Rock on...Camelot rock 'n' roll marble game



You need: two Pringles cartons, a couple of milk cartons, one shoe box,  one roll of sticky-back plastic e.g. from Silvan (about 44 kr a roll) or wrapping paper, shiny paper for turrets and roofs, a yoghurt pot and 'creme fraiche' pot, some glue or a glue gun (but be careful - the glue gets VERY hot), black and grey newspaper pictures from which to cut out the windows and rocks round the base of the castle, some scissors and a few marbles or small balls of clay made to look like rocks. A newspaper to cover the table before you start.

Once you've made the castle, put it on the floor and from a set distance away, roll the marbles through the gateways you've cut in the castle wall. Younger kids have more fun if you use a bigger box and tennis balls. Have fun!

Measure the tube against the side of the box
and mark where it comes ends.

Imagine the open end of the tube is a round clock face and cut slits up to your mark at 12 o'clock and 3 o'clock..

Slot the tubes over the corners of the box to make sure they fit snugly. 

Take them off the box again and cover them with stick-backed plastic, wrapping 

paper or rocks cut out of grey newspaper pictures. Cut up the slits again and 

slot and glue them down over the corners of the box again.





Measure enough gold paper to make a collar around each yoghurt pot and leave about 5 cm of gold paper sticking over the end. Before sticking the collar around each pot, measure and cut roughly equally spaced slits down to where the tower ends. Now bend every other flap right down and stick it to the upside down bottom of the yoghurt pot. Bend the alternate flaps over halfway down and stick them so altogether they formed the castellations (bits poking up, down, up, down, up at the top of the tower). See in the picture below, we haven't finished the taller tower yet.



The slits in the square tower at the back should be at 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock.

The rim of the creme fraiche pot looked great cut off and

lowered upside down over the yoghurt pot. 

Shame I didn't think of that until I'd taken all the other photos.



We didn't stick the smaller milk carton (back left) down because then we

can keep the marbles inside it so they don't get lost.

We cut equal sized strips of sticky-backed plastic (2 cm x 6 cm) and added them, bent
double, at intervals around the walls of the finished castle to produce the same effect.

Older kids get more maths practice if you use numbers they have trouble multiplying and adding up ;o).



Rock on... with rock cakes

Rock bottom (silly but true story)
We often go for seaside scrambles. One day Jakob and I took my boys to the beach, told them to be careful and set them relatively loose. They found lots of lovely climbing rocks dotted along the sand and also spotted some chalk. How creative! It wasn’t a long walk, but I suddenly realised it was a quiet walk. And that spelled trouble. Looking a little closer, I was horrified to see a trail of naughty chalk drawings on rocks stretching back the way we’d come. The little tykes were teasing me! It took me half an hour to draw underpants on all the cheeky pictures. And when I finally straightened up, I saw three uniformed officers from the local radar station watching me with amusement from up on the cliff. Goodness knows what they thought! By then the guys were halfway back to the car…

INGREDIENTS

2 cups sifted flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ cup soft margarine

½ cup brown sugar

3 tablespoons raisins

2 medium eggs

1 teaspoon of vanilla

4 teaspoons milk

½ cup dried shredded coconut

Creative diversions...
... because we started too close to bedtime for a dash to the shops and had to rely on what we had in the cupboard:
1. No excuse for not sifting the flour but we couldn't see any lumps - or the sieve for that matter.
2. We used butter straight from the fridge but I put it on top of the oven on a saucer for a bit to soften it. It's definitely better to think ahead and leave it out of the fridge for a couple of hours to soften up.
3. Our half packet of brown sugar was rock hard so we used light cane sugar. Odd then that our back right rock cake still came out darker than the original recipe.
4. The original recipe said four tablespoons of raisins. That sounded a lot. In fact it said tbsp but as I always muddle that up with tsp I wrote it out in full.
5. I forgot to check if they were medium eggs - but we always buy free-range. Either they run around more, get skinny butts and make smaller eggs or have access to more food, get bigger butts and make bigger eggs. Not sure.
6. We scraped some sticky black goo off a vanilla stick. Nowhere near a teaspoon because when we added it to the mixture it looked suspiciously like dirt. Tasted good though.
7. We got the coconut right!

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Take the baking sheets out of the oven and preheat the oven to 360°F or 190°C (165°C if using the fan - the button like a propeller that looks tastelessly like a radioactive sticker)

2. Put a sheet of greaseproof paper on a baking tray to save grimy, unwieldy washing up.

3. Wash your hands then rub the fat into the flour and baking powder until it looks like fine breadcrumbs (though we used our happy yellow mixer called Petal).

4. Add the raisins, sugar and coconut and mix well.

5. Beat together the eggs in a cup (so you can pick out odd bits of shell that escape into the cup instead of having to root about in the flour). Add the vanilla and pour it into the flour mixture. Add the milk slowly while mixing.

6. Even with a mixer, now you really have to wash your hands. Take off any rings, flour your hands first to stop the mixture sticking to your fingers like a Thriller video, flour the countertop and then bring the dough together by hand. It should be moist (though if it ends up rock hard, you'll have an excuse because they're rock cakes).

7. Place spoonfuls of dough on the baking tray and form them into cone shapes. Ours flopped a bit so make them good and pointy. If you like, poke any raisins that are sticking out back into the dough so they don’t get too toasty.

8. Bake for 15 minutes or until they look something like the front rock cake in our picture.

We used coconut, but there are plenty of sensible recipes without. Ours were nice cut open with butter and jam - they tasted a bit like scones, after all. Though on reflection, they probably don't if you stick to the proper recipe :o).

Have fun!

PS We find a metal spatula used sideways is best for getting dough off the countertop :o) 

Socks in the spotlight - sock monsters and shoebox theatre





I’ve parented through everything from Ninja Turtles to Teletubbies, but questions like: “Where does the light go when you turn it off?”, “Why doesn’t our dog have a belly button?” and “Where do odd socks go to die?” still catch me out. And I still find dirty socks on the couch. Thinking back, I devised an effective remedy for that one with my ‘big boys’: first I introduced a clothing allowance and then I started snipping the ends off any socks found on or around the couch. That kept them on their toes. They got the message and only a couple of socks had to bite the dust – not that it’s dusty under my couch …
It broke my principle of making things last, but odd socks fit in nicely with this week’s theatre theme and my general aim of keeping one step ahead, channelling children’s imagination − rather than following them around wiping it off the walls. Sock monsters are easy and fun. Try the sock on your child’s hand – heel over the knuckles with toes forming the mouth – and mark the eyes etc before sticking or sewing them on. Fabric can run, so test it in water before using it on pale socks. You might want to wash the socks first too.

 

Make up your own storylines or raid your bookcase for ideas:
Little Red Riding Sock, The Ugly Sockling or,
my personal favourite, Goldisocks and the three bears. 



What big ears you've got Watson...and one of them is inside out!
Hope he doesn't see those 'skellybone' trousers and fancy a bite to eat...  



 Film the show and you’ll have ‘footage’ to show relatives.

Our homemade theatre really is out-of-the-box. A shoebox. After reading a book or watching a film, hold a brainstorming session on characters and plot. Draw or cut backdrops from old magazines, or printouts, use figures from your toy box taped to kebab sticks, design costumes and ultimately film their own sequel. We used cutouts stuck on bases from an old board game to make them stand up. Cut holes in the side of the box so you can hold the sticks and move the figures as the plot unfolds. Disney recently took over Star Wars, so you can challenge your kids to get out their LEGO and produce the next Star Wars adventure - The Empire Has a Socking Great Monster Adventure?