Back to School
Some people might think I'm crazy for saying this but I think that our winter vacation was too short. The kid's vacation started on December 24th and they were back on January 4th. By the time we got into a groove it was time to go back to school. We had a really nice staycation here in Manhattan. We managed to see an Alvin Ailey performance at City Center, the Flaming Idiots at the New Victory theatre and Alvin and the Chipmunks the Squeakqual. We also went to one of our favorite kosher restaurants Les Marais twice.
The kids spent a lot of time at home with and with out friends. The girls did a lot drawing and crafting and Z spent a lot of time reading. We also got to sleep late which made all of us very happy! I'm really looking forward to our next week off in February.
I thought that I would post some of our favorite crafts from last week below. They were all relatively easy and lots of fun to do.
T is learning about dinosaurs in school and has been drawing tons of pictures of them. I just like the way this picture looks.
I first saw these Styrofoam "wood cut" prints on Creative Jewish Mom this summer and I finally found the time to do these with the kids last week. We used the yellow Styrofoam trays that our meat comes on. They were lots of fun and even D who is 4 was able to make her own designs to print. Here's the tutorial. I did find that the prints came out best when we put the paper on top of the Styrofoam and gently rubbed it.
R made this stuffed heart inspired by Kata Golda's designs. We got a pattern for the heart from here and hit zoom out a few times to get the size we wanted (this site also has some other cool shapes that we hope to get to soon). R worked really hard on this. We did have to pull out stiches a few times but this is really the first real embroidery project that she did all by herself.
The kids spent a lot of time at home with and with out friends. The girls did a lot drawing and crafting and Z spent a lot of time reading. We also got to sleep late which made all of us very happy! I'm really looking forward to our next week off in February.
I thought that I would post some of our favorite crafts from last week below. They were all relatively easy and lots of fun to do.
T is learning about dinosaurs in school and has been drawing tons of pictures of them. I just like the way this picture looks.
I first saw these Styrofoam "wood cut" prints on Creative Jewish Mom this summer and I finally found the time to do these with the kids last week. We used the yellow Styrofoam trays that our meat comes on. They were lots of fun and even D who is 4 was able to make her own designs to print. Here's the tutorial. I did find that the prints came out best when we put the paper on top of the Styrofoam and gently rubbed it.
R made this stuffed heart inspired by Kata Golda's designs. We got a pattern for the heart from here and hit zoom out a few times to get the size we wanted (this site also has some other cool shapes that we hope to get to soon). R worked really hard on this. We did have to pull out stiches a few times but this is really the first real embroidery project that she did all by herself.
Comments
I remember last summer break ended too quickly. We had just got into the swing of things. I'm already starting to think about the upcoming summer. I'm not good with crafts, so keep blogging so I can pull ideas.
How did your kid like Alvin Ailey? I find their dancing beyond fantastic. It is expressive and super-duper athletic. But I'm unsure of how a little girl would relate to that compared to something more classic like Swan Lake.
I have found that if you take kids to something that is more modern that they tend to enjoy as long as it is not too abstract and if it tells a particular story that they can relate to.