Flat Chi and our ALTERED book

At school I was never allowed to draw in books let alone alter them! The kids have enjoyed his though and know that this project dosn't nessecarily apply to other books! For hand writing on this particular day we decided to alter this book. It has some really beautiful pictures but the story wasn't very good! We decided to start writing our own one! the challange was coming up with words that still related to the pictures and still giving the story flow. I didn't post the pics in the right order in my rush to get them done while blogger will still let me!
We started this last term when we were learning a little bit about Japan. I bought some origami papers on Trade me when the kids were really into origami and the scraps came in handy for this book! Flat chi is one of our flat travellers that we have staying.

The Cargo Shed

The Cargo shed is a Arts and Crafts venue for a market held every weekend and on cruise ship days. Local artists come and sell anything from carvings, jewellery, paintings and knitted items. Tui and I enjoyed a good look around and a chat with some of the artists on the weekend. Obviously learning and socialising don't just happen during the week! She had a good time sharing something I love with me, learning about some of the native wood used by the wood turners and looking at the jewellery. One man even gave her a catseye bead bracelet!

Board games

I gave Jacob and Pearl a polystyrene cube each and let ehm come up with their own ideas on what to use it for. As yo can see they came up with very different ideas! Pearl made a die for her board game and Jake made a weight for a plastic bag parachute!

Jake's stingray

Jacob caught a stingray...here he is trying to land it! Unfortunately it snapped his line and got away but he's keen to give it another go this weekend. Jacob's really into fishing at the moment! We got some new tackle yesterday, new tackle box, new line etc for him as a very belated xmas present replacement and today he's going to learn how to tie hooks, change his line etc with Dad. When I get my hands on an old pot and some led we will have a go at making some of our own sinkers.

Fishing at he warf on Dive Cres

Pearl got her first Kung Fu belt!

Yay! Go Pearl! Here she is practasing her Kata, Basics and line work at home. The next photo's will show her cool new belt! She's really pleased at having passed!

Tui's casts

These are the first casts Tui had on. She's now got funky purple and pink ones! These ones had to come off because they were putting too much pressure on her heels. The were replaced with one pink and one purple fibre glass cast...the pink one got replaced AGAIN the day after becuase it was hurting Tui's foot (turns out it was actually causing a bruise!) so now she has a new pink one and the same purple one!

The ENORMOUS crocodile

We have just read the awesome book "The enormous crocodile' by Roald Dahl and now were doing some extension activities based on the book.
Tui wrote a list of the characters and a brief book review:
The book 'The enormous crocodile' is about by Roald Dahl is about (you guessed it!) and Enormous Crocodile who decides that he wants to eat some yummy juicy children for his lunch!
He comes up with a 'secret plan and nasty tricks' to try and catch the children...but the other animals in the jungle have plans to stop him...
Characters:
The Enormous crocodile
The Notsobig crocodile
Muggle Wump the monkey
Humpy Rumpy the Hippopotamus
Trunky the Elephant
The Rolly Polly Bird

Blogger isn't working (can't post photo's) but when it does I will post the pics of the egg carton crocodiles we made and their lovely book work :)

FUN FRIDAY-Making our own paper

 

We've been wanting to try this for a while...ever since I received a cool hand made paper notebook in a trade! I bought a mesh splatter guard (for a frying pan) to spread and squish our paper pulp onto and it worked really well. WE hand ripped all the little bits of paper and soaked them for about an hour before giving them the full treatment in the blender! Good ol blender! The very same one I used to make Tui's baby food in is still going strong! Anyway...we got our pulp and spread it out onto the mesh and waalah! PAPER. We're still waiting for it to dry but it's looking good so far.
While we made the paper we talked about how the Egyptians made the first paper (Papyrus) and we talked about how they would have beaten the plant fibres (not nicely soak paper in a blender....joys of technology!)to turn it into a pulp. Naturally I took the opportunity to talk about recycling...sustainable resources etc! On Monday we're going to look at Hieroglyphic writing as well.
The boat trip was after our paper making!

 

School trip across the sea...

 

 

Free ferry rides

 

We were lucky enough to get a free return trip from Tauranga to the Mount today courtesy of the Tauranga Sandy Walkers group :) It was lots of fun and we saw heaps of big ships, tug boats and recreational boats on the trip. We checked out flags (on the cargo ships) and watched the port workers. On the way home Pearl asked what the name of one of the boats was ( Sea Prophet) and by the time we had hit the shore again she'd taught herself to spell the word "sea." Clever!!
As you can see from the pics my Mum and her husband Ross joined us for the trip.

 

 

 

Dad and the kids checked out this huge digger at the quarry. It was impressivley big! The fact that the steel was also hot (scrorcha day!) didn't stop them from doing a mad scramble to climb around inside (where it was cooler) and see what bits still moved.

Spiders nest

 

We found this spiders nest at the Te Puna Quarry...it was interesting to look at how the spider had pulled the leaves together to make it but I'll admit that I'm glad we didn't find Incy-Wincy too!

Bush music