Fall Counting

Yesterday, we went on an exploration of some large public gardens in Vancouver called Van Dusen Gardens. I've been having a new parenting challenge, which  is that I have completely lost my voice. I feel just fine, but cannot speak. I never realized how much I rely on my voice to keep Auggie entertained. Being outside in the sun helped, but when we started to flag, I gave him the task of finding numbers, like, what can we find for "1" and for "2" and so on. It was a sort of numbers scavenger hunt and it was fun.

We took pictures and then the next morning did drawings. I put together a quick PDF and published our project to issue. Issuu is free, and if you can make a PDF (which you can also do in photoshop), you can make a little library of your own. You can read ours here or make your own.

This was Auggie's description of the our day and our project: "Well, it was really beautiful."

colouring fall leaves

This week's Saturday activity: a leaf colouring sheet and identification guide for you to download and print. We like to do leaf scavenger hunts in the fall and I started sketching them out so I could remember which leaf is which, and wound up making this colouring sheet set. The guide is in French & English.

squash soup

Oof, I've been trying to finish up another children's scarf pattern, but I misjudged the length, so it won't be ready for another week.

In the meantime, I thought I'd put up this really, really fantastic squash soup recipe from Jeanette Ordas of everybody likes sandwiches at poppytalk. This soup has a number of great things about it:

1. it's really, really good
2. it's not sweet
3. it's fast and uses frozen squash (it is very good to cook with small children, just keep them away from the peppers — measuring the frozen squash and chopping peeled apples under supervision are a lot of fun).

It has only one bad thing which is that it's a little spicy for a child. What I do is cook most of the spicy spices separately. It's quite easy and just means there's an extra saucepan to wash up at the end.

First, see the recipe here at poppytalk.

My modifications + tip for cooking with spicy peppers around small children and babies:

Shadow Puppets

This is a good gloomy-day activity, especially when it's getting dark earlier: shadow puppets. There is a printable template here for these super-lovely polar bear and musk-ox puppets by Orange Moon Toys.

We're going to make them this afternoon, so I'll see if I can do a better image, but for now this is via Martha Stewart vis pinterest. You could do a version of the Donkey in the Lion's Skin (see below) by Aesop — the Muskox in the Polar Bear Skin?

If you prefer to buy some pre made puppets (no shame in that) then you can find some gorgeous ones here.

Also this week: Aesop's Fables as told by Mitsumasa Anno and non-stop nature walks.

bat | cat hat

This is a good October Saturday project if you knit: bat or cat or superhero hat/mask pattern. Notes and information here.

If you don't knit, I bet you could sew together 2 squares of fleece or knit fabric and cut out some eye holes. The pattern gives dimensions.