Dice football

The summer has run away with me, but I'll try to get the blogworthy things we did up here over the next few weeks.  No promises though!

Anyway, we spent an hour or so one afternoon playing dice football.  The rules are simple, you make up 32 imaginary football team names, then for each match a dice is rolled six times for each team, each 6 constitutes a goal.  The winner goes forward to the next round, until you have an overall winner.

In the event of a tie, each match goes to penalties, one dice is rolled for each team until there is a winner.

In our game the Sock Launchers were the overall winners.  Unsurprisingly, Apathetic Athletic and Kind of Rubbish didn't make it past the first round.

The kids loved the game, but be prepared to spend a little over an hour on it.

A big roll of paper and a lot of junk

My Mum recently found a huge roll of plastic-backed paper she didn't want any more, so she donated it to us.  I've had it sitting around for a while and couldn't work out what to do with it, and my kids have also grown out of building stuff out of the box of random interesting packaging and odds and ends, so today I decided to kill two birds with one stone and do some printing.  First thing to do was to collect together a pile of interestingly shaped bits and pieces

Contains, but not limited to, sellotape middles, old socks, cotton reels, sponges and straws

Then the roll of paper and some paper plates with different coloured paint on

I didn't have quite as much blue paint as i was expecting to come out of the pot

Using a piece of fake grass we received as a free sample from a company who specialise in fake lawns

My youngest insisted that we found an old toothbrush to use

A car, made from cotton reel ends, a sponge and a toothbrush

Some shredded paper from a food hamper

Rolling the lid from a pot of baking soda

All the bits we had used were put in an old shoebox for disposing of afterwards (and to, very nearly successfully, stop paint getting on the carpet)

 The finished masterpiece was blu-tacked round the top of the playroom wall.  I should probably have waited for the paint to dry enough not to get it on my arm / the wall / a cuddly toy while putting it up, but we didn't have anywhere big enough to leave it to dry first.

Being a person too

Half term is upon us, so I've got all sorts of stuff to post about, but for now I'm going on a rant.  I'm almost certainly about to make myself extremely unpopular, so to all those who are about to 'unfriend' me on Facebook, it was nice knowing you.

I love my children, I love them more than anything, but I also love my husband and I don't think it's unreasonable to be a person too.  I make a lot of time for my kids, regular readers of my blog will know the enormous amount of effort I go to to put together activities to do with them - from cooking to balloons full of paint, to maths competitions with Maltesers as prizes (that was today, that post is coming later, watch this space) but I only have the energy for all this because I get couple time and 'me' time.

All three of my children have learned from a very early age that from 8 in the evening it's time for sleeping.  I have spent hours with each of them getting this to work, which involves (gasp!) leaving them to cry.  I don't enjoy listening to my children cry, but do you know what?  They're fine.  Every ten minutes I go upstairs and rock them until they're quiet (honestly, if rocking them makes them quiet, there's nothing seriously wrong) and then disappear for another ten minutes.  After about two weeks (or what feels like about two years) all three of them got the hang of it, 8 o'clock is the time that they go in the dark and on their own, and they go to sleep.  They get enough sleep, I get time to do my own thing, I can put up with whatever they throw at me the next day.

The same thing goes for sleeping in my bed - it's my bed, they have their own beds and they can sleep in them.  If they're ill and I have an early start that's another thing, but aside from the odd day they don't sleep in my bed.  They have their own beds, although you'd think I make them sleep in the shed from the reactions of some people that my middle daughter has never slept in my bed, but I once asked her if she wanted to get in when she had been sick at 3am and she looked at me like I was mad and asked why she would want to do that.

When they were little I also made them wait for feeds, with other children and a busy life I simply didn't have time for demand feeding - when you've got to get to after school clubs and music lessons, and then cook dinner and get children into bed on time sometimes these things just have to wait; and I won't take any nonsense over food either.  If you're not hungry that's fine, but there's no pudding and there's nothing else to eat until the next meal time.  That's the rule, it's always been the rule and as long as you stick to it, nobody argues.  Do you know what, none of them have starved.  There are things they don't like but in general they're all really good eaters, and they love trying new foods.

And what has this crazy regime of having a few hours in the evening to myself done to my children?  Absolutely nothing, they are well adjusted, independent, polite and friendly.  They love time with me, but they can also entertain themselves, and having a routine means that they know where they are and what they are doing.  School holidays we do two activities a day, and I get nagged to make sure they get done, so time together is fitted in just the same as everything else, so they feel valued and considered.

Don't get me wrong, if you feel the need to cuddle your children until they fall asleep, or have them sleeping in your bed until they're 8 then go ahead, I have no problem with that, there are loads of different ways to parent and I'm not claiming that mine is better than anyone else's, but what I am sick of is the comments and the posts on Facebook about how terrible it is to ever let your child cry, or to, essentially, have a life of your own if you are a parent.  I'm not claiming that I have all the answers, I can think of plenty of things I should have done differently, but I'm also not a Disney villain who sits in my evil lair rubbing my hands together in glee at the sound of miserable children and I want somebody, for once, to make a case for a way of parenting for which I, increasingly, feel like I have to hide.

The Enchanting Tale of Robert the Doorstop

Okay, so maybe this is a bit of an exaggeration, it might not be that enchanting, but still, you might like to meet Robert:

Robert is a little wonky-eyed and he doesn't have much of a figure, but he's always smartly dressed and has a smile on his face!

Robert is a combination of a problem with our cats knocking the stuff that lives behind one of the doors over and making it impossible to get into the room, a lot of scraps of material and a whole load of rice we had sitting around from a previous craft project.

So, first thing was to choose some material for his shoes, then draw round a roll of sellotape with chalk and cut it out

Then choose material for his trousers, shirt, face and hat and cut strips accordingly.  I can't remember the exact measurements of each but they need to be long enough to go all the way around the outside of the circular pieces plus a few cm more just to make sure.

Next the kids used the sewing machine to attach all the rectangular pieces together.

Next thing they did was choose some material for his tie.  I cut and pinned this on as it was really fiddly, but they then hemmed around the outside using an overstitch.  I appear to have missed taking some pictures of the next bit, but they then used buttons and ribbons to make him a face and sewed them on too, plus sewing a few lines on to separate his legs and mark off his arms.  You will see these in the finished thing.  Sorry!!

 So, once all the detail was done we turned him inside out and sewed down the back, making sure the circle made by the fabric was small enough to pin onto the circles to go at either end.

We sewed on the bottom circle (his feet), and the front half of the top circle (his hat), leaving it to flap open so we could turn him the right way out and stuff him.

Once he was the right way out we filled him approximately 3/4 full of rice.  This was a LOT of rice, we made him a little bigger than we had intended to! 

Then we filled up the last 1/4 with cotton wool.  Make sure it's stuffed very full, otherwise his head will sag.

Then all that was left to do was to oversew his hat the rest of the way round.  Doesn't really matter how neatly (or not!) this is done since it's on the back of his head which will be facing the door.  And hey presto!  Robert the Doorstop! 
What a guy ...

The Island of Mangalor

Regular readers might remember the Theme Park project we did last Summer.  the kids have remembered this and asked to do another one, so we did a hotel complex project over Easter.

I started by drawing an island on squared paper with beaches and attractions, so the kids could choose where to build their hotel complex. 

This, of course, needed a budget.  Then more maths followed, choosing what to put in the complex (shops, games rooms etc) and to place the rooms etc. 

Then they had to decide how much to charge for their rooms and work out running costs.

And then calculate how much money they made over two weeks.  This took a long time, but at the end they both had a profit to spend on advertising.

Obviously they both opted for a TV advert, so we watched some holiday adverts, they decided what they wanted to do, and we got making clips to go in it.  We set up an area to take pictures using some red paper and a table, and the kids spent some time making things out of Lego before I came in with my camera to take the pictures and videos.

 Then we put them all together in order, chose some music and spoke very nicely to my helpful (sometimes) teenager.

Who put together the adverts for us.  If you want to see the final adverts you can find them on YouTube at the following addresses:

Sun Shell Hotel
Costa Del Mangalor

Making Faces

I love pudding.  In my world the point of dinner is to get to pudding.  Unfortunately, this doesn't do my diet any good at all, so several times a week I try to have a pudding which I don't like, and a nice quick one which I try to keep in the fridge for emergencies are the fruit corner yoghurts.

This means that we end up with a whole load of the pots, which I've thought for some time must be good for making something, but I could never think what, so this week we've decided to make them into 'puppets'.  This is one of the least complicated things in the world, essentially you just stick some stuff on the pot to make it look a bit like a face, and use your hand in the back to make it talk.  There's no special secret to this one, just a whole lot of PVA glue, a random selection of craft stuff and some imagination.

So anyway, here are the creations:

These are my 7yo's creations.  They are a cat (top left), a dog (top right), and two monsters at the bottom

These are my 9yo's creations.  They are a frog (top, note the long tongue and legs), a queen (bottom left, note the crown), and a three eyed monster.

And these are mine.  I made a king (top left), queen (bottom left), princess (top right) and prince (bottom right).  I for some reason insisted on giving them all gold tongues "because they're royalty" and the prince has not only lost his beard but his tongue has also turned round sideways.

Rock pooling

So, the Easter holidays are upon us, and we're luck to live not (very) far from Botany Bay, which is a great place for rock pooling.  So we packed up a small net, some tubs, some drinks, a whole load of fruit, put on our wellies and set off.  We also took with us what turned out to be a broken camera, which explains why I only got one shot of this one.

We did, however, have a lovely time, despite not finding a starfish, and only one crab, which turned out to be dead, but mussels, limpets and sea snails galore.  Despite the children protesting because it was a lovely day, we were all very glad to have taken coats and wellies because there was quite a gale down at the coast.

The other lovely thing about Botany Bay is that it is all chalk cliffs, so as a bonus we got to bring home some big old lumps of chalk for drawing on the patio with