Several years ago, decades ago, as the case may be, my husband and his parents painted an outdoor mural on a piece of plywood and installed it at the back left-hand corner of their garden. Whenever I even think of going over to their house, this is the image that comes to mind: a large face or mask, […]
September 5, 2011 Over the past few days, I have been supposing that this last entry for our Summer of Funner 2011 would be something like one of those top-ten lists the media produces over the lazy days of the new year. I thought that I would write an overall assesment of our highs and […]
WE CAN’T BELIEVE IT! OUR SUMMER OF FUNNER 2011 IS NEAR TO A CLOSE! Of course, we’re going out with a bang…Over the last two days, for instance, Blaise has been holding a cartooning workshop with the kids, teaching them about how comics are designed and produced and helping them create their own comic strips. Yes, […]
August 30, 2011 Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea change Into something rich and strange Perhaps you were not expecting such language at the beginning of a post entitled “Jelly and Ice Cream Day.” But, you see, as we come to the end of our Summer of Funner, Ariel’s song from The Tempest becomes more and more applicable […]
August 26, 2011 On Tuesday’s Egg Day, we began a 3-day experiment. We placed a raw egg into a mason jar full of vinegar and sealed the jar, setting the whole thing aside for a few days. At that point, the kids hypothesized that the egg would explode inside of the jar. This morning, we had a look at […]
August 23, 2011 Egg day couldn’t begin without a little thematic breakfast! No, the kids would NOT eat it, Sam-I-Am, they would not eat Green Eggs and Ham! But, I did! And, after I managed to hard-boil about a dozen more eggs, we got to work. Today, we completed several “Egg-speriments,” including the old egg-through-the-bottle […]
August 17, 2011 Today we made Rob Ford Protest Posters inspired by the artists of the Ghosts of Gone Birds! _____________________________________________________________ This morning, I received a tweet from @GoneBirds with a link to a brand new poster advocating for the Spoon-billed Sandpiper. You can also find this picture on the Ghosts of Gone Birds Facebook […]
August 16, 2011 Sure, we’ve painted with pineapple skins…We even attempted to grow one from a crown on our windowsill…Still, this year’s “Crazy Fruit Day” took the old “Pineapple Day” up a notch. Today, we played a Name That Fruit Game, we created Still Life pieces with ink and watercolours, and we operated a Blind […]
August 10, 2011 Did he ever return? No he never returned From the library that day He may circulate forever ‘Round those queer old stacks & bookshelves He’s the mayor who never returned Today we made t-shirts to show our love and support of our local public library. Then, in further support of books and […]
August 9, 2011 Last summer, we had Pickle Day. We made Dilly-Dill pickles, and that was all. No. That wasn’t the end of it. Those seven litres of pickles lasted us through the winter. And, after they were gone, our talk about those pickles lasted another season, with plans and plots about what to do for our Summer of Funner 2011. The […]
August 4, 2011 Thanks to @MargaretAtwood for retweeting my “Save the Riverdale Farm” Sketches! A record number of visitors checked out the site yesterday! I hope you come back and visit us again! Please help Toronto save its farms, zoos, libraries and bike lanes! Write to your councillors! Get on the phone and call them, too! This Friday, […]
August 2, 2011 We’ve had Marshmallow Days before. Two years ago, the kids and I used large fluffy marshmallows as paint stampers, we made robots with marshmallows, toothpicks, and icing, and we finished up by making rice cereal treats. We had so much fun, it is no wonder that they asked for it again! Still, we […]
July 27, 2011 Today was supposed to be a day in which we played simple tourists, tooling around the city on a double-decker bus and taking photographs of Toronto landmarks and attractions with our purple and orange kid-safe cameras. But, this just didn’t seem right. We’re not tourists. We’re Toronto residents. And, our city is […]
July 26, 2011 For Pizza Day, we created colour wheels, learned about fractions, and made cheesy pepperoni pizzas on the grill! Colour Wheels Nothing says pizza more than a colour wheel….? When the kids objected to my idea of making a crust-less fruit pizza for breakfast (they were too hungry to wait!), I decided to […]
July 20, 2011 I hadn’t meant to spend two weeks in a row with the kids sketching at a museum in the city. We were supposed to photograph landmarks this week! During our trip to the AGO, however, the kids caught the sketching bug. In order to get him to take a lunch break from […]
July 19, 2011 Today is my wedding anniversary, so I decided to make sure that our food theme would be extra-luxurious! I can’t think of anything more luxurious than chocolate! Since we made plans to get together with some school friends during the day (I refuse to use the word “playdate,” by the way – I could write a sermon […]
July 13, 2011 Today was our first “culture” day. I’m not sure why I came up with such a stupid name for the days of the week in which we go do something creative downtown, but there you have it. We transferred at Broadview and took the Dundas streetcar all the way west to the Art […]
Tuesday, July 12 If you haven’t noticed by now, this whole food day thing isn’t rocket science. It’s just a way of making the kids feel as if a few normal crafts, punctuating their regular independent play, and centered around a theme, have made the day into a kind of holiday! Today was Pomme Day, otherwise […]
