Emu with a Clue

Friday 13: 13 things to do with kids on a wet weekend

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:29:14 -0700

Thought I might as well do my brainstorming here seeing as this is looking like the scenario for this weekend.

Let It Rain

Go swimming at the indoor Aquatic Centre - my daughter invited to a party there on Saturday along with my friend's eldest daughter. My friend and I have decided to take the little ones along as well and stay there and have our own swim and indoor picnic while the party is on. Will hopefully help with the stuck indoors stir craziness that all the kids bound to be experiencing.
Baking - my husband accidentally opened a tin of sweetened condensed milk the other night so planning to do something with that and also plan to make a lemon tart for my work morning tea next week. The kids can help with that.
Go to the library - unfortunately our library has really limited opening hours on the weekend. Maybe the council thinks that everyone in our local government area can't read or something!
Go to the movies - we have some 'movie money' to spend so planning to go and see Kung Fu Panda on Sunday morning.
Put on raincoats and go for a walk - would be even better if the kids had gumboots but alas I stopped buying these when the drought started biting as they would often only wear them a handful of times before growing out of them.
Get my son to decorate and start implementing his housework chart - his teacher sent this home last night and I think it is a great initiative. My son is Mr Lazy normally.
Painting.
Sorting out books, CDs and DVDs and working out which ones to get rid of.
Planning our trip away the following week - my husband now has to work so it will be just me and the kids. I still haven't worked out where to go. Not too far afield though.
Watching tv - the kids favourite 'must watch' shows on the weekend are Australia's Funniest Home Videos on Saturday night and Gladiators on Sunday night. They also usually pester to watch whatever Saturday night kids movie is showing and, more recently, Battle of the Choirs.
Reading - unfortunately my son too young to read independently and my daughter not really inclined to so I will read to them.
Writing - my daughter's best friend H is in Japan at the moment and she has promised to write to her while she is away.
Board games, eg, chess (or 'chest' as my son calls it), scrabble, Enchanted Forest etc.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Everybody was kung fu fighting

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:50:06 -0700

We had a nice day yesterday. The day of my daughter's Kung Fu demonstration at one of the city movie cinemas was finally here. It was meant to be in honour of the opening of the movie Kung Fu Panda but was really badly organised so actually coincided with the movie start time so a) nobody coming to watch the movie actually watched the demo and b) the kids didn't get to go to the movie afterwards as it was too long to wait until the next session.

The kids had a great time and didn't seem to click that the majority of their "audience" were actually family and friends who had been dragged along for the occasion. Their teacher (who is very much like a big kid himself!) was also very pleased with how it all went and offered to take the kids all out to McDonalds for lunch afterwards.

We all (ie, kids, instructors and parents) went and invaded Darling Harbour McDonalds and all the kids got a Happy Meal and a Kung Fu Panda viper so they were happy. Afterwards, a few of us went over to the playground and hung out there for an hour or so. It is a really nice playground and was a beautiful day for it. My one (minor) problem with it is all the water features around the place. These are like a magnet to my son who of course managed to get himself a bit wet (although not absolutely soaking like he did last time we went to Manly corso!). One the way home, we passed another group of Kung Fu students doing their training in the park. The kids enjoyed watching this as it was quite a different style of Kung Fu to what they do. All in all it was a very fun day.

Here are a couple of photos I took at Darling Harbour (I can't post any of the Kung Fu demo photos as they have other people's kids in them):

J darling harbour

V Darling Harbour

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Sudoku fever

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:50:16 -0700

Easy Sudoku Puzzles #1 (Dora the Explorer)

Sonia Sander

I got one of these Dora sudoku sticker books for $1 the other day and my 5yo son is obsessed with it. I went through a brief period of being obsessed with sudoku but lost interest after I worked out how to solve them. They also caused me to get on the wrong train one night as I was so busy doing sudoku that I didn't look at the board properly. Despite all this, I think these sticker books are good for kids. The stickers are also removable in case you make a mistake.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Trip to the park

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 18:40:56 -0700

Yesterday afternoon was sunny but with a cold wind so I took the kids and a friend and Mollie the dog to a different playground to the one we normally go to (which is located on a bay and not very sheltered). My daughter was most unimpressed about not getting to go to her favourite park which has quite a thrilling (and fantastically dangerous!) flying fox ride and netball courts. Everyone ended up having a good time though and we even had a bit of an adventure!

These are my kids on the 'teen rager' play equipment which is meant to cater to much older children (the kind who are 'too cool' to play on play equipment anyway!):

Winter surfing

Spinning V

There were lots of thrills and spills and dirt on clothes which was probably a good thing.

I don't know if it was the age of the girls or because we had a ball with us but we also found ourselves getting 'tailed' by a group of boys on bikes. This turned out to be quite fortuitous as the girls managed to throw the ball right up on top of the cricket nets so it was all hands on deck to get it down.

Group problem solving

We ended up with about a dozen kids (and Mollie supervising) working out different strategies to try and get the ball down off the nets. These included climbing the wire (which a couple of kids tried and failed), trying to find a big enough stick to poke at the ball and, failing that, having my son on my shoulders trying to poke the ball with a stick, throwing up various other balls at different angles to try and knock the first ball out of its bed of wire.

While this was going on, another kid (the cousin of one of our new friends) managed to climb up on the roof of the nearby toilets and get himself stuck up there. He later succumbed to the urgings of the other kids to "Just jump!" and fortunately no broken bones ensued.

The ball crisis was eventually averted after about ten minutes of solid effort and group problem solving when a little wiry kid just ran up and shinnied up the side of the nets and saved the day to much cheering and applause. We then all bid our farewells to one another as if we were old friends and went off home laughing and satisfied at a job well done.

My son fell asleep about 30 seconds after his head hit the pillow last night and even Mollie was too tired to do her usual middle of the night whining at the door and slept right through the night without a peep.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Who Let the Dogs Out?

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 21:57:29 -0700

This is the art exhibition my friend and I took our combined brood of children along to yesterday.

Banner

It was at a gallery called Hazelhurst which is in a southern suburb of Sydney called Gymea.

It was a really fun exhibition and very child-friendly. they had voting forms for visitors to vote for their favourite artwork and be in the running for a $100 voucher. the kids took this very seriously and went round looking at everything several times in order to choose their favourite.

This is the one my son voted for, which I thought was a fairly interesting choice for a 5yo (my husband said it depends what he saw in it though, ie, "a cynical commentary on the detachment of post modernist narcissism within the urban/non-urban landscape" or "a dog"):

Louise Hearman dog

I liked another one by this artist:

Deborah Williams dog

and this one reminded me of Connie!

Jane Trengove dog

You can view a wider selection of the artworks here and here.

I also liked that the exhibition was free and that the gallery had a big garden that the kids could run off some steam in (they were all completely stir crazy after having been indoors most of the weekend). Fortunately noone fell in the very impressive fish pond. Maybe just too scared of the enormous carp in there.

On the way home we stopped off at Sylvania McDonalds for 30c icecreams for everyone. Felt like real cheap skates going through the drive through but who cares!

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Let's go fly a kite

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:22:07 -0700

These are some kite flying photos I took in over two days in Malaysia last year. No wonder kite flying is so popular there. The kites just seemed to fly themselves!

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Some poems from my daughter

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 21:01:17 -0700

Homework poem

Back in time

Homework sits on top of Sunday

squashing Sunday flat

Homework has the smell of Monday

Homeworks very fat

100_1717

Elephant on the telephone

There once was a elephant who tried to use a telephant

No! No! I mean an elephone

Yes he tried to use the telephone

He pulled and pushed trying to get it out

But the eletelephone just wouldn't come out

All this silly rhyming is making me jump

So next time you call an elephant use a elemump or is it a telehump?

Who is that girl?

100_1679

Who is that girl staring at me?

She has big blue eyes

Looking like flies, which is rather weird

So I show her my singing she sings too we both sounds like a

chime so I wave she waves back at the same time

She looks quite odd so I nod and she nods back you can see

Oh I know it must be me!

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Vox Hunt: Awwwwww!

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 18:31:46 -0700

Show us something that makes you go "awwwwwwww."
Submitted by LittleWiseOne.

Sleepingchildren

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Friday 13: 13 things I plan to do this Queen's birthday long weekend

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:02:17 -0700

Not stay at work too late tonight (although this may be difficult as I am waiting on things from a few different people before I can go home).
Eat pizza made by the kids for dinner (kids are insistent that Friday night is Pizza Night).
Go to bed early as I have had a hell of a week.
Get up early to go to yoga.
Send husband grocery shopping (or do it myself).
Tidy the house while the kids are at Kung Fu.
Sort through the kids clothes and toys with a view to making more space in their bedroom.
Go bunk bed shopping (my son has started sleeping in the food end of his sister's bed - I suspect because his toddler bed not as comfortable).
Watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on dvd (with finger on remote to speed through any sexy bits).
Try and think of something fun to do with my son on Sunday while his sister off at the movies with her schoolfriend.
Do some baking - maybe a birthday cake for the Queen! (this might be the fun thing I do with my son - he loves cracking eggs and sticking his hands in the mixture).
Babysit for a friend.
Get meals, uniforms etc organised for the week ahead.

Such an exciting life I lead!

Ziyi Zhang vs. Michelle Yeoh best fight scene ever

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

QotD: Since my first post on Vox, I've...

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:20:00 -0700

Look at the first post you ever wrote on Vox. What important developments or changes have occurred in your life since then?
Submitted by Alexandra.

This was actually my second post as my first just a book review. My second post was on the movie She's the Man and my efforts to get my daughter interested in the plays of Shakespeare. Shortly after posting this, I managed to find an outdoor community performance of Much Ado About Nothing which we went to with two other mums and 9yo's. My daughter and her friend (the other boy fell asleep) found the performance hilarious despite not being able to understand a lot of the dialogue. They were pretty disgusted at the kissing at the end though!

Still keeping my eyes peeled for other Shakespeare plays to take her too. I think she would probably enjoy Midsummer Night's Dream or Twelfth Night or even Romeo and Juliet (but just cover her eyes during any disgusting kissing!).

Romeo and Juliet : For Kids (Shakespeare Can Be Fun series)

Lois Burdett

Read and post comments | Send to a friend