He's just a skater boi...

I bought this on a whim a couple of weeks ago and put it in the rainy day draw and since we have had quite a few rainy days this week it didn't stay in the draw for long. 

In the pack is a frame and a selection of pictures that slot in behind it and a load of little plastic beads.

The up-side of this project is that is it great for pincer muscles and co-ordination and for matching the colours. The downside is that once you have designed the pattern you have to iron it to fuse them together and I am pretty sure melting plastic isn't good for you!

Here he has just done the top row of blue beads.

Almost finished, took quite a long time and a LOT of patience.

Of course, I forgot to take a photo of the finished piece and I have no idea where it has gone! Oh Well!

Daddy-Ebi is back home today, he has been working away this week and we have a party to go to later today, so it is my last chance to blast the house and get it spotless before the guests arrive on Monday. My wrist is playing up again, so I doubt I will be getting much in the way of crafting done which is just as well since I can ALWAYS find something crafty to do rather than cleaning ;o)

Barrel Painting

I saw this ideas somewhere in the blogisphere but I can't remember where, of course I didn't book mark it, thank you to who ever posted it!

We rolled a piece of paper and put it inside a plastic barrel (old pretzel barrel), squirted some paint inside - we used watercolours because that was what we had handy. Then dropped a few objects inside, put the lid on TIGHT and shook and rolled and rolled and shook....

we started with buttons

and moved onto empty plastic cotton reels

this was cotton buds

this used marbles

It was a fun project and we will be doing it again, possibly today since it is wet and miserable outside!

I am working on updating the shop, cleaning the house (my aunt, uncle and cousin arrive Monday) and I will announce the next swap over the next few days.... stay tuned!

Shopping, Playing and Farewell Tears

We had a looong day yesterday. My Aussie friend who leaves at the weekend wanted to take her mom (who is visiting) to Nippori and asked if I would like to go along - as a tour guide! I really wanted to go but didn't relish the idea of dragging Ebi-kun around a load of fabric shops also R-kun was penciled in for a final playdate in the afternoon. I had a chat with Ebi-kun and we decided to go to Nippori and then have lunch on the train on the way home then we would be back in time for R-kun if he could make it. (I didn't tell Ebi-kun that R-kun was coming just in case he couldn't). We made it to Nippori just as the shops opened, I grilled Liv's mom as she is a professional designer - I wish I had prepared a list of questions! I promised Ebi-kun that if he saw some fabric he really liked I would get it for him. He found some with aliens on it!

I intended to just buy the few bits and bobs on my list but ended up with a load of stuff for the shop too - update coming up soon. I said my final goodbye to Liv, I know she will be back since her family live down the road but over this last year she has been a great friend and will be sorely missed.

We made it back home by 2.30pm, shattered,  R-kuns mom called to say they would come around 4pm so we had some quiet time. When R-kun arrived Ebi-kun was so excited, in fact over-excited, it took him quite a while, and couple of tellings off to calm down. I made the boys okonomiyaki for dinner, which disappeared really quickly, then they were back off to play. All too soon it was time to say our final farewells to Kym and R-kun, Kym has also been a great friend and was the one who encouraged me to sell the things I make in her shop, Liv was the one who pushed me to open the Etsy shop so I am indebted by their support and friendship, I will miss them both dearly. I will have to stop there or I will start sobbing into the keyboard.

On a completely different note, I whipped up this mini cushion for my mother-in-law, I didn't know when I made it that the reason older ladies in Japan like owls is because they have a symbolic meaning that is something on the lines of an owl bringing an easier life for you.

I hope she likes it. Ebi-kun is not happy because it means a trip to the post office by bike - on old bumpy roads, hurts his bum! and yes, he does have a cushion, he just doesn't have much bum cushioning (like his dad), he can have some of mine if he likes :o)

New Bag

Now in the shop, this fabric is so damn cute, I have a bit more of it but need lining fabric to go with it. I hope this goes to a good home, I don't really want to sell it but hubby says it has to go :o(

(typical bloke has no understanding of the woman's need of a 1000 bags!)

Sh vs Ch and a bit of excitement

I am a bit behind on my posts, sorry! Friday R-kun came for his lesson, maybe his last, we have our fingers crossed that he can make it on Wednesday. We started with warm up questions and a review of the emotions we studied last time. I took it one step further and asked the boys to make a sentence using the cards, R-kun's best one was "I am excited because I am going to Malaysia".

Then I gave them this group of objects, we went through to check that they knew all the vocab and then I asked them to put them into 2 groups. Which they did but they couldn't explain why they had chosen those groups (which I expected, older kids will be able to justify their choice). So, after a couple of attempts I arranged them into two groups and then asked them why I had put them in each group. Blank looks all round. I then named the objects again emphasising the sh and ch parts of the word, and the penny dropped! I mixed up the objects and had them sort them again by themselves.

They picked one object from each group to spell, write and draw.

Then we brainstormed other sh and ch words, I told them they were going to have a sh and ch snack, could they guess? They came up with sushi and chocolate, urgh what a combo! They actually got....

fish and cheese :o)

Ebi-kun had been pestering to play with R-kun and the playdoh, so I gave in, ebi-kun has a tub of letter stamps so they spent some time spelling things out. I have never taught Ebi-kun the capital letters, I totally focused on the little letters, this is my own belief that it is more fulfilling for the child to learn little letters first, with the knowledge of little letters he can pick up a book and start to read, he can't do this is he only knows the big letters. When I was teaching ESL I would do the same, my manager at the time would bollock me for it but then my students were all reading and writing far quicker than if I had followed his schedule.

Anyway, back on track, I also introduced comparatives and superlatives using the playdoh as a models, this worm is long, this one longer, this is the longest. It was done in a fun and relaxing way and the boys really enjoyed it.
Saturday we had a playdate at kodomo no shiro which was fun, we had a good turn out and it was a sunny day so a lot of time was spent outside. On the way home we saw a helicopter hovering over our town, not that unusual but then we saw another and another, 4 in all. Big news! We tried to drive to where the action seemed to be taking place, we live out in the sticks so it must have been something unusual. When we drove past the shinkansen tracks I spotted that the shinkansen (bullet train) had actually stopped. We had to wait until we got home to find out what had happened. Apparently a bloke had opened the emergency door whilst the train was going at 200kph and jumped! His body was found 2.7km down the track and all the trains were stopped for 2.5 hours. Jumping in front of a train to commit suicide in Japan is quite common but not with the shinkansen. The train companies actually charge the 'jumpers' family for clean up costs and loss of earnings and different lines cost different amounts. I was on the train one time with a Japanese friend and the train stopped, the first announcement said their had been an accident (read into the word accident) a short while later there was an apology for the delay, they were trying to locate a missing limb. There was a united gasp in the carriage, I didn't catch what was said so my friend translated, sometime I am glad my Japanese is rubbish!

A last note on suicide, in Japan people usually remove their shoes before doing the deed!

Did you guess Ebi-kuns word yet?

Emotions cards

I have to thank Swati for giving me a boot up the bum and making me dig out these files. The company I worked for before asked me to make a load of cards to use in class (I retained the copywrite!) and I have been meaning to put them up on Lulu for ages but, well you know how it is! So, here they are, the file includes 3 styles of card and 10 different bingo sheets, there is a preview page too :o).

Now, I would like to say I am not in favour of flashcards being used for drill but there are loads of other uses for them, here are a few of the games I used to use in class - note my classes had a max of 8 students and I always had two sets of each lot of cards.

Memory - simple, turn the cards over so they are face down, take it in turns turning over 2 cards to find a matching pair.

Fishing - you will need paper clips and a magnetic fishing rod too (I used a cooking chopstick, a bit of string and a magnet all held together with cellotape!). Attach paperclips to the cards, face down and then get the kids to fish them out. You can make this more difficult by having them stand on a chair and if you feel mean, ask them what kind of 'fish' it is, if they get it wrong, the fish gets thrown back into the sea!

Race - you will need some kind of place marker - small cars go down well with boys and a dice plus a start and goal sheet. Lay the cards out in a long line, either face up or down put the start at one end and goal at the other, then play as you would a board game. Throw the dice and move forward that amount of spaces. Make it more fun by adding bomb cards - decide before the game starts the forfeit for landing on a bomb or use the forward and back cards - you can download a pack of these cards for free here.

Janken race - janken is otherwise known as rock, paper scissors, rules of play are here. Lay the cards out in a horse-shoe shape along the edge of a table, face down. You have 2 players, one at each end of the horse shoe. When you say go the players race by picking up the card, turning it over and naming what is on it, they continue around the horseshoe until the two players meet. Now they stop to do 'janken' the loser must return to the start and the winner continues around the horseshoe until the players meet again. This continues until both players are at one end and just the first/final card is left, if the stronger player (the one who has made it all around the horseshoe) wins he is the champ. If he looses he has to go back to the start and the game continues....be warned this game can go on for a loooong time. If that is the case, pull a few cards off the table! This was always a high energy game and can be played in teams too.

Treasure Hunt - a fav with the little ones. Hide one set of cards around the room then ask little one to go and find the matching card. The easiest version - let the child take the card with her, next show the child the card and ask her to find the matching one, finally verbally tell the child (no visual) clue what to look for. This can be played with just one child or for a riot, a whole load of them.

Charades - the first child takes a card and acts out what is on the card - be prepared to be amused. There are numerous rules and versions of this just be sure the rules are laid out before you start.

Snakes and ladders - use the cards in conjunction with the snakes and ladders (or similar) board game. The child must name the card before he can take a turn.

I am sure I had more games, I will add them as I remember them!

Regarding explaining the emotions, I have found that helping Ebi-kun remember when something specific happened and then linking that to the emotion card works well. For example, I said the other day, 

"Do you remember when that big group of high school calls all started saying 'kawaii' (cute) to you on the train?"

Nods head.

"Do you remember how you felt?"

Nods head.

"Did you feel good?"

Shakes head

Well that was because you were embarrassed, can you think of another time you were embarrassed? .........

Let's play a game

I spy with my little eye something beginning with 'cuh' (c)

(this is from a conversation on the train the other day, can you guess what Ebi-kuns C word was?)

The geometric Solids

Ebi-kun surprised me by getting these out a couple of days ago, they have been quietly collecting dust on the shelf for quite a while. We didn't actually have any cards to go with them so once he had finished with them the first time, I took some photos to make cards.

Here he has collected objects around the house to match the shapes, these are the only ones he could find. 
Here is a better shot of the cards, I started off by deleting  the white background but then I didn't like how they were 'floating'. I printed one of each version off and asked Ebi-kun for his opinion and he liked the one with the background too, so they won! If you would like a set they are available here.
Of course, when I had made the cards I hadn't got anywhere to keep them so I whipped up a pouch - another design, I am still trying to find something I am really happy with! The folded card holder that I made for dinosaurs and art cards are lovely BUT they often get picked up, upside down and all the cards fall out, I tried sewing in a flap to prevent it but it wasn't too successful. So, this is the latest version...

This one has 2 pockets, the one at the back for the card with label, the middle pocket for the cards with just the image and a small pocket at the front for the word labels, let's see how it goes...
About the emotions post, I am trying to track down the cards I made, they are around somewhere but I made them on my old laptop and I am not quite sure where hubby has filed them, I am pretty sure there are bingo cards to go with them... I will get back to you.....

Snacks

My mother in law is a lovely woman  and often sends us food parcels from the wilds of Wakayama just in case we can't buy tea or honey on the out skirts of Tokyo! The problem is that, the last few parcels she has sent contain boxes of snacks for Ebi-kun, chocolate and biscuit type snacks. I made the mistake of letting him have them at snack time and so now that is all he wants. Most of the time Ebi-kun is a good eater, he will try ANYTHING and enjoys his food - he is painfully slow at eating though, a 3 hour lunch would suit him just fine! I have noticed though, since he has been on his 'bad' snack kick that he isn't eating well at meal times, so yesterday I decided it was time we had a talk. I explained about healthy and unhealthy foods and why they are that way. Then I made two labels and put them on the table and asked him to get some things out of the draw/fridge and sort them as he did it.

He did quite well with it all, he was confused with the jam because it has fruit in it but then we talked about the sugar content. I am not anti chocolate (in fact the opposite is more the truth) so we talked about eating these things in moderation and that it is OK to have them once in a while and we also touched on the subject of marketing, goods having popular kids characters on them and how these goods are often the unhealthy ones. He concluded that the milk should have Doremon on it because he is a cat and cats drink milk and milk is healthy!

Then I asked him to prepare his snack by himself

He picked dried soy beans, raisins and strawberries, three things because he is 3, in the 3 dish, with 3 strawberries. (Do your kids do this?)
We also did some work, language work is the favourite still, he got out the sound pouches and then started to spell out the words - that was before the zebra and grasshopper had a fight and then the praying mantis had to ride the skateboard to the police station!
Ebi-kun was super excited this morning because we woke up to snow, sadly it has turned to rain and has almost all gone already, he wants to make a snowman so much, perhaps those of you will loads of the white stuff could send us a box full each and then we can make one :o)

English Lesson or should that be giggles class?

R-kun came round yesterday for his English lesson, of course Ebi-kun got over excited and it took him about half an hour to actually calm down!  We played this game so that he had to concentrate which calmed him down some-what. R-kun is writing a letter on Ebi-kuns back and then Ebi-kun is writing it on the white board they did quite well to begin with but then once one of them had got it wrong it was all reduced to a fit of the giggles.

The theme of the lesson was emotions, I thought this would be a useful thing for R-kun once he moves, being able to express yourself is important and can be so frustrating if you can't get across to the other person what is wrong. One of my major gripes when I was teaching was that the kids were only taught

"How are you?"

"I'm fine thank you"

But what if you are not fine? It was a rule in my class that "I'm fine" was not a suitable answer and to help the kids get to grips with the different emotions I made some characters for the walls and matching cards, they were in my teaching box so we got them out too. 

Any ideas what they are doing?

Yup, throwing balls at the window! These sucker balls were by far the most popular 'game' in my class, I used on the white board but I don't happen to have one at home so the window had to make do.

I stuck the characters on the outside of the window, heaven know what the neighbours thought :o). The mossie screen squashed a couple of them though. The first game the boys would try and hit one and then say what it was 'I am happy', 'I am embarrassed' etc. Then I would call out something and they would have to try and hit it. Of course this was a big hit and yes, more giggles.


The boys then picked an emotion to draw and write about. R-kun did the top one, Ebi-kun drew a nice face, wrote, 'I am angry' then scribbled on the face with black crayon - more giggles.
Then it was time for a snack, I gave them senbei, cream cheese for glue and some dried fruit & veg and set them to work...

After we played some more games, they both read a book each, sang wheels on the bus, did some TPR and finished off making a fan that I downloaded from sparklebox.

Before R-kun left we gave him a present, I put some photos of them both in a cute frame and Ebi-kun drew this picture with fabric crayons then I ironed it onto a T-shirt and we stamped their names under each picture and friends. I love how it turned out. We will see R-kun again next week but I thought it might be best to give the present just incase someone is sick or the lesson is cancelled for some reason.

I am expanding...

around the waistline but that isn't what I am talking about, I have opened another shop! I thought I would give Dawanda ago too, I will will be stocking the shops with different items so pop over and have a look, or better still get your virtual paypal wallet out :o)

not that I need any extra money now that I am a real life billionaire!! 

done and dusted!

Remember this?

Well, it now looks like this!

The cupboard is quite deep, so I put shelves at the back for my stash.

Then used these blue boxes for all my crafty gubbins, I discovered that I have lots of zips, elastic and bias binding, just that they were scattered all over the place so I would always thing I was about to run out and buy more! The boxes are easy to lift out so that I can get at my stash and I have beautiful labels on them all, oh so very organised :o) I managed to get my spare blankets up on the top shelf and I also sorted out all the Montessori stuff, I discovered that I have a big box worth of baskets and trays of every shape and size. I labelled all the boxes so hopefully I can find what I am looking for in the future without going through all the boxes muttering 'I know it is here somewhere'. And that green and yellow checkered thing to the right is my ironing board, yes, it really is that small, it is useless for ironing clothes (not that I do unless it is a suit/dress shirt) but it is just right for sewing projects.

I even managed to sort out my crafty corner of the dining room and most of that has gone into the boxes in the cupboard, the only things left to do is go through my old clothes and sort through the big box of fabric scraps....

2009 Phonics Swap & bags

Everyone should have had their packages by now, I hope it all went well. I know a couple of people changed the details between themselves and that some new friendships have been made too - which is great!

My swap partner Schelle, was a late comer, I wasn't actually going to join the swap this time but didn't want her to miss out, I am so glad I decided to swap because we got some fab little goodies. Ebi-kun went straight for the lion and I love that little necklace.
P.S. Montessori has blogged about her swap here and What We Did We Do All Day blogged here, here and here! Montessori Spanish blogged about hers here. 

***update*** more swaps over at Our Montessori Story and DAng Adventures has started making her own pouches.

Once Inch World has her swaps up, I love the box idea for storing them all in.

If you joined in the swap fun and have blogged about it please send me the link. It is great to see what everyone else sent, there have been a couple of 'light bulb' moments when I wondered why I hadn't thought of that :o) For those just starting to build up their miniatures collection, I did a tutorial of sorts for the phonics pouches I made, they were easy but because I hand sewed  them it took me about 3 weeks to do the lot, on the machine I could have done then much quicker!

I also managed to get some sewing in, I made this bag for the shop, I need to take some decent photos first though. It is super cute, I am tempted to keep it but I think hubby with throw me out on the street if I introduce another bag to the closet.

That said, I also tried to make another bag, I have had the idea in my head/sketch book for a while and I finally got round to making it, it wasn't a total disaster but it didn't come out as planned, I have had to lengthen the strap and it didn't sew up quite right. I think I figured out what was wrong, so I will try another one, I'll show you when I have got it sussed. I tried the test bag out yesterday and it is really comfortable and quite roomy.

We have had glorious weather over the weekend, warm and sunny, we went to the local park on Saturday and yesterday we met up with friends for a farewell picnic, it was lovely to be outside in the warm air again except Ebi-kun wasn't feeling well and we ended up having to leave early with him running a fever :o( He didn't want to leave though and kept saying he wanted to stay with his friends. We had a sleepless night and I am hoping he will want a nap very soon, because I could certainly do with one!

Karaoke

A group of us went for lunch and karaoke on Wednesday (it was a national holiday so the days were off work too). One of the families will be going back to Oz at the end of this month, that is one of the drawbacks of this international living, you make great friends and then they are off and you have to start over again. Of course we will keep in touch and they will be back at some stage since daddy is Japanese and his family are here but all the same it is going to be sad to see them go.

It was the first time some of the kids had been to karaoke, luckily they have a drink-as-much-as-you-like for 2 hours (for the adults, I should add!) which certainly helped considering the quality of some of the singing LOL.
This is R-chan and she is the funniest babe ever, she comes along to our Japanese lesson and I spend half my time pulling faces at her because she pulls them right back at ya! She cracks me up.

Choc banana with sprinkles

Ebi-kun wanted to make a snack the other day and was insistent that it must have sprinkles, so this is what he made....

Chop the banana into slices

Put onto cocktail sticks then dunk in melted chocolate 

Dip into a bowl of sprinkles

Lay on grease proof paper and pop into the fridge for 10 minutes to set

eat!

He did it all by himself including setting up and cleaning up, the only thing I did was melting the chocolate.

AND THE WINNERS ARE.....

Picked by hubby as he was half way out the door on his way to work, the bag of goodies will go to.... number 196

KARA said...

Oh Pick me I really want to be the winner, thanks so much for your kind comments on my blog.

Kara

And Ebi-kun picked the winner of the mermaid pattern, number 1!

yngla said...

Beautiful stuff! I´m in!

Congratulations!

And that you to everyone who entered, I have found loads of new blogs I like the look of and I will be going through all the comments, a few at a time to have a look around those blogs too.

Fingers crossed that I actually win something, there were some fantastic prizes to be had and there are one or two I especially have my eye on...

spreading the love

I'm not big on Valentines and we will probably do some kind of hearty craft this week but nothing over the top so instead of posting about hearty crafts I though a post about spreading the love would be more suited....

Over on Mozi Esme's blog they are doing a run of posts about the terrible situation that Zimbabwe is in basically bringing awareness of all the tragic things that are going on there at the moment.  Pop over and have a read, see if there is a way you can help.

In another part of the world there are many families now without homes due to the awful bush fires over in Oz.

There are various crafty efforts going on, one is too make comfort packs, all the info is here or you can make softies or handmade toys if that is more your thing via the the Toy Society. Also Meet Me At Mikes has got a load of great ways for you to help, have a look through the list, I am sure there is something for everyone.

I am sure there is a softie or two just waiting to come to life out of that big bag of scraps sat under the desk...

Let's go fly a kite...

Yes, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. When we got married, over 5 years ago we were given a stunt kite as a present from my slightly insane uncle. So, we eventually decided to get it out of the box, we went over to Enomoto farm because they have some wide space near the river with no overhead cables and trees to worry about. They also sell the best Italian ice-cream around, which of course we needed to get us going :o) It was quite windy, maybe too much so and we managed to get the kite into the air for maybe 10 seconds at the most, we spent more time untangling it than flying it. After half an hour we gave up and went shopping instead :o)

The only photo I managed to take! The kite is just in front of Ebi-kun!

When we got home I decided to sort out the spare room cupboard having my stash in draws just isn't working and not having shelves in the cupboards makes for many an avalanche disaster, as you can see AND I had actually taken a couple of bags of stuff out before I took the photo!
I have got the shelves in and my stash nicely folded and put away, just got to figure out how to get everything else back in the cupboard. The top of the two draws is filled with clothes that I just can't part with - I think this exercise might just make me do it though, the bottom draw is general crafty 'stuff' and all the gubbins in the bottom of the cupboard is Montessori/teacher related and is going to need some major sorting out. I will post pics when I manage to get it all sorted. This is an in-progress shot, how am I going to get that lot back in the cupboard?

English Lesson

R-kun came again Friday for his English lesson. We started off with some reading and writing games then at snack time I invited them to the 'Mini Cafe' They both had a menu with a list of foods and drinks and I was the waitress. Ebi-kun ordered raisins and milk and R-kun ordered banana and milk. They had a bit of a shock when their order arrived with just 1 raisin and 1 slice of banana and a small sake cup of milk hahaha. When they had finished they had to call the waitress and order again, this gave them lots of practice and I threw in lots of questions such as 'Would you like that hot or cold?', 'With or without ice?'. I also pretended that I couldn't understand anything Ebi-kun said so that R-kun had to order for him. There was a lot of giggling and later Ebi-kun asked if he could have his dinner at the mini-cafe!
After the cafe had been cleared away, we got out the art cards. It is a while since I have played this with Ebi-kun. I laid out one set of the cards and the other set went into a pile. Ebi-kun picked up the first card from the pile and tried to describe the picture and R-kun had to pick the one he thought it was. I had to help R-kun a bit with the descriptions but all in all in went down well. If you want a copy of the cards they are here.
At the back end of last week I also had an order for 20 pouches that all had to be different, a great stash buster :o) I managed to get them all done by Saturday morning, it is a  pain not having a permanent sewing spot, I have to keep taking the machine out, doing a bit and then putting it away, I enjoyed putting them together though, they are now winging their way to England, I hope they make it through the snow!
There is still time to enter the giveaway, I will make the drawing on the morning of the 12th MY time.

Also, thank you for the links love, I will be adding them when I get a free 10 minutes or so but now I am off to do the housework - joy~oh~ joy.