World War II Diorama

(Goblin is 4 years old)

The other day Goblin announced that he wanted to make a model of the D-Day landings. I thought he just meant he wanted to play with his WWII planes and soldiers but when I suggested it he 'tut-tutted' me and explained that he wanted to stick the 'model's onto a scene so we couldn't use his toys as that would be "a waste". 

Fortunately we had quite a lot of cardboard kicking about, so following Goblin's instructions I set to work making an array of WWII vehicles. Over the years of working with my son and cardboard, I have come to realise that less is more. He has a great imagination so I don't need to spend ages painting and decorating and making things look accurate. So I did the minimum to depict the vehicles requested. 

To my surprise Goblin took on the decoration himself. He started by drawing Rondells on the Spitfires and used a double pen hold to scribble camouflage on the tanks. Then he asked me to show him how to draw Swastikas for the Messerschmitts. For a child who doesn't like colouring and feels pressured if you ask him to try and write his name, he sure can draw detail when its something that interests him. I experienced a strange mixture of pride and discomfort when I saw how accurately he'd managed them. Lets just hope he doesn't start drawing them at nursery or we'll have some explaining to do.

We even got him to draw soldiers. The one above I'm told is Goblin - he wanted to feature in his own diorama.

 We put all the models together in a big beach and sea scenario with the planes attached to kebab sticks. And Goblin even added some extra detail of planes on fire (on the "baddies" side obviously).

While playing with his diorama he may have reinvented history, in Goblin's version the Allies had a bit of help with their invasion, in the form of birds of prey!

Further reading:
Goblin's fascination with World War II originally stemmed from visiting Duxford Imperial War Museum. Find out more here
We have been building on his interest through further visits, reading books and imaginary play, you can find an example here
Two excellent WWII resources are the Usborne WWII flap book and Second World War Cards
(The two Usborne links above are affiliate links which take you to Amazon. If you purchase products I receive a financial benefit)

Art appreciation for preschoolers

(Goblin is 4 years old)

Goblin and I took a trip to the Royal Academy of Art in London to see an exhibition that had been recommended to us as good for kids. It's called Sensing Space and it will be running until 6 April. The exhibition is, unlike many art exhibitions, entirely interactive. This is perfect for little kids. 

Goblin's favourite room contained four spiral staircases and a giant ramp. He spent a good hour running up the staircases and down the ramps, and then doing it the other way. At first, while I thought it was fun I didn't entirely appreciate the 'art' of it. But as I stood there some adults walks past the tops of the staircases and got to the ramp and said, "Oh its just a disabled ramp" and turned around. That's when the penny dropped. "Sensing Space" is about making what you will of the space the artists have provided. For the adults all they saw was a disabled ramp, but for Goblin is was a source of huge entertainment.

In another room a giant arch made of plastic honeycomb stood invitingly. Boxes of long coloured straws were placed around the edges, accompanied by many art students busily weaving their straws, twisting them, tying them and trying to place them into the holes at the highest points of the dome. For a long time Goblin refused to actually give up any of his straw stash. But eventually, after going round the rest of the exhibits twice, he begrudgingly gave up a few straws to poke into the lower holes that he could reach.

My favourite exhibit was a beautiful maze made of branches with a stone and mirror room in the centre. The noise when you walked on the stone was disproportionately loud and Goblin loved crunching around on it. I couldn't get any decent shots because the lighting was low and Goblin was running at breakneck speed to hide from me - yes I still haven't learnt not to play hide and seek in a maze with a four year old.

There were several other rooms to investigate as well. The exhibition is quite pricy for adults at £15.50 but kids get in free. We spent a good couple of hours there and would probably have stayed longer if we didn't have plans. Plus you get to sound very posh when you say that you took your child to an art gallery!

Easy Peasy Puppet show

(Goblin is 4 years old)

The other day Goblin came down in the morning and said he wanted to put on a puppet show. 

"Hmm! OK" said I and we set to work creating some puppets. He is currently mildly obsessed with the Octonauts so our puppet theme was easily settled on. 

Fortunately we have an Octonauts sticker book so I was able to use that as a reference to copy the characters. I nearly fell off my chair in surprise when Goblin agreed to colour them. Goblin flat out refuses to do colouring in usually. I have never insisted he 'stays in the lines' when colouring, but its obviously something he has picked up, and because he feels this is too tricky he normally just won't give it a go. He actually only agreed because I explained that we would cut them out afterwards so he didn't need to even attempt to stay in the lines. 

We attached kebab sticks to the back of each character and then hid under a chest to perform our show for Hublet. Below is our re-enactment of the Octonauts and the whale shark - one of Goblin's favourite episodes. 

You can watch clips of the actual Octonauts on the cbeebies website.

Thank you cards

(Goblin is 4)

Goblin had a party for his birthday and the fancy dress theme was 'Flight'. He'd wanted it to be 'Red Arrows' but we'd encouraged him to widen it out to give the parents a fighting chance at convincing their kids to actually wear a costume.
He had an amazing time, and got a huge stash of presents from his very generous friends. I had a bit of a nightmare trying to work out who had given us what present. A combination of cards becoming separated from presents and preschoolers signing their own names with no back up parental interpretation. But we got there in the end, a solid list of people to thank.

I'm trying to teach Goblin that its important to say thank you for gifts, and as he opened them after the party I wanted each child to know that Goblin was grateful for what they specifically had brought. But Goblin can't write, and he isn't interested in writing, so the idea of getting him to attempt to sign his name 16 times was off the table. Instead I tried to find a way that he could contribute to the 'Thank you card' making effort.

I cut out 16 identical red arrows. And laid them on the table with glitter, glue and blue rectangles of paper. Goblin found them first thing in the morning and before he'd even got dressed he wanted to start creating. This was great. I'd had visions of me coaxing him to do one or two and me ending up doing the rest, but he was very enthusiastic and we set up a little production line. His main interest was scattering the glitter to depict the smoke coming from the back of the red arrow planes. So I did big glue crossed and stuck the planes on, then laid them out for him to glitter.

The finished products were simple, but Goblin had obviously contributed, which was what I was hoping for.
(sorry about the pictures, 6am lighting!)