Summer of Funner Family Film Fest 2014: Super-Anatomy in Space and Time Night One: Double Feature! Dark Passage (1947) and The Man Without a Body (1957) Happy Independence Day to all of our Friends and family in the USA! This year’s Summer of Funner is all about the fabulous ABILITY of the human body and […]
“Don’t be led away by those howls about realism. Remember-pine woods are just as real as pigsties and a darn sight pleasanter to be in.” L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon. Each year, the kids keep journals to document all of their Summer of Funner activities. We call these “Yesterday Books.” In the Summer of 2011, […]
Since this edition of the Summer of Funner is coming to a close, we thought we’d use our final post to list the movies that we saw and “reviewed” this summer. The theme of this Summer’s Movies was “Colourful Movies.” This year, we added a few new releases to the mix. And, for the at home movies, we made some […]
It’s good to make friends with your local farmers! On Tuesday, I was able to get out to the East York outdoor market to pick up a few freestone peaches. When I told one of the local farmers that the kids and I were thinking about making jam, she reached around to the back of […]
This weekend, we finished Our Big Summer Project – Our Outdoor Mural! Here’s how we got from point B to point Z, with a DIY recap at the very bottom of the page. Generating the Final Design Come up with a final sketch (or use an existing image) and print it in both colour and black and […]
August 13, 2012 Last year, we traveled to Riverdale Farm to sketch the farm animals, not knowing if the city and its mayor would pull financial support from the farm or if it would remain open to the public. We called these our Save the Riverdale Farm Sketches. With the farm saved from the chopping […]
August 8, 2012 Just because you can’t walk into the liquor store and purchase a case of beer at the age of 7 or 9 (and for good reason!) doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy foods that are cooked with it, or, under supervision, even cook with them yourself. Today was Street Eats Day! We had […]
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, […]
This is a summer to be inspired by the Olympic Spirit. As we learn more about our Olympic competitors by reading newspapers and magazines and by watching sports interviews, one of the aspects of Olympic training that the kids and I have admired is the self-sufficiency of even the youngest of our athletes. Time and […]
July 21, 2012 A friend of ours was commenting on the exorbitant price of a single French Macaron at a local bakeshop. So, the kids and I decided to surprise her with a sampling of homemade Macarons at a fraction of the cost. When we read that French Macarons are “notoriously hard to make” and fiddly, and […]
July 20, 2012 Each summer, my husband chooses a list of films for us to watch, once per week. We call this our “Summer of Funner Film Festival.” The last few years have featured classic Marx Brothers films, Fred and Ginger dance pics, Philo Vance flicks, and a bit of old fashioned Shakespeare. This year’s […]
July 18, 2012 Each summer, the kids create and fill up their “Yesterday Books” with pictures and stories of their Summer of Funner adventures. Sometimes, these are illustrated journal entries, and others, fantastic fictional histories. So, each July, we start off our Summer of Funner by choosing notebooks and decorating the covers, transforming them into our famous Summer of Funner Yesterday Books! […]
June 30, 2012 Pick yourself up, SUDS yourself off, and start all over again… We’re back! Welcome to Summer of Funner 2012! Over the past few months of our Lunchbox Season, the kids have been forming a list of all of their requests for activities for their Summer of Funner 2012. We’ve got plenty of fun […]
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 24, 2011 On Monday, we lost Jack Layton. The leader of Canada’s official opposition party, and a former Toronto city councillor, Mr. Layton passed away after a heroic fight against cancer. Even in his last days, he stopped to consider all of us, writing a Letter To Canadians that has struck a chord with […]
