Dad is home!!!!

Tom took the ipad to London; Collin missed it.

One for Collin, and one for Kate.

 Note - Tyler was at tennis camp when Dad arrived, so I didn't get a picture of their reunion.  I will have to stage one!!!

Tower of London Craft

T has been in London the past few days, and one of the things he did while there is explore the Tower of London and meet the Yeoman Warders (Beefeaters) who guard the tower and serve as caretakers of the legendary ravens.  Legend has it that if the ravens ever leave the Tower, the Kingdom will fall.

I thought C and R would find this very interesting, so I told them about the legend and had them create their own towers, Beefeaters, and ravens.

They began by looking at photos online of the Tower of London and coloring a Tower of London coloring page from Activity Village.

Once done, they glued the pictures inside of shoe boxes.

Next, they looked at online photos of the "Beefeaters" and colored a Beefeaters coloring page from Activity Village.

Instead of using the entire coloring page, we cut out a Beefeater for each of them to color.  Then, they folded the bottom of the paper Beefeater to make him look 3D and glued that in front of the Tower of London.

For reinforcement, we stuck toothpicks in the bottom of the shoe boxes and then taped the toothpicks to the back of the Beefeaters.

The River Thames was made with construction paper and glued inside the shoe boxes.

C and R made ravens by painting egg carton cups black with acrylic paint.  When the paint was dry, they glued on construction paper beaks and googly eyes.  They also cut up some black craft feathers and glued those on to their ravens.

This is R's Tower of London:

This is C's Tower of London:

C is especially fond of making the ravens fly away and then making the Kingdom (or in this case, his Tower of London diorama) fall!!!  Boys will be boys.

The ravens have left the Tower!

The Kingdom has fallen!

We own a few of the Madeline books, including Madeline in London by Ludwig Bemelmans, so we read that this week.  I love Madeline, but C and R really don't care for any of the books.  I'm not sure what it is that they don't like.  They both spotted the Tower of London on one of the pages though, and that seemed to interest them a little.  They also liked the page with Buckingham Palace. 

We are currently waiting for this book to come in at the library.  From the description, it is about a bear that wants to free the ravens from the Tower of London and he ends up learning a lesson about freedom and belonging.  Hopefully, it arrives soon!

It was a lot of fun to give C and R a taste of what their big brother is experiencing this week!