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

A Little Book of Treasures

Hooray for the school holidays!  Time for a project ...

This week we've been making secret boxes which will blend in seamlessly (ahem) to the kids' bookcases.  First they marked themselves our some rectangles - two 15 x 25cm and one 25 x 5.7.  These formed the covers and spine of the book.  I then took these out to the garage to cut them out as I'll let my children do a lot of things, but I draw the line at circular saws (much to their disgust)

Once cut out they each had a set which looked something like this:

While I was gone, they marked out some lengths on another couple of pieces of wood - some 10 x 12mm baton and some 4 x 4.5mm stripwood.

They then used a junior hacksaw to cut them into the correct sizes.  Then there was a whole sanding party going on.

 They marked 1.5cm in from three of the edges of the 'book covers' and we then set about nailing the baton pieces around the outside, leaving the 1.5cm gap around the outside.  One thing I have found over the years when children are using hammers is that if you hold the nail with a pair of pincer-nosed pliers, nobody's fingers get hit.

 

Once they had all been attached on, each of the children had something a little like this:

After that (and a good night's sleep), more nailing ensued to attach the spine and two of the pieces of stripwood on to make a book shape.

Leaving one of the smaller pieces of stripwood to slide in and out of the bottom to get the treasures in and out.

 Once both were all finished, we were left with these - tomorrow's job will be painting them to look like books, and then they will be added to their bookcases where I have no doubt they will blend in seamlessly.

Frosty the Sockman

One of my many missions for the Easter holidays is to sort out the socks, so today I started with my youngest two's underwear drawers and came up with quite a pile of ones which needed getting rid of.  Never one to waste an opportunity for activities, we set about having some fun.

First, we needed to assemble the bits - cotton wool, bag of rice, beads, sewing scissors, small elastic bands and (of course) assorted socks and tights.  Plus, not in the picture, we also needed a funnel, a large cup, and a needle and thread.

We each selected a white sock, then used the funnel to pour a cup full of rice into it.

Then we secured the top with one of the elastic bands.  Make sure the band is tight on top of the rice.

Next thing was to put a large ball of cotton wool into the sock, and tie the top with another elastic band.  Again, this needs to be tight on top of the cotton wool.

Then we cut the top off the sock, and the end off a coloured sock.

This coloured end goes on top of the 'head' to make a hat

Then we cut another strip off the sock and cut through it to make it into a long rectangle.

This was tied around the neck to make a scarf.

The final step was to sew on a few beads to make eyes and a nose (although my 9yo didn't want to and used our sewing time to make herself a second snowman)

So, four little snowmen all in a row.