Art and Fashion books

J have always enjoyed drawing but in recent months, I have noticed a clear pattern. All her free time drawing evolves mostly around girls with long hair in high heels wearing colorfully designed clothes.



So we went to the library to look for some art/fashion books.

Here are some of her favorite:
1. CoCo the Carrot by Steven Salerno (J esp. love this) It was totally by accident we came upon this book but it happens to be about a Carrot named Coco who in an effort to escape the vegetable bin made herself a beautiful hats and eventually arrives at Paris to become a famous hat designer.
2. Different like Coco by Elizabeth Matthews
3. Laurence Anholt series books (Picasso and the Girl with Ponytail; Cezanne and The Apple Boy, The Magic Garden of Claude Monet, My favorite: Matisse the King of Color etc )
4. When Royals wore Ruffles: A fun and fashionable alphabet by C. Mclaren and P. Jaber

*I have been reading Gladwell's "Outlier" and what I'm doing was coined "concerted cultivation" meaning the parents makes an effort to notice/cultivate their children's interest, thus giving the children a sense of "entitlement" (in a good way). Fabulous book, by the way. *

A day in the outdoors

We had a good time spending quite some time outdoor today and even got our own monarch butterfly caterpillar to take care of. More about that in a different post.

Observing a bee taking in nectar

Some climbing and some sliding

A little more climbing

Sand play is always a hit

Chilling on the spider web

Queen Ann's Lace for earrings

Everyone look at J!

Wind in her hair, though I didn't feel much while in the sun

Having fun

wow, is that a happy smile or what?!

Making a garland for her friend

In the shade of the gourd leaves

Loving all the flowers and plants;
summer is truly beautiful here.

Capsule (sponge) Power!

J/W inadvertently found these little packs of capsule yesterday and are having lots of fun first growing them and now playing with them. But I didn't realize they named each one of the creatures and gave each one various different powers until I made my blueberry pie! (They wrote the made up names on the back of my blueberry recipe paper.)

Here they are, all lined up.
(top row belongs to W, while the rest belongs to J)

A little closer look

The term "echolocation" was learned at a recent bat visit in the night.
(1-10) is W's.

while 11-20 belongs to J.

Drawing session with mommy

We did few lessons from "Drawing with children" by Mona Brookes and I'm really happy with J/W 's creativity (esp J's) while mourning the lack of mine.

Subject: Lions

Isn't this sweet?
(W found Calvin and Hobbes book in the library all by himself and have been reading and bursting into laughter at times)

This is J's rendition of lions.

Notice how playful the little lion cubs are.

I esp. love the one at the top of the stone and the one tugging on daddy's tail.

This is also J's with the main subject being birds.

Look at the baby birds!

And the pelican catching a fish

On their own

This weekend was a tough one. I was down with an ear infection I didn't even know I had; just the feeling I was sick. Every part of my body seemed to be in pain. Daddy had emergency work problem that people waited on him so he was locked in his work office at home busy working. That left the kids with no one to really tend to them.

They were literally on their own to occupy themselves for pretty much the whole day. They played (Sammy (like hangman), etc) and drew(always a favorite past time), read ( a lot, off and on), then looked for other things to occupy the time. They also enjoyed looking at their own baby books which I also fondly look back with many wonderful memories. They did make jumping bean and had fun with that for quite some time in the morning. Later, they made scrambled eggs totally by themselves and we all had that as a main part of their dinner. They even washed the dishes and put them in the dish washer. Apparently they enjoyed washing the dishes. They did eventually succumb to watching "Panda Go Panda" as their weekend movie. It was well earned.

Def. have to grow more edible flowers.
W wishes he can have a whole glass full of the sweet juice.

Favorite food/drink: buttermilk pancakes and Aloe Vera drink

Horse drawings

Once a month drawing class: Horse

I'm really impressed by the work done in these classes and the kids enjoy going. The kids like them so much esp. W that he asked me to frame it for him which I have done for him and J.

By J.

By W

waking up with "Bat,moths, trees"

We recently went on a "Gone Batty" trip at our local park at night. To illustrate the concept of echolocation, we learned to play a bat game which is similar to Marco...Polo. One child is bat, and a few children are moth, while the rest are tree who stand in a circle. The bat says, "Bat", while the moths says, "moth" and at the same time, the trees say "tree". You can see how you have to listen carefully as the bat is trying to catch the moth.

Well, I have always had a hard time of doing physical activity right after breakfast as I'm still trying to wake myself up. But today, we played this game after a walk around the neighborhood and all the excitement sure woke me up. :) And the kids of course had a ball. When I was being the bat, I realized it was a lot harder than it lot and J was really a big risk taker as she would lounge out of her comfort zone in an effort to catch moth. Fun, fun!

mostly camping trip

We went on a little get-a-way camping trip, in case you wondered where we went.

J/W both helped to set up tent

Of course, there's always swimming

Our friends' tent-- the only "camp house" on the camp

There's so much room in there; there's even 2 closets.

A little fishing

The gang

My artistic picture of A wearing my creation of flower wreath

W brought his little bear on the hike

Admiring the moon

Little bonfire/s'mores

J discovering seashells on the beach

Loving the beach/sand/water

A little play the night before camping trip

J with her g-friends

Blogging for J and fly babies

In a discussion with the kids about playing i-touch, the kids complained I spent a lot of time on computer which is true. So I said, okay, I can stop blogging since that does take quite some time. But J cried out, "No!" So here I'm, back on the computer, blogging or more like just recording since this space serves as my kids' scrapbook. But I'm really going to watch my computer time. I might just have to clock myself. :)

I killed a fly that was in the house today, and after the kids observed the fly, they decided to draw them. We had never observed a fly this close before. In the process, we realized the fly was not totally dead since it is moving some it legs. But a short while later, as I was about to throw away the fly, I saw squirming fly babies, or maggots!

Oh my goodness! See the maggots?
The cute fly drawn on the top right is W's.

J's drawing of fly

Since I'm on blogging already, I'll catch up on a few pictures of their weekly soccer with the local Asian community. This is just a great way to get the kids to get out and really run and sweat and of course have some soccer fun.

Trying out the family slide.
They really like it and went on it more time than I can count. I tried it too.

Spotted a young rabbit along with mommy rabbit this morning.

And a bird. I love that I'm spotting many different kinds of birds even though I don't know their names.