Malaysia Crafts: Leaf Stamping

I liked a recent blog post on Mommy Labs about creating all different sorts of stamps, especially using leaves and flowers. So we packed up our paints and joined up with one of our neighbors for some outdoor craft time. I encouraged The Whirl Girl to think of her visit to the Malaysian jungle while she was making her artwork.

Supplies:

• a big sheet of paper
• paints: we used a mix of Crayola washable paints
• paint brushes (optional)
• leaves, collected from the ground
  

The first step was to roam around our outdoor space collecting different kinds of leaves.

Then The Whirl Girl painted them, with her fingers...

...and with brushes.

And stamped them on the paper.

More fun with a friend!

The leaf stamp didn't make much of a leaf-shaped image on the paper, but the kids enjoyed doing it. And they ended up with a very colorful piece of paper.

Running around the playground with their artwork

It was fun to do art outside, painting in a different environment and using familiar objects that they wouldn't have necessarily thought of to paint with. They loved the novelty and the messiness of it.

Malaysia Field Trips: Orchid Garden

Like most tropical destinations, orchids grow very well in the hot and humid weather found in our part of the world. With all of our projects about animals and plants in the rainforest, a trip to see some orchids in person was in order. Luckily the Singapore Botanic Garden has an amazing Orchid Garden, with hundreds of different species on display.

To make it more fun for The Whirl Girl (and to help keep her entertained during a leisurely walk through the garden), we had an Orchid Hunt, similar to our Zoo Kenyan animal safari. It was her job to find all different colors of orchids in the gardens.

In preparation, I made this sheet. I found orchid outlines to paste into it at this site.

Then The Whirl Girl used her crayons to color in the corresponding colors so that she would be able to tell which colors she was looking for (and to get her excited for the hunt).

ready to go

The Whirl Girl finds yellow

purple

making notes of what she's seen

pink

and even green

checking to make sure she has all her colors

It was a fun activity for The Whirl Girl and it helped buy the grown-ups more time to enjoy the surrounds.

Malaysia crafts: 3D Rainforest Mural

This is my favorite crafts project that we've done so far! It looked so impressive when we were done and, even though it involved many steps, they all took just about the right amount of time to keep The Whirl Girl engaged. It was a good Saturday morning activity, and it took most of the morning.

Rainforests are a big part of the Malaysian habitat - both in Borneo and peninsular Malaysia. Borneo has the one of the biggest rainforests in the world, and an incredible number of animal and plant species. So some rainforest crafting was definitely in order.

I was inspired by this 3-D card. Our mural had three panels, while this card had five. The blog offers a great step-by-step tutorial if mine isn't detailed enough. (My hands were often too filled with glue or paint to take pictures.) There are also some great forest craft ideas at the Mommy Labs blog, which hosted a Forest Fiesta link-up in honor of World Environment Day.

On to our mural...

Supplies:

• card stock (you could use green-colored card stock to shorten the process, we painted and colored white card stock green) - we used 4 pieces to make three panels and the accordian sides
  
• scissors
• glue stick
• pictures of plants and animals (I used scraps that I had saved. The zoo map had photos of Malaysian animals. An old pile of thank you cards that I'd saved had lots of plants, flowers and butterflies. I had some batik fabric with bright flowers. And National Geographic had photos to cut out).
  
• green paints and/or crayons (if you're using white card stock) - I had three different colors of green paint in our crafts closet and that created a nice effect, but not necessary
  

Step One: Paint the paper....

...or color the paper. We painted the paper for the panels and colored it for the accordion sides. The Whirl Girl was insistent upon using more colors than just green and it came out lovely. Who am I to interrupt the artistic process?

Step Two: Cut out animals, flowers, and plants. This was my job while The Whirl Girl was painting and coloring.

Step Three: Make the panels by cutting out different sized squares from the middle. I left one page uncut, one with about a 3.5 cm frame, and one with a 1.5cm frame.

Step Four: Glue the animals, flowers and plants. It helps if you place the panels on top of each other to make sure that the pieces are overlapping nicely.

the finished panels

front

middle

back

Step Five: Fold the additional piece of card stock accordion-style, with enough slots for all of your panels. My folds were about 1.5 cm thick. You need two accordions - one for each side of the mural.

Step Six: Glue the panels to the accordion. I found it easiest to flue one side and then the other.

Ta-da! You're done!

jungle monster

Malaysia crafts: collage

Just as we did at the start of the month for Kenya, we made a "Malaysia" collage to keep in The Whirl Girl's room with her books about Malaysia.


It's a good, easy way to kick off crafting for the month. Just lots of cutting and pasting. Plus it gives us a chance to talk about some of the things we will be learning about Malaysia, and to point out things that are already familiar to us. More detailed directions and supply list here.

Malaysia Grown-Up Books

I'm feeling ambitious this month and will try to read two books, one non-fiction about Borneo (East Malaysia) and one fiction set in Peninsular Malaysia.

Reflections of Eden: My Years with the Orangutans of Borneo
by Birute M.F. Galdikas

This is a memoir by the scientist who has spent more time studying orangutans than any other, living for 40 years in Borneo. It's the story of her work with the orangutans, conservation efforts, and life on the island. I've long been fascinated by orangutans and when I found out we were moving to Singapore, one of the top things on my list was to see orangutans in their natural habitat. So I'm thrilled about our upcoming trip to Borneo and interested to read Galdikas' account of her experiences there.

Evening is the Whole Day
by Preeta Samarasan
This book about an Indian-Malaysian family gets a great review from National Public Radio. From the author's website: "When the family's rubber-plantation servant girl is dismissed for unnamed crimes, it is only the latest in a series of precipitous losses that have shaken six-year-old Aasha's life. In the space of several weeks her grandmother died under mysterious circumstances and her older sister, Uma, left for Columbia University, gone forever. Circling through years of family history to arrive at the moment of Uma's departure — stranding her worshipful younger sister in a family, and a country, slowly going to pieces — Evening Is the Whole Day illuminates in heartbreaking detail one Indian immigrant family's layers of secrets and lies, while exposing the complex underbelly of Malaysia itself."

Malaysia Children's Books

As I mentioned in the itinerary, it was much harder to find good and applicable books about Malaysia than it was about Kenya. But after some creative searching, we've got five (and two bonus books). Unfortunately for those of you who don't live in the region, they might be hard to track down. But you can always suggest them to your local library - maybe they're looking to expand their multicultural collection!

This month, The Whirl Girl joined me at the library and also picked out some non-fiction books on animals that live in Malaysia. She liked that process, though next time I will be more organized so I can grab my books quickly. She didn't have a lot of patience for my browsing.

Sasha Visits Kuala Lampur
written by Shamini Flint, illustrated by Alpana Ahuja
This is one in the "Sasha" series, which is published here in Singapore. Sasha visits places all over our part of the world and shares her travels with a young audience. In this book, she visits sites and markets in Kuala Lampur. I liked it because it shows urban Malaysia, in addition to the jungle stories and folktales that we're reading.

The Beaded Slippers
written by Adeline Foo, illustrated by Lee Kowling
This is another book by a Singaporean author. It offers insight into Peranakan culture, a culture that was formed when various foreign traders who came through the region for the last couple of centuries married local women. I had never heard of the term before coming here, but they are a prominent part of Malaysian and Singaporean heritage. This book tells the story of a little girl who discovers her grandmother's history and wedding traditions.

Little Sibu: An Orangutan Tale
written by Sally Grindley, illustrated by John Butler
This tells the story of how orangutans grow up and become independent from their mothers. The Whirl Girl has been very interested in orangutans lately - and we're going to an orangutan reserve in Borneo. I'm curious to see how she finds the tale of separation. I'm also reading a book about orangutans for my grown-up book.

My Mother's Garden
written and illustrated by Emila Yusof
This is a sweet, simple story about a girl playing with the flowers and butterflies in her mother's garden. It is written and illustrated by a Malaysian author, and while the text doesn't specify its Malaysian setting, the illustrations are evocative of the region. The end has an appendix with the names (in English and Malay) of the plants featured in the drawings.

Rain Forests
written by Nancy Smiler Levinson, illustrated by Diane Dawson Hearn
Since we will be going to Borneo and into the jungle (well, jungle lite), I wanted to read a book about the rainforest. There is a good list of options on The Artful Parent, one of my favorite blogs. Most of them are more Amazon-focused, so I picked this one that features one page spread on the Bornean rainforest and some good general information on rainforests. It's a little more on the factual side than the story side, but the illustrations keep The Whirl Girl's attention. Though after the first reading, I think The Whirl Girl is more scared than excited to go to the jungle. "I don't want to see snakes. Or ants. Or lizards. Or crocodiles." I can't blame her, though, I feel pretty much the same way!


I also found a couple of books that are for an older audience than The Whirl Girl. They are more text and less pictures, but I will try to abbreviate and paraphrase them because they offer something different than we're getting in the other books. Two bonus books:

Malaysian Children's Favourite Stories
written by Kay Lyons, illustrated by Martin Loh
This book retells nine Malaysian folk tales, featuring princesses and Malaysian animals like tapirs, crocodiles, and the mousedeer.

Payah
written by Margaret H.L. Lim, illustrated by Su Jen Buchheim
This book was written by an author from Sarawak, the Borean state in Malaysia that we will be visiting. It is about a little girl who cares for animals in her native Sarawak and features animals like the orangutan, hornbill and a mouse deer. The story is a little disjointed but offers some insight into longhouse culture and the Sarawakian living environment. It has some nice illustrations at the beginning of the book.


And here's a book that I couldn't find here, but might be easier to find elsewhere:

The Adventures of Mouse Deer: Tales of Indonesia and Malaysia
written by Aaron Shepard, illustrated by Kim Gamble
This looks like a good option showing Malaysian folktales for younger kids.

Malaysia itinerary

For July, Whirls and Twirls will be traveling to MALAYSIA!

Did you know that there are two parts to Malaysia? I didn't until we moved to Singapore and started learning our SE Asian geography. There is Peninsular Malaysia (that houses the main cities like Kuala Lampur and Penang) and there is Eastern Malaysia occupying part of the island of Borneo (which is shared by Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei).

This month, our virtual travel is inspired by actual travel. In the middle of the month, we will be taking a trip to Malaysian Borneo, just an hour and a half from our home in Singapore.

For our Kenya visit, a quick Amazon search and a visit to National Geographic's website were a big leap to get us on our way. For Malaysia, it's been much harder to find books, photos and resources. Considering that Malaysia is our neighbor to the north, only a 30 minute drive away, I was surprised by how difficult it was.

But the good part was that it made me reach out into different communities. I've come across some great family travel blogs and reached out to those travelers. I've been in touch with local book stores to see what they have to offer. I've contacted some other bloggers who write about children's books in Asia. (see favorite links in the sidebar). So what seemed like an uphill battle at the beginning has turned into a rewarding search. We like to get off the beaten path when we travel, so it's exciting to get a little off the beaten path in our Whirls and Twirls travels too.

Here's the tentative plan for this month's trip. The reading will be ongoing and the other activities we will do throughout the month, posting about them as we go. To find links to each activity, check out our Malaysia album.

Reading: Our 5 children's books and 1 grown-up book are picked and in hand.

Field Tripping: Trip to Borneo (orangutan reserve, national parks and cultural center) and the Singapore Orchid Garden

Cooking: Pandan Chiffon Cupcakes

Making Music: Dikir barat

Crafting: Collage, Kid-friendly Batik, 3-D Rainforest Collage, leaf stamping, proboscis monkey puppet, and rhinoceros hornbill paper craft

Conversing: jalan-jalan

Giving Back: Donation to Orangutan Foundation International, an organization working to save the orangutans, whose Bornean and Sumatran habitats are in grave danger.

We're packed and ready to go! Here's some photos of Malaysia to get us excited for the trip:

(from our own photo library of previous trips to Malaysia)

(and the following photos courtesy of National Geographic)

*Map graphic from worldatlas and flag graphic from The World Flag Database