Posts in Category: Uncategorized
First chocolate
The first thing Grace and Eli discovered this morning were the two Easter bunnies hiding in their bedroom, and that set off the hunt for the rest of the eggs hidden through the house.
Some of the spoils
Adam also had his first taste of Easter today when he managed to break into an Easter egg to get a little bit of chocolate.
Gyro Grace and the Science Centre
We took a family outing to the Cape Town Science Centre today and had lots of fun. Eli spent the entire time in the building section, and Grace did a bit more exploring. It was definitely lots of fun for all of us, with lots of exploring still to do in the future.
Gyro Grace (she says this was her favourite part)
Eli the builder – he just zooted around collecting bricks and directing his “team”
When you’re a head, stay a head
Watch out for that back pressure
Big chess with dad (and the monkey on his back)
Scrub
Grace and Eli decided that Adam needed a sensory exfoliating scrub
Sick boys
After Eli was sick, Grace went down. Donné followed shortly after, and now Adam and I are bringing up the rear. The poor little guy is taking strain with a viral infection and fever – the first time he is sick.
Fishy lips
Adam has been making cute fishy lips, which happens at any particular random time, for who knows what reason…but it’s cute.
The safety ring
How to protect a baby from bashing their head while you wash your face in the morning
Entrepreneurs day
On the last day of each term there is a market day for all the children from the junior primary through to the high school. They make all sorts of arts, crafts, food, jewellery and games, and then have a fun time selling it to parents, pre-schoolers, friends, and any willing buyers.
Set up and ready to sell
Demonstrating her cloud dough to prospective buyers
Grace wanted to make play dough, but because the idea is to enable them to prepare and sell everything as independently as possible we discussed it and decided to try making kinetic sand (play dough requires working with a hot stove). It turns out, that kinetic sand isn’t so easy to make.
Mixing sand and corn flour – that recipe just ended up giving us wet sand
To make kinetic sand properly requires the correct viscosity dimethicone (silicone oil), which we were not able to find a supplier for. After some more experiments we gave up on kinetic sand (for now), and chose something close – cloud dough.
Cloud dough is basically oil and flour, and definitely easy for Grace to make on her own – and loads of fun for Eli to play with.
Family fun making cloud dough
And lots of Eli fun playing with it
In the whole process we also worked through the costs, turnover and (potential) profit with her. Fortunately her arithmetic and money skills are good, but she still struggles to separate cash in hand (turnover) from profit – especially seen as the materials were bought on a loan from mom.
Gemma A getting her stand ready
She made 18 containers with 1kg of cloud dough each, and sold them for R20. The cost (half of which was the container) was R15/unit….and she sold them all. R10 to the school as rent for the market stand and after the cash float and loan was paid back, she made R80 profit.
Gemma M waiting for the customers to roll in
I was a bit worried she wasn’t going to sell enough at first, and that the place she had set up wasn’t getting enough foot traffic, but Grace decided to take her cloud dough out into the market and did lots of direct sales. I think persistence paid off and I thought she adapted very well to circumstances to make sure that all the cloud dough flew off the shelf. Thank you to all of you who supported Grace – may your children be enjoying their cloud dough tactile experience!
Gigi deciding whether to buy some gemstones
Tayla, Anna and Nyasha’s games stand
Getting some Squidgy love at the market
Loving the strawberry ice lolly
