jojoebi's Profile

ridiculous! my supervised 5 year old peels and chops and has been helping in the kitchen since he was knee high to a grasshoppper. I alwys sharpen his knife before he uses it, a sharp knife is safer than a blunt one. Yes, accidents can happen, I have been known to 'peel' my own finger and I am a fully grown adult. Kids need to learn how to use kitchen equipment properly or else how are they ever going to learn?

I made an art portfolio book for my son a couple of years back and in the process on making one with his more recent works of art. All his work from kindy gets sent home at the end of the year in a handmade giant pocket so we have it all stored in there for now.
http://jojoebi.blogspot.com/2008/08/art-portfolio-book.html

Our doctor kit is made up of real things but children shouldn't play with a real stethoscope without adult supervision as they can seriously damage their hearing. We have one that we get out for science experiments or if we are playing doctors but only if the patient is mommy or daddy.

we have the same kind of living set up. In the kitchen area we have a small shelf, this originally had everything my son needed to make his own snacks. His cutlery and placemat etc were also kept here so that he could set his own place at the table. Once he got bigger and could reach the adult areas we changed the shelf into an art station. In the living room he has a kids sized desk and chair next to the computer desk, we got it from Ikea and the small chair matches the bench chairs we have.
We also have a small bookcase, we tend to keep encyclopeadias and other non fiction books on it, most of his story books are upstairs.
In the hall we have a coat rack which is child sized. We also have some of his painting framed and on the walls and the side cupboard we use to display things, sometimes it is a nature shelf, sometimes it will be something he made. We try to keep it to one or two focus items rather than crazy clutter.

soda water in a spray bottle is brilliant for cleaning windows and mirrors

love this colour scheme!

I photograph all of my son's artwork. We have a few selected original pieces framed and an Ikea display shelf where we have pictures in frames but because they are not hung they are easy to rotate. Once the picture has been photographed it goes into a big box and then they get used for card making etc.
The photos I then used to make a portfolio book using Blurb, the final book looks fantastic and my son likes to get it out and look at it, he will often ask to repeat a painting method chosen from the portfolio.
Here is the blog post with pictures of the finished book, I will be making another for his 6th birthday
http://jojoebi.blogspot.com/2008/08/art-portfolio-book.html

The rise is allergies is quite alarming and it is terrible that parents choose to exclude a child because of it. We live in Japan and I must say the allergy thing doesn't appear to be as bad here, that is to say, kids don't seem to have them. In our bicultural group, there are about 50 kids and 2, who are siblings have allergies. My son is at kindy and in his class of 19 non of them have allergies and non of his friends do either. In fact the only family I know, apart from the siblings I mentioned, whose son had an allergy to eggs were very laid back about the whole thing and although they knew the eggs would make him sick (but not life threatening) they let him eat them to help build up a tolerance to them and now at 8 he seems to have grown out of it, his sister is going through the same thing now.
The siblings with allergies can't eat out, their allergies are life threatening, there is an ignorance about the whole thing, store bought food is not well labelled although it is getting better, their mom has to make everything from scratch to be on the safe side except for a handful of goods that they know are safe. When we know they are going to be attending a group event, which is usually pot luck we make sure there are a few dishes that are safe for them and their parents always bring their own food just in case.

we live in japan, most of the family are in the UK and we travel back every 12 - 18mths and stay for a month, up until now my husband hasn't been able to join us because of the crappy japanese holidays but this year he is flying out for xmas and new years, yeah!
We put money aside each month, this year we are really scraping the spending money together and for the last 3 years I have bought the flights directly from the airline after checking the prices virtually everywhere else it is always cheaper, I also get to pick the seats when I am making the booking and order special meals. There are several sites where you can check the seating plan for the specific plane and they give you the heads up on which are good seats and which to avoid.
On all the flights I checked this time all the websites showed the prices for 3 dates either side of your requested one, I decided to fly out on a Thursday rather than a Friday and saved money.
I'm sure about elsewhere but in Japan they have certain dates when the prices suddenly leap for the peak time, my husband is paying a lot more than us because he is flying peak times. If you can avoid them, do so.

I am named Jo after Jo in Little Women it was one of my mothers favourite books and she said that she hoped her baby girl would grow up to be strong, courageous and independent like the Jo in the book.