Posted by Sarah in Art on December 22, 2011

It’s so busy at the moment I keep forgetting to post things that I mean to, like this.

Every year the coastal walk from Bondi to Tamarama Beach hosts an exhibition of fun and whimsy, contemplation and reflection, art in the open to open our minds.

I like to post the ones the kids were moved by, I am always fascinated by what sparks their interest.

It is a big walk with many many steps so Sabi chose to take the daddy train for most of the day.

The girls insisted I take a photo of this one for Eli, he was sick at home with Grandma and Granda (thankyou) and they thought a representation of a dead human pointing out to sea from the top of a ladder would cheer him up.

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Posted by Sarah in Parties on December 15, 2011

Our Littlest daughter Sabrina just turned three, along with Fish Berries and chocolate (her vitamins) all she asked for her birthday was Doctor Who. I thought about getting her one of the figurines but she loves to cuddle her toys and I wasn’t sure how well the small plastic Doctor would fit that bill. Unsnugglyness aside I was pretty sure she’d break it too so I decided to have a go at making Mr Eleventh myself. He’s only the third doll I’ve made and I don’t know how to follow patterns, I just wing it so it was anyone’s guess how he’d turn out.

Sonic made from toothpick, some string and a bead.

Dolls clothes are soooo hard! I have never even made adult clothes so that didn’t help and way to late I realized with a bit of tweaking barbie clothes patterns may have worked. I used a pattern for the pants but the rest I just guessed at which is the main reason there are no collars on anything.

Her big brother told me he needed as fez.

close up of sleeve detail, it may not be perfect work but I used press studs so she can totally undress him if she wants to.

One very excited little miss three.

She recognised him as Doctor Who straight away and started a little conversation with him so I know she likes him.

Posted by Sarah in Cakes on December 13, 2011

This is the cake I made for Elijah and Sabrina’s Doctor Who themed birthday party. It is by no means an expertly or elaborately decorated cake but it is fun and reasonably achievable even if you don’t have mad cake making skills. If you want to see photos of how the rest of the party went look here.

I also have a tute for a Pirate Smash Cake which is less Doctor Whoish but cool none the less and easier to make.

I wanted to take one of those “this is all you will need to make this cake ” photos only I forgot the milk, and the mint slice biscuits, oh and the food colouring. So this is all you will need to make this cake as along as you add a bunch of other stuff.

Start by lining a bowel with tin foil. Melt a family sized block of chocolate and pour it into the bowel turning it so that the chocolate coats the sides. Pour the excess melted chocolate back into the bowel you melted it in and put the mould bowel in the fridge to harden the chocolate. After a few minutes take it out of the fridge and use the left over melted chocolate that has cooled and thickened to add a second thicker layer around the rim. After this first coat is set completely I repeated the process using two blocks of chocolate in all.

Make two cakes one round and one square let them cool completely, even put them in the fridge if you want.

Put the round one on top of the square sandwiching it together with butter icing.

Cut three of the four corners off leaving one point sticking out from under your round cake, this is the front of your Dalek.

Ice your cake in your favourite Dalek colour, they come in all the colours of the rainbow now so you have a few to pick from.

Now if you look at the picture you will be able to see I was having a very bad icing day, I’m sure you’ll do much better, like I said this in no expertly made cake.

Use jelly lollies to create a one eyed tentacle Dalek monster on top of the cake. I wanted one of those eye ball jelly lollies but when I sent Glenn out at 10 the night before the party the shops were all out. Oops, note for future Sarah “try planning ahead’

Anyhoo once you’re happy with your Dalek take your chocolate dome out of the fridge and place it on top.

Coat the top with a the same colour icing as the body.

Wrap flat liquorish around the joint between the heat and body and also around the base, feel free to be much neater than I was.

Use chocolate buttons as the Dalek dots, again late night shops were out so we had to use cooking chocolate drops, not as nice but the kids didn’t seem to mind.

For the plunger I impaled a Mint Slice biscuit with a chop stick (oh yeah you’ll need chopsticks too) and glued them together with melted chocolate, you need to put it in the fridge to set.

I used another Mint Slice for the eye stork, adding detail lines with melted chocolate and gluing on an M’n'M as his eye light. I chose not to worry about the stork part of the eye stork as I didn’t want to jam anything into the chocolate shell in case it broke.

To make his little ear lights I stuck two marshmallow onto a tooth pick and dipped them in chocolate then stuck the tooth pick into an orange and put it in the fridge to set, you need two of these. When they were set I pulled the tooth pick out before gluing them and the eye stork onto his head with icing sugar.

This is the finished Dalek Dude. I used a whisk beater for his shooty gun thing which was easer than trying to figure out how to make it edible and also added to his over all cartoony cuteness. One thing I should mention though, we put the candles under the metal whisk which of course heated up when the flames licked all over it. This meant that poor Eli got a bit of a shock when he tried to pull it out of the cake and he felt how hot it was, he didn’t get burnt but it was an avoidable moment of panic.

We let our little doctor do battle with the Dalek and smash his head in, you will need something fairly hard to do this we used a wooden sonic screwdriver the kids had made earlier in the party. One word of warning though be prepared for totally chaos and extreme levels of excitement.

Posted by Sarah in Parties on December 10, 2011

The invitations, no name but they are Tardis blue (If you look closely at the stamps we have two from the moon landing, one from the Queen, one from a time long gone, one signed by the Doctor himself and one barcodey thing from the US that says LUNBERJACK which to my knowledge has nothing to do with Doctor Who but looked a little like one on the Doctors invites so we stuck it on anyway)

Eli, the boy in braces, and Sabi, the girl with the box on her head, chose to celebrate their 8th and 3rd birthday in Whovian style. Being Children of the Eleventh Doctor the event began with the requisite tasting of fish fingers and custard, which was, not surprisingly, a first for everyone.

(sorry for the icky grainy photo. My poor old flash that chews through batteries and was originally friends with a camera born in the age before digital and has never really bonded with my new one, simply refused to participate in the reaction shot)

The verdict: ” I like it”

When asked what it tasted like: “Custard and then fish fingers”

While the kids were turning up and munching out on fish fingers and custard, bad bad beans and bread and butter (menu picked by Eli) we played a line up of YouTube videos, to entertain and to educate as, being in Australia most of the kids had no idea what was going on. A lot of the clips were Trock songs from Chameleon Circuit (a band that plays real proper music, just it’s all about The Doctor. Because really, why would you bother singing about anything else?) All four of our kids are hooked on one of their songs called An Awful Lot of Running and sing it constantly. We also used these two dudes to give a run down of the series in its entirety and the kids’ other constantly sung favourite, Tik Tok Trock.

Some really cool friends turned up with a home made Fez which was hugely exciting because Eli had been asking for one but I ran out of time ( bit ironic at a party about time travel)

And they let him keep it because they’re that nice. And even though the evidence looks kinda contradictory Eli was surprised, completely ecstatic and totally thrilled, only that’s the face you get with Eli when too many unexpected emotions happen. (more…)

Posted by Sarah in Parties on November 16, 2011

Scary I know.

Lani, Eli and Lilly wanted to surprise Sabi with her own “on her actual birthday” cake, even though her party will be at the end of November with Eli’s. I let them do the whole thing themselves, right down to finding the ingredients at the supermarket. It was so funny watching them try and find butter, they found the yogurts and cheeses but the butter was in an extra cold isle that wasn’t around the outside, Lilly desperately wanted to find it and stood staring at the cheese declaring with annoyance that “All this stuff comes out of a cow and butter does too so it should be here, why would you not put cow stuff with the other cow stuff.” Oh to be six and know everything again.

The cake is a T.A.R.D.I.S by the way and Sabi being the little Who fan, geek girl that she is was suitably impressed.

Sabi totally enjoyed the whole traditional birthday cake performance and has not stopped singing “happy birthcake to you” since.

Present time!!!!

When her Grandparents gave her the first present I told the other kids to stay back and let her open them herself to which she replied “No, Help me!” I think she likes being the baby.

She was a little confused when she started to open the present I made for her.

But she was overcome with bouncing excitement when she realized it was her very own Doctor Who.

Then finally some more dolls house furniture, she’s a huge fan of very small tables and chairs.

There was a moment of sadness when she realized her presents didn’t work brilliantly together but that was short lived when I promised to make a Doctor size chair. Cheeky little thing added “and de Doctor ahhh-dis too”  that’s “Can you please make a Tardis too mummy” for those who don’t speak Sabi.

We couldn’t stop laughing at how excited she was by her Doctor Who doll, she shook all over and couldn’t stop bouncing hence the blur. She talked to him, sang to him…..

…she made him a bed….

…and took him shopping….

…and found him a pet tiger she named Amy (I think I know what to make for Christmas).

But you really should have seen the ultimate excitement when Lani found a Doctor sized chair. I think it will be pretty hard to top this birthday, any more happiness and this kid would have exploded.

Posted by Sarah in Homeschooling on November 10, 2011

Our church has been laying new carpet. This means the biggest cardboard rolls we’ve ever gotten our hands on are just laying around the place and since we are studying the continent of South America, and looking closely at Brazil, when I saw them I immediately thought tree trunks.

This activity didn’t just serve as a huge visual reminder of our journey through the Amazon it presented numerous learning opportunities in itself.

The kids knew they needed brown but we had only the primary colours. I asked them if they could talk to each other and maybe do a few experiments to see if they could find brown, they had remembered the basic colour mixes but couldn’t think of two colours that made brown. Lani had a moment of inspiration when she remembered seeing brown when Sabi had gotten to their paint pallets and mixed all the colours together. So after a few trial runs that were too red they got the colour they were after.

It also turned out to be a fairly messy activity, like that’s a surprise.

This may not be top of your list of bonuses. However with one child who adores mess and will seek it planed or not and another who has been known to freak out over glue/paint/water touching his skin it proved to be a brilliant safe time to give in to obsessions and challenge phobias respectively.

Oh yeah and as the tubes were round and had to be held while painting them it was also good for all that bi-lateral, crossing the centre line, using two hands and both bits of your brain stuff….I should really listen better in class.

plus it was fun

Bet you can’t tell which child adores messy play. By the way bubbles are included in messy play in my world once you’ve seen what Sabi can do with a bottle of detergent, the kitchen and the time it takes Mummy to go to the toilet you would consider them a ticking time bomb too. But in the above photo she was being reminded (once again) that mess can be fun, but we do need to clean up after ourselves.

And then we learnt to fly.

Like an Amazon bird

or Amazon super hero?

before we all came back down to earth and made dinner.

Posted by Sarah in Asperger Syndrome on November 10, 2011

This term Eli has been going to weekly therapy sessions at a place called The Sensory Gym. Eli has Asperger’s and Sensory Integration Disorder a string of big fancy terms which basically means that he is out of sync with the world around him. He can’t filter sound instead he hears all the noises around him at once causing a wave of incomprehensible sound. He used to become very aggressive when this happens, screaming and blaming those around him, accusing them of deliberately yelling at him or tricking him so he couldn’t hear them.

He is also sensitive to unexpected touch. He has an overly defensive reaction to any contact that he is unable to anticipate or that he believes to be restraining such as holding hands.

Clothes bother him as well and the change over between winter and summer clothes is always hard for him. I quite often hear “I’ve got nothing to wear” even if his wardrobe is full. At the moment we are having to deal with two hour long meltdowns because his skin feels itchy, I’m assuming that this has to do with him getting a little sweaty in the hot weather we’ve been having lately. We have decided to use this possible negative as an incentive to encourage him to become self sufficient with showering, really talking up the need to regularly wash off the sticky sweat. 

Eli loves The Sensory Gym, they have taught him new coping devises and ways of calming himself down. He has learnt that the reason he can’t sit still and crashes his body into everything, or jumps and twirls has to do with the way his body copes with its environment and that things like sensory brushing and deep pressure exercises can help him cope better. Plus it has a flying fox and is just generally really cool.  

Posted by Sarah in Outings on November 4, 2011

We went to the Sydney Children’s festival again this year, actually we were very game and went twice. Lani and Lilly both wanted to have ago at the workshops this year and neither of them could pick one on the same day as her sister.

Lani went to a How to make a Monster workshop with and author and his artist friends. I think the point of her workshop was for him to steal ideas off the children to illustrate his book. Still she had fun and it gave her great insight into the process of writing a book.

Lilly donned the plastic goggles and joined a science workshop. She was one of the youngest in her group and was a little intimidated however with big brave Daddy close by she had a blast playing with gasses to make a glove stand up and create a volcano with a chemical reaction.

Eli had no interest in doing a workshop but there was enough free stuff going on to keep him busy. There were teams of people helping the children create, play and learn new skills. Two favourites for both Eli and Sabi were the Circus Drop Zone and the Creation Nation.

Eli making a house to add too the ever growing city in Creation Nation. He requested the photo on the right, he must have been proud, posed photo’s of Eli are rare.

My two girls with their favourite street art The Skippy Girls

Posted by admin in Homeschooling, TV on September 23, 2011

I was totally failing at keeping my ASD seven year old in the room long enough to even hear the words we were trying to learn let alone attempt to spell them. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in the lesson. He was, he couldn’t wait for his turn to write on the board and squealed with excitement every time he got a word right first go. It was just that he was equally interested in jumping on the trampoline, skipping, swirling the skipping rope, trying to catch the dancing spot of light on the wall, discovering what was causing the dancing spot of light on the wall, explaining the properties of reflective material, listing the occupations in which the wearing of clothes made out of reflective material was a requirement………..and it was really starting to tick the girls off.

The lesson was taking too long and I was about to cut my losses, send him off in search of a butterfly or something and hope the fallout later when he realized I had gone on and schooled the girls without him wouldn’t be catastrophic. Then inspiration struck. I realised that one of the word families we were working on was the `ood` family. Yay I know that family, those weird squishy, tentacle faced, hive brained singing dudes, I know them and better than that Eli does too. At the moment Eli’s absolute top of the list special interest is Doctor Who followed closely by Minecraft and Gymnastics. Basically he’s in his element killing Creepers whilst wearing Eleven’s skin and standing on his head. If that last statement makes no sense to you then you need to hand your nerd licence back in, it’s been revoked. Anyhooo I quickly scribbled up an Ood on the whiteboard and the change in Eli was instantaneous. Without being asked and with overflowing enthusiasm he began to write all the words he could think of with ood in them. Those staring red eyes were like some kind of attention drug and Eli was hooked.

Mr Ood has not been allowed to leave our board all week. Instead he stays, demanding the best out of his pupils and has now become a crucial part of each spelling lesson coming up with ingenious if not childish sentences containing the word on our list. Now I’m racking my brain to think of other ways to let the Doctor into our lessons.

Posted by Sarah in Homeschooling on September 1, 2011

On Wednesday 17 books relinquished their most cherished characters handing them over to the care of excitable youngsters who we subsequently, as any sensible person would, invited around to play.

Book Week is a magical day, yes it is a day to celebrate the hard work of talented Authors and Illustrators. A day to appreciate the characters they gift us after many creative hours labouring over the birth of a new life albeit a one confined to the page, but it is also a day were we can put aside self and live the life of our heroes of fiction. Today we can talk to animals, follow white rabbits and fly in a blue box to planets normally held captive by time and space, today is magic.

Goldilocks and her three bears (and apple)

Alice in Wonderland

The Eleventh Doctor Who

Pippi Longstocking

The best group shot of the day, Sabi was meant to be in the large gap in the middle but never mind.

One of the books we read was called My Uncle’s Donkey. It is a cute little book with very retro micky mouse style illustrations of a donkey running amuck in the uncles house. The story elicits delightful responses from the children along the lines of “That’s naughty he really shouldn’t be in the fridge, I would never do that!” And “Ahhh now he’s eating the flowers…..aren’t they Vincent Van Gough flowers?” and yes they were, the book is full of little pop culture references that you can explore in greater detail with older children.

I did love the fact that when the book inquired at the end not one of our kids thought it would be a good idea to have the Donkey come and live at their house.

For a craft we used one of the donkey drawings from the book and the starter line My uncle’s donkey……. to create our own donkey scenario using drawing and collage just like the book.

There was of course lots of free play opportunities and it was nice to see the kids inventing their own games.This one involved two sitting people and two standing ones that occasionally ran around the sitting ones like crazy then stood still. I’m not sure what the point was but I’m certain it existed after the amount of planning I witnessed before they started.

The second book we read was called The Tall Man and the Twelve Babies. This book is quirky and funny and delightfully nonsensical with a very tall man living in a very tiny apartment with six baby boys all named Alistair and six baby girls all named Charlene. And to top it off the babies aren’t very well behaved. To make the chaos come alive I hid laminated copies of the twelve babies around the Shed (School/playroom) each one had an action verb written on the back. When one was found the finder had to read the word then we all did the action such as jump, shake, cry……I think by the end of it we all felt the tall man’s pain.  At one point in the story the poor tall man is stuck in a cat flap and pulled in alternative directions by the Alistairs and Charlenes so we played a game of tall Man Tug of War with Charlenes (girls) verses Alistairs(boys). The girls knocked the boys socks off, twice, go girl power!

We finished with a colouring in of the Tall man complete with crazy hair that will be turned into a book mark.

Wet crafting hanging on the line drying oh so nicely when the weathers fine….

A glimpse of the madness involved in feeding so many, this was about half I’ll let you imagine the noise.

The theme for book week this year was One World Many Stories so we had to have a world cake to celebrate. My kids have also been looking at different stories from around the world and decorated the windows with a pulled apart sticker book on national costumes of the world so they felt that they had participated in the theme.

The last book we read, Maudie and Bear, won it’s category and looked just like it had been pulled of the shelves of history. For me this book works best as a one on one with a child where the little one you are reading with can snuggle up on your lap and pour over the delicate illustrations. I fell in love with the illustrations, their unfinished sketchiness and visible pencil lines gave the book an exquisite fragility, like it was merely a passing glimpse into a time gone by and if we weren’t careful we would loose the moment before we truly understood it. They added so much story to the book, filling in the blanks between one carefully succinct line to the next. The title character Maudie however is neither careful nor delicate and is instead the essence of every true child, self focused, hot tempered, excitable and sometimes rude but steadfast bear loves her through it all. by the end of the collection of short stories you just know Maudie with turn out well adjusted, who wouldn’t living with such strong non judging unconditional love.

For the craft for Maudie and the Bear the kids put eyes, nose and ears on and then stuffed a bear I had sewn. I’m hoping they can find the time to learn how to stich up his bottom because the poor bears left here very uncomfortable with their bottoms pined shut.     

They seemed to have fun, I hope they did I loved having them all around.

The Doctor will see you now.