Thursday, April 29, 2010

Launch at Kidsbooks


A few weeks ago we launched Foggy at Collage Collage. Now we are preparing for a second launch at Kidsbooks, as part of Simply Read Books' spring book launch. We will be there to present our book, along with some other new books, including Owls See Clearly at Night.

The launch will be from 7–9pm on Wednesday May 5th. You can find more details at Simply Read's blog. We hope to see you there!

Friday, April 23, 2010

How to make a mini kite




This post has moved.

How to make a kite



It's time to think about an activity for the weekend...how can we not have done kites yet! We have a link to Windy's original instructions for making a real kite below. If you are the type who prefers to play indoors (or it's rainy where you are), we'll add a little set of directions for making a little paper kite for your favourite toy, or for your own diorama, on Sunday morning.

Let's start with a proper kite (PDF). There are 2 pages to this PDF.

The original directions for making a kite are on the dust jacket of our first book, Windy.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Colouring page for Foggy


Here is a colouring page for Foggy, for you to print out and colour at home. Have fun!

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Sunday honey


After the Easter eggs have all been dyed and hunted, you might be looking for something to do? If you have any food colouring left, you might make "Colored Honey" from the Pooh Cook Book, a very old, loved and used (as you can see) book from our shelf.

Ingredients: honey and vegetable food colouring.

Only use a tiny bit, especially if you are using red dye, which can add a little bit of flavour if you add too much.You might use a dipped toothpick to transfer the colouring to the honey.

This would be nice on leftover hot cross buns tomorrow morning, don't you think?

Friday, April 2, 2010

Easter Bunny origami

Do you remember the meadow bunnies in Windy? Here they are flying their kites.

You can make your own bunny with origami. You just need a square piece of paper, a pair of scissors and a pencil or crayon. You can check that your paper is perfectly square by folding it in half, the same as the first steps in our directions below (1 and 2) below. If there is no overlap, then your paper is square. Here are directions for folding up your bunny:


So it will look like this as you fold:


You can use some scraps of coloured paper to make the insides of the ears pink (or you might colour it in).


If you like, your bunny can have a kite, too (tutorial here). We used small sticks, glue and paper to make our bunny kites, but you could simply use plain folded paper. We used florist wire for the string, which is cloth-covered wire (so it holds the kite in the air). It is tricky for bunnies to hold their kites. Usually they use their mouths, front feet or tails. Use your imagination to make the perfect kite for an Easter bunny. We would love to see pictures of your bunnies. Mail your pictures to windyandfriends{at}gmail {dot}com.