Making Butterflies

Finished butterflies for play and season corner

Inspired by our crafty week so far and the dragonflies we made at the Water Festival, today we made some butterflies. We stuck bits of tissue paper and shook glitter onto to some drawn butterfly shapes on a laminating pouch. Laminated and cut out (by Mommy), we then threaded some wooden beads onto pipe cleaners to create the eyes and body of the Butterflies. Friends for the dragonflies and the bat. Great fun again. Imogen is now busily putting stickers in the books and in her scrapbook of nature.

Craft supplies

Adding tissue paper and glitter

Making friends with the bat and dragonflies

Crafty week and library activities

Art Corner

We've all had a Summer cold around here ... probably, although it may have been something else in the news a lot, but we are all fine and recovered. Imogen had more of the stuffy nose and nausea than me but I had the aches, feeling light-headed and awful headaches. Anyway, a good opportunity to do some arts and crafts. We did some painting last week including these lovely pictures of a colourful house and a tree in the sunshine and our colourful sheep in the field, both with lovely apple trees. All Imogen's own handiwork, except the sheep I printed on the PC for her to paint (oh and I painted the rainbow one!)

House and Apple TreeSheep picture
Painting the sheep and the field for them

We also did lots of big pictures to send to relatives. Imogen also wanted to write on the back of the pictures who they were for and that they were from her, so we did that too and her writing was pretty good for her age.

Giraffe for Granny and GrandadFunky sheep
Tiger for Auntie Lucinda
Pick-up trucks
Wombats for Nanny and Grandad
Turtle for Uncle Jon
Animals awaiting painting
Imogen's writing on the back of the pictures

Just need to post them off now.

Today (Thursday) we went to the local library who had an activity on based around "The Green Balloon Club" from the Beebies. We like to watch the programme as it's based around nature so this attracted us to the event. After some stories from one of the librarians, we made a Spider hat, a ladybird feeder flower, and planted a Pansy to take home to put into the garden.

Looking pleased with our crafts and plant

There was then a goody bag for each child which was lovely. A cotton reusable tote bag with a couple of booklets, stickers, a maze, dot-to-dot and word search and a lovely organic t-shirt. We had a lovely time. We are back there next week for a Gruffalo activity session.

Hampshire Water Festival

Staunton park and lake

We ventured out last Saturday to the Hampshire Water festival held this year at Staunton Park, which was lovely as we got to go around the garden and ornamental farm for free too. There were activities to do around the water festival and Imogen made some dragonflies, a bat rind and painted a ceramic fish ... very colourful it is too.

Dragonflies

Bat and dragonflies

Painting our fish

We had a lovely walk around the lake spotting birds, insects and trees and picnicked on the lawn in the glorious sunshine. The walled garden was lovely, lots of seasonal vegetables and herbs growing alongside lovely flowers. There was also a maze, although not as good as the one at Glendurgan whilst on holiday!

In the mist tent - lovely on a hot Sunny day

Flowers in the walled garden
Vegetables in the walled garden

We had a great time around the farm, there were Llamas, Deer, Alpaca's, Ponies, a Bull, some Sheep (mainly Jacobs), Goats and Pigs. Yes I did think I'd like to get my hands on some fleeces, maybe I'll find out what they do with them at shearing time.

Feeding the Deer

Feeding the Goats

Feeding the Alpaca

resting Goat
resting pigs
and pig in mud
Llama'sJacobs Sheep

Recovering from colds but had an art and craft week whilst stuck at home. Will post about that separately.

Seasonal Corner

A few updates to our seasonal corner to add the shells and other things collected on holiday, and some other bits and pieces collected or made recently. Lovely seasonal books that we enjoy reading, some lovely Lavender and Sweet peas from the garden, our Summer rainbow, collections and crafty bits. My lovely craft swap from the GP forum is there too on my felt watering can. The knitted bees and ladybirds are somewhere, but often played with so missing from the corner for now.

Lavender girl with basket of dried lavender;
collection of shells, driftwood and
stones from the beach;
some lichen and some feathers gathered
from a Peacock and a Guinea Fowl


More lichen, pine cones, dried Alder fruits,
Eucalyptus twigs collected for a craft project,
and handmade dragonflies by Imogen

Book sharing Monday

Having read other blogs with interest about the book sharing Monday venture, today we are finally going to join in. We love, love, love books in this house and there are so many good books to choose from, so today's choice is a favourite of my daughters.

Imogen loves nature and at the weekend called herself a "nature explorer". She loves to identify birds and is very good at it too, so the book of choice this week is
My First Book of Garden Birds (RSPB) - Sarah Whittley and Mike Unwin



Imogen showing us the page identifying the Coal Tit,
"The coal tit has a black-and-white face, and an extra stripe of white on the back of its head. It's not as bold as other tits at feeders, but look up high in fir trees. You might see one busily searching for insects." The next page is the "Guess Who?" for the next bird.

back page showing all birds in the book in size order

A lovely book, well illustrated and a guess who? for each bird. It (along with other bird books we have) gets used a lot, and we get excited about spotting the birds in the garden or out and about. Her identification skills are impressive, and she has stunned onlookers when correctly naming birds we see. We also us this book as inspiration for drawing.

Robin

We've enjoyed sharing this book with you today, see you next Monday for the next book.
Take a look at Canadian Home Learning for more book sharing or to join in.

My little girls drawings ...

I want to put up a post sometime of the way her art has developed over time, she draws a lot, always has. Lately her pictures have been really good, and often scenes are drawn. She drew a lovely picture a while ago of a house with a garden and trees, but I can't find it or a photo of it at the moment. Here are a couple of pictures drawn this week, the one of the sheep was inspired by Patatutu, I love the sheep she has drawn and the colours used but also the lovely blue skies, the Sun, the clouds and the grass for the sheep to eat. I think it's a happy sheep, what do you think?

Patatutu

And here's a picture of some Pick-up trucks - drawn this morning.

pick-up trucks

A trip to the allotment and the Docks

salad bed

Probably not two things you would normally hear people do in the same day, but that's what we did on Sunday. We went to the allotment in the morning where Alex was digging and setting out another new bed area. Imogen and I set up the pond at the bottom of the herb spiral (about time). Hopefully that will attract some pond wildlife over time and when the other pond is completed in the Autumn/Winter, that will too. Harvested more salad, Chard, Spinach and Beetroot. Admired the Pear tree again!

Spinach

Beetroot

Pear tree

In the afternoon we went to the docks as there is a good children's park there which Imogen likes to go to. We had a walk along the docks too and there was a new cruise liner in dock. It's quite exposed down here and when the wind blows, it really blows. Imogen thought it was really funny getting blown around.