Term of achievement

We are just about to escape to the country, and from our computer, for a week. The first half of the school's summer term is about to finish - and it does so in a flurry of red, white and blue - with the Diamond Jubilee celebrations resulting in the children bringing home patriotically decorated paper crowns, fans and, somewhat randomly, pompoms.

We end the half term of school as we began - with Daddy away. He was working in India at Easter, and tonight he flies back from Bahrain; we will collect him from the airport tomorrow. The children get so excited about meeting him - the picture below shows them minutes before his arrival last time - see what I mean?

The airport-collections-of-daddy neatly punctuate a six-week period of busy playing, learning and achieving for all of us. I've been working on some very exciting projects; writing and performing a brand new story about a teapot, a coffee pot and a chocolate pot for the Geffrye Museum, and designing all manner of horse puppets for a new session at The British Museum. And Daddy has been writing a new show to take up to the Edinburgh Fringe in August, so there's been much drumming and guitar-wielding round our house too.

Bud and Daisy have also achieved a lot this half term. They were both Stars of the Week at school - Bud for his brilliant numeracy work, and Daisy for being a great friend and role model. Daddy made them a CD to say well done. It's full of fantastic rock, pop, jazz, house and rap songs, with a Numbers and Friendship theme - how cool is that? We've also been experimenting with a new way to measure the children's individual personal achievements. Bud puts a car in a jar every time he's successful at his particular goal, and Daisy puts a marble in hers. When their jars are full (which is about every week) they get a treat - a new book, or maybe time on the computer. As soon as the jars are full, they are emptied - a very noisy and satisfying activity - ready to be filled again. As a motivational 'carrot' - it's working a treat, and I think they look great too. Now, how to get these jars to Wales...

Satellite City

Satellite City

Today, our rainy day art-making transformed the things I'd kept from a previous activity into the finished piece above. It's mixed media, and it's a city - a combination of London, Monaco and a made-up place, apparently. Overall, it reminds me of a satellite Google map - hence its title Satellite City.

It's turned out to be an interactive work of art too; the cars have been racing round its roads all afternoon.

Buddy was in charge of street planning; he laid out every last section of road on the city-print cloth.

Buildings were cut out from our previously printed paper and include the Gherkin, St Paul's Cathedral, Buckingham Palace and the London Eye.

Here's a selection of our printed paper from which the buildings were cut.

And this is the printed cloth that became the city's background.

So how did we previously create our printed materials?

By squelching, stamping and hop-scotching in paint-bottomed footwear - that's how.

Buddy and Daisy have wanted to try this ever since hearing about teacher and author Steve Light; his students accidentally made shoe-print art when they stepped in some spilled paint. I love Anna of The Imagination Tree's brilliant take on this activity too; her daughter ran around the garden on flattened cardboard boxes whilst wearing 'painted' wellies - looked like great fun.

Light went on to use various shoe-prints as collage illustrations for his fantastic book The Shoemaker Extraordinaire. Buddy and Daisy are fascinated by his cleverly created shoe-print world and it's great that we've now made one of our very own in Satellite City.