Monday 17 February 2014

Bubbles: Giant, flat, stand-in, space, gum, and bubbleception!

The kids' grandpa has been in hospital this week, so they've spent some time writing him letters, making up a puzzle for him to do when he's up to it, and drawing him some pictures...


The chocolates that they made for Gruff turned out really well :)


We spent a day at a fun day in Manchester where Sprout tried (and loved!) virtual caving...


...did some more climbing (he was really excited at how high he got this time)...


...a bit of archery...


...and a giant game of Operation, among other things.


Both the boys tried out some different bikes aimed at variously differently abled people, so some that were hand-cycled, some wheelchair-adapted...


...plus Squidge's favourite, this Mammoet kart :)


Sprout and Moppet stood inside giant bubbles...



...and then the stand organiser let Sprout help out for a while which he was very excited about :) 


While we were in Manchester we realised we were only half a mile away from MOSI, so we went along for a couple of hours before they closed. Moppet spent the visit asleep on Gruff in the cafe while I went round with the boys, facilitating 'nuclear fission'...


...experimenting with light colours...


...rolling a ball heavier than an adult male gorilla...


...making big flat bubble sheets...


...riding a bike with a skeleton...


...making temperature sensitive panels change colour...


...and looking inside military aircraft.


On the walk back to the car Sprout was amazed by the Beetham Tower.


Sprout and I had some one on one time, reading New Scientist and chatting about whether there is a largest possible number, the history of water molecules and whether any of the water molecules you drink were once drunk by dinosaurs, why mammoths might have become extinct due to loss of the vegetation they fed on, black holes and the changing understanding of them, the Great Barrier Reef and threats to it, and dugongs (which I'd never heard of before!) I can't remember how the subject came up but he also wondered what his name would look like in binary. The answer?
|01000110|01101001|01101110|01101110|00001101

Back at home he set up a game with minifigures and explained the rules to me, and we also did some building together on our Minecraft server, where between building with me and building his own giant replica of his Minecraft skin he was also gently explaining to another player about griefing and what wasn't ok to do :)


He also had a play with a new wooden calendar we got, and we chatted about the meanings of am and pm, and which months are considered to make up each season in this country.


Squidge was interested in the different sweets they have in different countries, so we've started setting up some swaps with people overseas. We made our first parcel ready to ship to Estonia (note to anyone else doing this, keep the weight low, and don't even bother with Royal Mail, go straight for a courier!)


Squidge and I have also been chatting on and off about various things he's wondering, such as whether hair grows from the top or the bottom (we went with an analogy of those play dough extruders!), and how powerful water can be even though it's not solid.
Moppet now has a favourite episode of Peppa, which is the one where Peppa has a baby cousin. It's five minutes long and she asks me to skip back to the start every time it ends :)


Squidge got another Weekend Box, including some special extra ingredients to make macaroni cheese...


...which obviously got pirated up after :)


They all made some chocolate cupcakes too...


...and we had a look at Squidge's Something Sweet magazine and used their idea for chocolate bark. We had some milk chocolate and a couple of mini Crunchies in, so we used those. It was lovely for something so quick and easy :)


We spent an afternoon at the park with friends...



...and although it was cold they fancied an ice cream anyway :)


Back at home Squidge and Moppet made crocodile clappers out of the Weekend Box, while Sprout played some Far Cry 3, along with the TF2 and Orcs Must Die 2 that he's been playing the rest of the week.


After we'd packed up the parcel of sweets to go to Estonia, we opened a parcel that the kids' uncle had really kindly sent with some sweets from various countries (other posts to follow on this!), one of which was some bubblegum. Sprout was excited that I could blow bubbles and he had a go himself, then we found a video online of the most recent world record for the biggest bubblegum bubble blown. She seemed to create it from two bubbles carrying on from each other, to which Sprout exclaimed, "Bubbleception! A bubble in a bubble!" From there we googled bubbleception, and found a video on the ISS where an astronaut created a water bubble floating in an air bubble floating in a water bubble floating in the air! From there Sprout navigated to a video of a tour of the ISS, which reminded me to show him a time lapse video of the lights on earth taken from the ISS. 

Meanwhile Squidge asked for some art tutorials on YouTube...


...and drew a panda...


...a fish...


...and a cat.



Moppet is happy that she can reach all the board games since I reorganised the shelves, so we've been playing lots of Gooey Louie, Monopoly Free Parking balancing game, the Magic Tooth Fairy Game, and her favourite of the week, this fishing game...


We have three birthdays coming up in the next week, so most of what we have planned is birthday related, but we have a couple of international candy/sweets swapping posts coming up too :)



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