making sandwiches with The Week Junior

Making Picasso Style Portraits, and Sandwiches With The Week Junior

My boys, Oliver, 10 and Alexander, 8, have loved reading The Week Junior (suitable for 8-14 year olds) since first coming across it about a year ago so we all feel super duper honoured (as Xander would say) to be family ambassadors for such an engaging, inclusive, educational and fun magazine.

Oliver reads The Week Junior the minute it lands in the letterbox (it’s a weekly subscription), gobbling it up without pause while Alexander prefers to take his time, absorbing each issue at his leisure.

making sandwiches with The Week Junior

Each boys’ interests are varied but this mag has them covered.

Oliver, being older and more mature than his ‘baby bro’ as he likes to call him is fascinated with the current affairs covered in the Week Junior, especially as so much of the news he absorbs (mostly indirectly) at home can often baffle him. The magazine acts as a tool for me as a parent too, helping me to explain more challenging subject matter in an age appropriate way.

…Alexander always likes to seek out the animal stories first, heading straight to the Animal of The Week feature before reading the other items (he’s a mini film buff too so loves the reviews). He also likes to share his fact findings from the magazine with the family. Did you know a baboon can live for up to 40 years and they live in troops of 50 members! He’s also informed me that a pigeon called Pidge had returned to where he hatched in New Zealand a whopping 24 years later at the age of 29! Wow!

making sandwiches with The Week Junior

Oliver enjoys a good old debate like his mother (!) and has fine tuned his skills of persuasion, thanks to the magazine.

Our last conversation was around a feature he read on whether humans should trust robots or not. Oliver said, ‘it’s the humans programming robots we shouldn’t trust, but in the right hands, we could save a lot of time and energy with AI’s help’! Go Oliver!

making sandwiches with The Week Junior

The magazine cover important topics on how to stand up to bullying, how to protect our planet, which new books should make the reading list and much more!

The Week Junior boosts both of my boys’ literacy, comprehension and communication skills- stimulating and challenging them to think for themselves so they can question the world around them. The issues improtantly encourage them both to step out of their comfort zone and to try new activities.

Case in point is honing both their illustrative and culinary skills.

making sandwiches with The Week Junior

Reflecting on a favourite past copy (they treasure all their issues and regularly read them back), the boys decided this week they’d like to create Picasso style pictures before making themselves a hearty sandwich from a recipe in the another issue, to reward themselves with.

The arts and crafting article like many, was anecdotal, funny and easy to understand (written by comedien and illustrator Olaf Falalef), first explaining that Picasso who was one of the co creators of Cubism, an artistic movement which shows multiple views of an object in one single picture and then how to create your own portrait.

making sandwiches with The Week Junior

Follow the instructions below if you fancy a go!

You will need: 

  • Two sheets of paper
  • Black pen
  • Scissors
  • Glue stick
  • Coloured pencils, pens or paints

 

  1. First you start by drawing a simple self portrait. Have a mirror or mobile phone so you can study your face while you draw it. Don’t stress too much-it doesn’t have to be perfect.
  2. Then you need to cut up your self-portrait drawing into individual elements (ears, eyes, eyebrows, hair, nose etc) almost like you are making a jigsaw.
  3. Next you have to stick your self portait jigsaw pieces back together-but the important part is you put them back in the wrong order.
  4. After you have stuck your pieces down, you can add in extra lines and patterns to join things up (I drew an extra eye on my portrait because I’m weird).
  5. The final part is to colour it in., and like before, getting it wrong is vital. I have blue eyes in real life so naturally I made the eyes on my portrait, blue, green and red.

 

making sandwiches with The Week Junior making sandwiches with The Week Junior making sandwiches with The Week Junior creating Picasso style portraits with The Week Junior creating Picasso style portraits with The Week Junior

creating Picasso style portraits with The Week Juniorcreating Picasso style portraits with The Week Junior

creating Picasso style portraits with The Week Junior creating Picasso style portraits with The Week Junior creating Picasso style portraits with The Week Junior

After working up an appetite from all the drawing, the boys proceeded to make ‘the perfect squashed sandwich recipe’ I’ve shared below.

making sandwiches with The Week Junior

The Week Junior informed us that squashed sandwiches intensify the flavours in a sarnie and are also fun to make. You can make them look pressed by placing them under tins or big books in the fridge so they become firmer so they’re easier to carry and eat too!

Why not have a go:

making sandwiches

You can use any bread you like but if you plump for a bap or crusty roll, you’ll need to scoop some of the inside out to make room for the fillings.

In their recipe they use cheese, ham, lettuce and tomato.

We used chicken slices, cheese, cucumber and tomato!

 

What you need: 

Three fillings chosen from:

  • Cheese-cheddar or mozzarella
  • Tomato
  • Ham
  • Cooked chicken
  • Lettuce
  • Chopped spinach
  • Avocado
  • Cucumber
  • Tuna
  • Grated Carrot
  • Mayonnaise (optional)
  • Mustard (optional)
  • Bread -ciabatta or crusty roll
  • Butter
  • A small chopping board
  • bread knife
  • Something heavy
  • Baking paper
  • String

Instructions:

Carefully slice the ciabatta lengthways and butter one side of the bread. Next, add the ingredients. You can use any of your favourite sandwich fillings, but try to think about what flavours will work well together. It won’t neccessarily taste better with lots of ingredients.

For a cheese, ham, lettuce and tomato combination, start by slicing the tomatores so they fit across the bread. Place them on top of the buttered side of the bread. Take the ham and lay it out on top of the tomatoes. Slice the cheese and add it on top of the ham. Separate the lettuce leaves and place them on top of the cheese. If you want to add mayonnaise or mustard, spread it on the other piece of bread. If not, spread butter on the top piece.

Now wrap the sandwich in a piece of baking paper and carefully tie it with string. Place the sandwich in the fridge and put a small chopping board on top of it. Then carefully place something heavy, such as a few cookbooks or tin cans on top. Make sure it is level so it doesn’t fall, and leave it overnight. The next morning the sandwich will be squashed. Keep the wrapper on until you are ready to eat it. Then, untie the string. remove the paper and enjoy!

This can also be made using a crusty roll. To do this, carefully cut the top off the roll. Then remove some of the bread from inside the tip of the roll, but make sure you leave the bottom half intact. Fill the row with the fillings you have selected, put the top back on and wrap it ip. Then follow the same steps as above to press it.

 

Three Classic fillings:

Cheese, lettuce, marmite

Tuna, cucumber, mayonnaise

Peanut butter, strawberry jam.

 

making sandwiches making sandwiches with The Week Junior making sandwiches with The Week Junior making sandwiches with The Week Junior making sandwiches with The Week Junior

My two sons were far too impatient to wait for the sandwich to squish overnight so they ate theirs immediately with some watermelon for dessert!

watermelon lunch

The sarnies were still adequately squashed enough (they pushed them down with the palms of their hands) and both felt proud as punch to have made their own little picnic buffet! Maybe they can start making their own packed lunches from now on, thank you very much!

making sandwiches with The Week Junior

Yummy!

If you create the portraits or make the sandwiches you can email your creations to hello@theweekjunior.co.uk and the magazine might feature your pictures future issues.

Have your kids read the magazine yet? Vibrant, engaging and easy to read with large, bold fonts and lots of colour-coded boxes to break up the content to retain children’s attention spans, it really is an unmissable must-read for everyone (even parents, too).

making sandwiches with The Week Junior

 

The cutest quote this week about The Week Junior comes from Xander who asked if we can recommend his new form teacher for Teacher of The Week. Bless his little cotton socks!

For free activity downloads, click HERE.

You can find more activities on The Week Junior’s brilliant Activity Hub with arts, crafts and recipes.

This Week Junior offers a free delivery service in the UK (and is plastic free) and is also available worldwide.

In fact, when you subscribe today in the UK, you will receive 6 whole issues for FREE.

It is then £25.99 every 13 issues (FYI, you receive 20% off if you purchase online).

 

Subscribe to The Week Junior HERE.

 

This is a sponsored post but as always my words are honest.

 

 

 

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