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Playing With The New Toys
February 19, 2009
| We had a great time last weekend at the Jack Frost Winter Festival in Charlottetown. The weather was perfect and everyone seemed to be having lots of fun. Owls Hollow had a play area set up in the indoor event at the Civic Centre. At the Centre, there were rides & games, treats, a petting farm and an incredible face painting artist named Nika. My daughter had her face painted and was so excited to have a sparkling dolphin on her cheek. |
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At our play area, we had lots of toys for children to play with including the Thomas The Tank play table, a Plan Toys table with a wooden castle and knights, a big map floor puzzle, Kettler tricycles to zoom around on, Karito Kids dolls and all of the newly-released Playmobil sets.
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The night before the show, my brother and I were busy setting up all of the new Playmobil Construction sets and I have to say that I had a ball! It really is one of the coolest toys out there. I'm not big on plastic toys, but for Playmobil I make an exception. I really like the new construction sets. At first sight, I thought the new Take Along Construction Garage would be a bit boring, but as I worked on putting it together, I changed my mind. It comes with so many cool tools and accessories. I was thinking about some of the people I know who would love to have a garage set up like this one! |
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The Playmobil Road Construction is really neat too. It has bits of "asphalt" pieces that fit into holes in the pavement where kids can use the jackhammer and work on fixing up the road. I also noticed the signs for bicycles and pedestrians that are a great addition. I wish Charlottetown would get a few more signs like that... There is also a Road Sweeper that actually brushes up little pebbles, Brick layers, Rollers, a Road Maintenance Truck with a rotating arm, and an LED Sign that flashes three different signals. I never thought I'd be into heavy machinery, but these new sets are so much fun! |
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We really had a great time at the Winter Festival. I think it's important to have celebrations within the community. Lily was skating outside on the rink by Founders Hall, we admired the amazing ice sculptures and sat inside the igloo. I think that my favourite part about the whole weekend was the farm animals. Seeing a newborn lamb being cared for by her mother was so interesting. And watching all of the animals interact completely fascinated me. At first I wasn't sure what I thought about the animals being transported around and fenced in for us to pat, but when I talked to my brother Steven, about it he offered a fresh perspective. His thinking is that it's such a great opportunity for city kids to see animals that they wouldn't normally see and when we get to know about someone or something, we can then start to care about it. When we don't have knowledge about something, it's much easier not to give a damn. I also met the family who runs the petting farm and learned how much they love the animals. The animals have good lives and when they get too old for traveling, they hang out on the farm until they die from old age. That made me happy. I was so glad to hear that, Bacon, the pot-bellied pig from the Petting Farm was indeed NOT going to be turned into an edible salty delight when his days of public service are done!
All in all it was a great weekend. |
Making Valentines
February 07, 2009
Instead of buying Valentine cards to give out to her classmates, my daughter decided to make her own. She set up a little production table and got to work. She used easy-to-find materials including: plain white paper, a glue stick, scissors, stamps, watersoluble pastels, a paint brush and a bowl of water.
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We use this set of water-soluble wax pastels a lot. They are made in Switzerland by a company called, Caran d'Ache. We have a tin of 30 colours and it's great because there are different shades of the same colour. The way these pastels work is like magic for children! You draw on a surface as you would with a crayon and then paint over your drawing with a wet paint brush and it turns to watercolour. You can also draw on wet paper with really cool results. |
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 We also use this Fairy Stamp Set by Djeco quite often. It comes with lots of really beautiful fairy-inspired stamps, a stamp pad and a book for stamping.
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 Lily painted her sheets of paper, set them to dry by the fireplace and then cut them into heart shapes. |
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 We used the scraps of paper from the big hearts to make little hearts to decorate with after. I helped cut out the little hearts. Some really pretty patterns come out just by chance when using the scraps of leftovers. |
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 Later, she folded the hearts in half and then addressed each to the friends in her class. |
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 And here are the finished Valentine Cards that Lily made for her class. Each is unique. What a fun way to spend an afternoon! |
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