Last year, the family went a dinosaur exhibit at the Science Center in Singapore. They had a video reinactment of dinosaurs attacked by lava balls of fire, leading to extension. It was maybe a bit advanced for my kids, and they have asked endless questions since then. East, now 5 was asking for ‘lava’ weekend, so it seemed apropos to make it our final (I hope!) themed weekend.
We ended up with a 3-day weekend due to a holiday for election day in Singapore, which gave us a bit more time to play, but also less time to plan! I put together a volcano for decor out of streamers, while my husband and the kids were out at the store. I couldn’t help but think he would have done it better, but I thought it worked.
The kids liked it– and East was so excited that she was finally getting a lava weekend! We started the weekend with some tropical fruit, playing on the Hawaii islands with pineapple and orange.
A couple of weeks ago someone was selling a volcano kit on Facebook, unopened, so I picked it up in antipation. We opened it and got to work on making the volcano. The kids mixed the plaster (maybe a little slower than recommened as it got hard quick!) and we poured it into the mold. It was a multiday project– which was ok, because we had the time!
The box came with a learning guide and some 2 rocks to perform experiments on, which was a bonus. We read the book, put one the pumice stone in water to see if it would float, and broke the geode open to the see the crystals.
It felt a bit complicated to celebrate Independence Day in the midst of both a pandemic and racial injustice happening in the US. And if we lived in the US, I’m not sure I would have participated. But since we live in Singapore, we try to ‘do up’ the American holidays, to give a sense of what is means to be American. And interestingly, focusing on the good parts of the American ideals was heartening; thinking about being the mother of democracy, welcoming all people, and people can have any dream and work hard to achieve it. Unfortunately that’s not really the case for all people, which is not fighting for the fairness the US was built on. But it felt good to be reminded of what we Americans are fighting for, and what we expect have to expect from each other.
I made this cute banner, that’s actually quite easier than it looks! Instead of wrapping the paper around a toilet paper, like she suggests, I just used card stock, painted them, and stapled them into tubes. The whole thing took about an hour– not too bad. (And I did most of it while chatting on the phone to my bestie.)
Our Saturday started with the kids outside, while Mama worked out and showers and Papa worked on a special lunch. The kids came back from the store with thier nanny and brought back watermelon for snack.
Shortly after they started work on thier afternoon snack of popsicles. I wanted to do the striped ones (like in the banner) and we didn’t want it to be too sugary. We blended strawberries for the bottom layer, coconut for the white layer and lemonade died blue for the top, freezing in between layers. We let them freeze over nap and took them out to eat by the pool.
In between freezing layers, we did a craft of q-tip firework art. I still have cut q-tips from the Under the Sea weekend’s sea aeonomes, so I pulled out some black cardstock and paint and we were good to go.
This weekend is Father’s Day, and while that’s a mini-theme, my husband asked it mostly revolve around food and less around an intensive schedule. It was the kids last week at school, so I was happy to oblidge. I’m tired, you guys! (If you want to see our Father’s Day weekend it’s on my instagram stories and the highlights on my profile).
The #1 question I got throughout our quarantine weekends was how do we have so many supplies on hand. For the most part, we were able to get through the 10 weeks using things we had at home. At some point I ran out of paper, so I had to order more, but I’m still using it. We printed out a lot of templates so we did go through ink (although I also printed a lot for home based learning, so I’m not going to blame the weekends). We did get a few odds and ends (I needed more streamers for the Under the Sea and my husband ordered some beads for Superheros), but over 10 weeks thats not so bad.
I will say, before kids when I had plenty of time to look in cute shops when we traveled, I used to collect party supplies. And before we left Hong Kong I went to the stationary store and stocked up on some various items like pipe cleaners and puffs. But not an extrodinary amount, just normal toddler mom amounts. And we live in a condo, so it’s not like I have a ton of storage; no garage or attic or even a craft room. So I have to make due with what I have. It’s not pretty, but it’s effective.
But, given all that, I thought I’d give you peak into my storage solutions, and how we managed these weekends.
This area was probably the most used, as it’s where I keep all of the cardstock and papers and the printer. I also keep the glue dots and tape in one of the boxes, and my washi collection is always useful. The other boxes hold cards, ribbons, tags, paints, and other various odds and ends.
As we started decorating more, these 2 storage bins became more used, as they hold our various holiday decorations (not Christmas, those are under the bed), balloons, streamers, banners, some lanterns, etc. This is also our utility closet, with our vacuum and tools, so it’s not the most organized. But it’s pretty accessible. (You can see some things need to be put away still!)
This one is harder to show– it’s usually a lot more organized but with the in-and-out these days it has gotten out of control. It’s not a lot of space, just one side our TV cabinet. The drawer holds our paper napkins and down below is our table runners, cloth napkins, birthday candles, candles, some vases, paper cups, paper plates– this is a lot of cute party supplies from those pre-kid days, or left over supplies from the kids’ birthdays. They do come in handy when we need to decorate a cake, or have some paper cups on hand to make a dragon.
Lastly, this is the kids’ art supply closet. Along with some paints, it has stamps, pipe cleaners, pom poms, cardboard and other random things that can be used for kids art projects. Recently we moved to an art cart so the markers crayons and paper type supplies can be more accessible to the kids, but I feel like I’m always sorting and resorting. I’m not quite ready to take a picture of that.
So really, that’s what has been getting us through these past 10 weeks! Creative use of what we have, Pinterest and templates. As of this past Friday Sinapore has entered Phase 2 so things are slowly opening up, including our condo pool. I’m not sure of the future of our weekends, but I’ll keep you updated!
Can you believe this our 8th post about our themed weekends? Which means we’ve had 9 themed weekends (the first 2 were combinesd, Easter + Indoor Camping) and 10 weekends in quarantine. I’m honestly not hating it, but also, I’m ready for a change.
This weekend, the kids asked for a China theme. They are in an English/Chinese bilingual program at school, but I really think it was an excuse to eat dumplings. They loved them when we had them with the Singapore weekend, and have been asking for them ever since. Christian and I lived in Mainland China and, of course, in Hong Kong, so we were happy to oblige.
Thankfully we had some Chinese New Year decoratons, so we pulled out our lanterns and pineapples. Then after much deliberation, we decided to use whiteboard markers on the glass to draw the Great Wall and Chinese pagoda and temple. It was a bit subtle, but still added to the fun. We debated over washi tape and paper, but, honestly, this came together pretty easily.
The kids usually go out Saturday morning, to give Mama a minute to wake up and work out. Recently Papa has been taking them out, so this Saturday he took them to the market. My huband and kids love the wet market, with fruit and vegetables, fresh fish and cooked food. They had a little adventure, even in the rain.
They got some fruit and rice rolls, plain, shrimp and pork. The kids chowed down on the red dragon fruit, lychees and rose apple/cashew apple (one of my favorites, yet I’m still not sure of the name), but the rolls were the favorite. I also love the peanut dipping sauce.
Next they got to make thier own hand pulled noodles, for lunch. Any time my kids get to play with dough, they are pretty much in. After making the dough, they were able to stretch and then put to dough in boiling water.
After watching the launch last weekend, I was inspired to put together a space themed weekend for the kids. It was a bit harder than I expected, mostly because many of the activities seemed to be targeted at boys. I did my best to approach it as gender equally as possible, and my daughter had a blast.
I was hoping for an easier plan, decor wise, but my husband was committed. So he cut and paint the planets to scale on Friday night. I added tiny gold stars the next day.
After the kids came back from outside, they had a snack of a rocket made out of fruit!
Then we jumped right into a moon toss! We just bought our first new TV so we had a large box that was perfect for this. For the astroids we wrapped paper in foil. Our kitty also really like the box and the foil balls!
Next we tried out a space shuttle repair activity. The idea was that astronauts worked in space with gloves on, so we simulated that hard work with nuts and bolts (plastic and wooden ones from one of their toys) in a tub of water with yellow gloves on. My little one thought he couldn’t do it, but he managed.
Usually tempers are likely to flare just before lunch so we watch about 30 minutes of videos. We watched this one and this one. Maybe the first time I didn’t find pink fong annoying!
