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Jaylene made an adorable parachuting bear that actually “flies”.
Materials:
Plastic bag
7 lengths of string
clear tape
a magnet or some sort of flat weight
a parachutist (Jaylene drew a pandabear, a small toy would work too)
Cut the bag into a circle and decorate it with permament markers and then attach the strings to the edge with the clear tape. Tie the ends together and add the weighted parachutist to the end.
To help the parachutist “fly”, swing it back and forth a bit to open up the chute. Then toss it into the air. Or, if it’s windy enough you can just hold your parachutist and let the wind blow the chute open.
One of these days I’m going to go up island to Green Bay and paraglide off the mountain to the beach. Perhaps for my birthday? What fun adventure have you been planning in the back of your mind?
I just saw these pictures from Jayden’s school and thought you might like to see as well.
One tradition for Dragonboat Festival is to eat Zhong Zi, or sticky rice dumplings. It’s said they were originally thrown into the river to prevent Qu Yuan from being eaten by the fish after he committed suicide in as a political protest. We eat the dumplings every year to remember this tragic hero.
It’s a sticky rice mix with nuts and meat, shaped into a triangle and wrapped in a taro leaf.
Jayden made his own at school. You can see them hanging in the background as well.
Another tradition is for children to wear fragrant bags that bring luck and keep bad spirits away. Jayden is so proud that he made his own. Here he is putting the fragrant beads in.
Now he’s putting the stuffing in.
And the final result. He’s worn it around his neck almost everyday.
Jaylene made one as well, but we don’t have any pictures of hers. She also brought home a little kit to make one at home, but I don’t think we’ll have time this weekend to make it.
Happy Dragonboat Festival!
We went to see Taipei’s races this year.
It rained a wee bit but I still managed to get sunburnt. For the first time ever we participated in the tradition of balancing an egg on end at high noon.
Only Ahji’s attempt was successful, but that’s enough to bring good luck and fortune to the family.
Jaylene made this great cardboard dragonboat at school.
And we had our own dragonboat races at home by cutting down a shoebox to make a couple of boats. We added to the authenticity by including a drum, but we decided we wanted two dragonheads on our boats.
We gathered up a bunch of friends and headed out to the old swimming hole. It was rainy and cold so we headed back into town and BBQd and blew bubbles and rode bikes. How’d you spend your weekend.
Today we went for a hike…
to Yang Ming Mountain’s second largest waterfall.
The beginning part is a nice walk along a small water channel. Which is irresistable to a young boy who loves to play with water.
We saw a lot of beautiful and fragrant flowers, fuzzy catepillars, dragonflies, butterflies and even a meter-long garden snake.
With all that lovely nature around us, we had to do a little drawing in our nature journals.
Friday…
Sunday…
Ahji calls him “Baby Beckham”.
It was hard to catch a shot of Jaylene, she was too busy having water fights, running around with friends and kicking the soccer ball around. Perhaps she’s the true Beckham in our family.
I’m finished my course! Handing in 150 handwritten grade reports Tuesday! Finishing up a major project at work for Friday! Then I’ll be back to my usual bloggy self.
