Having a Ball

These tiny little balls are super cool! After reading about them via Pinterest I ordered some from a Hong Kong supplier via Ebay we got 20 packets and this represents about 2 packets. You place them in 100x their volume of water overnight and wait...

The peg is to give you an idea of how tiny they are.

This was taken about 4 hours after we added the water.

And this was the next day. The balls are normally used in vases to make flower arrangements look spiffy. They feel amazing, soft and silky- I totally love running my hands through them. And so does he....

They are non toxic but we didn't let Tama eat them anyway. :-)

Will added some sea creatures to the mix and spent some time spooning them and scooping them.

As well as putting them in his toy mixer where they stayed intact but looked totally cool. 

We tried freezing some too in a block of ice but that wasn't particularly effective.

I've just covered our up and put them away in the laundry and they are slowly getting smaller- but all I need to do is give them another soak to get them up and running again. And if they get too manky and gross then I can chuck them in the garden and they will help the soil retain water- which will be a bonus for my vegetables in the summer.

 

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Simple Sunday

 From Etsy seller: Harebrained schemes

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Single Photo Saturday

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Flora on Friday

 

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Round-up~ June 2012

I hate it when I get a couple of weeks into the month and realise I haven't done this.... June is a blur!


On our bookshelf this month....

Merenia is reading the second book from the Twilight series. Kieran is reading his iPod and facebook messages. Les' reading is concentrated on about 3 hours each night on the internet- but maybe he's just looking at the pictures? Tama is a fan of any book that has flaps. Will is into anything anyone will read him and also Noddy books. Me- Women, Food and God (And god it took me a long time to read it!!)

Loving on the box....

Masterchef, Offspring, Grey's Anatomy. Thunderbirds, ABC for kids, Friday night footy, Saturday night footy, Sunday afternoon footy.

For you...For me?

June was of course Tama and Saskia's birthdays. Saskia got balloons and pavlova. Tama got a whole pile of stuff including books of course, some musical instruments and stuff for the play kitchen. I received a box of goodness in the mail from Paula.

Germs and bugs and botherations....

I think June was relatively bug free. Whatever there was I don't recall.

Today was good today was fun, tomorrow is another one...

Kalamunda Markets. School disco and sleepover at Britneys. Backyard play fight. Saskia's Birthday. Morning in Fremantle with Ferne and Koru and a visit from Ferne and the kids. Autumn leaf walk. Gel ball play. Family game nights. Ice Skating. Merenia had a St Johns Competition and got 2nd. Les and Will explored Rockingham. Kieran's team had some super exciting wins at Hockey.

Yum, yum, yum....

Jam Tarts and home made Pretzels.

'It was on sale'
I don't remember anything in particular we're heading into the Stockley Birthday season (essentially at least one each month till the end of the year- so you can be sure I am looking!!

Bugger!

Aneils Mum died in NZ and we were stuck over here.

Hooray!

We got the Reading corner set up at home and it has been a big hit- a lovely spot to hang out and read and play.

Etc...

Nothing to report.

You know who's good idea this was? Katie The Scrapbook Lady. Go check out her list of tasks to do at the end of each month as well.

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Just me, right now

I am obsessed with pinterest. I'm not proud of this but my boards sure do look pretty.

Can't live without sleep.

Am petrified of dropping my keys down a drain. I feel even more justified in this since that guy died trying to retrieve his in Wellington a while back.

Am proud of my parenting at the moment.

Really need to catch up on some photo stuff and blogging. :-( Story of my life.

Don't get why I feel so tried even when I go to bed early. Or why I seem to get SO MUCH less stuff done than ever before.

Think alternative medicine is awesome and too expensive- not that it's not worth the money- but it's just not affordable for me any time soon.

Relax by sleeping.

Am excited about nothing much at the moment- I'm not doing anything I'm really passionate about outside of parenting and there's nothing on the horizon to look forward too.

My worst vice is smelly and expensive, guilt-inducing, time wasting, bad for my health and a fantastic escape.

Fridge usually contains MILK, our fridge always contain milk. Not to have milk would be like some sort of apocalyptic happening.

Family is complicated, hard work, far away, exhausting, wonderful.

Friends don't understand why. No they don't. But I'm not sure I do either.

Attitude to exercise is exer- what?

Relationship with my body is a very personal question to ask... and blog about.... who wrote these anyway?

Simple Sunday

 Source Unknown- please let me know if you deserve the credit for this one along with Mr Einstein.

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Single Photo Saturday

Flora on Friday

 

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1347 photos in one post...

Here's what a week in our life of photos (before I edit severely!) looks like- it goes from after last weeks hockey game till just after this weeks....

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Simple Sunday

 On Help Ink to raise funds for Water.

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Single Photo Saturday

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Flora on Friday

 

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Phases Of The Moon

A few weeks ago at school they had the Scitech Star Dome come to visit. It wasn't a Kindy day for Will but the kids from his group were allowed to go and join the red group class specifically for the visit. I picked him up after and we went and looked at the dome from the outside and talked about what he had done and seen all the way home. We even wrote it up as a story for his school book. It was a great tie in for the activity I had already planned for that day. 

The foam paintings we did a few weeks earlier and a great texture and looked a lot like the moon. Will is seriously into the moon and tracks it's phases on our Moon Calendar.  So we talked about the phases and how the moon looked and drew these on the back of our foam art. Will cut them out.

 

Stuck them down and then added some star stickers to complete the look. We added an explanation about how the suns light shines on the moon. I added the title and the names and we called it done.

 

 

 

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365 Week 25

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Foam Art Name Poster

A couple of weeks after Will made his foam pictures we put some of them to use.

Using a piece of dark A2 card we squirted lines of PVA glue randomly around.

We then sprinkled glitter all over the glue lines.

And repeated the process 3 more times.

Advisory: Keep babies well away from this stage of proceedings!

 

I then wrote Will's name on the back of one of the foam art pictures. I stuck mine on the window so I could try and get the cooler foamy sections to fall inside my letters. 

Note: If the letters in your name are not symmetrical then be sure to write them backwards.

Then Will cut the letters out....

 

 The final stage was to glue them on our glittery background- this would also work well using foam mounting tape to make the letters stand out even more.

 

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Due Back 25-6-12

I thought it would be cool to review some of the books we've got out from the Library lately. We try and get to Story Time most weeks and grab a few books each time. Children's books can hit and miss I'm generally pretty good at sorting the 'ok' ones from the crap ones but scoring the great ones is a matter of trial and error. Here's the great ones due back this week...

For the truly littlies (Birth -3+)

Jump Over the Puddle and Good Night Sleep Tight Written by Emma Quay and Illustrated by Anna Walker. (Board Books) Published by Scholastic.

These too little books are from the 'Hello, Friends' series. There are three central characters in the series: Panda, Sheep and Owl. And each has a theme. Jump over the Puddle is about bravery and the other about bed time.

Why I like them: The artwork is lovely and simple great for the smaller set. There's just the right amount of text for those with limited attention spans. The repetition in Jump over the Puddle is great as well. These books are just right.

Preschoolers and more 3 - 5yrs+:

Lemons Are Not Red by Laura Vaccaro Seeger Published by Roaring Brook Press.
This book features  a cut out on every second leaf. with the other pages being either solid colour or illustration.

Why I like it: The cut outs make a striking graphic on each page. The really simple repetitive format is super effective. It's definitely one of the cooler books I've seen for learning about colours. This book would be great for learner readers.

Cars Galore By Peter Stein and illustrated by Bob Staake. Published by Walker Books.

Why I like it:The illustrations along with the rhyming words really make this book! The bright cars on the sleek black roads pop from the white background pages. And yet there are so many little details to explore. And there's lots of fun to be had figuring which wacky car belongs to each description- if you have a car loving kid then I'd suggest this would be a must have book.

Schoolies 5yrs+: 

Willbee The Bumblebee by Craig Smith and Maureen Thompson, illustrated by Katz Cowley with Music by Craig Smith (Book plus CD). Published by Scholastic.

Why I like it:
I'm not a fan of The Wonky Donkey which was also written by these author- but that could be due to a long stretch of State Highway One a couple of Christmases ago during which the CD player was on repeat! But I do like Willbee. I like the rhyming couplets and the lovely soft illustrations. Who knew Bees had bums? The story line is sweet and Will enjoyed the CD at bedtime over a few nights.


Don't Let The Pigeon Drive the Bus written and illustrated by Mo Willems. Published by Walker Books.

Why I like it: Mo Willems is a 'new to me' author, but I will certainly be searching out a whole heap more of his books in the future. There are many in the 'Pigeon' series. Don't Let The Pigeon Drive the Bus is fun to read because there is a little bit of suspense- the text is 'talking' directly to the listener. And the story makes fun of various 'child techniques' aimed at cajoling parents into submission. Mo's pictures are so simple but convey the emotions of the pigeon so well. I'm pretty sure we'll be adding a few of Mo's books to ours and Ehren's libraries.




Chicken Dance by Tammi Sauer and illustrated by Dan Santat. Published by Koala Books

Why I like it: I wasn't sure I was going to like this one, it was one of Wills picks. Marge and Lola the chickens are competing in a Talent Quest against the Barnyard animals to win tickets to see Elvis Poultry in concert. Their ideas are silly and they are mocked by the ducks along the way- in the end they have to 'wing it'. There's lots going on in the illustrations and lots of opportunity to talk about what might happen with each of the chickens ideas. The ending is fun and kind of unexpected. I think it would be cool to use the book as a starting point for our own talent show. Let's bawk and roll!






13 Words by Lemony Snicket with pictures by Maira Kalman. Published by HarperCollins.

Why I like it: I picked this book because I enjoy Lemony Snicket. As I read it I was wavering on whether I would include it here simply because I'm not sure who would enjoy it. And because I just didn't really 'get it' as a book for children. It's weird, truly weird.
It's not quite what I'd call a 'sophisticated picture book'* but it's also not for the younger set. If you look at the reviews on Good Reads you'll see that it averages 3.7. Not because people think it's average- but because they are polarised. Over half the 447 ratings are 4 or 5 stars- but there are also 70 1's and 2's.
The book centres around 13 words which are linked together by a number of characters and eventually circle back to the beginning. But the words are not so much what you'd expect: Bird, Despondent, Cake, Dog, Busy, Convertible, Goat, Hat, Haberdashery, Scarlet, Baby, Panache and Mezzo-Soprano! The art work is almost surreal and very quirky and I'm not sure the book would be nearly as interesting without it.
I'd be interested to read this to a class of 11-13 year olds and get their take on it. 
I like it because it's weird, funny, quirky, sad, entertaining, funny, vocabulary building, challenging and it has cake. It's not going to be for everyone though, be sure to try before you buy.
(I didn't read it to Will and Tama).



*Sophisticated picture book- a Sophisticated Picture Book is a picture book that has been written with older readers in mind. People tend to think picture books are just for younger children but there are is a whole raft of Sophisticated Picture books that can be enjoyed by adults and older children. Shaun Tan and Gary Crew are two of my favourite authors of sophisticated picture books. The Arrival by Tan in particular is a book I recommend as 'must have' for any library, home or otherwise.

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As always take the age recommendations with a grain of salt, children are not made equal there are always children that will enjoy books categorised for those older or younger than them. Especially if they have a special interest or passion eg Cars, Space, Dinosaurs. As the parent you're the best judge.

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Oh my Baby! Tama is one.

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