Wednesday, 26 December 2012

How to make a Christmas manger

In Spain, I have always prepared a Christmas manger at home. I always liked to unpackage the figures, make a river out of aluminium paper, put together the mountains and buildings.

Here is Rwanda, we only have a small set of figures with Joseph, Mary, baby Jesus and three shepherds. Very cute, all coming from Argentina. So this year, we have added some scenery to it! We made a small "building" by cutting a paper bag and placing it upside down. And we added as well some trees and animals from the toy farm. To finish it, Paul and Anna drew an angel each, and also a star. We glued all of it on top. You can see the result below!


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Saturday, 22 December 2012

The Little Fir Tree

This year the children had a very nice little play at school. It went over a little fir tree that was left alone in the forest, and that wanted to grow and become a Christmas tree. It was really cute!



I would recommend this play to other schools, or to play it with your family (given that you have more than one child and maybe some nieces and neighbours). Well, you can find the complete play here.

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Monday, 17 December 2012

Christmas decoration: Stars and straws

Here comes another super-easy way to make easy Christmas decoration stuff.

Draw some starts that your children can cut, or let them draw the starts themselves. I used the brown paper from the supermarket paper bags (about the only crafting material available in overflow in Rwanda).


Ask the children to colour the starts and then to glue them around a straw. Then get any pot you may have around the house and place the straws inside; or put them in plant plots. Voila!

Saturday, 15 December 2012

Christmas tree decoration

Last week I went to buy a Christmas tree; and since we are in Rwanda, I was already that I could find a pretty decent plastic one. After unfolding it, and getting it ready, we went for the second step: Christmas tree decoration!


Not many fancy things are for sale here, but that only helps to improve our creativity. We baked our usual cookies, but this time we made a hole with a stick before baking them. You can see the result above. And then, we hanged them on the tree.


Well, they did not last long. Honestly, there is not a single cookie hanging on the tree at the moment. But, hey, that is part of the fun; isn't it?

Thursday, 1 November 2012

What do you find in Lego Creative?

These days Paul is mainly busy with Lego. He got a couple of boxes while we were in the Netherlands, and that means enough pieces to play around for a while. Since he has done already the vehicles and figures according to the instructions in the packages; he goes on now with building his own creations.

Such as the one below!


I wanted to investigate a bit further into what is online concerning Lego. I have started with Lego Creative website. The website opens in the 'Bricks & More' section. I went to 'Products', and indeed, I could find some of the packages that Paul already has. Let's say the one with the safari car, the elephant and the giraffe (number 4637); quite cool by the way to build those animals with blocks!

Well, you can click on 'Inspirations', and then see pictures of other things you can build with the blocks in that particular box; for example, a rhino. And in 'Building instructions', you can download a pdf with the instructions to build a couple of extra things, like a boat and a jeep. Cool! What I miss is actually the instructions from the package itself, it would be handy in case we loose  the original ones!

Then I went into the 'Fun with Bricks & More' tab, nice! Even more booklets with instructions that can be downloaded. The 'Monthly Builds' tab seems to be the one giving the better overview on possible designs.

And again about the building instructions. After a longer search, I have noticed that it is actually possible to get lost booklets. The correct place is the customer service page, where you only need to enter the code of the package, or a description of it (e.g. airplane, car).

Which one is your favourite Lego product?



Friday, 12 October 2012

How to make a sun with paper

My children seem to draw suns all the time. Most of the time, the sun is smiling, and I remember drawing myself also smiling suns. Was it the same for you and your children?


Paul made this sun short time ago (no need of inspiration or help from my side!). It is just a circle cut in yellow paper, and then he cut stripes in red paper and glue it together. And then, of course, he draw a smily face into the circle.

Actually, we have always at home coloured paper, it is a great and easy way to do quite some crafts. Try is also and send me a message about how it went!

Thursday, 11 October 2012

Welcome home!

We are back in Kigali!


We have spent four months in Europe, most of the time in the Netherlands with my parents in law. First days felt really strange, meeting people, opening suitcases and re-arranging the house. Now I am getting used to a our new life; with Nils everything is different! I have less freedom on coming and going because of the breastfeeding schedule; but it is worthwhile. More news to come!

Note: the lovely poster was made by my husband to welcome us at home; isn't it lovely?

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