On Monday morning, the children were amazed and delighted to find rice in the water tray!  Thailand, the country we were visiting, has lots of rice farmers and some of the rice that we eat in our homes here in the UK may have come all the way from Thailand!

The children spent much of the morning, pouring, scooping and sifting the rice in the water to get it nice and soggy!  The next day, we removed the water and used pipettes to add drops of food colouring to the rice – creating the effect of rainbow rice!

“I love rainbow rice!”

Isn’t it beautiful?

Just as we were packing our bags and getting ready to set off on the next part of our adventure, we spotted a herd of elephants, who had become caught in traps!

Luckily, the children found them just in time and carefully freed them using specialised equipment (tweezers!).  We made sure they were all safe in the elephant sanctuary before we climbed back onto our magic carpet.

The next stop on Granny’s journey was Mexico and, to inspire our visit, we decided to learn about a very famous Mexican artist called Frida Kahlo.  We read this delightful book by Isabel Sanchez Vegara which told us about Frida’s life and you can revisit it at home in the video below.

Book cover image from www.amazon.co.uk

When Frida was growing up, she had an accident and hurt her leg so badly that she had to stay in bed for a long time.  She couldn’t watch TV or play games on her ipad.  Can you remember why she couldn’t do these things?  That’s right, because “ipads (and TVs) were only made after the olden days finished” and Frida lived in the olden days.

To help pass the time, Frida started drawing and painting instead and that is how she became a famous artist!  She would look at herself in a mirror and then paint a picture of herself.  We learnt that paintings like these are called self-portraits.

Here’s a photo of Frida and a self-portrait that she painted:

Images from: https://photos.com/featured/frida-kahlo-holding-her-pet-monkey-bettmann.html  and https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-frida-kahlos-self-portraits-helped-embrace-flaws

Inspired by Frida’s self-portrait, we decided to paint our own.  First, we took a selfie on the ipad and then looked very carefully at it to help us paint our own self-portraits!  We have just started working on these and will carry on next week.  We are very impressed with the results so far!

We decided to visit Frida’s house in Mexico which is still there today even though Frida is no longer alive.  The house where she lived is now a museum dedicated to her.  So, we entered ‘Blue House, Mexico City’ into our satnav (Google Earth) and waved goodbye to the elephants in Thailand as we headed eastwards once more, up over the gigantic Pacific Ocean to North America.

As we came down to land, we saw lots and lots of houses and trees.  A lot of people live in Mexico City – even more than in London!  We even spotted some swimming pools in some of the gardens!

We decided to take a closer look and, using the little, orange man to guide us, we landed right in the courtyard of Frida’s house.  The walls were painted a beautiful, bright blue and there were trees everywhere!  There were even some words written on the wall in Spanish, telling us that Frida and her husband Diego had lived in the house in the olden days!

We thought the trees in Frida’s courtyard where probably there for her pet spider monkey to swing through!  Did you spot her spider monkey in her photo and self-portrait? Spider monkeys can only be found in Mexico and other countries in South America.  They have a really long tail that they use to help them swing through the trees.

We also read the story of Monkey Puzzle by Julia Donaldson which is all about a little monkey trying to find his mum in the jungle.

Book cover image from www.amazon.co.uk

You can listen to the story again in the video below:

After visiting Frida’s house, we noticed lots of house making within the children’s own play both outside and inside, with the wooden blocks and, of course, in our lovely home corner.

Finally, we took a moment this week to remember what we had learnt about Ramadan and Eid-al-Fitr when we visited Istanbul.  Some of the children in our class celebrated Eid this week and they showed us the lovely clothes they wear to celebrate.  They also taught us how to say ‘Eid Mubarak’ and one of our lovely mums even read us a Curious George story about Ramadan.  Thank you so much!

Have a lovely weekend everyone and see you on Monday!