The Unscary Scarecrow

My school have a fabulous display of scarecrows displayed at the moment and today we finally succumbed to the requests (demands) to make one of our own. This was partly due to the somewhat alarming collection of perfectly wearable clothing piling up in the 'Clothes For Scarecrow to Wear' pile outside, most of which had been pilfered from wardrobes other than Sophie's own!

It was a bit harder than I had initially imagined to make. We ended up using a pair of straw-stuffed holey tights as arms and running a stake through them for stability. A rubbish bag of straw served as the body, and a plastic supermarket bag the head. Sophie thoughtfully illustrated the scarecrow's frock with pictures of lambs, hay sheds, butterflies and stars and gave it smiling face. Of course all art work must be named. This rule applies to scarecrow faces too.



Caleb is a bit nervy of scarecrows, due to a story we once read about one with a grumpy face. He seems a little unsure of this one, but was happy to attack it with a drill and hammer, so it can't be too frightening!



Oh, and just to make you die laughing (as my dear husband did while taking the photo) this is evidently how I look swinging a hammer. There is a good reason I am usually given the measuring tape!

Owls

Sophie has been begging me to do some paper craft with her lately, and after a friend's baby shower where we made owl bunting, I was inspired to do some owl stuff. Despite Soph's vehement distaste of the birds already hanging above her window, she also quite liked the idea.

We used templates to cut scrapbooking paper of varying prints into the correct shapes, then simply glued them on canvas. Some vintage buttons added to the appeal, and sparked lots of lovely discussion about how to make something look in different directions and how our eyes work together as a team. Caleb had a fabulous time playing in the buttons and trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to find matching pairs - it reminded me of the many hours I spent as a preschooler delightedly playing in Mum's button tin full of treasures. What a fabulous and underrated learning tool they are - sorting, describing, matching etc - all really valuable pre-maths skills.







I can't decide which I like best. Possibly the top one, despite its wonky beak, glue marks and uneven tree branch. Kinda adds to the appeal.

Fire

A month or so back, I posted this picture, of my parents' 150 year old homestead in the freak snowstorm we had:




The other night, we saw it like this:



We are devastated. My family have lived in that home for 100 years, and it contained countless Irreplaceable family heirlooms, as well as all of the simple, essential things needed to run a large sheep farm - vehicle keys, gumboots. lambing records. My sisters lost their clothes, shoes, laptops, university notes. I live over the road, so it wasn't really my everyday *stuff* that was lost. But little things like special childhood toys, books, Christmas decorations - all of those things that create and cement memories are gone. I was at a baby shower today, and teared up when I realised we've lost our baby record books. You never miss them, until they're gone.

The house was beautiful. She'd been a bit rough when Mum and Dad first moved in 11 years ago, but they had almost finished the renovation, with just 2 bedrooms, the laundry and the exterior painting left to finish. On a house of that magnitude, an incredible amount of work had been completed, mostly by Dad and relatives. This wasn't a renovation done on a shoestring, either, unlike the one Steve and I completed on our old house. We'd done a good job (if I do say so myself ;-) ) but for us, money was a big constraining factor, and to begin with, our house (though a similar age) didn't have the... grandeur, I guess, that Bankhead did. In it's day, it was a show home, and it was very close to being that again.

But through it all, the wonder of humankind comes through. Wonderful, wonderful folk who gave meals, baking, time out of their own busy lives to sit and cry with us, look after our children or sift through ashes to try and find our treasures.

Thank you.

Spring!

While I'm at home (not quite as wretchedly ill as I have been over the past four days) and childless, thanks to the wonder of preschool, I thought I'd update some of our happenings lately.

I alternate between thinking that 4 year old girls are the devil incarnate and the most fabulous creatures around. I don't tend to hover in between these extremes. Currently my feelings are on the favorable end of the scale. Sophie is learning huge amounts every day - not necessarily the schooly-type stuff, but the really important, 'this is how the world works' kind of stuff.

The other day, whilst I was busy being wretchedly ill and Steve was on solo Dad duty, Sophie decided she'd like to make a kite. She tied a piece of string to a picture she'd created a few days earlier and took it outside. Of course it failed and she stomped inside in a fit a fury. At this point, an interesting situation developed involving the differences between the female and male mind. Or maybe jut the mind of a teacher and the mind of fixer.

Steve (who admittedly at this point had already suffered several days of essentially parenting two busy preschoolers alone and was somewhat frazzled) said "Of course it won't work. I'll make you a kite later. But not now." Male mind: Solve problem.

Enter ill and woebegone mother / teacher / embracer of learning experiences at the expense of sanity...
"Why didn't it work, Sophie?"
Sophie: "It was all floppy"
"How could we fix that?"
And here was her solution - straws and a tail.



And you can guess what happened. It still didn't work and we had a repeat of the earlier drama. Poor Steve was getting a tad frustrated at the excessive emotion, as afterall, he had offered to fix the problem. What were we messing around with?

Sophie and I had a discussion about what else we could change that would make it work. Her eyes lit up and and she said "THE SHAPE! It has to be a diamond shape!" We were on the way, and through the process of trial and error, she'd come to some important conclusions about the laws of physics and the limits of craft supplies.

At this point, Steve intervened. As a fixer and a perfectionist, he simply couldn't suffer through the process any more, and sat down with the kids and researched some kite making. They ended up sacrificing an old cot sheet, a bamboo stake and a string line and it worked! Unfortunately, we have no pictures of The Great Kite Flying, but apparently it was so impressive that cars slowed on the highway to watch two little poppets flying their piece of homemade wonder, picking dandelions as they went!

The tail, incidentally was made with fan-folded origami paper. It seems by teaching Sophie this trick, I may have sparked a new obsession. Heaven help us all.

Here are some pictures of the process and the finished product, yet to be painted.





All in all, it was a fascinating probe into not only physics, but the differences in thinking between two people essentially working to meet the same goal. One that seeks solely to create a product that works with the minimum of fuss, and one that seeks to learn along the way and maybe not actually end up with anything but a heap of failed experiments and a list of things that didn't work. And a fair guess at why that may have been. Neither is wrong, but spot which one is the teacher ;-)


Another thing we've been doing is planting the seeds for this year's summer vegetables. As an experiment, we did the old 'bean in a jar with paper towels' trick. Though we used loo paper, as we had no paper towels. I intended to take a pic every day, but failed miserably! In any case, the seed germinated OVERNIGHT! I can definitely recommend a heavily used coffee machine as a good spot for speedy seed growing. Gotta be some bonus benefits to our excessive caffeine consumption!

It has been a fascinating thing to watch. Great for explaining the role of roots, stems and leaves, which mean nothing to your average preschooler. Also great for them to be able to see what is going on under the soil in the pots sitting on our windowsill. So far, it has helped repel nosey fingers from investigating... mostly **twitches a little**

Day One:


Day Four:


Day six: