Some mornings just don't go to plan.
Yesterday, I overslept, woke up at 8.55am realising that I was meant to be helping out at dd1's preschool at 9.15am! I hadn't bought any snacks for the break time (parent helper responsibility) so needed to get to Tescos on route, and the kids were just sat downstairs in their pjs watching tv! So at 9.10am I was chopping up carrots into fingers and trying to work out whether the humous was past it's best (it was). So, after rushing around like mad things, we stopped off at Tescos to stock up on humous, breadsticks etc, and finally arrived about 9.45am.
Preschool was chaotic - lots of small boys with heaps of noisy testosterone, far too many adults around, but none of them seeming to be in charge, and my 3 causing even more chaos. And one child was apparently very allergic to humous (typical!) I ended up talking to another parent and giving a very poor case for home ed (my brain wasn't really in gear), who then told me she was a GP and was looking at me as if she was about to report me to the local authority and have me sectioned {g}. At that point I went and hid in the preschool kitchen for the rest of the morning doing the washing up! I suppose it's just as well we don't have to do the school run every day, there would be this sad, motley, disorganised bunch arriving late every day!
Anyway, by the afternoon we were all worn out. dd1 had a friend back for lunch and play and I disappeared while they were quiet to do some web surfing. I found some interesting projects on the http://www.instructibles.com/ website - ds2 was looking over my shoulder and once I printed a few things out he disappeared upstairs and started making knex crossbows. We found several on the website, some were quite complicated, some had unintelligible instructions, but after we'd sorted through them we found some that looked 'do-able'. The basic mini crossbow was quick to make, didn't take many pieces and worked quite well, firing an arrow down the hall fairly speedy. The new improved crossbow took a lot longer and quite a few pieces to make. It seemed unecessarily complicated to make, but was stronger and when it worked it was certainly effective, making a hole in a paper target that we blue-tacked to the front door. Anyway, it was fun and for the first time I got to make something out of knex that actually worked - lego is more my 'thing', never did get the hang of knex. Ds1 had a go at designing his own version today, quite a simple design but it worked.
Yesterday, I overslept, woke up at 8.55am realising that I was meant to be helping out at dd1's preschool at 9.15am! I hadn't bought any snacks for the break time (parent helper responsibility) so needed to get to Tescos on route, and the kids were just sat downstairs in their pjs watching tv! So at 9.10am I was chopping up carrots into fingers and trying to work out whether the humous was past it's best (it was). So, after rushing around like mad things, we stopped off at Tescos to stock up on humous, breadsticks etc, and finally arrived about 9.45am.
Preschool was chaotic - lots of small boys with heaps of noisy testosterone, far too many adults around, but none of them seeming to be in charge, and my 3 causing even more chaos. And one child was apparently very allergic to humous (typical!) I ended up talking to another parent and giving a very poor case for home ed (my brain wasn't really in gear), who then told me she was a GP and was looking at me as if she was about to report me to the local authority and have me sectioned {g}. At that point I went and hid in the preschool kitchen for the rest of the morning doing the washing up! I suppose it's just as well we don't have to do the school run every day, there would be this sad, motley, disorganised bunch arriving late every day!
Anyway, by the afternoon we were all worn out. dd1 had a friend back for lunch and play and I disappeared while they were quiet to do some web surfing. I found some interesting projects on the http://www.instructibles.com/ website - ds2 was looking over my shoulder and once I printed a few things out he disappeared upstairs and started making knex crossbows. We found several on the website, some were quite complicated, some had unintelligible instructions, but after we'd sorted through them we found some that looked 'do-able'. The basic mini crossbow was quick to make, didn't take many pieces and worked quite well, firing an arrow down the hall fairly speedy. The new improved crossbow took a lot longer and quite a few pieces to make. It seemed unecessarily complicated to make, but was stronger and when it worked it was certainly effective, making a hole in a paper target that we blue-tacked to the front door. Anyway, it was fun and for the first time I got to make something out of knex that actually worked - lego is more my 'thing', never did get the hang of knex. Ds1 had a go at designing his own version today, quite a simple design but it worked.
The Basic Mini Crossbow design made from the webpage:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Mini-Powerful-Knex-Bow/
Testing the mini-bow
There were loads of other ideas for projects on the website, just putting 'airplane' in the search box led to pages and pages of ideas. I like the idea of trying to 'make an ipod speaker out of a hallmark card'. Unfortunately they've had to remove the pattern for knitting a tardis due to complaints from the BBC on copyright issues. Shame, cos I fancied having a bash at that...
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