Building a Roller Coaster

The Melbourne Meteor

Hi it's P here.  Well, we just spent the first week of the holidays building a roller coaster!  OK, not quite full size and just out of paper, but a great family construction project none-the-less.  I found a great site called paperrollercoasters.com run by ex-teacher Andrew Gatt.  You can buy templates for $20 and print them onto card.  They come with a detailed instruction manual:

How to build paper roller coasters

We first cut out the designs and folded and taped them to make the parts - columns, beams, bracing, shelves, brackets, straight track, sharp turns, wide turns, loops, merges, switches and funnels!  The templates were very well designed and we appreciated the thought that had gone into them.

Construction of the framework then began, anchored to a cardboard base.

The Snork Maiden at work building a strong foundation

Moomintroll checking on proceedings

The finished frame and a bucket of track parts

We all had input into how the final roller coaster would look.  The Snork Maiden designed and assembled the fast track section.  Moomintroll created the slow track section.  Over a few days it all came together, and "The Melbourne Meteor" was born!

Marvin & The Melbourne Meteor in 3D

There were so many things to like about this project.  The girls got great experience thinking in 3 dimensions.  They interpreted plans, worked with nets and created parts.  They were also exposed to the engineering challenges of team work, project management, problem solving and innovation.

Loss

This year we have experienced much loss. The deaths of Laura and Mary were quickly followed by the sudden decline of our beautiful Harris and then the very unexpected death of lovely bunny Nutmeg a week later.  We now have just three pets remaining - Sniff, Hazel and Cuddlepie.  Although they all showed signs of distress and loneliness at first they are now all quite content with being the only one of their kind. Sniff in particular is like a different dog; she is quiet, calm and more affectionate now that she's the top and only dog in the house.
Harris was our first dog child. She was smoochy, loving, daring, inquisitive, loyal, energetic, exhausting and patient. The support she offered me while I was in early labour with the Snork Maiden is something I will never forget and the way she gracefully accepted each new baby into the family was amazing.
Dr. P wrote a poem for Harris and I have compiled some photos of her from years past. There aren't nearly enough to show how beautiful she was, but as always, our best memories are in our hearts.

Harris and Sniff with their cousins Rodney and Reg

Harris

Our tweedy, wriggly Harris pup,
Tearing round with that crazy bum-scooting run,
Would be worn out yapping from the car window,
Or between swallow sprints lie panting, done.

At storms to bark, the horn to howl, the mower to yip.
To stalk dogs and possums, pigs and bunnies.
To bound recklessly into creeks,
Sport a torn ear, a swollen lip.

But she was a gentle soul, 
A purring dog with an ear-flapping head shake,
Who insistently nosed your elbow for a pat,
And lay dreaming with legs twitching and muffled yelps.

Dreaming of swallows.

Ballet photos 2013

Two months have flown by and I have so much to put on this blog that I don't know where to start!

I'll ease into it with a few photos of the girls in their ballet costumes. 

First up, Miss Moomintroll as one of the 12 Dancing Princesses attended by some Golden Nymphs.

And now Miss Snork Maiden as a dancer from Napoli, a gypsy, a bluebird and a contemporary person.

Volcanoes - Saturday Science

Hi there - this is P again after a Saturday Science session on volcanoes.  We've always wanted to make a volcano and it seemed like a great way to get back into some Saturday Science after getting out of the routine for a few weeks.  We started by thinking about what's inside the Earth.  It's very hot in there, so hot that rock melts and is called "magma".  When magma breaks through the surface we call it "lava".  All that separates us from the magma below is a crust of cooled, solid rock.  How thick is the crust?  H, R and K made their guesses on the picture above.  It turns out, if the Earth were an apple, the crust would be about half the thickness of the apple skin!  This is still tens of kilometres thick, but you get the idea.

The crust is broken into tectonic plates which float on the magma below.  Where plates push into each other mountains form (like the Himalayas).  A fun way to model this is with pancakes floating on maple syrup!

The pushing and rubbing also creates heat and releases trapped gas and this is why volcanoes often form where plates meet.  Time to go outside and build some volcanoes!

Take a jar, surround it with soil, add some warm water, sodium bicarbonate, detergent and food dye.  Then pour in vinegar and watch the eruption!

Vinegar reacts with the sodium bicarbonate to release carbon dioxide gas.  This bubbles up in the detergent and causes a magnificent eruption.  Heat causes carbon dioxide to be released also, which is what happens when you cook with self raising flour, and also when carbonate rocks are heated.  Our homemade volcanoes erupted many times until at last our supplies ran out.  It was a lot of fun.  We finished with a great National Geographic video of real volcanoes in action.

August

This post is so long overdue I can't quite remember all the hilariously funny and deeply interesting events and conversations that must certainly have happened.  I could make some up I suppose but at the moment I'm sitting in a crowded corridor at Box Hill TAFE. There are so many other ballet mums chatting and laughing and rogue ballerinas running riot all over the place that I can hardly hear myself think. The conversation next to me is extremely distracting but as I don't know these women I'd better keep on typing and pretend I'm not listening.  

So here's a list of the worky type things the students at the Brian St Centre have been up to.
The most exciting new experience for the Snork Maiden is her debut into adult society as a volunteer at the Eltham Toy Library.  She was very keen to start working in a library shelving books, but all our local libraries were most unhelpful and couldn't offer her any kind of work experience as she is "too young".  So after perusing the Volunteering Victoria website we found the Eltham Toy Library was in need of a couple of volunteers.  After emails, phone calls and a rather stressful interview with the lovely lady in charge the Snork Maiden began her new career and is now, two months later, practically running the place.  Well, ok that is a slight exaggeration but she is doing very well and her boss told me that she's working so much more reliably and competently than many of her adult helpers!
Her duties include:

• receiving returned toys -  checking for damage, counting parts, ticking items off the receipts

• setting up and putting away toys

• returning toys to shelves

• tidying shelves

• using the computer to borrow new items and print out receipts

Moomintroll also enjoys coming along to the toy library sessions because of all the very cute toddlers that come in. She's made friends with some of them and will happily keep them occupied while their mothers browse the shelves for new toys to borrow.  While the girls go about their duties,  I spend a lovely hour sitting in the adjoining Eltham library engrossed in the land of Westeros and the saga that is The Game of Thrones.  From time to time Moomintroll wanders in and does some maths, and we always visit the Teapot cafe in the same building for lunch afterwards, so it's a very productive and tasty morning for all of us.

  *It's getting harder to concentrate here. The conversation next to me has suddenly decreased in volume and they are talking in low, very serious tones. No matter how hard I try I can't make out much beyond "...thirteen years of school..." ,  " ...the teachers can't...."  , "...a lot of parents are complaining...",  "....get serious now because you have another 6 years of school ahead of you...".  
It's intriguing but I've heard all this so many times before from nearly all of the school mums I know. Perhaps I should step in and quietly offer them an alternative.  It's times like these I need some  "Home Education? Ask me how!" brochures to casually strew about the place or drop in their path. 

Back to the important stuff now. Stop eavesdropping T!

Just Brass practices are going great guns. At the end of term all the kids put on a concert and we heard some beautiful and not so beautiful renditions of Rain Rain, Good King Wenceslas, Indigo Rock and Campdown Races over and over and over and over again.  Besides the massed band pieces there were 51 solos and duets, one of them by Moomintroll and her friend Hayley which was a huge surprise for us all. It was awesome by the way.

Other learnin' done included starting our own newspaper called The Daily Brain with chief reporters Paul Robinsons, Jane Brain and Marge Areen.  You can read some of the fascinating reports on Paul and Jane's blogs here and here. 
Those two intrepid reporters have also filmed an interview with their tennis coach J.





The Snork Maiden is blitzing through the Life of Fred books. She's now on the third to last book. The moomin child is working her way slowly though her maths books and has just completed her first one, making her a 'Maths Wizard' apparently. She has a certificate to prove it. She even wrote her own name on it.

Well, that's pretty much it for August.    So far September is proving to be a productive month but more on that in my next post. 
I think the ballet class is wrapping up now, so I shall do the same.

Coming up in the next post: Jane Brain and Paul Robinsons's must see interview and rare footage of Moomintroll's debut duet!

Passing notes

I remember when I was in grade 2. We were writing innocent jokes and messages, passing them around the class, trying to stifle our giggles. We thought we were so funny and clever, until we got caught and my best friend dobbed on the rest of us.  I spent all afternoon sitting outside the principal's office, my nose red from crying. He took pity on me as it was my first offence and I got off lightly. Other kids had to go home with red strap marks on their legs.  Such a shame, seeing as we were all having such fun. We certainly learnt a lesson that day, but I don't think it was the one that the teachers had in mind.
The students of the Brian St Learning Centre have started passing notes around too. One student in particular is obsessed with it. She just can't stop herself writing pages and pages of special notes to people. It is really wonderful to see her spontaneously working so hard and seeing her pride in herself. This is her note to me:

"I know how you are. You are good and happy. And the best thing of all is you."

I have a growing collection of these notes on my desk and I love to read through them when I'm feeling down. They never fail to cheer me up.

Other notes that have been passed around here lately are musical notes.  Both girls have joined Just Brass
- a local music initiative by the Salvation Army. We now have a percussionist and a cornet player in our midst.

I haven't filmed the Snork Maiden on the drums yet because she only has a rubber drum head to practice on at the moment. Once we get her a snare drum watch out!

So that ticks off two subjects - English (written expression) and Music.  Oh, and maths too from working out all those tricky drum rhythms and timings.
We've had a change to our PE program. Goodbye Kids Cardio after five happy years and hello to tennis at Silver Grove.  J is a great teacher who fits in tennis classes for home educated kids between his regular classes for preschoolers.  The girls are really enjoying the lessons and have made some new friends too, so that's a bonus.

Moomintroll had her first ballet exam this week. She was in a line of three girls, so had to do many of the exercises and dances on her own (usually they are done in pairs). It didn't seem to bother her though, and she enjoyed the experience.  Now they are setting their sights on the final performance for the year and she is beside herself knowing that she'll be dancing in The 12 Dancing Princesses.  The Snork Maiden may be an Outlandish Creature in a ballet inspired by William Morris' writings.  Did you know that besides being an amazing artist he was also a writer?  I didn't.  I consulted Mr. Wikipedia and discovered that Morris was so prolific and famous as a writer that he was a huge influence on C.S Lewis, James Joyce and J.R.R Tolkien!  There you go, you learn something new everyday.  I have downloaded three of his books from Project Gutenberg and can't wait to begin reading.  What I'm really looking forward to though is the set design for the Morris ballet. Mr H from the girls' ballet school is a superb artist and creates wonderful sets. His Medieval Scene backdrop a few years back was amazing.

one of my favourite Morris designs - The Strawberry Thief

Song of Love

Yesterday we visited Healesville Sanctuary where we were very privileged to hear a lyrebird practicing his courtship song.

Later in the day we passed his aviary again and noted that it was closed. He must have really impressed his lady friend!