for fun. The kit also notes some tips such as shining a light on the zoetrope as you spin it so that you can see the moving image better. It helped with the videos too.

Xman read through the whole Tinkerzine, a magazine that comes with the kit which explains the history of animation from the Lumber brothers to Edison. He was completely enthralled.

L loved putting together the kit but once he’d played with it a few times he was itching to go outside and dig a tunnel through the big pile of ice and snow that came down yesterday. I can’t blame him. Super fun childhood memories for me!

Eventually we got to our lessons and the boys were the first to use my new yarn bowl. It arrived yesterday with the Kiwi Crate and they were excited to try it out. Is it awesome and on sale and the shipping is very reasonable. It is an early birthday gift from my husband. 🙂

You should get one. 😉

L making his hat. X making a scarf.

L really wanted to go back outside and dig and Xman joined him with a ladle and a pie cutter to help cut through the ice which worked quite well. The ladle got bent a bit but all in fun, I say. The boys stayed outside in -11C plus windchill for over an hour and came in tired and sweaty. Time for a snack and warm chocolate mylk!

There was just a bit of ice on the windows this morning…

Luckily, not all of the windows got the freezing rain on them. I was able to take a picture of the boys having a great time clearing away the frozen snow from the back door. Thank you, boys! 🙂

Snail Mail All Year 2015

January 16, 2015 by tam

This month’s Mud Puddles to Meteors newsletter has a link to the Snail Mail 2015 Challenge. I love sending and receiving personal mail but it happens so rarely as we are more apt to hop on our computers or phones to send a message. There is something so warming and delightful about finding a hand-written note or a little piece of art in the mail!

If you’d like to spread some warmth this winter season, hop on over to the Snail Mail Challenge!

A busy but good day

January 14, 2015 by tam

Yesterday was a darn cold day. We didn’t go out for the trail walk as planned due to the road conditions outside of the city. We did, however, go to Chapters so that the boys could use some of their holiday money to buy more Lego, Minecraft Lego. But, we had to finish our lessons first and I have to say, it was smooth going!

I happily wore the hat that I just finished knitting the night before. So warm. Love it!

Our lessons include handwork. X is knitting a scarf on needles and L is using one of the loom kits. He is so adept at it. If I can get him to do even 15 minutes a day he will have it finished in no time!

Xman and I did some time-telling practice with this fun little book I picked up a while ago. The pages are magnetic as are the little pieces so it’s quite fun! Xman is pretty good with telling time but when it comes to analog without the numbers it takes a bit of practice.

I took some time during their copy work to prepare some kale chips – so good!

And these cookies…oh my goodness you just have to try them – so many good things to be found.

Lessons done and off we go to get the Lego. I have to say, Minecraft and Lego really is the perfect combination…

While the boys Lego’d it up I took a bit of time to check out these new arrivals and put that Dreamscapes book to good use right away!

*if you do get the pattern for the hat here are a couple of corrections:

Row 17: *k5, p6, k5, p1* to end
Row 18: *k3, p10, k3, p1* to end

A busy and fun New Year’s Day!

January 2, 2015 by tam

As I previously posted, yesterday was the first snowfall of the season and we were all very excited as the big flakes floated down and muffled the city sounds. So beautiful indeed!

After lunch, the boys went outside to play a bit while I busied myself indoors – after taking some quick pics of them, of course. The snow was a bit sticky but it made trying out the new slide no less fun!

Mooooon. 🙂

After a dinner of home-made pizza (so yum!) I sat down with the boys and they broke out their new felting kit and string art.

Xman had a bit of help from me placing the pins into the cardboard for his string art. It’s a tricky business getting them straight, I know, from my own string art creations when I was a kid! We didn’t get all of the pins in but it was a good start.

I was quite impressed with L’s determination with the felting, especially this being his (our) first time with needle felting. He became quite good with the needle and by the end I knew I didn’t have to keep a close eye on what he was doing to make sure he didn’t felt his fingers!

The boys are totally hooked on Kirby since they borrowed a wii game from their friends. L decided to forego making a critter with instructions from the kit and make a Kirby instead. Not bad. Not bad indeed, especially for the first time. I’d say L is pretty pleased! =¬) (face made by L)

And then today, for post-breakfast snack…popcorn! This time with some coconut oil and salt. Oh my goodness!

Make your own iPhone speaker

November 26, 2014 by tam

I love it when the boys bring out X’s Snap Circuits. They both love playing with it and it gets their minds working in such creative ways. It’s been one of our best purchases so far and it generally leads to other ideas such as this one:

Making your own speaker.

Snap Circuits can be put together to create a radio and speaker set with volume control which reminded L of a craft he read in a mag… The boys each have a subscription to Owl/Chickadee Magazine and they get so excited when it arrives in the mail. Suddenly, the house is very quiet as they sit themselves down to read. Then it gets a little busy here with neat experiments and crafts. Making a speaker for your iPhone (they each have our older iPhones for games) or whatever device you may have kicking around is one of them.

So L made a speaker out of a Tim’s cup – good recycling! Then he realized he could use it as a spotlight with the flashlight app. Cool! X found some a piece of red gel from a science kit and placed this in front of the light and voila! red light!

If you have an old take-out cup at home and some scissors, this will keep them entertained for a while. So fun!

Oh, and the speaker works surprisingly well!

The boys can’t wait until night-time to really try out the spotlight in their room.

Happy creating!

Cameras, gardening and automata fun

August 22, 2014 by tam

Just a few days ago, Xman made me a camera because he knew I am without at the moment. It sits on my art desk with pride. Love it. 🙂

Xman has been super excited to do some ‘tinkering’ since I got some tinkering books from the library. You may want to check this and this out (literally) if tinkering is a fun project in your home.

We’ve been wanting to make an automaton for a long, long time, like since at least last summer. There was this project in the one book that Xman wanted to do and when he suggested using Lego L was all for it!

On another creative note, the garden is doing well now that I figured out what little will successfully grow in a yard that gets mostly shade. The peas and beans have been very good to us this season. The boys were in the midst of cleaning out their playroom and brought out a big bin to clean veggies for me. So helpful! (and so fun!)

A great day so far! Now off to visit some friends before Momma goes to work (eck). 😉

Rock Tumbling part 1

August 19, 2014 by tam

This is the tumbler kit we bought from Scotia Lapidary Supply at the Rocks and Gems show. The Lego Mixels are not included. 😉

First step for us was to take each bag of rocks that came with this kit and give them a quick inspection while dry, for curiosity’s sake. Each of the boys will have their own bag of rocks and having a double tumbler means they can keep their rocks separate.

Then the boys sprayed their rocks to see how they would look when polished. Oooooh. Aaaaaaw. Very exciting!

Close up of Xman’s rocks. I see some tiger’s eye, rose quartz and either sodalite or lapis – he told me but I forget which this blue one is.

L’s dry rocks.Jasper, sodalite, tiger’s eye and more!

Rocks go into the rubber tumbler.

rocks in tumbler The next step is to add some grit. This first tumbling step will round out the sharp edges.

Next the boys added water to almost cover the topmost rocks.

There are a couple of steps for adding the lids to ensure a tight seal.

Don’t over tighten or the lid may warp!

And a’tumbling they will go! This first step can take about a week for rocks that are 5.5or higher such as these. We will open the containers tomorrow to let some gases escape as per directions. Then we let them tumble for about a week before moving to step two! Can’t wait!

In my search about rocks I came across a super fun kids rocks site! Haven’t shown this to Xman yet but I think we will add it to our studies for the year. It has information about rocks and minerals with projects to go along – plus you can collect rock patches – like that’s not super cool!

Thanks again to Scotian Lapidary Supply for their tips on Facebook as we begin our first rock tumble!

Make and Listen

April 25, 2014 by tam

Hello! It seems like I haven’t been doing much posting lately. Guess I’ve needed a break from technology wherever I can these days. Down side is that I have been getting behind on reading some of my favourite blogs and commenting.

We had a lovely visit with Dawn and the kids yesterday – we have so much catching up to do but the hours go by so quickly and the kids are playing so loudly (happily!) that sometimes it’s hard to hear! Dawn also hand delivered the Star books from the giveaway at Mud Puddles – so excited to dig into these with the boys! Thank you, Dawn and Annie, your site rocks! The boys love looking at all of the wonderful nature photos.

Gotta say I’m glad that Dawn is a day late with the Make and Listen Along post for the week because I just haven’t gotten to much posting and had something to share this time around. So a quick post then it’s off to swim lessons and the eye doctor for my checkup after my LASIK surgery I had done last Saturday. Still healing but wow it’s so nice to see without glasses after 30 years! Look at all of the contact cases I’ve collected over the years! Off they go to the second hand store (yay!).

Last week while looking for a bachelorette gift for a friend my boys and I came across some neat cookie cutters – a great excuse to make easter cookies! There are three different cookie cutter shapes: circle, rectangle, and heart. You slide letters into the bottom and press these into the cookie. Very fun!

I haven’t done much sewing lately but I’ve been wanting to make these cases for the boys for at least a year. We don’t give a lot of gifts for easter and try to make it about the season, celebrating spring and new life, so these little owls seemed to fit into the giving. I had a great time hand sewing these up to fit their iPhones (our old ones). They also got a Pokémon book (of course!) and some animal spirit cards. It’s all about the animals over here!

As for listening, it’s been the usual CBCR2 with a little Happy thrown in amidst the sound of the raindrops as of late.

Mother Earth, she is yawning and stretching after a long sleep, and slowly waking up. That is nice. 🙂

Eggsperiment

April 3, 2014 by tam

We’ve been having a great time reading through The Weather Watcher’s Handbook. It has been a slow read because we keep stopping to learn more about the weather and watch some great videos online. Today we learned about wind and air pressure and did a super fun eggsperiment (that’s right) to show the effects of air pressure. Super fun!

We were left wondering how to get the egg out… 😉

If you haven’t picked up a copy of The Weather Watcher’s Handbook yet, I have to ask, “What are you waiting for, Spring?” You may be waiting a while. 😉

Found object fun

February 25, 2014 by tam

The boys love to construct things as most kids do. I came home from work to find they had made a car from things around the house. Very cool! They said, “Mommy can you take some pictures for the blog?” “Of course!”

The second pic shows Xman rolling some sort of Mario shell to the imaginary car in front – I am only somewhat familiar with Mario Cart because although I have played it I am not very good. Oh, and yes, that’s an energy drink can he has in his hand. It’s been a very busy semester for Stephen, but hey, at least it’s natural ingredients, right? 😉

Vrrroooom vrooooom!

the shards

Category Archives: art/craft