do you have any trees that need chopping?

...coz M4 has a chainsaw to chop them down with.


He might need to learn a few safety tips before he's let loose with it though - he's insisting it should stand upright!


......and then who should come toddling up the stairs, but T3?
"Please may you take a photo of me an my twee-cutter-saw to put on da blog"


But that wasn't the end....L6 arrived with yet another one...we'll be needing a whole forest!

I wanna be dangerous

By K10

I wanted to make a catapault from The Dangerous Book For Boys that I got for my birthday, so I asked Mama if I could and she said, "Yes". I drew a plan, which I followed. Here's the end result:

I used chopsticks (which I got told off about), a bottle lid and copious quantities of wool.

How To Make Fabulous Felt

1. Tear up 100g of carded wool into strips. Then pull the wool out so it fluffs up.
2. Lay the wool so that the grain of your first layer (I did five layers) goes all up-and-down. Lay the next layer on side-to-side, the next up-and-down and the next side-to-side.
3. Now you are ready for one last layer of wool. We did fancy coloured wool.
4. Mix together three cups of boiling water and a squirt of detergent, pour this slowly over the wool and start to gently squeeze the wool. You will have to wear rubber gloves as it will be very hot!!!
5. Keep adding more water and keep squeezing until the fibres all matt together.
6. Turn the piece over and repeat the process on the back. The longer you work the wool, the tighter it binds together.
7. Rinse the piece of felt.

If you want to speed up the process, you can place your piece of felt in a pillowcase and put it in the washing machine. Just remember to use hot water and a wee bit of washing powder.

it never rains - it pours

By Mama

Having impressed me with their origami skills, the boys asked to try out their Dangerous Book for Boys constructions.....
"Can I throw it out the upstairs window Mama?" J11 pleaded.


Why, oh why, would I say NO to that request?
What else would you do with a water bomb?

girls can use tools too!

By J12
(posing in the first photo, taken at Karekare earlier this week)


Wanting to attract some different kinds of birds to our garden, I decided to make a bird feeder. Before Dadda would let me use his tools, he required a plan! I provided him with a very detailed one. It was so good I had unlimited access to his saw, drill and screwdrivers.

Here's what I made
(with a little assistance from an interested J11):



The little piece of dowel held up by two small branches can be removed and have a piece of apple or something stuck on it, but we didn't have any spare. Water goes in the yellow container (Dadda said I should hollow out a piece of wood instead to make it look really natural - I just might yet), and seeds go on the other little platform. Any bird who happens to use the swing too energetically might knock itself out on the upright stick - that's a wee design fault, which could be fixed in the Second Edition!

TUESDAY

By J12 and J11 (self-editted without any Mother-Help)

In the pouring rain we dashed across MOTAT to the Robot Exhibition. There were some remote controlled robots, which we were allowed to have some fun with. J11's favourite was a dinosaur that could run quite quickly and move its tail and head. K9 directed one of the dinosaurs *almost* under one of the cars that was parked there. There was a robot robot (do you know what we mean by that? it looked like what you expect a robot to look like) - it could bend down, roll over and say Hello, as well as move anywhere you sent it.

Do you have any idea what this is?
It looks like a piece of cardboard with straws and string, doesn't it?
What you can't see are the rubber bands attached to the back.

They work all together as a robotic hand.
When you pull a certain string, it will move a finger, stretching out the rubber band (just like a tendon). Of course, when you let go of the string the rubber band pulls the finger back straight again.

When we got home Grandpa used this to explain to us about his Carpal Tunnel surgery.
It was also easy to see why the end of Mama's finger hung lifelessly when she snapped one of her tendons.

Very Interesting.

Judgement Day

K9's Story

Today was the day I had been looking forward to - the Science Competition Day.

It was the day I could take my game about a science topic to the university.

My game was called "Animal Hide & Seek". There is a Hider and A Seeker - the Hider puts one of his animal cards in the cave and the seeker has to try to work out which one it is. The Seeker reads out the question cards and the Hider tells the answers. If they don't know the answers, there is an information chart they can look at. The Seeker takes out any of his cards that are eliminated until there is only one left. It *should* be the same as the one which is hidden!

I really wanted to get a Highly Commended, but when I saw all the other games I wasn't so sure I'd get anything.

There was a solar system game that was very impressive. I thought it might get first place, but it didn't actually end up getting anything. The people on either side of me had made their games in two weeks. One was a spider game and the other was a dinosaur game.

When they called out the highly commendeds I was disappointed, because I thought I wasn't getting anything. Then they called third place and it was me. I was really really happy and couldn't stop smiling.

The two other things I enjoyed at the Science Day were making slime and dressing up in the clothes scientists wear to Antarctica.

J&J's Story

Our many years of weather watching proved to be the inspiration for this year's Science Competition Entry. Our task was to design a board game. But we didn't stop at that! We constructed a weather station as well - complete with barometer, thermometer, ananometer and rain guage...all of which would work apart from the rain guage as we wouldn't put the game outside in the rain!

To play the game, you race around the board answering questions, predicting the weather, collecting Information Cards and gathering signs until you have made your own weather station. Would you like to come and play?

The judges obviously liked it......so they gave us first place. For the Second Year In A Row! (but, shhhh - we didn't tell them we had won last year too!)

This lovely Lady Judge, who intereviewed us, was very friendly and interested in our game. She asked lots of questions and laughed at our funny information cards (for example, "In Bedfordshire, England, a tornado is said to have plucked the feathers off several chickens. Surprisingly they survived their ordeal.") She was particularly interested in how the thermometer worked - and we can understand that! We love watching the liquid race up the straw too when we put our hands around it!

When we saw all the other games we really weren't sure we'd get anything, because some of the others looked most professional and they had had a lot of work put into them. Fortunately for us, however, the judges liked the weather records we had been keeping (scientists do like measurements, don't they?)....and we have a sneaking suspicion they enjoyed blowing the anemometer around! We think Lovely Lady Judge would have liked to have seen it blow away the night it was really windy - she laughed when we told her about that escapade.

All in all, we had a great time....but the BEST was that K9 won a prize. We knew just how DESPERATE he'd been to win so we were very very happy for him.

Mobile Meatballs

we all worked together to produce

a MILLION meatballs.......

somehow we always seem to end up

making fun of our work!

DISASTER!

Well, almost.
We are two weeks away from The Science Competition.
Yesterday the printer JUST STOPPED in the middle of printing out our cards.
Then K9 took his papier mache cave out of its mould and it fell apart in his hands - literally.

We are very thankful Mama suggested we try to finish a week early so that we would have time up our sleeves if anything went wrong.

We should be done by the end of the week - YAY!

paper and pencil

the big boys have been cartooning

baby sister seems to be the subject

Porcu-pins

By J12


A porcupine would be the best animal to make as a pincushion, but I've done an elephant, a crocodile and a giraffe. They are all hand sewn from felt with various little bits and bobs as decorations....if you click on the pictures you'll be able to see the details.

I'd like to sell my crafty creations one day, but I'll need a few more pieces before I can open a shop! Here's my first market research endeavour: how much would YOU pay for a one-of-a-kind hand-made-with-love 12cm long croc? ;-)

Knit Away Knit

By K8

My first ever cloth I knit was a blue one and I kept dropping stitches, so it was a holey cloth. For my birthday I got lots of wool, so I thought I could make some cloths out of it. I tried one the other day, twenty stitches and twenty rows. But it wasn't a square, and I worked out you double what you cast on and then it will be a square.
So now I have written my first ever knitting pattern (that's it in the photo).
Last night I knit a whole cloth and K9 did too. He wanted to do some knitting, but he didn't know what to do so I said, "You could knit a cloth." We sat together knitting and Mama said we looked like two old grannies.

catch up

There's so much to write about.
We had four days without Mama and L6 who went to hospital. It was really nice to have Dadda round more and to spend time with our friends and with Grandpa.
We've been doing things like visiting open homes (Dadda looks like he wants to build another house!), gardening, working on our science competitions, shooting baskets, making glasses and weather recording equipment, tidying the house for when Mama came home, riding bikes, playing cricket and lots of board games....
Last week we learnt the whole National Anthem. AllFiveVerses.

it's good to be a boy!

When we were gardening on Saturday we found a treasure in the bush. It didn't have a handle, but that didn't take long to fix!




We've also been making shanghais after reading "A Dangerous Book for Boys" (thanks Jonathan for telling us about it!). The postie has been giving us a pile of rubber bands if we're ever outside when she goes past. Mama thought shanghais were illegal in New Zealand - but she hasn't managed to find anything to prove this yet, so we are allowed to continue!

are you really busting?

By Mama

If you're not, you're requested to not use the bathroom.
A reasonable request by J11 as he's in charge of bathrooms this week.


But I do wish he'd learn to spell correctly!

happy birthday ER

you are one!

look what you can do

boys will be boys

K9 you are usually ALL BOY! For such a long time you've not really been interested in anything much apart from bats-and-balls and making money!! But recently you've been awfully productive - I just love the boy-doll you made yourself - I can understand how important it is to have a boy-doll and not a girl-doll when you're a boy! He's very handsome - and I hope he doesn't make too much noise when you're spying out in the bush.

Love,
Mama

fluffyFEET

Inspired by Mama knitting slippers for the little boys, I (J12) got my needles clacking for myself. My ones took much longer - not only because I'm a slower knitter - but also because my feet are soooo looooong! They may have taken a wee while, but they were actually one of the easiest thing I have knit. They are also my first felting project.

Mama said to say THANK YOU to *dodgums* for the wool!

Favourite Books Centre Stage

Coming up in three weeks is a church family camp...and on the Saturday night there's a concert. Last time we acted out the story of The Little Red Hen. This year it's Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar. We spent this afternoon making props with items we got at the recycling centre:



We'll see you on stage at 7:42....not giving away any more than that for now;-)

workin' with dadda

The neighbours decided they wanted some privacy screens up between our living area and their kids' bedrooms. So our adventures in that part of the bush have come to an end - we never realised how much we played on *their* land! Hope they didn't mind!!!

But the adventure wasn't entirely over - the screens still needed to be built:



And right now we're staining the posts black while Mama types this for us.