Painting plastic bottles: Paint recipe

My children have enjoyed watching Mister Maker and are keen to do some projects they have seen. To paint recycled bottles you need to mix 50% Paint and 50% PVA (glue makes the paint that sticks to the plastic bottles etc)               

After school activities

Always looking for free activities to do, funny how the most obvious get forgotten in our house!
They had a ball.
Another free activity at the local markets. It was a healthy living expo.

Holidays have been and gone.

Isn't it always the way on holidays, down comes the rain!

We caught a cold from our last Questacon trip and coughed and splattered our way through the break. Now we are better we are finding it very hard to get into a routine again, holidays are so nice but it's time to get going again!

Over the holidays I had an Extra Lesson Practitioner test youngest for school readiness. Just as I suspected he isn't quite ready to learn to read. His body awareness is excellent but auditory processing is not at the point where he will clue on to reading.

So we are doing Sound Therapy with him. This is an extremely nice process of listening to classical music and doing some activities, catching bean bags, standing on a balance board. It is a system that was developed by a guy called Alfred Tomatis, "the French ear specialist who developed the discipline called audio-psycho-phonology, meaning the psychology of speech and hearing."
http://www.soundtherapy.com.au/v3/home.html

Here he is doing his sound therapy.
Yes for all the audiophiles, the child is using Grado's ;o)

Colin Buchanan for CAPA

Certainly covered CAPA on this one.
Colin Buchanan is fantastic, he is theologically sound and relates so well to the kids.

Colin and Nudge "God Rock"

Canberra Concert

Just a comment on CAPA (Creative and Performing Arts) I discussed with Mr registration that we are not a 'dance-y' family and he agreed that the boys education would not be severely hinder by not knowing the Pride of Erin. I was really pleased that our interest in music, drama and performance and visual arts was adequate. Phew! Unless we appear to have a Billy Elliot in the house I'm skipping dance lessons ;o)

Volcano making

We did some book work in the morning and then had some fun getting our volcano under way.

We bought an Aldi volcano set. Putting the mould together.

Pressing the sides together

Oh great, the plaster of paris went off in seconds :o(
Big dud. Must have been old plaster.

Dad saves the day with base coat from gyprocking the walls! 

Woohoo looking good! Tomorrow we'll paint and set it off!

We stopped to make afternoon tea. Coconut jam slice

Base: 125g melted butter & 1/2 cup sugar and add 1 egg, 1 1/2 cups flour
and 1 tsp baking powder.
Press into tin

Heat up jam, coat base then mix up 2 cups coconut mixed with 2 eggs and 1/2 cup sugar
Spread on top of base.

Into the oven 180 deg C for 30 mins

Yum, all done. Cool in tin before cutting up:o)

The boat adventures and secret mysteries to unravel!

After a really fun trip to the beach and a special boat ride investigating nooks and crannies on the river. We continued on the theme of boats and adventure with the Famous Five (Enid Blyton) jigsaw puzzle complete with a mystery! We found the jigsaw in a second-hand shop ages ago, this was a perfect tie in to the weekend.
Subjects covered: PD H PE-outdoors, water safety, sun smart etc
HSIE: Natural environment, getting along with others, history with story of great grandfathers etc
Science and Technology: boat, natural environment, boat engine, computer use -reversing type and mirrors 
Maths- patterns, shapes, decoding doing puzzle 
English- listening to story, comprehension, answering questions, writing own clues 

The boys off on a river adventure

Read story (on top) and complete jigsaw puzzle

After story and puzzle there are questions to answer, the answers were backwards!

Checking answers in the mirror

This lead on to making our own clues that you can print out backwards using Word. You can do treasure hunts or answers to any questions, whatever you want, it's just fun needing a mirror to decode.

Since randomly finding a puzzle is not probable, the point of the post would be to tie activities together, see where they lead and how cool backwards writing is ;o)

Outdoor classroom

An adventure to new beaches covering PD H PE, Science, HSIE, Maths (count the steps), English and CAPA -the boys will write a recount of their adventure with pictures and present oral presentation, this is as simple as telling me about their day with DDad and DD

Investigating local beaches

The path lead to a great view

A surprise on the way down

How blessed to live in such a country