Wednesday 30 July 2014

Dramatic fire and Bernoulli circuit wire

The week started with more face paint requests from Squidge and his friends: evil clowns, clown zombies, and a twoface Spider-Man Venom :) Moppet joined in with a dinosaur on her arm that she roared at people for the rest of the day.


Squidge found a Bernoulli effect kit, and put the components together and set up the circuit.


It worked :)


Sprout rediscovered Starmade, and we looked up some of the console commands as he hadn't played since it was in alpha so quite a lot had changed. He built a big ship but we need to work out the ratio of weight to thrusters and other components as it won't yet get off the ground! He's since been playing on Space Engineers too, which he now prefers.


He showed me some gameplay videos of Pewdiepie's too, including a Shrek version of Slenderman on Swamp simulator.


Squidge has had his friends round for most of his waking hours :) Lots of CoD has been played, as well as loads of bouncing on the trampoline and games of don't touch the ball.


The next day Squidge himself was responsible for painting his own face and his friends' :D Introducing 'The Purple Hulk'!


Moppet played shadow puppets...


...and I was up late working so Sprout kept me company, scrutinising our kitchen plan...


...and chatting about gambling odds and racial identity.


We had an afternoon at the park and had a play with a new toy I picked up...


...and Moppet practised her plate spinning :)


The boys went super fast on the little roundabout, and screamed about G force :D


Meanwhile, with a Ho Ho Ho! Moppet was a pirate captain once again :)


Sprout likes what he calls references at the moment (connections, things from other things), and when he saw this tree in the park he said it looked like a reference to Avatar, as it reminded him of the Na'vi Tree of Voices, so he wanted a picture of the three of them under it <3


On the way back to the car, he said he was going to do a Temple Run reference, and ran and ducked his way along this wall :)


Back at home I got some chalks out and they drew pictures on the drive.


This is Sprout's Banana Ninja...


...Squidge's Fire Ninja...


...and Squidge's picture of when he went on a boat with his Grandpa last month.


Sprout played some rhythms on the guitar and asked me to guess what tunes they were. Mario was a recurring theme.


Moppet watched Care Bears and fell asleep.


Squidge and his friend made words out of magnetic letters...


...and then made themselves into Nappy Ninjas by wearing their tshirts on their bums :)


Sprout rocked out :D


Moppet came in with the guitar while I was cooking dinner and asked me if I wanted her to sing the baby song :D


We all watched Despicable Me 2 and had popcorn.


The seeds they planted in the nutrient gel began to germinate.




Moppet discovered My Little Pony on Netflix and Squidge kept her company.


We had a day out the front with their friends, skateboarding, bike riding, hula hooping, scooting, car ride-on-ing, footballing and bubble blowing.


They all decorated some gingerbread men (if you're wondering why Squidge is kind of blue and smudgy it's because he and Moppet painted each other like Smurfs, I've never seen two such blue people).


The boys had some friends round (still, they're here more than me ;) ), and played some Tekkit.


I gave Moppet a bowl of Cheerios along with some uncooked spaghetti stuck in play dough, and she had fun stacking the Cheerios on.


We then made some bird feeders by putting the Cheerios on pipe cleaners...




I saw that Pathe had put their entire archive on YouTube, and Sprout was fascinated by some of the films, notably the Wright brothers ("Why did that make the world smaller?"), the Titanic survivors ("So the moral of that story is don't use a Titanic boat."), and the Hindenburg ("So hydrogen burns faster than paper then!").


More playing in the street, and Moppet is rather enamoured with the older girl that lives next door.



Sprout read an Okomi book to Moppet <3


Moppet repurposed the Cheerio stacking activity and made some models, including this dog...


...and this elephant :)


Sprout and Squidge had a marathon CoD session...


...during which Squidge took a break to sing Soft Kitty to our cat :)


He then took the balloon pump into the bath and experimented with how high he could get it to squirt water :)


We got out our new big pack of Sharpies, and I cut out a stencil for Moppet (she asked for an elephant) to decorate a babygro for her soon-to-be new cousin :)



Squidge drew this design on the one from him.


Then we decorated our socks :) Little people for Moppet...


...Sharkboy and Lavagirl for Squidge...


...then Spider-Man and giraffe puppets too :)


While we had the sharpies out I suggested this Chihuly-inspired project. Colour in some clear plastic cups...


...and pop them upside down in the oven for a few minutes until they go all wibbly :)


Squidge then wanted to stack the rest of the cups and see how high he could get them..


...which then progressed to a game of 'guess which one the ball's under' :)


Then we made noisy frogs: a paper plate coloured green on one side and red or pink on the other and folded in half, two balled up bits of paper taped on the top with a dot drawn on each, and a party blower stuck through the middle of the fold.


Fun! They've all been chasing each other round with them this evening :)


The weekend saw a performance by Periplum of The Bell in Central Forest Park. We got there early so we could park so we spent some time on the playground first. 




Then we saw the dragon appear (which had been the deciding factor for the three of them when deciding whether they'd go) so we went and watched the drumming and Sprout was excited to notice that it not only breathed fire but it was also made out of hubcaps, some of which were VW. 


They went on a ride and chose some candy floss and lollies...



...then night started to draw in in suitably dramatic fashion for the show :)







This woman's singing at the beginning gave me chills, she was amazing. The weather had a very Pratchett-esque turn as she began, with a dramatic and perfectly timed gale :)











The whole production with incredibly moving, and visually stunning (which the kids appreciated, they loved how much fire featured!)


Sunday began with Moppet's "wawourite hat" :D


Then I put some things together for the kids and one of their friends to decorate Mr Potato Head cupcakes...




These were Squidge's...


...Moppet's first one was very Picasso...


...and she told me that her second one had "three tails and a label" o.O


Squidge's friend made this vampire for me :)


Sprout planned his very carefully, and had loads of fun making them and showing me the results :)







Later on he decorated his babygro present for his new cousin, with a baby Creeper in a nappy and a top hat :)



I helped Sprout do a big clear out in his room that he wanted to do, so Gruff took Squidge and Moppet to the park for a while.


Bike riding boy!! Exciting! :)


Some of this week's activities we found via Pinterest, they're parked on this board if you'd like to see the original links :) http://www.pinterest.com/tamchuzzle/this-week/