A shadowy idea

My husband has gone away for work for a few weeks, and we always make sure to do a lot of fun things while he's away to give the children something to look forward to.  We had a great outdoor activity planned for this weekend, but unfortunately a big old storm rendered that impossible, so we had to think again.

We had noticed a few days before that when the light is on in the bathroom in the morning it shines onto my bedroom wall.  We decided to set up my 6 year old's flipchart and spend some time making shadow puppets.with a few How To guides printed out from the internet.

First thing we did was the girls drew round each other's sillhouettes.

Then we set about attempting some shapes - this, I believe, was supposed to be a teddy bear ...

These were a dog and a wolf ...

And then we tried some freestyling.  I was informed that this was a table ...

Can't remember the one on the left, although the one of the right was sweetcorn.

This is my attempt at a camel.  Really quite proud of this. 

Maybe should have tidied up a bit before pictures were taken in my room

 This was apparently supposed to be a bee, but we decided it actually looked more like a clown fish.

A dog?  A goose?  Not 100% sure about this one.  Definitely an animal side on, however.

I think this was a snake and a crocodile.  Or a snake and a bird.  Or something.

This was a very impressive dove.  Not quite sure how she did it, it wasn't one from the sheet.  

For a quickly put together activity, this was so much fun.  They stayed upstairs for another hour playing at shadow puppets after I'd gone off to get on with the housework.

Bodium Castle

This has been an ongoing project since before Christmas, but we finally got it finished this evening.  The kids were wanting to do something with papier mache, so we decided to make a castle.  We looked online at a variety of castles and decided that Bodium Castle was a nice shape, so we used a lot of cardboard boxes, Pringle tubes and sellotape to make a basic castle shape.

Then we used a mixture of approx 3/4 water and 1/4 PVA glue (and a lot of newspaper) to coat the castle.  The basic process is to lay a strip of newspaper on, then use a paintbrush to soak it in the water / glue mixture.  It's important to make sure the paper is pushed well into the corners as it makes it much more solid.

Once that had dried (it took about 24 hours) we did another coat. 

And then a third coat, making sure to get into all the corners, and checking really carefully that everything was covered.  We used much longer strips of newspaper on this coat.

Once that was dry, the next step was to pain it grey, and then leave it to dry again.

And then a second coat of grey paint.

Then lastly (this evening) I mixed up another three shades of grey, all slightly darker than the base coat, and we used finger painting to put on the 'stones'.

 

Now the only thing left to do is to find somewhere to put it!

A few updates

I've been very guilty of being really quite lazy over Christmas so I don't have anything very exciting to report, but I do have a few updates on some past projects and activities.

1. Following on from our trip to see the sunrise we attempted to go to see a sunset.  I found a beautiful spot on the Wye Downs which faced west perfectly, got some lovely pictures of the moon: 

And then this enormous great cloud appeared and ruined everything.

2. Our Christmas decorations were very beautiful, and have now been taken down and got rid of ready to make new ones next year.  During the time they were up, however, the Christmas house was 'found' by our kittens, who decided that this was a good idea: 

3. In better news, the '(not so) pointless planting' is coming along well - the apple trees are a good few inches high now:

4. I've finished the second of the three advent calendars, only another 25 hours (or thereabouts) to get the last one finished:

That's it for now I'm afraid, but there will be new and exciting news soon.  I have three costumes and a pair of curtains to make and a bed to repair (and if you believe my brother's additions to my To Do list last time he was round I also have to paint a milkman and take one of my children to Bedfordshire)

Water Density Experiments

Hello blog-readers, hope a happy Christmas and new year was had by all!

We've been doing some science (in amongst all the present opening and eating too much), it's only a little experiment but we enjoyed ourselves.

We assembled some bits together - a tub to do it in so as not to make everything wet, a jug of water, some food colouring, two glasses, some salt and a piece of cardboard

We filled both glasses up with water, put two tablespoonfulls of salt and a little food colouring in one

Next thing to do was to use the piece of cardboard to flip one cup over and put it on top of the other, then watch what happened to the colour of the water.

This was when the plain water went on top of the salt water - because the salt water is heavier it stays at the bottom and the two don't mix (although they did a little bit because I had a little trouble getting the cardboard out!)

This was when the salt water went on the top of the plain water.  The heavier salt water tried to sink to the bottom, mixing with the plain water on the way down.