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"Zing Things" - 5 new articles

1. opera on wheels
2. I shouldn't be allowed out
3. Absolutely Speechless Wednesday
4. Works for me Wednesday - Not this week!
5. Beatrix Potter, author, illustrator and scientist.
6. More Recent Articles
7. Search Zing Things

opera on wheels

As you’ll see if you scroll down my first attempt was an Easter craft WFMW. Now I know I should have done cars, so to help out, the girls have reminded me of this hilarious way to lighten the mood when it’s all getting a bit tedious for them in the back seat and life’s a bit frazzled in the front.

I usually start this off by singing what I see in my best ( or worst, says Rhianna) operatic diva singing style – like this…..

we are passing a vandalised bus stop… but look.. there are some buds on that tree –ee –ee

… the car in front is turning right without in-di- cat-ing.. and can you be qui-et in the back there…...

the shops on this street look in-ter-es-ting…do you like that dress in the wind-ow……

black and white zebra crossing coming up….yes, yes, yes we’re very nearly there…

The more mundane the things you sing about, the funnier it is. You have to do trills plus low and high notes. Sometimes the girls join in with the singing. Sometimes they just laugh. Very definitely at, not with, me.

I got this idea from Michael Rosen's poem The Car Trip - specifically the lines.

Mum tries to be exciting again:

'Look out the window

there's a tree.'

and please..can anyone help out with the twinkies? or scroll down.

I shouldn't be allowed out

As Rhianna approaches teenager-dom (tomorrow), family conversation is rather dominated by discussions on her need and desire for more freedom of movement. These discussions have taken on new meaning, since it has become clear that while I exhort them to ‘take care’ just as my mother did, they have good reason to doubt that I am capable in that regard myself.

I am writing with one arm in a sling, - fortunately the left -, complemented by the most terrific array of bruises all down my left side, in all the usual stomach-churning shades .

Although it’s an incomplete fracture, the injury to my arm is causing pretty complete chaos round here as well as a (temporary, believe me) role reversal the girls are thoroughly enjoying. They nag me to put on my sling to rest the joint and time me at my computer keyboard. They cook meals, bless them! and they are now loathe to let me out on my own. Me, a forty something woman who manages to fall up stairs in the middle of the afternoon, of course in a public place, while no more intoxicated than in the enjoyment of an absorbing conversation with a friend I hadn’t seen for a while? Well, maybe they have a point.

While my girls, your girls, your boys help around the home and take on chores at school and in the community, have a look at today’s entry for Absolutely Speechless Wednesday on child slavery. Sobering. Outrageous. I for one am going to join an anti-slavery organisation today and start speaking up and out.

Here's my it works for me Wednesday - a very easy, quick Easter egg craft.

Hard boil as many eggs as you feel you need. Cool them in a bowl of cold water to stop the yolks turning grey, (discoloured yolks always puts my children off eating them. )

Raid your sewing or junk box for items small enough to stick onto the eggs. Try out tiny flowers, poppers (press studs), even bits of sewing or embroidery thread. For a 'robots' approach look in the tool box for tiny tin tacks, screws, whatever. You can paint or not. Try offering prizes for 'alien' eggs pretty eggs, ugly eggs, geek eggs - friendliest egg, most appetising, most colourful, so that everyone is a winner. This project puts the fun into fiddly plus gets away from the pretty pretty approach, so may appeal to boys too.

The girls haven't made their eggs for this year yet, but when they do and I have a photo, I'll post it. In the meantime, Spring has sprung.

Absolutely Speechless Wednesday

Not quite wordless Wednesday – more speechless.

Today in in the year 2007, 8.4 million children are believed to live in slavery.

For more details on Dalyn, (right) who was sold as a slave for $150 - and other children like her -go to the BBC website pages This World.

Works for me Wednesday - Not this week!

We’ve been listening to the radio a lot this week, (see yesterday's post) and Beka was inspired to do some sewing by a discussion she heard on BBC Radio 4's Woman’s Hour bemoaning the fact that sewing isn’t taught in British schools any more.

Beka likes her craft projects short and sweet, so we came up with the idea of making a little drawstring bag in paper, with minimal sewing and a bit of gluing for maximum impact.

We found some gift wrap, stronger than tissue. You could use felt, or other fabric to suit, bearing in mind that flimsy fabrics are harder for children to cut, glue and sew.

This is where I have to tell you that I’m in Works for me Wednesday this week under false pretences. From now on It Doesn’t Really Work Very Well.

It took Beka several days to draw round a dinner plate and cut out a circle. During that time the plate was in and out of the cupboard several times. However, once one circle drawn and cut, Beka was pleased to see that there was enough paper to fold over and cut out two circles. She can make herself and her sister a bag each without too much extra effort. Except that’s enough effort for today thanks Mum. She decides to do something else.

Two days go by. Today, as she knows I want to post about this project today, she thoughtfully finds the paper hole punch and make holes around the edge – as far in as the punch will let her go.

Still with the paper/fabric flat, Beka’s going to decorate her bag. She hasn’t decided yet whether she will sew or will glue shapes/buttons/sequins. I don’t want to put her off, but might offer to show her how to sew on a small button or two for a ‘funky’ bag. Simple random crosses or stitches in bright embroidery thread will work well too. Or she might choose a star pattern that radiates out from the centre of the circle.

But no, all things considered, she decides she likes plain best. No decorating. Not even gluing. She finds some yellow ribbon. It’s too wide really, but she likes it. It’s to hand.

This is what you do with whatever you have to hand. Cut two lengths of (thin) ribbon or contrasting embroidery thread or cord to weave through the holes round the edge of the circle. Start each length at opposite sides of the circle. Work round the circle and when your thread meets, knot it, leaving a short length to pull on. Keep the circle of paper or fabric flat. You end up with short pull handles at opposite sides of the circle. Pull apart and the threads neatly gather and close the neck of your bag.

I did take photos of each step, but as I was downloading them from the camera got distracted and have filed them to such an obscure place on my computer that my search facility can’t find them. So roll on Thursday.

I’m going to read Beka a bedtime story now. It feels the best thing to do all round.

I think, given the right creative mood of course, this activity would be good for as a party activity – the children can make their own pretty bags for their party favours. (Good excuse to keep them small!) Depending on the age of the children, you may want to do the cutting and hole-making before the party, leaving the children to decorate the circles before you gather them up. Older girls – from 9 – should be able to cope with all the steps themselves if you show them step by step first and stay on hand for the knot tying.

Beatrix Potter, author, illustrator and scientist.

During a favourite radio programme this week, the presenter made an aside about the children’s writer and illustrator Beatrix Potter having discovered the biological process of symbiosis. As a seasoned reader of The Tales of Peter Rabbit, Mrs Tiggywinkle and Jeremy Fisher, and someone who collects stories of artists with second strings to their bows, my ears pricked up (like the proverbial rabbit!) and, soon as I could, I hit the Google search button.

Beatrix Potter didn’t, in the event, discover the process of symbiosis.

Symbiosis is relationship where two organisms or creatures offer essential or life-enhancing services to each other. Think of the tiny fish that pick clean the teeth of sharks. One eats, the other gets free dentistry.

What Beatrix Potter did do, even though an amateur, was to design and conduct a series of experiments whose publication in 1897 put her at what scientists now recognise as cutting edge of the biological sciences at the time.

Beatrix’s work as a scientific illustrator of fungi and lichen for Scottish naturalist Charles McIntosh prompted her to do her own research into the subjects she drew in such painstaking and accurate detail. Setting up her own experiments and reading widely on in the field of mycology, she became fascinated by a theory advanced by mycologists in Europe that a lichen was not a single living organism, but was in fact composed of two organisms – an alga and a fungus.

She did much to explore the exact nature of their mutually dependent – symbiotic – relationship, and although scoffed at by the predominantly male British scientific establishment at the turn of the 19th century, to the extent that she withdrew her paper, scientists today give her credit for advancing knowledge of the process considerably.

The rejection of her discoveries came just before her success as an author. Her time and attention moved on from the study of lichen in such detail, but the fortune she made from her smash hit books for children did allow her to become a significant benefactor to science and the preservation of the natural environment in Britain.

Merchandising tends to stress the ‘cutesy’ factor in Beatrix Potter’s drawings, but the Potter tourist attractions in the Lake District and in Perthshire in Scotland (home of Peter Rabbit, Mrs Tiggywinkle and Jeremy Fisher) pay tribute not only to her art, but to her scientific and observational acuity.

I haven’t seen it, but Renee Zellwegger plays Beatrix in the film Miss Potter, released at the very end of last year and pictured above.
There’s a new biography by Linda Lear recently published too.

To read more on Beatrix Potter’s achievements as a scientist, which should fascinate our daughters in their science class –try The Chemical Heritage Foundation.

Other Potter sites are:

http://www.bpotter.com

http://www.beatrixpottersociety.org.uk

http://www.peterrabbit.com

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