A couple of weeks ago, Stringbean did some animation stuff with some other HE children at another families house.
One of the things they did was some Lego animation. We have the raw images here, but they were burnt on CD with a MAC and Windows can’t read them , and I’ve not got round to installing utility to read them, so that we could convert them into a movie
But the host family have and here are the results:
Posted in art and crafts, IT, Stringbean's HE
unlike some people 
we didn’t take laptops/internet access devices with us, so did not blog from centreparcs. so this is not going to be a blow by blow account!
we had a fab time. we certainly did A LOT of swimming. our swimming biorhythms seemed to cross across other families, so we saw a lot of our friends in the pool. it was a family holiday with contiguous friends and was very lovely. [ the making it up, deependers, going against the flow and manor borns on the blogring] we had a plan, and it failed, which was for us all to swim before taking the car round to the cabin, but my swimmies were missed out 
so i left chris and the kids swimming and took the car round, and realised i couldnt unpack it as i didn’t have key to the bike rack. grr! never mind. said hello to all arrivals, and generally chilled! we took one premade meal, and next time would take 2!
we swam on the whole 2ce a day, a morning and late aft/eve. this was in part because we like swimming, we liked swimming in the dark! and because it limited our desire to pay for other activities!! SB is a bit of a water nymph. she and clo went round the slides and rapids countless times. i did go down various, and most impressed with my white sliding, as i had been concerned that all the pool water would exit! i think each child got a fair crack at the attention!! BB got braver and braver in the week, and by the end was ‘diving’ in the shallows sans any life saving devices since she could stand back up. we must go more regularly, as she will i imagine begin to progress towards not quite drowning.
we all enjoyed the indoor river and the waves. the deependers and us were disappointed that our patience was not rewarded in the hot pool though. Michelle deserves a special mention as nose clip finder extraordinaire… oh, and the snow falling on swimming the rapids was apparently cool, but when me and bb got to the hot salt pools to investigate it was just v cold rain!
so, we also did some extras. jo suggested bowling one evening, and we loved that. it was partic good as it had no music track to be too noisy. that our family is fairly hopeless, but enjoyed it. i tore half my thunb nail off – still painful. BB and shannon kept swapping news and info – which was v cute.
SB walking past the aerial adventure was v keen on it. and seeing it reduced from 22 to 15 quid, we gave it a whirl, in fact, clo tagged on too since chris was there to be the adult. they both loved it. i was v proud of SB not giving up when she had difficulty with the spiders web, and getting round. she then had a bit of a wobble facing the zip wire at the end, and i felt for her [being 25 m away in distance and prob 15 in height] but clo whizzed down first, and she felt she could then do it. she was v happy to have done it, but thinks she would like to try just jumping off next time! jo also did it, and we stayed to cheer her round as well.
free activities were cycling, as chris took sb and clo on a cycle tour of cp that lasted some while. considering the mixture of on and off roading they seem to have done, i am surprised they made their way back. bb did a fair bit of cycling on her new bike. but she seems to be using it mostly as a like abike at the moment. my bike had a broke front wheel 
i am going to buy a bike to encourage a bit of usage!
then there was interaction with friends, games playing and grownup interaction too – mostly at jax ‘n’ tim’s as there were 2 families there. all v lovely. A brief swim and visit by Em, E and R was a treat as well.
bB slept in the car and then all eve, so has been awake till far too late, but we are all of the exhausted persuasion i think. will flickr at some point – ah yes, the camera! we bought a v cheap underwater camera there. it took dire photos, and then wouldn’t delete, so we took it back and got money back. they are on tim’s laptop though, and hopefully he’ll send us them, and we can post the 1 or 2 out of 26 that you can see identifiable shapes on!!
Here is the centreparc photo set
Posted in General, Out and About, socialisation
my order from the little linguist arrived, and we have read since i got home from work The Giant Turnip
otherwise, thurs was tots group and SB and BB went, bB ecstatic as did lots of recordering. Sb listed to stuff about the phoenix lander. then they had gym, and sb got her level 7 and 6 badges – rofl at gym going backwards.
today there was a playdate, that apparently went reallly well.
chris may or may not blog this obviously
Posted in Books, General, language, little languages
i think we are going to have to buy bb a cheapy digi camera, as she really loves taking photos. i enjoy seeing a bb worlds eye view as well.
Posted in General
today was rather busy, another latinetc day, and i had 2 ‘speriments up my sleeve. katy was a bit worse for wear with a migraine [and merry got the start of something too] so since michelle and i were migrainous last week there is something in the air!
latin for the big ones to start, and science for the littlies. except i couldn’t get experiment one to work! it is from sarahs young scientist kits, and i know i need to search through her blog to find it![gotcha!!] as i was trying to use ballon over the bottom as well, and then used a plastic bag far more successfully! so the younger group got to see it work, but didn’t have the fun in it. luckilly merry to the rescue, and they all loved doing her sticking craft. i heard a great deal of fun happening in the music section too, and SB loved playing the bell tunes.
the big group used my model diaphragm/lung and did it. and due to chloes exceptional amount of hot air [i mean puff!] she inflated the balloon fully inside the bottle, and demonstrated the mvt of the diaphragm. not quite the way the speriment is supposed to demonstrate, but actually they all got far more out of that than seeing the little bit of mvt from moving the diaphragm! we chatted all the while about lungs and function and muscles, and then moved onto smoking. i had decided a sprinkling of health messages would be good, and had googled for smoking experiments, and abandoned that route!! so looked for anti smoking science fair, which was more successful, and adapted some recipes. so i made a pretend lung and it smoked a cigarette [outside] we talked about various illnesses, looked at a packet and a cigarette and smelled it unlit. interestingly, the only child that didn’t think it smelled dreadful has a smoking relative. then outside it burnt away and we saw our lung filling up with yellowy smoke, and our cotton wool around the cigarette was convincingly yellow and black. the children were most offput! when i catch up on flickr, there will be a set! a number of them thought, said or wrote some reasons not to smoke. SB did a flip book but on 1 page to cut and arrange of a lung getting more and more damaged.
lovely lunch, chat and separated to our diff afternoon events. merry and girls came here, and the girls played tho fran not so well, and did reading. and merry and i chatted about this and that, including the books in the post below! we also thought we might do a relaxed art activity here in the afternoon, as fran is spare parting at the mo, as SB plays down prob, with a love of barbies/sylvanians etc. in a fun relaxed way anyway!!
had a bit of a thing from work, so have been in once this evening, and might need to go in again. but hoping not.
SB had her new brownie pack this eve, and says she misses the old one, but we’ll see, and then judo – a firm fav. BB watched some numberjacks.
Bermuda Triangle (DK Readers Level 3)
Beastly Tales: Yeti, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster (DK Readers: Level 3)
Volcanoes and Other Natural Disasters (DK Reader – Level 4)
Days of the Knights: A Tale of Castles and Battles (DK Readers: Level 4)
Robin Hood: The Tale of the Great Outlaw Hero (DK Classic Readers Level 4)
Antarctic Adventure: Exploring the Frozen Continent (DK Readers: Level 4)
Space Station: Accident on Mir (DK Reader – Level 4)
Space Heroes: Amazing Astronauts: Amazing Astronauts (DK Readers: Level 3)
Tiger Tales: And Big Cat Stories (DK Readers: Level 3)
etc etc!
and for the inventors
The Battle for Radio: Marconi’s Story (Science Stories)
Thomas Edison: A Brilliant Inventor (Time for Kids Biographies)
Alexander Graham Bell: Inventor of the Telephone (Time for Kids Biographies)
Three Cheers for Inventors!
The Search for Radium: Marie Curie’s Story (Science Stories)
The Fight Against Microbes: Pasteur’s Story (Science Stories)
Benjamin Franklin’s Adventures with Electricity (Science Stories)
and third grade detectives
The Clue of the Left-Handed Envelope: Readyforchapters (Third Grade Detectives)
Third-Grade Detectives: The Puzzle of the Pretty Pink Handkerchief (Third Grade Detectives)
The Mystery of the Hairy Tomatoes (Third Grade Detectives)
The Cobweb Confession (Third Grade Detectives)
Posted in Books
Library day, as usual somehow the time before we go always seems to slip past. Though I did manage to get some Dhal going in the new slow cooker beforehand. BB grumpy becuase I said she couldn’t get anymore books out as she had too many out we couldn’t find. She had dressed very trendily, as she wanted to wear shorts , so said she needed to wear tights (which she doesn’t really like much). So we hard shorts over tights.
Off to the library, where I managed not to confuse the library ladies at all over anything, some piratey stories, where we wondered why pirates always managed to blind each other in one eye. Did a piratey craft, B didn’t get books out, Sb got a couple, and also she donated them one of her xmas books which doubled up on one she already has (It’s volunteer run, it’s not a proper county library, so these books stay as the stock of the local library).
So we were out prety quick.
A short walk to the other half – HE family we know, where the kids made some oatcakes, including some experimental sweet ones.
For oatcakes they tasted prety nice (not a great fan of them), we chatted about this and that, including the 6 week holiday they are taking to New Zealand in February – rather jealous of that. Playing tends to be a bit erratic with C, but they mostly got on well and had a good play once settled down, once they got a argumentative with each other it was out in the garden for a running about, scootering and chicken harrassing.
They found a newly laid egg, which pleased them, and SB helped clean out some of the straw.
Then it was home for a bit, SB finished rerading a book she started in the library, I sat a played with BB for a bit, and then she strung some new beads she got at christmas, and then spent ages playing some game with the beads, where they all seemed to be different characters. Snacking, finished some dinner preps, before you know it it’s time to go to swimming lessons.
Home from swimming to find Helen already home 
the Dhal smelling nice nice to have dinner pretty much ready (sapped some rice from the fridge, stirred fried up some veg with some spice, prety yummy). BB did a bit of letter writing and making words in a Thomas the Tank Engine book whilst waiting.
Which meant that got kids into bed at pretty much proper times
Oh, and as for the post tilte, talk of Oatcakes reminded me of the ‘How oats and barley grow’ song. We have ona car CD, always annoys me. ‘Not you, nor I, nor anyone knows, how oats or wheat or barley grow’.
Yes they do, we actually know rather a lot a bout how plants grow ! chunter chunter
Posted in General
Unusually both the girls ended up in different places today.
Someone was trying to organise an animation workshop with someone from the university, using the UNI equipment, but in the end that didn’t happen. But another HE family said they have them round as they had been doing some animation recently and has stuff set up. So took SB to their house, where she quickly settled down to making a flip book (apparently it’s a horror one :rolls:).
Drunk a bit of tea, chatted and had serious house envy. They live in a lovely, built for them modern house, split level kitchen living area, glass wall, curves, high celings all that sort of Grand Designs sort of thing.
I swopped SB for another girl who decided she wanted to come to the dogs while her mum stayed and animated and we headed off. A popular event, must have been 50-60 people all told. The police showed of the equipment they have on their vest nowadays,
talked about the dogs, answered lots of questions. Showed one of them attacking another policeman
and showed another dog that they use for finding explosives sniffing ou hidden little bottles around the room.
THe dog would sit and wait patiently once it found something, becuase all it was really interested in was playing with it’s ball after as a treat
BB enjoyed it and seems to have prety much lost her fear of dogs, was not fazed by a big black Alsatian barking and attacking a man in the middle of the room.
Headed off back to see what SB had been up to. She’d finshed the flap book, done her own design for something to go inside a Zoetrope, and done some Lego stop motion animation. They’d not had time to finish off the latter into a movie, so we got a CD of the images, though the computers here don’t seem to be seeing any on there. A quick more bit of tea and my lunch and playing before heading home. Another parent though had the best ‘chivving up the children’ line.
“Come on R and R, don’t you want to go to Africa”
(They were leaving right then to catch the plane to go out to South Africa, where one of them harks from).
Dragged the kids away from playing, SB “I wish we lived in a house like that” to head home to catch up with Helen. Which you can read about below
It was quite pleasant only having one child with me for a bit really for a change.
i am feeling a bit glum it has to be said wrt this parenting lark. but what ho, i am sure we can focus on improvement!
girls had a fun day today – that I am REALLY hoping that chris will blog. SB went to an animation workshop and loved it – they did a flip book and stop animation. chris dropped sb off and then whisked BB off to a police dog handling session which she really enjoyed. particularly telling me that the dog bit his arm… anyway, quite a first, SB being left at a totally new venue without parents, but she did know most of the other kids. not sure how many of their parents were there as i think they were all ferrying their kids to the dogs session.
so, when we all reconvened at home, SB did some piano practice, and then decided to make an off the top of the head baking, which ended up being hot chocolate, yeast, sugar, self raising flour and
mixed fruit in random quantities. it would have had breadstick bits, but as we are supposed to eat this, i nixed this! [ it is, however edible as we have all eaten some] BB did primary brainbox electronics.
SB had some good news in that she can move to the wednesday brownie pack, and some bad news at ballet, that she didn’t pass. she is quite philosophical about this, and will practice more next time! bB and i read a fair number of magic key books and on SB’s return we did some french together reading Leo Le Chat Goes to School (First French Story)
ooh, forgot tosay that SB got her ds back, but bb not got dinosaur duplo. bb has had some more goes at weblanding, and has v much enjoyd it
but before i blog, i am going to ask for hE absolution, or summat, and i need an HE alternative to a few hail mary;s that work on HE. my girls are entering a v bickery phase, and it completely destroys me. i look back in the blog and i see one of my advantages of HE are the fantastic relationship the girls have. we just don’t seem to have that at the mo. it is 6 of one and half a dozen of the other, and i try hard not to play ‘the oldest’ card with SB [too often!] but also there is an entire non-share thing going on as well. aarrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
SO, i thought, if we alternate who to concentrate on, do things differently with each one, but in parallel, treat them age different etc we might get somewhere, but we don’t seem to be. [tho it might be soon to tell] what words of wisdom has anyone got. i have taken an unemotional step away to focus on how to improve this. would like a few potential strategies! [leaving them too it leads to the worst possible day imaginable!] NB, my interaction with the girls always ‘full on’ and that we are prob in each others space a lot.
so, now that plea for help is done, we can get on with the day can’t we!! lots of manic running around and i had a bit of a lie in [for a bit anyway] got up, breakfasted, discussed our lovely new book
which i have displayed, cos i think you should all get it, it is so fab. i want one too!! but actually we didn’t do it, because there was a sharing issue between accessory/spare watercolour paper should we want to use some more!! [i bought 2 of the books grrr] so i calmly said that we couldn’t do it then, unless we agreed to just do it in the book…
so instead we did some recently acquired crafts. BB did a foam dinosaur craft, and SB a glitterry butterfly craft, and we were all happy again, working in parallel, and me in the middle as the no mans zone… SB did some piano with me [very nicely] whilst BB wailed that i wasn’t playing a game with her. bB and i played a game together [not-snap with her dinosaur top trumps] and did some french counting and saying hello and some colours. SB was playing with her sindy’s and not doing the baking she said she had wanted to do, as i was playing with BB. SB and I read the end of Camille ne veut pas dormir
then, following a contretemps, we watched a prog about cuckoos [rather than the conflicting girls choices] and that was good, particularly as one of the locations is just down the road… we all thought it was a bit yuk watching the baby cuckoo push its not sibling out of the nest!
SB has read her knowledge book [The Ultimate Book of Knowledge
We played ludo together, SB and I did some quick revision of latin [after i had looked up pingo - no, that can't be painting!!] and somehow it was teatime.
obviously there is always in our house a fair bit of snuggling, cuddling, tickling, rousting about and general play as well. but i have left the day feeling that i could have managed it so much better.
oh, on something that did work, we did some of the cold/ winter music thought stuff yesterday, and that went well.
