Thursday, November 5, 2009

Project time!

I love the energy around here at the moment!  We're all in the midst of various creative projects, and whilst it has seemed for ages like nothing will actually get finished, I can now see things coming together.  Hopefully what I'm doing will be finished by Christmas, as the biggest gifts for my kids this year will be homemade!

My projects:
•  Refurbishing a dolls house, built for me by my great uncle.  It's floor plan style and only just fits under a single bed when not in use.  Needs a new base, fresh paint and I have grand plans to make all kinds of furniture, linen, treehouse in the side yard.  Miss 4 has had my Strawberry Shortcake dolls for a year already, but this will be their new home.
•  I've almost finished making a highchair for Miss 4's cabbage patch doll.  This isn't a secret as she's watched me do most of the work.  Today she said she wants two highchairs.  Ha ha!
•  My husband doesn't want the fridge to be scratched by magnetic toys, and the magnetic  whiteboard easel is pretty small ...  so I'm looking for the right piece of metal to attach to the end of the breakfast bar.  Then we can have fun with magnetic letters, words, play scenes and a fantastic motorised set of cogs.
•  Making a chalkboard for the cubby/ bush fort we made earlier this year.  While we're at it, I also want to repaint the slippery slide, paint a compass on the floor and pot some flowers.
•  Use offcuts of wood to make signs for the yard ... a black and yellow 'work site' sign for Mr 5's gravel quarry, set of traffic lights, stop sign etc, orchard signs for the citrus trees.
•  Extend Mr 5's wooden garage (made by my brother), to have a multi-storey car park.  This may be beyond my engineering capabilities and patience, we'll see!

What Mr 5 is up to:
•  Making a papier mache landscape, either for dinosaurs, animals or soldiers, depending what he's thinking about at the time.
•  Cutting up lots of pictures which he will apparently then make into wrapping paper for Daddy's present.
•  Playing as much cricket as possible, in the garage or at the park.  He's always been terrific at bowling and batting, but I help him practice catching.
•  Drumming, strumming and singing!  Playing for hours with matchbox cars on his car carpet, building with lego.
•  Telling us ever more elaborate tales about his trips to Neverland (he's hooked on Peter Pan).

Miss 4 has been:
•  Making books with me, then reading them aloud to Daddy.  Joyfully doing Reading Eggs lessons on the computer.
•  Colouring in and drawing, cutting out pictures and telling stories about them, playing with Polly Pocket dolls, making creatures with playdough.
•  Giving us live action replays of her ballet class.  Brushing her hair, carefully choosing outfits to wear, arranging things on her dressing table.  

That's some of what we've been doing in recent days.  There are no school routines at present.  Our educational methods seem to mostly fit into what's called Natural Learning.  We weren't very schoolish to begin with, so it's been a subtle change.  I love strewing (leaving material of interest around for our children to discover, as defined by Sandra Dodd).   Mr 5 and Miss 4 are still as keen as ever about everything to do with reading, art, music, maths, but less interested in writing.  They love everything related to science, the world and people.  Mr 5 was today telling me information about the earth's core, before he asked me about space.  

Life's good!

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like a busy life atm :) We need photos of your projects!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Correction: The dolls house was made by my Poppa for Mum and her sister when they were children. Mum repainted it for me. How cool that it's into it's 3rd generation now!

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