You may remember I participated in Christmas Around the World and I shared about Christmas traditions in Kenya. Well after my post was published my friend, Andrea, from Ziezo - Crafting and Living in Kenya and her Esty store, Ziezo, sent me a book one of her friends wrote. Now Andrea was a huge help in my previous post since there is not much available in the United States or on line about Christmas in Kenya. Her friend's book, A Kenyan Christmas by Aunty Kiko however is a wonderful resource, so I want to share it with you even though it is February and not near Christmas.
This is a wonderful story about a Kenyan girl named Akinyi. She cannot wait for Christmas (like all Christian children). It tells how she and her family prepare for Christmas. She is waiting for the short rains to end. She has helped her mother plant the garden with sweet potatoes and sukuma (kale) and is wondering about the plants as she listens to the rain fall on the tin roofs. When the sun finally comes out she notices jacaranda trees are bare and the hornbills have flown away.
Her family goes out shopping for Christmas gifts for family and friends. There are many Christmas fairs to shop at and the schools are closed and decorations fill the shopping centres. She also wonders abut Christmas Mama, Baba and Toto. I would guess they are the Kenyan equivalent to the American Santa Claus and they are pictured on the cover of the book.
Akinyi wonders what her family will do for Christmas. They may travel to the village to visit her grandfolks like so many Nariobians or go the beach for the New Year or go on a safari. She knows no matter what they decide it will be a special family time which will include new clothes and new shoes for the new year.
In the mean time, her family decorates a tree and then goes swimming and has long cool drinks. Nairobi begins to slow down as people leave to go visit their families in their villages. The buses leaving Nairobi do not have empty seats.
Our Mandazi
Finally it is Christmas. Every kitchen is full with happiness. The cupboards store juices and goodies. On Christmas morning her family has mandazi and sweet chai (see my original post for a recipe and our experience making mandazi). They sing a few songs and tell stories about Christmas and of course open their zawadi (gifts). Then they wait for their visitors whom they will feed. Doesn't that sound like a lovely Christmas? Now, A Kenyan Christmas is available for sale, however I have had trouble finding an on-line site that sells it. Creative Parenting is the site to purchase it, but is in the middle of re-organizing. If you are interested in purchasing see the comment below from Aunty Kiko (the author).
I like to give some non-candy items to Hazel in her Easter basket. Her grandmother (my mother-in-law) tends to give her a lot of candy and the truth is Steve and I end up eating most of it since Hazel eats healthy and is usually full after a bite or two of the candy. This year we are planning on getting her a book about Easter and I am making her some peg dolls. I made her a duck, bunny and chick for her basket.
Since her favorite toy is Ducky, we always seem to gravitate to ducks. This is my little duck that I made her.
An Easter basket is not complete without a bunny, so here is her pink and white bunny with a sparkly pom pom tail.
And of course we need a chick for her basket. Next maybe I'll make a lamb. I'm also going to maker her some spring flower fairies. I'll share those a different day though since they are not done. What do you do for your child's Easter basket?
Today is just a quick post about a new book we have discovered, Red Sled by Lita Judge. It is a fairly new book, however the illustrations remind you of much older books. The only words in the book are sounds. We liked this book so much we gave it to Hazel's teacher and her former teacher for International Book Giving Day last week. This book is about a little boy who puts his red sled leaning against the side of his house when he goes in at night. Then a bear comes by and sees the sled. He decides to borrow it. During the night many other animals join him on his sledding adventure. Then they return the sled. The little boy notices the foot prints and wonders what happened. That night he looks out his window and joins them for their sledding adventures. It is such a sweet book about nature and play. I love it!
After making Hazel the peg doll fairies and animals, she wanted some princesses, princes, knights, king and queen to play with her castle playmat. I decided to use clothespins since I had a bunch of them. We needed to glue buttons on the bottom so they could stand on the playmat. I decided to paint the males and I painted the tops of the females and added felt to be their skirts. I used wool roving for the females' hair. Some of which I even needle felted into place.
She has named each one. One is Princess Moonlight and there is Cinderella (in blue), and Princess Carrie. The men are named after her father, grandfather and first cousin. She is still deciding which are princes and guards.
Now she loves to make up stories about all her princesses. It keeps her busy for hours and then she puts on a show for us.
This month the Virtual Book Club for Kids is featuring Dr. Seuss. Now I must admit, I was not too excited about Dr. Seuss. I feel like he is so well known and so over done, however I still visited the library and found some books I had not read by him. We have really enjoyed reading his books and have found some new favorites. Here is a collage of all the books we own or took out of the library except one, My Many Colored Days, since it did not have a title on the cover. This however is one of my favorites since it hits so many lessons--colors, moods, etc.
For those of you who are new and do not know anything about the Virtual Book Club for Kids, I am joining a group of wonderful bloggers who each month pick an author for the month and then host a blog hop sharing one of the author's books and an activity, craft, etc. to go with the book. You are invited to join in the blog hop and link up all your Dr. Seuss (this month) book activities. It is a great way to find new books and new ideas to go with the books. The amazing blogs I am joining in hosting this book club are:
If you have been following the Virtual Book Club for Kids for awhile you will notice we have some new hosts.
Now another exciting resource for Dr. Seuss is www.seussville.com. You can visit there and find games, activities, printables in the teacher and parent sections. Above are some of the printables we printed and have done. We have many more to try. This is also our first post of this month's author. We have done some activities for a couple more of his books which we will share later in the three week blog hop time. Plus Dr. Seuss's birthday is March 2nd, so expect to see a lot of Dr. Seuss on the web (which also corresponds to Read Across America).
Today I am going to share with you, our projects with Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Now this is one of the books we took out of the library. I had not read it or heard of it, but we enjoyed it. For those who do not know the story, the King of Didd gets angry with the sky since sunshine, rain, fog and snow are the only things that fall from it. He wants something different since he is a special king. He has his page boy, Bartholomew, call the magicians. Bartholomew tries to talk him out of calling them, but he is ordered to call them. The magicians go to their mountain to perform the magic and have promised to have oobleck fall from the sky. No one including the magicians know what oobleck is or will look like, but it is not sunshine, rain, fog or snow, so the king wants them to do it. The next morning oobleck starts falling and Bartholomew discovers it is green and sticky--think slime but stickier. Birds are getting stuck in their nests from it. He goes to warn the people of Didd to stay inside but runs into oobleck trouble everywhere he goes. Soon the oobleck is not staying outside, but starts to come into the palace. The king gets stuck to his throne. He orders Bartholomew to go get the magicians, but he cannot since they are locked in their mountain cave and which cannot be opened by him. They decide to come up with some magic words of their own and Bartholomew suggests the king say "I'm sorry." The king gets upset since he is king and should not have to apologize. But after getting frustrated and crying the king says, "I'm sorry. It's all my fault." and the oobleck stops and the sky clears. And all of the oobleck that has fallen melts away so all the people and animals become unstuck.
We of course did the oobleck coloring page of the king stuck in it found at Seussville. After reading the story for the first time, we happened to make popcorn (using a hot air popper) and noticed the popcorn flying everywhere. We commented on how popcorn would be better than oobleck to fall from the sky. It is less sticky and soft and edible. Then for an activity we decided to try to make oobleck. Ok, we really made goo, but we pretended it was oobleck. We followed the recipe/tutorial at Science Sparks for glow in the dark goo, but we did not add the glow in the dark paint. She happened to share it again on her Facebook page right when I was going to go look for a goo recipe. This was the first time we made goo, so we didn't really know what to expect. My daughter who does not like to get her hands dirty usually absolutely loved playing with it. She got upset when I told her we needed to clean it up. It definitely has a very strange/unique feel to it.
We used a cup of corn starch and then I took a cup of water and mixed a couple of drops of green food coloring into the water and added it slowly to the corn starch. Otherwise we followed the tutorial at Science Sparks. When I mentioned to my mother what we were doing she thought we should be using corn meal. We tried it and it did not make a good goo, so we went back to our corn starch. Now it is your turn to share your Dr. Seuss book activities. I know in the past I have some posts about Dr. Seuss. Here is how we celebrated his birthday last year. Here is my Multicultural Monday post on The Sneetches and What Was I Afraid Of?
