Sunday 25 January 2015

Various Cakes and Photofit Makes

Sprout started off the week watching some FNAF videos and piecing together the chronology of various unshown parts of the story, and explaining to me why the animatronics are endoskeletons rather than exoskeletons like I'd thought. 
We discovered the Heads Up app which was loads of fun, and Sprout especially loved the video games deck!



Moppet and I made a coconut cake at her request...


...while Sprout played Plague Inc, Evolved and Squidge watched some cartoons. The boys had a friend round to play, and they played Lego, Nerf, built a mini fire pit and lit a fire outside, and did a vinegar/bicarb volcano.


Oh and they played in a box too :)


Next day was home ed park day, which was cold and brief! Back at home the kids all made things for Gruff coming home from work as he'd had a rough day, Sprout made him a list of reasons he loves him, Squidge drew him a picture of them playing Skylanders together, and Moppet drew a picture of herself with lots of kisses, then they sealed them with a wax seal, and set up a comfy area for him with a cushion and blanket, a cup of coffee, a piece of cake, his favourite crisps, and their letters/pictures, it was very sweet :)

After we watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a little while ago, Sprout had the idea of making a cake like the land inside the factory. So we bought some supplies and made four chocolate cakes, made hills on three of them with pieces of the fourth, and covered them in green icing, then the kids made them into little candy worlds.



Sprout spent lots of time on his...


...and showed me round the result! The little bear at the top owns the world, the other bears are the civilians, and the jelly babies are the giants who have come to celebrate the opening of the new fountain (in the middle). There's a skyscraper at the back and lots of lolly trees.


Later Squidge set up an assault course and spent some time seeing how much higher and further he could jump over different things.


While Sprout played Blocksworld, Squidge and Moppet watched surprise egg videos together.


Before we went out in the snow the next day, Sprout played some Theme Hospital and explained it to his grandpa, and then he tried out Sims 4 for a while.


Moppet and I made Minion biscuits...


...and the boys helped decorate them.


The half a centimetre of snow we had closed the local school, so one of the neighbour kids spent his snow day at ours playing GTA V with Squidge, while Sprout investigated the spy kit he got at the charity shop. He started off making some photo-fits, and I showed him some real ones online..



...then he used this little device to make an encrypted message to give to Gruff.


Once his friend went home Squidge carried on playing gta v and then carried on with the Skylanders game he and Gruff have started.


Some lovely friends had the idea of a little  bonfire, and we all decided to go ahead despite the weather. Squidge showed me some letters he made out of Lego before we went.




It was a lovely evening of friends, warmth, snow, marshmallows, hail, sparklers, and a very noisy Sprout in an Ironman helmet :)



Moppet played on Endless Reader again, then Squidge did too, then they both played at robot building.


And Moppet is still loving all her baby apps, from prenatal care to looking after the babies, to this one where she takes a mermaid through pregnancy to looking after the baby (she also designs the mummy to look like either Anna or Elsa or a pirate :) )


We all watched Boxtrolls again, and then Squidge and Gruff carried on the Useless Box project together (so soldering, circuits, switches, mechanics)...


...while Sprout designed a mech on Tekkit.


Sprout told me about the ways in which predators were essential to ecosystems, and I wondered whether I'd shown him the documentary about the Yellowstone wolves, but he said no he'd seen it on Wild Kratts. I told him about the wolves too and he wanted to watch the short film about it so we did and he was awestruck. 
The kids and I went out to Subway while Gruff got on with some stuff in the house, and in the car we put on the Big Questions from Little People CD that we'd picked up in the charity shop this week. We listened to them talk about the space in atoms, the colour of different bloods, the best way to eat a worm, and how dreams are made. 
While they had their subs, Sprout said he'd been telling his guinea pigs about predators too, and I mentioned their inbuilt reaction to anyone looming over them, which likely had an evolutionary basis from predatory birds. We realised that it might be similar to the evolutionary basis we've thought about for human fear of the dark, and he thought that was pretty cool. We looked up where guinea pigs are originally from and what predates them, and found out people eat them too. He then went on a thread of youtube discovery, watching videos about feral children, giant squid, and unusual friendships between animals of different species.
The next morning Squidge watched Power Rangers, Moppet made up songs about the cat, and Sprout built a base and a pirate ship on Attack of the B Team. While I was spelling stuff for him I suddenly realised the etymology of the word 'survival' which he thought was cool, and also wanted to know the origin of the suffix -al. Top Gear was on in the background and Sprout remembered the Chernobyl episode and wanted to know how it was safe for them to go near, so we chatted about that for a little while.

Tuesday 20 January 2015

Playing with Levers and Puppet Theatres

One more pic from Nerf day :) They loved it and are eagerly looking forward to the next one and planning their arsenal :)


We had a Pirates of the Caribbean film marathon and watched the whole series in a day. Sprout wanted to know if it was set in medieval times, so we looked up what years are considered to be medieval...


...and what years the films were likely set in.


Sprout downloaded Table Top Simulator, and played some games that were new to him such as draughts and Chinese chequers, and invented some games of his own.


Squidge and I watched some of Attenborough's Africa...


...and Moppet wanted her hair doing like Frozen's Elsa...


...and Anna :)



Squidge and Moppet had a morning watching Disney shows together while Sprout played Plague Inc Evolved.


We went out for lunch and Moppet spotted things out of the window...


...then we went to their grandparents' house where Sprout showed them his experiment to see whether an orange floats with and without skin, and why.



Moppet got measured up for her birthday dress.


More experiments ensued, with weight, density, balancing, and levers.


He worked out the if you moved the heavier object closer, you could still balance them.


Moppet and Squidge played with his experiments too, then Moppet played some skittles, they each played some football...


...then Sprout wrote another puppet play, taped the script up inside the theatre, and performed it. 


After everyone had done a puppet show, we tried out this tiny solar car but there wasn't enough sun.


We headed home and watched Clutch Powers while Sprout played The Forest and told us what he was doing to survive.
He played some Roblox later and there was a reference to pigs hunting for truffles and he asked me what that meant so I explained and showed him some pictures on google, and we have some truffle oil so he smelt that too. 


The three of them played all together for a lot of the next day, which I think might be a first! They played Labyrinth board game, the Telephone Box game, GTA V, catch, football, and Peppa among other things, and they made some new felt tips together and then drew pictures with them. 




They played gta v together..


...moppet played Hello Kitty...


...and the boys played Angry birds.



The next day was a whirlwind of mummy and pyramid building...


...Vikings...


...reading the hello fresh recipe cards to decide what to make...


...plus robot making, bingo playing, horrible histories watching (Vikings, Timbuktu, plague, and Sprout told me that the Black Death was also in his Plague Inc Evolved game that he's been playing earlier in the week), robot arena online game playing, Lego building, LBP3 playing, logiblocs circuit making, Peppa weebles, baby hazel apps, hero factory making, building with meccano-type stuff, and Skylander playing. 

We found a seal and some wax that we'd meant to try out a while ago after seeing some at Blists Hill, but hadn't got round to, so they each wrote a letter or drew a picture and sealed it, Squidge and Moppet made them for me, and Sprout's was a Xmas thank you letter.



Sprout made the first meal from his Hello Fresh box with Gruff, it was seared peppered steak with new potato and spinach salad with a chimichurri dressing and it was soooo nice.


They all did some human body jigsaws and Sprout told me lots of body facts, some of which we looked up and busted...


...(while Moppet played in a box)...


...(and Sprout took a hieroglyphs break)...


...we watched Mythbusters busting the 'can't sneeze with your eyes open' myth...


...and checked how many bones were in the hand as the jigsaw didn't seem to show enough.


Sprout was telling me that nothing is exactly the same, even things that look like they are. He brought me some of the pie chart templates and showed me the imperfections that made them different, and told me that he thought even protons would each be different as the particles they're made up of would be in different places at any one time. Conversation moved to the world's roundest object again, and why balls that look the same wouldn't maybe be completely round or the same as each other because of differences at a microscopic level.


He made some logiblocs circuits again including a pulse sequencer...


...then took apart some Nerf guns to see how they work. Squidge joined in after and took apart an old keyboard.


Moppet raced around for a while on GTA V...


...more circuits (loud ones!!), then he made his next Hello Fresh meal of Pan Fried Chicken with Creamy Leek and Porcini Lentils...


...and Gruff and Squidge played some more Skylanders and upgraded some more characters.


Last thing at night Sprout was asking about when the first humans existed, and we talked about the gradual nature of evolution and the fallacy of being able to pinpoint what would be considered to be the first Homo sapiens. We looked up when Homo sapiens emerged and what from...


...and he wanted to know if that was the Stone Age so we looked that up too.


We finished the week off with a nice chilled day all together at home, playing board games, and video games, inventing Lego Beasts v Undead...


...and Moppet made soup and cheesecake with me, danced in the kitchen, and made floor snow angels, while Sprout watched some Five Night at Freddy's video and Squidge and Gruff made the last Hello Fresh meal, Crunchy Mexican Tilapia with Roasties and Roassted Tomatoes :)