For carrots, I carved out some basics shapes. For broccoli, the florets are patterns by themselves, while the leaves and stem of the broccoli can be used as a "brush". It was a good distraction from their climbing and fighting. Both began doing their own artwork themselves so I carried on my cooking.
Another thing: in Singapore I used to have tons of rough paper, either from school or home, where a lot of paper is thrown away daily and I will salvage some whenever I need. So the kids can draw and scribble on any amount of rough paper they want. Here, every sheet of paper costs more and I am reluctant to hand them good white paper I buy for printing stuff to do their artwork.
Thus, enter the kind and generous commercial companies who send lots of flyers and advertisements to my mailbox each day. The amount is mind-boggling. Many of them are printed on one side only, so I saved them up for the kids to draw on. See below: left shows the adverts and right shows their veggie printing masterpieces. (Ok, I confess the bottom left one was done by me, as a demo to them. But dh said theirs look way better than mine, cos mine looks contrived and childish while theirs is mature, abstract and creatively contemporary. Whatever.)
2. Target shooting
Yes we do have a no-gun policy with regards to toys. But water guns are an exception. They don't have flashing lights, real bullets or noisy sounds. And they motivate my kids, who sometimes resist bathing, to want to bathe.
Yet, other than bath times, they still want to play with it, and I can't have them running ard the whole house wetting everything. So I drew some aliens, monsters etc onto discarded clear plastic wrappers and taped them up on the shower curtains in the bathroom.
They spent almost an hour there that day and thereafter, shooting those aliens and the only wet place was the bath tub. Great!
3. Spatial sense
ds1's ganma asked me about right-brain training and that spurred me into thinking more about right-brain based activities. I tried some games with ds1 and found him rather lacking in spatial awareness. I told dh about it and asked him to help, cos I myself am not good with my spatial sense. (I always attributed my atriocious physics grade to this defect of mine. :-))
In this particular pic, dh was telling ds1 about mirrors, reflections, lateral inverted images and so on.
While he did that with ds1, that freed me up to spend some precious time with ds2. That is a rare luxury cos I hardly have time to teach him anything usually. He loves to trace pics and letters so we did some tracing.
These are not much actually. If they were enrolled in some preschool in Singapore, they'd be doing hours of such activities each day. So for me, it is just a baby step.. Steps towards real homeschooling... :-)
Finally,
FOOD:
1. Roasted chicken wings for church potluck on Sunday but dh got sick with a cold and we didn't go for the potluck. I brought kids alone for worship and Bible class in the morning then went home immediately. However, our own family actually consumed 40 wings in 2 days (Sun and today). I did not have to worry about wastage in the end!
I did them the Chinese BBQ way, but using a toaster oven to toast, 8 wings at a time. It took me a whole day cos each set of 8 wings need about 40min to roast. And I did 40 wings. Not to mention time needed for the honey glazing at the end of each roast (about 2min per side of the wing). After spending that much time, I had to take a photo. :-) ds2, the greedy one, ate 5 per meal on his own.
2. An American Vietnamese lady in church baked me this yummy loaf of pumpkin bread. It has nuts and a hint of cinnamon too. Delicious. So nice of her!
