Kindy Shorts

Hugo starts kindy next year, so obviously I wanted him to have something cool to wear to kindy, just like the girls had. I had just enough material for a pair of shorts from the coloring in material that I'd gotten from Ikea.

It has made three dresses (see Sophie's, Sonia's and Rachel's), and was used in the Table Tent, and now all that remains are some scraps. Goodbye fabulous material. I hope I can find something similar again in the future, because wearing something you've colored yourself, is a pretty special feeling.

Anyway, because there was such little material left, it was a bit of creative cutting to get the shorts out; some of the pattern is upside down, I'll admit. And I accidentally cut one piece out facing the wrong way, so I had to trace everything through the material and color it a second time. Luckily, these are going to get trashed at kindy anyway, so it really doesn't matter.

And I don't think you can really tell. They just look fun to me. Crazy, but fun.

Rachel's Kindy Dress

Since Rachel has started kindy, it's only fair that she too, have a kindy dress. So I have made one. Actually, I made it at the start of the year, but I made it big, and she's only just getting into it now. Sophie was so excited that Rachel was wearing her kindy dress today, so she wore hers too.

Of course, I told Rachel we would need to take lots of photos, so that I could blog about it, so as I hearded her out the door to take them, of course all the kids came. Sophie bought her own camera, and was very serious about taking photos of all the kids.

I used the standard pattern and had the girls colour it in. Then had mum put the buttons on, because I dislike buttons like there is no tomorrow. Such pretty buttons.

This is the only photo I have of the back. In the chaos of four kids all trying to get in photos at 7:45 in the morning, there was a limit to what you can do. Rachel's dress looks so clean compared to Sophie's.

Here is my little gang. Love these kids!

And this is Rachel at kindy in her kindy dress. Ready to wear it in.

I have just enough of the Ikea material for a pair of shorts for Hugo next year.

Disco Costumes

The girls went to their first kindy disco last week, and the theme was "We can be Heroes". While they have a plethora of Cinderella type dresses (here and here) and fairy skirts (here), they were lacking in hero type costumes. 

So I showed the girls a range of generic super hero costume photos and asked who they wanted to go as. Sophie chose hers based on which costume was the shiniest. It was Wonder Woman. 

I did make some adjustments to the style, because it was for a five year old, but I kept all the classic elements and I feel that she is an excellent generic Wonder Woman.

The shirt was just $2.50 from Big W and I just cut the sleeves off. The skirt was some leftover stuff from the stash and some new tulle from Spotlight that worked out to be about $5. I had the yellow left over in the stash, which was fortunate. The headpiece is just pinned onto a headband that we already had, which made it really easy for her to wear it.

Rachel chose her costume on which one had the most blue. Her favourite colour. She is Captain America.

Again, I had to do some costume adjustments, to make it appropriate, but we were all happy with the results. Same deal for the shirt and skirt, so another costume that cost $7.50. Winning! I spray painted the star on, and the mask used to be butterfly shaped, but I sprayed that and cut it to shape too. I had the white and red material in the stash as well.

All in all, some successful costumes I think. The girls were really excited about their poses, can you tell?

Skirt Sewing

Sophie had a minor break down last week when she wanted to wear a skirt to kindy and found she had no kindy skirts this year. Usually, she gets her kindy clothes from ordinary clothes that have been worn too much, painted, stained etc, that I deem them to be kindy clothes. Alas, all her current skirts were still beautiful and clean. 

Given how easy skirts are to make, I promised to make her a couple. With pockets of course.

I had the material in my stash from a friend who kindly donated it to my sewing cause (I've actually sewn heaps with her material, but seem to have only blogged about it here and here, both skirts. And both times I used the yellow piping. Strange coincidences). Sophie picked it out, and thankfully the two prints were similar enough that I could use the left overs for pockets on the other. I put some of the final bits of yellow piping I got from Reverse Garbage around one set, but didn't bother with the other.

They are a little long on, but will last all year this way. I did suggest that one should be for kindy and the other not for kindy, just to make it last a little longer, and Sophie did comply. Here she is wearing it at swimming. I was taking the opportunity to photograph the skirt when Mia decided she should get in on the photo action.

Lunchboxes for Two

Rachel officially began kindy this year, so even though I've been making her lunches in lunchboxes last year, here are are lunchboxes that go elsewhere and are eaten without me around at all.

Kindy day one: sushi. It was the request of both girls that they have sushi for the first day. These are egg and avocado, in the lunchbox with some grape tomatoes, carrot, capsicum and cumber sticks, grapes and soy chips. 

Day two: so vibrant and healthy still! Wraps with cream cheese and ham, grapes, cucumber, carrot and capsicum sticks, grape tomatoes and watermelon. Already I can see the familiar go-to items of the lunchboxes making their appearances.

Hooray! A change of pace today. Pasta with cherry tomatoes, ham and parmesan. Apple pieces and corn puffs. I made this lunch the night before and it was waiting in the fridge in the morning.

Side by side lunches, because I have two kindy girls. It's a whirl wind of children growing up, that suddenly they are at kindy, and before you know it, the year is gone and then they are at school. And then they are gone. Soon to happen to me I suppose. The days are long, but the years are so so short.

Anyway, back to the lunches. Cream cheese and ham sandwiches, boiled egg, pepitas, grape tomatoes and cucumber sticks and corn puffs. Rachel has grapes in the orange-print reusable lunch pouch and Sophie has a pear.

What madness is this? A different lunch box!? You saw it first people, sometimes I use different lunch boxes. This was for a playgroup day actually, so I did see them eat it. Carrots (cooked), ham, grape tomatoes, ramen noodles. Cornpuffs, crasins and apricots. 

Planning ahead, I made some mini quiches and put them in the freezer. Although it takes up a lot of space in my tiny freezer, it does make lunches easy to throw together. Same old same old for everything else. I remember last year lamenting about what I would do when grapes and grape tomatoes are out of season. I find I am again wondering the same thing.

Wraps again, cornpuffs, blueberry yoghurt, olive, grape tomoatoes, hiding under the cucumber flowers. See I'm changing up the cucumber sticks with cucumber flowers!

Are these lunchboxes self expliantory? I don't feel I need to talk about the next one at all.

These next two lunches are an example of what happens when Brisbane has a heat wave and it's too hot to organise any kind of nutrition in lunches in the morning. You put leftover dinner in one lunchbox: pizza that Rachel didn't eat the night before, along with anything else you can find that doesn't require any effort. Grape tomatoes (lunchbox lifesaver!), popcorn, marshmallow, choc chip biscuits.

Sophie ate her pizza for dinner, so she got some store bought Vegemite and cheese scrolls. Since she doesn't like the choc chip biscuits, I gave her marshmallows. And olives. Most terrible lunch ever. I would not recommend this as a regular lunchbox option, but for a once off, it was really hot and I couldn't be bothered but at least the kids are fed, it's pretty well perfect.

We had burgers for dinner one night, so again, I used some leftovers. The breadroll has avocado and cheese on it. Then some tomato and the meat patty, because I know they will just be taken off and eaten separately anyway. Olives, carrot and capsicum sticks. Popcorn.

Another leftovers for lunch kind of bento here. We had spaghetti and meatballs, so I saved some of the pasta and meatballs for the girls lunches. Didn't bother with the actual pasta sauce but just used tomato sauce for them to dip into. Added grape tomatoes, pear, cucumber and capsicum.

The frozen quiches make another appearance here, along with ham and salami, grape tomatoes, cucumber flowers, corn puffs, passion fruit (from my parents vine) and some apple. Rachel is smashing the passion fruit, and Sophie wanted to try it, but didn't end up eating it.

Salami and cream cheese sandwiches, cucumber flowers and grape tomatoes, peach, apple and passion fruit. This is Rachel's lunchbox. Sophie had olives where the passion fruit is in hers. They also had a pack of corn puffs because they were going on a kindy excursion to the park and I knew they'd be extra hungry.

And that's half a term done. Sophie has been asking for Totoro shaped onigiri (like the one in this post) for the last week, so maybe that will be tomorrow's lunch. We will see.

Kindy Dress Mark 2

Sophie's Kindy Dress has received much attention and talk from the other kindy kids and mums. Maybe there is a business opportunity here, but thankfully, Ikea don't have the fabric anymore, so I can't get too carried away.

Anyway, one of Sophie's friends from kindy is going back to Malaysia at the end of the year with her family, and when Sophie mentioned that she liked the dress, I suggested that we could sew one for her as a gift. I had enough fabric left for a dress for Rachel (for next year) and one more, so why not?

Sophie's friend came over and they had a grand old time colouring the dress in together and after they left, I sewed it up while naps happened.

It's much more coloured than Sophie's was, so we might add some more colour to Sophie's now. And Sophie's dress, after only four weeks of repetitious wear, looks a much different colour to the new one too. You can see the pattern is repeated on the girls dresses, although in different locations. Sophie's doll and pear tree are further down, while Sonia's is up near the neckline.

Sonia chose the square buttons that I put on (so hard to get through the button holes, but I guess that's not really my problem...). I had to do the button holes myself actually, which is always an ordeal.

Sophie wrote the tag/message in yellow and I traced over it in the blue. She is super excited to give this to her friend on Wednesday. They are both planning to wear them on Thursday.

Sweet.

Kindy Dress

Sophie asked me if she could wear a dress to kindy before the holidays, but she had such a great time at kindy playing and painting, that whatever she wears is inevitably going to get completely trashed. She has plenty of dresses, but they are all pretty lovely, either made by me (like this one, or her Easter Dress, or her Bear Dress) or my mum (recently this gorgeous new Japanese-print dress, and a dinosaur dress), and I wasn't ready to risk any of them just yet.

Enter the Ikea fabric that I'd bought a long time ago. We are talking a long long time ago actually, like, in the Time Before Children. I bought it so long ago that they don't even stock it anymore. It's so cool though. I made the most basic dress I could, (which I've made before, here and here) and then let the girls colour it in.

I helped with the colouring too.

After it was coloured, I sewed it up, iron it and washed it, as per the instructions (to set the ink). Now, Sophie has a kindy dress!

It's perfect. She wore it the first day back after the September holidays, and also the second day back, which was photo day. Yes, two days in a row. It was totally trashed after the first day (as all of her kindy clothes are) and I had to wash it, but she was pretty insistent about wearing it for photo day, so I didn't mind too much. I mean, when your kid really wants to wear something that you made for photo day, you can't complain right?

Getting Organised: Morning Routine Prompts

So much changes when one small child begins spending a portion of her time somewhere else. When faced with the challenge of getting three small children out the door in a timely fashion (especially given my strange obsession with never being late), I willingly accepted. And also enlisted the help of some internet ideas. 

The first thing that had to happen was morning routine/organisation. Generally we were pretty laid back in how long it took to get ready (and what order it happened in), because our first thing in a day didn't usually start till about 9:30. I was happy to let the girls get up whenever and stay in their pj's a little longer. Now, I want them to take more ownership of getting ready, and be a little more organised about it. Playing can't happen until everything that needs to happen in the morning to make you ready to walk out the door has happened. 

I also wanted to increase the independence the girls had, so they didn't need me to remind them every moment what should come next (especially since I was now making actual lunches). I'd seen a few ideas online that I'd tucked away, but the week before Kindy started, one of the blogs I follow just happened to post some free printable that were pretty perfect. I probably could have just drawn them myself, but these were free and fun looking. (I honestly can't remember where I got them from now! Sorry!)

I printed two sets because even though I was mostly doing it for Sophie, I knew Rachel would want to be right in on the action too. It all came together rather marvellously, because I just happened to have two cooking trays that I hardly ever use handy, and they both had holes in the top for hanging. The pole came from a clothes stand that was under the house. I did have to buy the hooks, but that was it. 

The cards ended up being a little big after printing and laminating (oh, how I miss laminating from my teaching days. Everything is so much shinier when it's been laminated!), so I couldn't fit the girls names at the tops. No matter, I just put them next to them! I also encourage the girls to use these as their sticker charts, but they haven't really gone for it yet. 

The cards I printed had all sorts of extra things like "do homework" and whatnot, which I don't really need right now, so I just didn't bother laminating those. Sophie's has a "Morning" and "Afternoon" section, because she has to put her lunch box and bag away when she comes home from Kindy, but she (for reasons unknown) does not like the "Morning" and "Afternoon" signs on her board. So I just fill the board up in the morning and then put the afternoon ones on before I go to get her from Kindy.

It only took a day or two for the girls to get the hang of it. I talked them through it the first day, but I don't really need to anymore. Now, they get up and know they have to have a clean board before they can play. They are in charge of "updating the board" as we say, so after breakfast, they put the "eat breakfast" card into the "Done" box (the bottom of a milk bottle) and then move onto the next thing. It's so good that they have a visual prompt of the things they need to do in the morning, so I don't have to keep reminding them. All I have to say is "update your board" and they've got the rest.

I still help them out with things (like brushing hair and making beds), but otherwise, they are learning to be self sufficient and organised. The cards are stuck on the trays with magnets that were leftover from putting our fly screens up after the window renovation. I knew we kept them for something.

If you can't read the cards (because the shiny lamination make them hard to photograph), the things the girls have to do in the morning are: eat breakfast, get dressed, pj's away, make bed, comb hair, brush teeth, shoes on. And Sophie also has pack bag.