The Arty Farty Nutty Professor

Every day when Daniel is having his nap Nicholas chooses an activity for us to do together. I always try to incorporate some reading or writing but it often involves something arty and lately some sort of science experiment. This post contains a collection of photos from some of the things we did over the past few months. Nick has an extremely good attention span and will almost always finish whatever he starts. A quality of his that I admire just as much as his enthusiasm. I'm really going to miss this special time that I share with my little big boy!

Good old fashioned drawing

Painting is always a popular choice

CollagesMake your own aeroplaneDinosaur mouldsMetamorphosis
Homemade compass
Experimenting with volume
Bobbing Raisins
Experimenting with density

Summer Drama

During the summer holidays we did quite a few drama related activities. It wasn't only about watching professionals doing the acting, sometimes the kids were involved in drama workshops too, which they absolutely loved. They enjoy make believe so much and I think it's really good for their self confidence so I am a total believer!

Nicholas and Phillipa even attended acting school for 3 days, Witches and Wizards, all ending in the sweetest ever stage production of the Wizard of Oz. It was excellently produced giving each child a part in each chapter and also a go at one of the main characters. Nicholas was the Wizard of Oz and his line was 'I AM OZZZZ!' in a booming voice - it didn't come out all that loud and he nearly fell of the stage - but he was very impressed with himself nonetheless. He really enjoyed attending every day and loved the limelight at the end, so I think we'll have to do it again sometime!

The Lion And The Unicorn, a lovely musical show, very cleverly done using different nursery rhymes and poems accompanied by different muscial instruments to tell the romantic story of Will and Kate!

All Join In, at the Polka Theatre, as the blurb says it's a musical extravaganza based on a collection of Quentin Blake's stories - fantastic!Also at the Polka Theatre, The Big Dig, an archaeology workshop. It was linked to the The Worm Story (which unfortunately we missed)!

The Tiger Who Came To Tea, part of the Kids Week in the West End program, so it involved an exciting trip to the West End, a world class theatre production and a tea party with the cast afterwards - what an experience!

And that's one of the reasons why it's great living in London!

The Vio-vio-violin

Quite by accident we stumbled across a music teacher who lives down the road from us. He invited Nicholas for an assesment and concluded that he was ready to commence lessons right away. So we got Nick the cutest little violin you've ever seen and he started lessons a couple of months ago. I secretly love the fact that he used to go to Rugby Tots and with his violin strapped to his back so that he could go straight to Rustem afterwards for his lesson. It still sounds like he is skinning a cat most of the time but every now and then he hits the right note. He is very enthusiastic and proud of himself so I guess that's the best start we could have hoped for!

Daniel is, dare I say, even more enthusiastic to have a go and always waits for his turn whenever Nicholas practices. We'll be very pleased if something comes of this, but if not then we'll be glad that at least we have exposed them to music lessons!

Couch Potatoes

Who could blame then with a sofa like this!

Incidentally Nicholas has figured out how to use the remote. One day I thought "Geez but Jake and the Neverland Pirates is a long show" then I realised that he kept rewinding it back to the beginnig when it reached the end. Wonder what he will be doing next!

Greenwich

Earlier this week we went on an expedition across London to visit the London Planetarium which is now located at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. It was well worth the big mission because it kids really enjoyed it. We spent ages in the experiments room where we built a rocket, experimented with gravity and orbits and used a telescope to find different constellations based on their co-ordinates. The highlight was definitely the 'Meet the Neighbours' show which was all about our solar system. It had me entranced so you can only imagine what effect it had on the boys!

Concentric Circles

As I've mentioned before, the boys go nuts at the mere mention of the word paint. Inspired by Kadinsky (in The Usborne Art Treasury) and also the little girl Vashti (in The Dot) we decided to paint circles. I think the end result was brilliant!