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We finally visited River Safari last week! We’d initially wanted to visit River Safari on my little boy’s birthday but hubby couldn’t take leave on that day so we postponed it for a week.

Since the highlight of the trip was to check out the pandas and let my panda-crazy boy see real pandas (hop over to check out his panda birthday cake and win a delicious Emicakes cake while you’re there), I thought I’ll start our River Safari experience with the Giant Panda Forest.

The Giant Panda Forest is located at the Yangtze River zone at River Safari, which is quite a distance from the entrance.

How? Do I look like a panda?

The state-of-the-art biodome was designed and landscaped to simulate the giant pandas’ natural habitat in China and is climate-controlled to 18° to 22°C. And Kevin Kern’s music was on the whole time we were there. It was really cool and very serene.

Besides Jia Jia and Kai Kai, you can view the golden pheasant and red pandas.

Unfortunately we didn’t manage to get a better shot of the red pandas 🙁

Kai Kai was sleeping when we arrived –

so we went to try our luck with Jia Jia. On the way there, there’s a giant panda with a baby panda exhibit (yes, the pink thingy is a baby panda).

We spent some time reading about the panda’s growth –

We also popped by to take a look at the food preparation room and learnt that both pandas eat carrots and apples on top of their bamboo diet.

And since Jia Jia was hiding and only came out for a very short while just outside her den to have a drink (and proceeded back in – you can view her via the cctv they installed in her den as she’s very shy), we went for a snack at Mama Panda Kitchen where buns shaped like the panda’s face are sold alongside other food.

Needless to say, the kids were thrilled that the cafe had a section that was panda-themed.

The kids are seated on the child-sized panda chairs. Adult-sized panda chairs are available too!

Presenting the “die-die must-try” buns which we had seen advertised earlier on a banner –

We ordered a red bean bun (left) and a chocolate bun (right)

Each bun costs $2.90 and is much bigger than usual buns

The buns tasted ok – they could have been a little more generous with the fillings which were pretty good.

After our snack, Kai Kai was awake and was on his way to eat!! I’ll leave you with photos and videos of the glorious panda who spent much of his time eating and wandering around looking for food placed all around. Stay tuned to the next part of our River Safari experience!

river safari singapore

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Shaving foam art with pipettes

shaving foam art

Playing with shaving foam every day has become part of our bath time routine – the kids get to choose a letter at every bath and I’ll spray it on their little tummies. Fun for my big kid, and great for learning for my little one who’s picking up alphabets. On days that we want a little more fun, we do shaving foam painting and here’s another shaving foam art activity which incorporates the use of pipettes since the colour mixing with pipettes activity was so well-received.

I cut out some shapes from the cardboard backing of the kids’ drawing block and had them smear shaving foam all over the shapes. You can cut out anything you want, depending on your own focus (alphabets, for instance).

My girl enjoyed the smearing of shaving foam on the cardboard but my little boy didn’t.

If you’re using thinner cardboard, the cardboard might buckle when you apply the shaving foam on, but I don’t think that would really affect the activity very much.

HELP!

And he promptly ran off to wash his hands.

He returned to the table when it was time to start on the ‘painting’. He loves working with pipettes!

I used food colouring so I had very pastel shades. If you’re looking for vibrant colours and a greater range of colours, you can use liquid watercolour instead as it’s more concentrated than food colouring in water.

The kids were super generous with the amount of coloured water they squirted on the foam using the pipettes so after awhile everything became rather watery. But watching how that takes place was rather fun and the marbling of colours was very pretty too.

Stage 1 – first squirts of colours covering the entire shape

Stage 2 – when they squirted a second round of coloured water on an already coloured piece of cardboard. Shaving foam starts to become more watery and marbling of colours start to take place.