{"id":1981,"date":"2012-02-18T23:32:02","date_gmt":"2012-02-18T23:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1981"},"modified":"2012-03-14T00:34:18","modified_gmt":"2012-03-14T00:34:18","slug":"a-week-off-for-half-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1981","title":{"rendered":"A week off for half-term"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week has been school holidays in Hampshire, so I took a week off to entertain the rampaging monsters otherwise known as my children<\/a>. <\/p>\n

As always, it’s been a fun mix of things. With a three year old and a seven year old, the general plan is to try something a bit different every day so they’re not bored by the end of the week. <\/p>\n

We did a few arts and craft<\/strong> things. We made our own candles<\/a>, melting down candle wax chips from Hobbycraft in a saucepan, adding colouring and pouring them into moulds. We did some sewing<\/a>, making stuff like animal-shaped cushions<\/a>. <\/p>\n

We spent an afternoon mucking about with a camera and a microphone. Faith loves singing into a small USB microphone we’ve got, so we recorded her singing some of her favourite songs. Grace tried making a stop motion animation using her Sylvanian Families<\/a>. It ended up being 25 seconds long, but between taking all the photos, and recording the voices and sound-effects, it took her ages!<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

Given Grace’s recent decision that she wants to be a scientist when she’s older<\/a>, we tried to fit a few science<\/strong> activities in the week. I’ve blogged about two of the most interesting ones already – making a voice box<\/a> out of a balloon and straws, and making an evaporograph<\/a> from a sandwich bag, rubber bands and a plastic cup. We also tried a few other random bits and pieces, like making a race track for balloons from cheap thread<\/a> and racing them across the bedroom. <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

The kids both love to eat, so we did a few food-related<\/strong> things. The all-you-can-eat buffet at the new Chinese restaurant in town was a good excuse for trying out a bunch of new food, as well as working on our chopsticks technique<\/a>. <\/p>\n

We made some odd things, like spaghetti threaded through hot dogs<\/a>, and hand-shaped jelly<\/a> using rubber gloves as moulds. We also tried some more normal things, like getting the kids to make their own pizzas, and squeeze their own orange juice. <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

The weather was rubbish, but we managed to do some outside<\/strong> stuff. We found a couple of geocaches<\/a> – although the girls call it treasure-hunting in the woods! We also did the usual, like several trips to the playground, and rides on their bikes<\/a> and scooters. Less said about Grace’s attempt to teach me to use a skipping rope<\/a>, the better. <\/p>\n

Because of the weather, we did more indoor-but-active<\/strong> stuff – a morning at the soft-play centre, a couple of trips to the swimming pool, as well as taking Grace to her usual gymnastics class at Knightwood. <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

The rest of the week was filled with random bits and pieces<\/strong> around the house: reading books together, playing board games (the favourite this week ended up being Marble Run, with Junior Scrabble in second), and watching a lot of Doctor Who with Grace. Thanks to LOVEFiLM’s streaming on the XBox, we had a movie night with popcorn and Gnomeo and Juliet<\/a> (great film – a kids film that’s fun for adults, too). And we had Grace’s friend over for a sleepover another night. <\/p>\n

I managed to avoid thinking about work<\/strong> too much, but did spend a few evenings writing a presentation I’ve got to give this Wednesday. I’ve been using Prezi<\/a> since 2009, so have been keen to try something new. I used this as a chance to write a presentation in HTML with CSS transforms for the transitions. I tried a few techniques but settled on impress.js<\/a>, a cool 3D presentation tool. I’ll have to see how it works out on an audience on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Amy was pretty ill, so I had the TV<\/strong> to myself for most of the week. Thanks to Netflix on the XBox, I finally watched Season 2 of Dollhouse (awesome!) and played a lot of Modern Warfare 3 (I finally prestiged!)<\/p>\n

That was my week. On Monday, I’m back to work<\/a>. A chance to relax and make up for a week with nowhere near enough coffee. \ud83d\ude09 <\/p>\n

(Oh – by the way, I should credit Roo with giving me the idea for a post looking back with rows of small square photo thumbnails, from his post this week on getting a very exciting new job<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week has been school holidays in Hampshire, so I took a week off to entertain the rampaging monsters otherwise known as my children. As always, it’s been a fun mix of things. With a three year old and a seven year old, the general plan is to try something a bit different every day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[328,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kids","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}