Monday Made: Beyond the book "Salted Fish"

I have mentioned before that Junior J and I love reading through this book "Salted Fish" (Its currently a fav on our bookshelf).  I love the soothing colours and simple illustrations, and that the book is based on an actual painting by Cheong Soo Pieng.  Junior J loves learning about the various aspects of life in the old days (there is a kitchen scene we tend to pour over, from the little child's "masak masak" to the mortar and pestle and bamboo stools on the floor).

So inspired by the cover of the book, as well as the original painting... we tried making our own "salted fish", starting with painting with watercolours:

This was his first time using watercolours, since I've never had the guts to give him a palette, for the fear that he would mix all the colours up!  But after running through with him the steps of rinsing his brush, and drying it on a rag everytime he changed a colour, he more or less got the hang of it... so the palette was spared. :)

I thought the subtle colours of the watercolours matched the pastel cover of the book the best! 

The finished work.  The cat was painted by me, thanks to a request by the little boy.

So after the painting had dried, I drew the outlines of fish on one section of the painting, and cut them out during the little boy's nap:

And now he too can hang up salted fish to dry in the sun!  (If you're thinking the background looks familiar, you're right... we made it last time to practice pegging!) 

Anyway, I tried out the activity with the little boy, but he woke up from the wrong side of the bed and was extremely grumpy.  Turns out he's still not a fan of all those pegging activities, so I'm thinking of modifying the fish so that he needs to practice hanging them on the line, instead of pegging them.  Will see how it goes!  (On a side note, the boy was given silver fish in his soup in the evening, and he asked "wats dat?".  I told him it was something like small salted fish, and he promptly proclaimed "I like salted fish!" and munched some of them up!)

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Oh, and for the results of last week's giveaway:

This round there were 2 entries for each kit (guess many readers don't have cats/dogs as pets!), so this means the first entry for each kit wins!  Sometimes the early bird does catch the worm, yes?  Jessiestars and Juanna, do drop me an email so that you can arrange to collect your kit! :)