Day 30. Curls!

Check out these curls! DD's hair is thin, fine, and straight as an arrow. She got a new curling iron of her very own, one with a very small barrel, that works pretty well on her hair. Much better than my big-barrel one. If we use a ton of hairspray it will actually stay curly for more than 10 minutes. Really all she needs it for is dance performances, but today she wanted to try it out, just because.

Day 29. Our afternoon entertainment

DD had a somewhat major dental procedure this morning, so I kept her home from school for the rest of the day. I've had this jigsaw puzzle for some time, and she decided she was up to the challenge. She's good at jigsaw puzzles but hasn't ever done one with this many pieces -- 500. They're very small too. The finished size of the puzzle is only 14x18". So we'll see how it goes.

Day 28. Dragon puppets

The kiddo chose this one for our photo-of-the-day. It's the mouth of a paper dragon puppet that she made at school today. I volunteered in her classroom and gave a short lesson on Chinese New Year, and this was one of two different art projects that they did.

More dragon puppet pics

Here are a couple more photos of the dragon puppet, which show it a little better. The pieces are printed on colored paper, but they had to color in the dragon scales, then cut everything out, fold in a certain way to make the hand-puppet part and the nose/nostrils. Then it is assembled mostly with glue, but the tail pieces are attached with brads so that it can move around. This was a great CNY craft for school age kids.

Day 27. CNY gifts are ready!

Everything is ready for the red envelopes! The bookmarks are two-sided -- you can kinda see both sides in the picture. Because it's traditional in China to give gifts of oranges or tangerines with the stems attached, we've traditionally given out candy orange slices with a candy mint leaves. We made the candy bag toppers and bookmarks using the Chinese New Year kit by lliella available at Funky Playground.

The book, Happy New Year, is the one I read to the class. It's a nice book for sharing CNY traditions, but afterwards I decided it wasn't such a good choice for a public school classroom because of all the references to gods and temples. I explained that it is folklore and not churches as we thing of them -- hopefully none of the kids went home and told their parents that I was talking to them about religion.

Day 26. Red envelopes

This Wednesday I'll be going into DD's classroom to do a lesson on Chinese New Year, combined with an art project. The kiddo enjoys giving out red envelopes to her classmates. Here she is putting chocolate coins inside them. We'll also put in a bookmark and small bag of orange candy, which we're working on this evening.

Day 25. Sleepover!

The kiddo with her best friend, who spent the night with us tonight while her parents were out of town. Believe it or not, her bedroom was completely picked up and clean a mere few hours ago, but when I went in to snap a photo I could not even see the floor. Not that she has much floor space in her little room, and most of it was taken up by the trundle bed that we pulled out for her guest, but still. How can a room go from picked up and tidy to complete disaster so quickly?

Oh, and the matching bathrobes were a Target clearance score -- $3.84 each. I also got them matching shirts for $1.84 each. Gotta love a bargain!