Pea Pilly Bean * » Uncategorized

There’s a Fraction to Much Friction

Sarah — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 04:18:36 +0000

I found the kids outside playing with off cuts of wood. Most of their play involved rolling and sliding things down planks of wood so I thought it a good opportunity to talk to them about the science behind their play. The discussion really held their interest. We talked about the effect that friction has on motion and about how the shape and design of an object can effect its speed. I got them to imagine that they were sliding down the plank and asked if they thought they would go faster if they leant forward or back, if they put their feet on the plank or kept them up as they slid. Eli thought this was great and ran outside to experiment. Within seconds he was calling out for help. When I got to him the problem was clear. So the conclusion of our science experiment is: You travel slower down the plank if you lean back because of the friction caused by your clothing….hmmm maybe our experiments need a bit more prep.

Shhh, don’t tell them they’re learning

My Place & Yours- Kitchen Loves

Sarah — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 05:01:17 +0000

I am eating lunch and the children are planning their futures. So far it goes a little like this.

Lilly:” I never want to grow up”

Me:”oh why there are lots of good things about being grown up”

Alanah: (dripping with sarcasm) Yeah like you can have your stomach ripped open and a needle stuck in your back” (she recently over heard a conversation involving the word Caesarean section. I tried to be as delicate as I could in the description focusing on the joy of finally getting to meet your baby and how thankful we should be that modern medicine saves lives but apparently all she took away from the conversation was the cutting and jabbing bits)

I just roll my eyes at her, I’m trying to get in as many eye rolls as I can before the teenage years turn up.

Alanah: “When I have a baby he’s going to be called John, Eli’s favourite name”

Me: “Well that’s not fare if it’s Eli’s favourite name wont he want to call his son John”

Eli: “That’s ok I’ll just call my baby John too.”

Lilly: “My baby’s name is John” (said like it was something totally new to the conversation)

Me: “Well that will make it easy for me. When I have my grandchildren around for Lunch I can just call out JOHNSSSSSS foods up. ( Totally ham up the acting here, cup hands around mouth, lean back as I draw out the call then put hands out to fend of the hordes of invisible Johns)

Peals of hysterical laughter ensue, I so rock the stand up stage in this house!

Finally Lilly manages to get enough oxygen in her lungs to speak (yes I know so surprising that Lilly spoke first..a hum.)

Lilly: “ Noooo you’ll have to call come in John S, John K and John J”

Me: “Oh do you two girls already know who you are marrying then”

Lilly: “What????”

Me: “Well when a woman gets married she takes her husbands last name that’s why all your babies would have different letters, so who is Mr J then??”

Lilly: “Eww no that’s just the baby’s name like John Jay Kay Ess Ell Emm……” ( I so love that they want babies but the thought of kissing boys is still yuck to them)

Alanah: “Actually my baby is going to be called Wendy”

Lilly: “OH OH Oh and mine is TINCKER BELLL!!!”

Eli: YES and my other baby is called CAPTAIN HOOK!!!!”

And suddenly I’m Grandmother to a fairytale.

That is what I love about my kitchen, the conversations.

Find out what other people love by popping over to Hello Owls.

Birthdays

Sarah — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 12:26:38 +0000

I love going to little kids birthday parties. They don’t hold back on the emotions like we adults have learnt to do over the years and it’s just hysterical to see them overloaded on sugar and emotions. Only I didn’t get to go this time because I have a stupid virus, Blarrh. I also missed out on going to the chocolate cafe how cruel is that.

Anyhoo, I made the little girl a crown with her letter on it because her Mummy said she liked dress ups and sparkly things. I hope she liked it according to my family who are all not sick and got to go to the party she wore it so that’s a good sign.

I also made her a rainbow kitty cat because the little crown didn’t seem like all that much when I had finished it. I hope he’s not to weird looking I made him up as I went along.

The lovely thing about the day was that the parents of the birthday girl took all our kids for the rest of the afternoon which was nice for Glenn, I didn’t really notice because I was asleep from 9:30 am till 2:30 pm. Then because apparently a birthday party and unexpected afternoon guests wasn’t enough stress for them they offered to have the kids over night. So Lilly and Eli went to their first not Grandma’s house sleep over and I was too woozy with flu medication to even panic about it, much. So just before I let my porridge filled head collapse onto the lounge chair to watch House make other sick people feel worse I would like to say a Huge Happy Birthday and Thank You Very Much to my friends, don’t I have cool friends?

Softie Swap

Sarah — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:07:23 +0000

This is the little puppy I made for Talia in the softie swap. She arrived at her new home so I can show her to you now. Talia has a beautiful sooky faced doggie called Pepper so I had a pretty good idea of what animal would suit.

If you would like to see all the other softie creations at their new blog homes head over to Tab’s blog Small things and click on the links at the end of the post. You can also see a photo of my puppy with her real life doggie friend on Talia’s blog Life’s Visual Journal

My place and Yours- where you sleep

Sarah — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 02:11:26 +0000

Well normally in my bed cuddled up with Glenn all snug and warm but Sabrina wouldn’t sleep at all last night. So that every one in the house could sleep without the disturbance of plaintive howling I kept Sabrina in the lounge room with me. I can’t blame her her mouth is a mess and I do know that eventually teething will be over the teeth will come through and she will sleep better again. I know these things but it is hard to keep them in the front of your mind when the air turns icy at 2 in the morning and the thin little blankets are not doing the job.

Check out this weeks theme at Hello Owls

Vivid-the festival of lights

Sarah — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:30:28 +0000

(Still catching up on posts from before the week of sick)

On the Monday night of the long weekend we went into Sydney to see Vivid. See this is what I love about homeschooling, no stress about them having to be up early the next day they could just sleep in (they didn’t thought)

Vivid was a display of video and slide projections throughout the city. You followed a trail of blue glowing light houses to discover the story of governor Lachlan Macquarie’s life painted in technicolour on notable Sydney buildings.

The kids were thrilled out of their minds to be wondering around way past their bedtime thought the colour drenched streets.

There was a real sense of community as the crowds flowed from one installation to the next. Familiar faces catching up again after falling behind to gaze a little longer at something that caught their eye.

The blue lights were my favourite, they brought and eerie sense of wonder to the night.

The kids didn’t really grasp all the information about Governor Macquarie, they got that he was an old guy that got the buildings made and something to do with money and people being farmers (I quizzed them a bit to see if they were picking anything up) I’m not sure if we will look more closely into it now, we might but even if we don’t I’m sure seeds have been planted for future learning.

The conservatorium of music, Sydney’s to young a city to have castles so we built one to put all the music students in.

From there they could see that the Opera house had lights on and begged to walk there to see it. I had my reservations because it is quite a walk but they assured us they could do it.

Lilly didn’t quite make it, but she’s fairly light so I can’t complain.

It was spectacular to see the House all pretty in Pink

The kids were really interested when we spotted the source of the projection from across the harbour.

so we played around with the camera capturing our own light show. This one is of buildings dancing and the harbour bridge jumping.

We made ghosts my running in and out of slow shutter speed photos and this one is Lilly with no arms and legs (because she moved them to fast to be captured)

We then went to the Rocks and watched a harbour side spectacular production about a young Indian/Australian girl telling the tale of her Grandparents immigration to Australia. It ended in massive Bollywood style dance involving a tall ship and large paper dragons.

Finally we grabbed some food from the Fire Markets that had food tents from all over the world. As we have been studying Indigenous Australia we chose to eat Emu and Crocodile from the Australia tent. At the end of the markets girls dressed in traditional Indian costume danced to a hypnotic drum. When their performance finished they invited the onlookers to dance with them. To her Daddy and Mummy’s amazement Lani was asked and went happily into the midst of the swirling bodies.

She may not have swirled quite as much as everyone else but she loved it.

Lionfest

Sarah — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:41:40 +0000

I was better by Friday night and we thought the cause of the excruciating stomach pains and frequent toilet trips was food poisoning as I had found some mould on pumpkin seeds I had been eating. So we thought we would still have a go at doing all the things we had planed for the long weekend.

First up we met with some friends to go orange picking only when we got there the orchard was closed, oh well that one turned out to be a dud but we headed out to Windsor to have lunch with them instead. Then after lunch we piled all the kids into the car and headed off to the city to see Lionfest. Eli threw up in the car on the way, we remained clueless and thought he had just guzzled his lunch.

Lionfest is a celebration of the diverse nature of the arts of lion dance Dragon dance and martial arts. We arrived just in time to see a cool stick battle I’m afraid it may have been inspiring for the kids.

Every performance was accompanied by traditional drumming, a gong and a group of cymbalists. It was incredibly loud, there is just no way to adequately describe the voluminous resonating sounds that blanketed the performance space with noise and bounced enthusiastically around the inside of your skull.

This guy was hilarious, he made a very poor attempt to tame his Lion and train it to to sit and beg.

mostly the Lion grabbed hold of him and threw him around the floor. Lilly was a little petrified but after the mans head had been in the lions jaws half a dozen times and he was still breathing she settled down.

There was heaps of deferent performances, Lions climbing up on tables and poles and throwing oranges and short red sticks at the audience (It must have meant something traditionally I must look up orange throwing does anyone know what it could have meant??)

I’m afraid the noise got to Eli

But then members of their own troop were blocking their ears too so I’ll let him off.

We finished off the night by visiting a Chinees tourist shop and ogling all the jade dragons. The girls bought a Chinese music doll each and Eli bought meditation balls. Then we went around to the food court and had Chinese food for dinner only Eli didn’t because by then he was vomiting heaps.

Hello World…

Sarah — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 01:57:28 +0000

…This is me, life could be…e…e.. FUN for everyone……

This is what this last week has done to my brain cells, I am now reduced to typing sad lyrics from The Saddle Club as I sit staring at the screen figuring out where or how to start. See to say we have all been so horribly sick I wanted global warming to hurry itself up and fry the world would be an understatement.

Also I would love to just say a huge gargantuous BlAAHHH!!! to the week, apologise for not being around and placate Jilly Bean my darling Skin and Blister the demander of more photos by simply starting again and forgetting last week ever happened. BUT I am using here as a sort of external memory as the internal one often shuts down and even through last week was the week of Blahhh we did actually manage to pull of some pretty cool learning experiences. So for the sake of recording our homeschooling journey I am going to suffer through the memories of large amounts of vomit and write a bunch of posts about the good stuff that happened in-between.

So to end this weird post I would like to say a huge thankyou to God that I managed to eventually stop throwing up ( I may have mentioned before that I had Hyper Emesis during all my pregnancies and now every time I feel a little queasy my body is all Hey I know how to do this it’s cool man I got the vomiting thing covered and will only stop with a trip to the hospital and a needle) and a huge thankyou to my darling husband Glenn who stayed home from work to chase me and the kids around the house with buckets all week. Isn’t being a Daddy grand.

Progress on bed making

Sarah — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 13:06:01 +0000

An update on our attempts to fit four children into two tiny bedrooms.

We had been working on the Green room, as it is affectionately named, only our ideas for that room have grown to include knocking out part of a wall and building a mezzanine level. So we have decided to build the less scary beds in the Pink room first giving ourselves ample time to stress about the other room.

Glenn’s friend from Uni (I win I have kept friends from School and babyhood he can only go as far back as Uni) came around today to help with the lifting and holding. Actually the poor guy spent most of the day playing fetch the right sized screw that I was sure I had somewhere from the local hardware shop. He’s probably not going to come help again for a while.

The girls kept a close eye on the proceedings.

At one stage Sabrina thought it was taking to long and she could get it make quicker.

Then the children decided that since uncle Steven was just sitting there while Daddy worked, he could look at their new costumes. Rather closely. Like I said I don’t think he’s going to want to help for a while.

All joking aside the guys did a great job. I am so thankful that we have a friend like Steven who’ll give us a hand whenever we need it. He will help out with any crazy scheme we come up with and has been there lugging furniture around for us every time we moved, even when we changed houses every year for a while.

Sadly I don’t have a photo of the finished bed or even as finished as we have gotten it tonight. Lani is sleeping in it now so I’ll take a nice photo in the morning and put it up for you to see.

p.s. I love Glenn very very much and only pick on him because he is just so darn cute.

Makeover

Sarah — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 02:31:37 +0000

Apparently I don’t go out and get dressed up fancy enough, it’s a sad thing when your 8 year old starts giving you advice on your social life. So while Eli hammered nails into blocks of wood in the garage and the baby posted batteries into the green wast bin Lani and Lilly gave me a make over.

Sorry for the depressed looking double chin shot but I wanted to show you the eye work. They even used eye liner (in the eye lid crease) they were very proud.

She’s actually scarily good at lipstick even picked a subtle colour because she thought it suited me. I’m sure I have mentioned this before, but, once more for the dummies FASHIONISTA IN THE MAKING!

No related posts.