Month: July 2015

Airport runway add-ons

On By Aruna TalapatraIn craft1 Comment

Here is an update on our airport (previous seen here). We painted an “H” for helipad on our control tower. Here is a chopper landing on it. Nadia cut the chopper out of an egg carton and painted it.

Here, she is busy painting a hanger for her plane.

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Here’s the truck pulling the airplane into the hanger.

Our plane has a home now.

Our runway, all lighted up at night 🙂

Finally, Nadia also added a terminal, drew windows and a door on.

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This piece has provided hours of entertainment, all made of recycled materials…UPS boxes, Christmas lights, egg cartons, toilet roll and a cheese carton.

Have a great week ahead.

Cheers,

Aruna

Star wars

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Nayeem and I watched “Terminator Genisys” last night…I hope my daughter shares my love and excitement for action/sci-fi movies such as the Star Wars, Terminator, Fast & Furious etc. Today morning I was telling Nadia about Star Wars over breakfast and that is what motivated this post.

I drew a Star Wars banner with Yoda on it and Nadia colored it.

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Debating between a star ship (future post maybe) and something smaller, we settled on a simple skateboard. I cut out a piece from an old shoe box cover and Nadia colored it.

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We then glued small lego wheels on, so it can glide.

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Here’s Darth Vader, using it to get around 🙂

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Nadia has a great time playing with her creations.

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Have a great weekend.

Cheers,

Aruna

Eid Mubarak!

On By Aruna TalapatraIn Uncategorized3 Comments

We spent Thursday evening working on some EID crafts.

Nadia cut stars out of paper and then we clipped them on to this banner.
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I drew a Mosque scene silhouette and Nadia painted it. I helped her a little with the area around the borders. Her painting is getting so much better…her grip on the brush is also so much stronger!

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Finally, here is our home-made “EID Mubarak” card for family and friends! It has a little mosque that pops out 🙂

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We attended EID prayers this morning…what a lovely start to the weekend celebrations!


Eid Mubarak and have a great weekend.

Cheers,

Aruna

Racing cars

On By Aruna TalapatraIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Today we recycled toilet-paper rolls to build cute racing cars. Nadia painted each one of them a different color.

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We then cut circles out for our wheels and stuck them on.

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We added little wheels and a driver. Isn’t it cute??

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Nadia’s been talking of a car park now…her point is we should not be stuffing the cars into a box. Build them a garage mama, so they can breathe too! What a wonderful idea…food for thought.

Have  a great week ahead.

Cheers,

Aruna

Salt painting

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We tried some salt painting today. I first drew a quick design on a sheet of paper.

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Nadia then poured glue on the lines I drew.

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We then sprinkled salt on the paper and kept it aside till it dried.

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Once it dried, we filled a dropper with colored water and dripped a bit on the paper. It was fascinating to watch how the water traveled through, absorbed by the line of salt.

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Nadia had a blast watching the color run through.

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Here’s the finished version. We plan to make a few more elaborate works with this definitely in the future.

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Have a great week.

Cheers,

Aruna

Peg people

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Here’s a peg wooden doll we made. Nadia colored her clothes and hair.

The next question was where does she stay? So we made this house using a box. Her roof are walls are painted pink. Here, she is looking out of a window we cut out.

We added some minimal features…here’s her washed clothes drying in the hot sun. They are pink too 🙂 She has a small potted plant outside the window. Also a table is set with cookies and a drink.

So the next question Nadia posed was who could she share these cookies with?

Enter a second peg doll, he’s a guy with a funny moustache and a little beard. Again, a pink shirt 🙂

The requests are now increasing…a peg family, neighbors, more houses. Hmm…I think I see a potential future village in the making!

Have a great week ahead.

Cheers,

Aruna

Painting on canvas

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I found these canvas squares at a sale and stocked up on a dozen. Nice for Nadia to get her practice and we can also put them up on the wall. So here, Nadia started with painting  simple design.

My sister is visiting this weekend and we had a great time with Nadia just chatting and painting away.

This type of work is really good for children of small ages. It improves their patience and hand-eye co-ordination.

Here’s the final version.

Have a great weekend.

Cheers,

Aruna

Airport runway

On By Aruna TalapatraIn Uncategorized1 Comment

We have been working on a runway for an airport for the last few days. I started by spray painting an entire side of a UPS box. Once it dried, we measured and drew a runway on it. Nadia painted the runway white.

We added some yellow lines and LED lights. Using a screw driver I poked holes in the cardboard and we inserted the lights from the back. Here’s our plane being guided by the LED lights.

We added some cones and other goodies that were in the US Airways plane set.

This is our control tower. It’s made out of a toilet paper roll and a empty cheese carton. We painted them black. The plan is to eventually add a helipad to the top of the control tower.

Needless to say, Nadia is having a blast with this as you can see below.

We have more plans with this project. We plan to add a hanger for the plane, an arrivals/departure lounge, a car park and then add some lego structures around it. It’s a big treat to photograph and play with this 🙂

On another note, we have a super exciting weekend ahead. Our album “Jiyaa Lage Na” is getting released this Friday by the great legend Shri Bappi Lahiri. I owe my friend Neeraj Agrawal a big Thank you for letting me add my vocals to his project. Here’s a link to the CD if you are interested.

Have great weekend.

Cheers,

Aruna

An underwater scene

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We are working a project that will take us a few days to finish. Meanwhile, we are also doing some minor activities on the side just to keep it diverse and also to keep the posts coming 🙂

Lately we have been watching the “Land before time” movies on the weekends. It really a heartwarming series of cute dinosaurs. In the last one, we heard this song “Big Big Big Big Water”. That has inspired this underwater scene. At swimming class today, Nadia announced that she wanted to paint a water scene…so here goes. Nadia is painting the blue waters here.

There are some rocks at the bottom and a school of fishes swimming happily.

Here are our little critters that we plan to stick in the scene. The crocodile is really a belly-dragger and the shark is a sharp-tooth!!

Nadia then stuck them to the scene. The sharp-tooth had fun swimming around.

He then spotted the fishes and the rest is history.

Weekdays call for 15-20 minute sessions. It’s a great way to connect with Nadia and relax a bit before her bedtime. Nadia added a few more creatures next day morning. Here’s the final version.

Have a great rest of the week.

Cheers,

Aruna

Learning how plants absorb water

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This is really cool. We used food coloring, water, and 2 cabbage leaves for this experiment. First Nadia poured 4 colors into glasses of water.

We then tore up the cabbage and put them inside the glasses. The idea is that the leaves will absorb water and should change color.

This is from the next day. They all changed color. The yellow is a little difficult to see.

This resulted in a super excited child claiming “Wow, they are really drinking the water”. Next, she wanted to know if white flowers would change color too.

So, we plucked what white flowers we had in the backyard and immersed them into the solution.

Well, it’s been a day and no change yet. Nadia said, Mama it rained last night so they are not thirsty. Gotta love the logic 🙂

So we decided to leave them for another day. I will update this post if we see good results.

Cheers,

Aruna