cotton ball farm

Update :)

It is almost spring and it's a good time to begin looking at plants, seeds and root systems. Two days ago we planted some beans in cotton balls to watch the root systems develop, and they are already sprouting! Later this week I'll add in pictures if they sprout leaves. The tutorial comes from The Imagination Tree, which has lots of great projects. All you need is a jar, some cotton balls and a couple of dried beans. We used a black bean and a black-eyed pea. You don't want the cotton balls to get too wet, so I would suggest measuring out a small amount of water for your child to sprinkle on the cotton balls.

You can find more indoor growing experiments here, including growing carrot tops, avocado stones, growing a cutting and growing sprouts.

Marine alphabet (& a free printable poster)

Today Foggy & Cloud teach you the International Marine Alphabet (also known as flag semaphore). You can learn more about semaphore from Arthur Ransome's Winter Holiday or read this excellent student project by Susan Laflin.

You may download and print this mini-poster to help you with your messages. This is taken from the inside dust-jacket of Foggy.

(I made an extra colourway for fun, so you can download the blue one here and the yellow poster here). As usual, all rights from the Windy series reserved © Judith and Robin. Happy signaling.

Puzzles

We've made some simple block puzzles for you to print and make, one from each book (high quality PDF link).

Simply print these out and cut along the dotted line with scissors. You can also glue your printout to a piece of card or cardboard and cut them out with a craft knife if you would like the puzzles to be a bit more durable.

Windy's Boat

A paper boat for Windy (PDF), from the book Foggy.

Update: you can see photos of the paper boat here.

Robot Paper Dolls

These are very easy to make, and fun! If you know how to make paper dolls, you can do this freehand, using our instructions below, but we've made up instructions and templates with 2 sizes (PDF).

Happy Easter

We're too young for Easter Egg dying this year, so we're just decorating construction paper eggs. If we were going to dye eggs, maybe we'd do these cool stripey ones. Or make eggshell planters.

If you're looking for another Easter activity, our bunny origami from last year is fun.

Happy Easter!

Paper bag space helmet

Here is an activity inspired by the moon in our last post. This idea comes from the NASA web site (you can see the original instructions here).

Materials

Paper bag (big enough to fit over your head)
tape
scissors
transparent plastic (office supplies or cellophane), preferably red
decorating supplies (any kind you like)


1. Try on your bag and estimate where you should cut the hole for your eyes. Cut a rectangular hole in your bag, roughly 3 and 1/2 by 4 and 1/2 inches. (Cut the bottom off your bag if it's too long for your shoulders).


2. Cut a square of transparent plastic about 4 x 5 inches.


3. Tape the plastic over the hole. (If, like us, you attach it from the inside of the bag, you will have trouble folding the bag flat to draw on it, so gluing on decorations in the next step will work best).


4. Decorate. You can experiment with different types of helmets. We tried one with an antennae and one with a microphone. Have fun on the moon.

How to make a mini kite

This post has moved.

Easter Bunny origami

Do you remember the meadow bunnies in Windy? Here they are flying their kites.

You can make your own bunny with origami. You just need a square piece of paper, a pair of scissors and a pencil or crayon. You can check that your paper is perfectly square by folding it in half, the same as the first steps in our directions below (1 and 2) below. If there is no overlap, then your paper is square. Here are directions for folding up your bunny:


So it will look like this as you fold:


You can use some scraps of coloured paper to make the insides of the ears pink (or you might colour it in).


If you like, your bunny can have a kite, too (tutorial here). We used small sticks, glue and paper to make our bunny kites, but you could simply use plain folded paper. We used florist wire for the string, which is cloth-covered wire (so it holds the kite in the air). It is tricky for bunnies to hold their kites. Usually they use their mouths, front feet or tails. Use your imagination to make the perfect kite for an Easter bunny. We would love to see pictures of your bunnies. Mail your pictures to windyandfriends{at}gmail {dot}com.

Sunday morning pancakes

While we're on the subject of breakfast, we thought it would be a good time to put up Snowy and Chinook's recipes for pancakes (PDF link).

As we're still finding our feet with blogging, please let us know if you have any trouble accessing the link.

Colouring page for Sunny

Here is a colouring page from our second book, Sunny.

Colouring page for Snowy & Chinook

Over the next few weeks we'll be putting up activities from Windy, Sunny, Snowy & Chinook and Foggy for you to download.

Here is a colouring page from Snowy & Chinook.

If you have any trouble with the link, please email us at windyandfriends at gmail dot com.

Paper cicadas

These colourful paper cicadas were originally made to inhabit the reeds near Foggy and Cloud's camp site. Although they don't appear in the final book, now you know they are there, behind the scenes, chirping in a papery sort of way.