Once upon a time ...

This week we have been writing a book - I say this week, it has been a loooooong process but the kids are thrilled with what they have produced.

Day 1

We each wrote a few character sheets.  I designed these specifically so there was a place for a picture, a name and an age of the character, and then lots of spaces to fill in any adjectives to describe the character.

The selection of character we came up with

Fred the Frog.  He eats seaweed and is friends with a badger.  Apparently.

Day 2

The next day we had a consultation meeting to decide what the story would actually be about.  There was an awful lot of giggling and silliness but we finally decided on an outline of a story and which of the characters we had designed would fit into it.  Fortunately one of my children got a flipchart for Christmas so we had somewhere big and handy to write all the information.

The unfortunate position of the perforations means this looks much more like 'Lucky the Super Hippy' than 'Lucky the Super Puppy' (which it actually is)

I was told by my nine year old that this part should be called the climax.  I disagreed for a whole list of reasons, but when I left the room it had mysteriously appeared on the paper.

There was a lot of debate over what Mr Big Mouth wanted the cat claws for.  I personally like the idea of selling them on the galactic market.  In the end we decided it didn't really matter and never mentioned it in the story.

Day 3

The next thing we did was to stick the sheets up, decide on a section each and get writing!  My youngest wrote the introduction, my other daughter wrote the beginning and I was in charge of build up.  We had the sheets blu-tacked to the wall for reference to make sure we were sticking to the story.

There is a possibility I finished before the children and did a little bit of doodling in the margins ...

Day 4

I then typed it up on the computer (there are advantages to being a touch typist!) and we had an editor's meeting - I had to talk to my older one about not being too critical of her little sister's work and making sure that at least some of her ideas for changes made it into the edit.  The main changes we made were things like making sure it was all in the past tense, and taking out bits which didn't make sense or contradicted other parts of the story.  I also encouraged them to suggest changes to my parts to show that it's not a bad thing to change and adapt your work and there's no need to be upset about it.  I did have to trample on my childish side once or twice during this process ...

'Lucky the Super Puppy' was the working title, I wouldn't let them decide on a final name until the story was finished.

Days 5 & 6

We repeated days 3 and 4, but with the fourth, fifth and sixth sections (the Problem, Resolution and End)

Day 7

Today was the day we made it into a book!  Since I had already made the edits and put the writing into columns, the first thing to do was to draw some illustrations.  Then I spent some happy (not) times with my scanner trying to work out how to get the parts of the story and illustrations the right way up and on the right pages to make it into a book.

This picture shows Mrs Ronaldy, her sister, Lucky the Super Puppy and several cats

Then we set to work on a cover.  We decided on a story title, and I wrote it in bubble writing, then we discussed a blurb, put the authors' names on the front and the children drew pictures.  Then I wrote a little about the authors inside the front cover.  Once all this was done I laminated the cover to make it as much like a 'real' book as possible.

This is our blurb.  Does it make you want to read more?

Lastly I discovered I didn't have a stapler long enough to staple the middle of the pages, so with the help of a staple gun and a hammer I managed to get two staples in to hold it together in book form and the book was finished. 

The finished book.  The children are unbelievably proud of themselves

And for anyone who is interested, here is the final story of Mr Big Mouth and the Stolen Cats:

One day Lucky was left on her own. She thought to herself “I want some friends”. Lucky always wanted to find out who lived downstairs so she could make friends. Mrs Ronaldy lived downstairs but Lucky didn't know about her. Lucky had a think, she thought she was an ordinary puppy.

Close to tears, Lucky looked away from the peeling walls, she shut her eyes, and tried to remember how life was before she was left alone. Lucky looked at the single door, the one things separating her and happiness. Oh, how she longed to be free. She looked here and there, trying to find something that would bring happy memories. But they took it all. Every last thing. All they left was a single collar. She couldn't help but let the tears fall. Suddenly something made her freeze. She smelt a strange smell. Smoke …

Where her tears had landed, small fires had started to burn. Only one thing she knew could put out a fire. Water. She leapt up to the sink and grabbed the tap in her jaws. She spun it round and round. It began to overflow, but the carpet was already ablaze. Leaping down, Lucky ran over to the window. The fire alarm rang and she heard panicked footsteps. She looked

out of the window, but was repelled by what she saw. It was a ten storey drop to the ground, but Lucky had no choice.

“I have a chance” thought Lucky, “I'm going to take it”. She leapt out of the window, and a strange sensation greeted her. Lucky wasn't falling, she was flying

From above, Lucky could see a lady in green dashing out, carrying a lot of cats. Then the lady shrieked, “Pancake!”. Confused, Lucky looked up to see a glum faced cat staring out of the window. The cat was in danger! She soared upwards and picked up the plump tabby cat in her jaws. Lucky heard another scream, and brought the cat safely to ground. At first, the lady just stood there. Then slowly she approached the two animals. The lady checked the cat was unharmed, then spoke softly. “Well, I'm Mrs Ronaldy and you are unlike any dog I've ever seen before.”

“I'm ever so worried,” said Mrs Ronaldy, “have you seen on the news about all the cats going missing? I love my cats ever so much, all seventeen of them. If anything ever happened to them I just don't know what I'd do.” 

 

Lucky looked sadly at Mrs Ronaldy, she didn't like to think of her all alone without her cats. She seemed like a lovely lady who did not deserve to be sad. 

 

“I suppose I'd better go and stay at my sister's house” sighed Mrs Ronaldy, “I don't have anywhere else to go”. And she trundled off, her cats following in a line. Lucky stared at the floor, she did not have a sister, or at least not one that she knew about. She had no idea where she was going to go, but at least she was out of the flat. Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye she saw something green. Glad of the distraction from her current problems, she looked to see what it was and was surprised to see a small green frog carrying a saddle.

“What can he be up to?” wondered Lucky, and started to follow along.

All at once the frog had thrown the saddle up onto one of Mrs Ronaldy's cats and was riding it away. Lucky tried to attract Mrs Ronaldy's attention, but she didn't notice. “Well, I have to do something” thought Lucky determinedly. She started to follow the frog and the cat through the bushes.

The frog rode the cat to the edge of a big blue lake. “What is he going to do now?” thought Lucky from her hiding place in the bushes. Suddenly both the frog and the cat disappeared under the water. 

 

Lucky crept out of her hiding place and leapt into the lake after them, just in time to see them swim quickly down an underwater tunnel. The tunnel led to a huge hall with tall pillars stretching from floor to ceiling and huge velvet curtains hung between them. Lucky couldn't believe the size of the place, and was amazed to see huge stacks of cages with hundreds of cats in. She heard the frog mutter, “Mr Big Mouth will be pleased with me, he will. He'll be so pleased with old Fred the Frog”.

She looked at the cats. She was confused to see no claws on the cats. Fred the Frog put the new cat in the cage. “Poor thing” thought Lucky. Fred the Frog finally decided to put Lucky in a cage. Lucky was caught. Mr Big Mouth came in to talk to Fred the Frog. Fred the Frog told Mr Big Mouth all about Lucky following him. Mr Big Mouth was very cross.

“Anyway,” said Mr Big Mouth, “it doesn't matter, we've nearly got enough cat claws. Mwahahaha.”

Fred the Frog and Mr Big Mouth left and slammed the door.  Lucky tried not to cry because she didn't want to set the cage on fire.  Looking down, Lucky could see that she was on top of at least eight cats. 

“Is there a way to get out of here?” she asked the cat below her

“Well, there's a window and that's about it.”

“Are these cages locked?”

“Yes.”

“If only I could pick locks.”

“Uh ...” said a small voice.

All the cats' heads turned to face the cat taken from Mrs Ronaldy.

“Can you pick locks?” asked Lucky.

“I probably could.”

“Please try.”

The cat twisted its claw in the lock and after a few seconds the door swung open. She unlocked Lucky's cage. Lucky thought for a moment, then said, 

“Keep unlocking cages, OK? I'll be back.”

“Alright.”

And without another word, Lucky zoomed out of the window.

Lucky spotted two large grey birds sitting in a tree.

“What do you want?” cawed one of them.

“I need some help.” said Lucky.

“Okay,” chirped the other, and soon they were airbourne, and heading for the lair.

“Only six to go!” cried the cat. Lucky and the birds, Flip and Chip, were flying in. Lucky, Flip and Chip took a cat each and flew them up to the window. This continued until there was only one cat left. Lucky could hear the frog coming. Lucky picked up the cat and hurried over to the window. She could see the frog hopping over. Fred leapt up and tried to grab the cat, but missed. Lucky landed the cat on the hill with the others. The birds said goodbye, and flew off into the moonlight.

 

Lucky looked around and far from looking excited and happy, every cat looked sad and worried. 

“What's the matter?” asked Lucky, “aren't you pleased to be free?”

“We have nowhere to go,” said a small black cat called Mungo, “most of us have been in that room for so long our owners will have forgotten all about us.”

“Mrs Ronaldy will look after you,” chirped Mrs Ronaldy's cat, “she loves cats, I bet she will have all of you.”

So the cat led the way to Mrs Ronaldy's sister's house and she got the biggest surprise of her life!

Mrs Ronaldy and her sister moved to a big house in the country with Pancake and her other sixteen cats, her sister's four cats, all 174 of the rescued cats and, of course, Lucky the Super Puppy. They love her best of all and Lucky isn't lonely any more. In fact, she's far too busy playing with all her new friends to remember she was ever lonely at all.

THE END

What did you say?

This blog is a little late, but I've had a very busy bank holiday weekend - my apologies!  This is only going to be a short one as well as I still have a lot to do and it's late.

However, today we've been working with speech bubbles.  Essentially the idea is to find a variety of pictures of cartoon characters (I found it works better if they are interacting with others rather than on their own) and a variety of speech and thought bubbles.  Then you need paper, scissors, glue and pencils.

Unfortunately I forgot to photograph all this stuff before we use it

 Then the idea is to cut out a picture, stick it down, add speech bubbles and write what you think they might be saying.  As well as being fun, this has elements of an educational activity for younger children - using language, considering the emotions of a character, character interaction etc.

Anyway, these are what the kids came up with:

I particularly love the spellings of 'upside down' and 'skippety skippety'

Just for clarity, it is an elephant in a fountain which is just off shot saying he is certain there is no better way to bath.

Watching Water

I've got several big projects still ongoing, but we've been doing some more little things this week.  Yesterday we did another science experiment to demonstrate that heating molecules makes them move faster.  We talked about how the molecules move in a solid, a liquid and a gas, and discussed why this is (answer: heat is a form of energy so as you heat a molecule it has more energy and is able to move faster)

Anyway, the following experiment demonstrates this beautifully.

Step 1

 Take two clear containers (makes sure they are heatproof - you don't want boiling water all over your children!) and fill one with tap water and the other with boiling water.

Step 2

 Put a couple of drops of food colouring in each one - make sure you put the same amount in each, and as close to at the same time as possible.

Step 3

 Watch what happens - the food colouring in the boiling water glass will mix in because of the movement of the water, whereas the food colouring in the tap water will not mix in as well because the molecules are far less active.

A Model Afternoon

This week we've expanded on 'Mummy's Hairdressing Salon' from a couple of weeks ago and gone the whole makeover.  This was the suggestion of my resident teenager - she was somewhat bored since all her friends are either on holiday or busy at the moment.

I used the same pictures of suggested hairstyles I used the first time round, and she found pictures of nail decorations, and the two younger ones chose what they wanted.

Our teenager's entire makeup collection - this is more makeup than I've ever owned.  In total.  Ever.

These are little nail penguins

And these are blue with red swirls.  The picture does not show this off particularly well

 Then she did their makeup, just a bit of eyeshadow and lipstick but they felt like the most glamorous people who have ever lived.  There was a lot of looking in mirrors and pouting going on.

This was purple eyeshadow.  She kept rubbing it off so there was very little left by this point

This is blue, she's kept it on better but we gave up on the mascara due to all the fidgeting!

 Next I did their hair according to the styles they decided on - both wanted curls, but my six year old wanted ringlets and my nine year old wanted waves.

Ringlets ringlets ringlets ...

 Finally they chose some pretty dresses and all three of them disappeared outside for a photoshoot.  There was lots of twirling, skipping, sitting in wheelbarrows and looking whistful but we got some lovely photographs and they had a fantastic afternoon.

Playing with the special effects

Going for a walking-away shot

Stop Motion (and an update on the pointless planting)

This week we have been making Stop Motion Animations, you know the things, like Wallace and Gromit (although the similarity between what we made and a Wallace and Gromit film very much stops at the 'it's a stop motion animation' stage!), or the Ooglies.  If you've never seen Ooglies you very much should.

Anyway, first thing we did was to set up the area, we blu-tacked my camera to a table so it absolutely wouldn't move no matter how much the children fidgeted and fussed.  Then we chose some figures to be in the animations, ones which could stand freely, moved well (ie. not cuddly toys), and were small enough to fit in the picture. We ended up with some dolls house people and furniture, along with a small plastic vet set.

Not the tidiest start ...

 Then we set up how we wanted the film to start, the children chose a character each, so not too much was moving at the same time, and decided how they wanted them to move.  It took a little while for them to get the hang of how much they should be moved each time - one of them got incredibly impatient and I had to keep making her move them back, the other took my instructions a little too literally and wanted to move them about a quarter of a millimetre between each picture.

The first six frames of one of the 'movies'

 You want around 5 pictures per second, so for a decent length short you want at least around 150 pictures.  You can make up the story as you go along but we found it was a good idea to make something leave the frame before something new joined otherwise it started to get cluttered.

I then enlisted my resident teenager to put the pictures together into a film using Microsoft Movie Maker.  If I'm honest I'm not 100% sure how she did this but if anyone wants instructions leave me a comment and I'll get her to do some print screens in a step by step.

Anyway, the finished articles came out like this:

 In other news:
The 'pointless planting' we did recently turned out to be not so pointless after all!  Three of the apple seeds seem to have sprouted, so assuming I don't manage to kill all three of them we will hopefully be able to grow a whole apple tree.  No sign of anything else sprouting yet but we'll wait and see ...

Three little apple seedlings

The biggest of the seedlings close up.  It's going to take a while to reach 'tree' status!

Pointless Planting

I have a lot of fruit trees and a vegetable patch in my garden, so my children are very used to a spot of gardening.  They are always, however, looking for their own things to grow, so we decided we'd try some pips and seeds from the fruit we had eaten that day.

First we collected some paper, a seed tray, a bucket of compost, a trowel and some fruit seeds / pips.

The legs are optional ...

 Then the kids filled the seed tray with compost.

And covered the patio, their hands, my shoes ...

 They kept a record of which seeds had been planted where.

Correct spellings are optional

 And then finally we put a propagator lid on and put it in a sunny position.

Then I have been asked if it needs watering approximately every 5 minutes since

I'm quite expecting (and have warned the kids) that nothing will grow, but you never know, I'llk eep you posted ...

Theme Park Projects

I try to make at least some of our school holiday activities educational, this one has been going on for nearly two weeks.  I used a combination of a family outing to Chessington and some teaching materials I collected to start the children on a theme park project.

We started with quite a lot of maths - they had a budget and different items cost different amounts, they planned their theme park on squared paper and worked out how much it was costing them.

She's taken the public transport thing proper seriously!

From this map we learn that toilets are important ...

After that  they worked out how much it was costing them to run their theme park each day.

Then they read through a list of "interviews" to decide how much to charge people to get in.

Finally they used all the information to work out how much profit they were making each day.

There's a LOT of maths in here

Not so much and much, much simpler.

There are two different levels of difficulty here for differently aged children.  I also let them use a calculator for the last sheet as it was very repetitive adding.

Anyway, once they knew how much money they'd made after a fortnight they could decide what sort of advertising they could afford.  The first things they made were posters - this involved a lot of looking at posters (they knew remarkably little about them), naming their rides and worlds (and parks!) and thinking about taglines.

A tour round the lakes for just £30?  Bargain!

I'm looking forward to the treets for my famely.

Finally we spent the morning today watching theme park adverts and made our own.  The kids LOVED doing this, and fortunately I have a helpful (sometimes) teenager to edit them for us.  Unfortunately I've had to compress the files to make them small enough to fit on here and the software has added a watermark.  It was very easy to use, however, so I shan't complain (too much!)