Monday, March 30, 2015

Spring flowers :-)

Posted on 3/30/2015by with No comments
Not much to say about these... I simply love spring flowers a lot!
Except for the daffodils those are not out in the garden yet, but I couldn't resist to buy some from the market garden.
 Chess Flower (Fritillaria meleagris)

Closed ecological system

Posted on 3/30/2015by with No comments
One of our little science projects with the children was to build a closed ecological system, which means that once it is set up, nothing goes in or out.
We took sand, some water plants and one (!) water snail, put all in a glass jar and closed the lid safely. We placed it on the window sill for enough sunlight over the radiator for good temperature.....
Actually we soon figured out that TinkyWinky, our snail, has a little companion.... At first we worried for overpopulation, but since it is still the two of them, we are quite sure, that they are of different race and the second snail, which the children named Little Tinky, came with the plants....
Anyway, I never would have anticipated the system to work so nicely...but it is running now for four or five weeks, the water is clear, the inhabitant seem busy and lively and the plants grown in a reasonable way :-)
Although TinkyWinky and Little Tinky live in their own world, they somehow belong to the family by now :-)

Btw: No need to worry, in case anything goes wrong, we have an evacuation plan for them....

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Children's Art: Pattern

Posted on 3/29/2015by with No comments
Here we tried to start working with patterns a bit Paul Klee like....I guess it is just a beginning and we will continue working with this method some time.

 The children first draw lines pencil to divide a sheet of watercolor paper.
Afterwards the colored the different segments with different colors using water colors.
When the watercolors dried they were asked to put patterns in a layer over the whole piece.
As you can see the decided for different approaches ;-)


Children's Art: Find the Figure

Posted on 3/29/2015by with No comments
Here we made a little experiment:
The children put some watercolors they chose loosely on sheets of simple white drawing paper.
After it dried they searched for figures in it and marked them with a fine black waterproof marker.

 I give you two examples out of a whole bunch of paintings:

End of Hibernation!

Posted on 3/29/2015by with No comments
Yesterday Madita's winter break ended.....
She is back in her element and we are eagerly hoping, that Eastern will bring good winds and weather for the transfer to Sonderborg/Denmark....

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Friday, March 13, 2015

Venice/Italy - 03/03/2015

Posted on 3/13/2015by with No comments
While we stayed in South Tyrol we took the chance and drove to Venice and spent the day there....

 It was the fulfillment of two dreams: To come back here one day (Wolfgang and me have been here in 2003 as a later honeymoon and simply loved this place) and to show this special beauty to the children.
They were fond of the idea, since we once read a children's book "Thief Lord" (German "Herr der Diebe") taking place in Venice, which they liked so very much, that they re-played the story for month....

We had the most wonderful day here and what Lena said, while we walked through the streets, over the bridges and driving by water bus expresses best how we all felt....

She said:" I wish there would be no need to blink my eyes, so that I could intake every single detail every single moment!

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Bozen South Tyrol/Itlay - 03/01-03/06/2015

Posted on 3/12/2015by with No comments
It was a long trip south by car. The landscape changed and suddenly the mountain rang Alps lay in front of us. For the children the first time to see Europe's highest mountains and for us as well a compelling sight.

 We stayed in South Tyrol's capital city Bozen and enjoyed the, at this time of the year rather calm medieval city center and the nature of the surrounding mountains with small villages a lot.

One morning we spent in the so called "Ötzi" museum, the South Tyrol archaeological museum. The exhibition explains a lot research results achieved after a 5300 years old mummy was found frozen on the mountains 20 years ago.

An other day we visited the Nature Museum South Tyrol, where we learned a lot about the geological development of the alps as well as the flora and fauna in this region.

During our stay in Bozen we perambulated several churches: The Marien Dom at the Walther Place in the center of the city, the Franziskaner Church and the Herz-Jesu Church. It was rather new for the children to see such elaborately decorated churches since there are more used to the sparse northern style....

Koblenz/Germany - 02/28/15

Posted on 3/12/2015by with No comments
Lucky us, we had a full week vacation during spring break last week...and we went ....surprise surprise....not to the north as usually, but to the south...
Our final destination was South Tyrol/Italy, but we took a break in Koblenz for one day and visited Wolfgang's family.

Since we stayed only for one day, we took time to take the aerial lift starting in the city center going up to fortress Ehrenbreitstein on the opposite site of the river Rhein.
The view was fantastic, especially overseeing the Deutsche Eck, where the rivers Rhein and Mosel meet and where a sculpture of Kaiser Wilhelm I. is located on an artificial headland.
After arriving safely at the fortress Ehrenbreitstein we spent the whole morning exploring the huge territory.
The first castle was built in this place around 1000 p. Chr. The precursor of the now still existing fortress was constructed in the 16. century.

In the afternoon we had a pleasant walk at the Rhein Wiesen, where we met some nice ladies, who reside in some preferential location with view on the river Rhein and many children passing by willed to collect green for them ;-)

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