Friday 30 November 2012

Optical illusion, masking tape profusion, and how atheism doesn't preclude religion inclusion

It's been another fairly Pinteresting week! 

We started with this masking tape road that I've been meaning to do for ages, it was *lots* of fun (to make and to play with!)


Next up were teabag rockets, which the boys were sooo thrilled by we used all our teabags and have ordered more to do it again this week:)



Later in the week we drew this awesome optical illusion (this is Squidge's hand.) This is one of those things that you see online, try out, and actually does end up looking as cool in real life! 



We also baked some marbles. Now, our oven is as temperamental as can be, and never as hot as you set it, so even with some adjustment these didn't come out great so we're going to try again with a much hotter oven and colder water.



Squidge loves anything to do with hearts, so we cut round his hand and made this...



...and while we were at it we made an impromptu gingerbread man chain.



Away from Pinterest we got out our EZ-Fort kit for the first time, which we'd invested in as our tally of moveable furniture dwindled to almost zero. Both boys made forts with Gruff...


...plus he helped Squidge make a fort umbrella too!



We tried out our tornado tube for the first time too. It was *hard hard hard* to get it to work, and it leaked an annoying amount, but once the whirlpool actually formed it was pretty cool and Squidge loved it. (After reading reviews apparently this one is better and less leaky, for anyone thinking of getting one!)



In other news Fly is getting pretty big now, she's almost six months old, and very gradually we're managing to integrate her more into the household as Squidge gets used to her. He's so much less scared now when he sees dogs out and about, and will generally be able to walk past them as long as he can see they're on a lead. Progress!



Sprout in particular was extremely excited to go and see the Coca-Cola Christmas truck when it came here this week...


...and on our way home that night we got an amazing view of the moon and Jupiter (sorry for the useless photo, I only had my phone on me.)


A question was answered this week too: As atheists, how will our kids come across religion? I knew the answer in general terms already, obviously: there's religion in the world and my kids live in the world. But I liked the specifics of how it came about again this week. Last week we'd talked about Christian stories surrounding the birth of Jesus when we were looking at Christmas decorations. This week, Sprout saw a video on his favourite YouTube channel for a game called The Binding of Isaac, which we then bought and played, which led to us chatting about the bible story of the same name. A couple of days later he was playing with a Noah's ark set at his grandparents' house, and we chatted about the story of the flood, and he was telling me that there had to be two of each animal so they could breed, and that that was true for Noah and his wife too. I wondered out loud whether in the Bible Noah was related to Isaac, and he was interested so we googled and found this, so apparently Noah was Isaac's great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather. Or thereabouts! This elicited an awestruck, "Whoooooah..." from Sprout :)

Squidge has been getting interested in letters and words, wanting me to read more books, playing on Reading Eggs, typing his name in scoreboards on Kizi, and asking me to point to letters on the keyboard so he can type out website names and search for the videos he wants. 

Sprout asked for the first time last night a couple of things about the reality of Santa. They'd watched Arthur Christmas five or six times over the past couple of days. In bed last night he asked me whether Santa really had a spaceship. I asked him what he thought, and he laughed and said no. He paused for a bit, then asked me if Santa really had a flying sleigh. I asked again what he thought, and he asked me back again. I asked if he wanted the real actual truth or the story, and he said the real actual truth. So I smiled and said no, but it's a lovely magical story to think about at Christmas isn't it? He smiled, said yes, and fell asleep. So I think that went ok!

They're both very excited that Advent starts tomorrow (Sprout's been counting down to it for at least a month!), and I can't wait for the Christmas fairy to come back, I've thought of some fun things for her to get up to already :)

2 comments:

  1. We have extremely excited people waiting for advent too! Not long now...

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    1. Squeeeeeeee :D (<<< more excited about Christmas than the kids hahaha)

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