To make it easier on me, and all the kids, it's best to have some definite activity to get stuck into. Initially they were happy to play Duplo by themselves, or else work on the new form of art I'd shown them that morning (constructing a picture with lines which extend beyond the thing, which then need colouring in)...
... which gave me time to try out the initial idea of in-cereal-box dioramas and see that it was going to be a pain to try to do with Oshin around, even though it did look great...
... so perhaps we'll do that another weekend, when I can think of a pseudo-educational way to use it.
Instead, I had the idea of making another film in Manx, with them acting it out this time, instead of last-weeks laborious animation.
Knowing that we had a scutch of cardboard to make a shield from, I chose Teeval, a story of how an Irish warrior came to the Isle of Man to have a blacksmith make a sword for him, but meets a mermaid who helps him via a magic shield.
Happily the boys were excited to make lists of characters, scenes and props, before dashing about and organising everything on the kitchen floor that we needed. As this was going on, I looked up some key Manx words I knew Finn wouldn't know ('shield', 'untie', 'blacksmith' etc.). All this activity was also great for keeping Oshin entertained!
As it turned out, we weren't ready to start filming until after lunch, when Oshin was asleep, but it was great fun and both of the boys were great at it (especially Finn, whose patience for this sort of thing was much better than Orry's):
As you'll see from the stills, the full 4-minute film is well worth a watch, even if you're not a Manx speaker:
If you're wondering, we're trying to do things in Manx in order to keep up Finn (& Orry's) spoken Manx at least a bit. Even if there is little Educational from making a film like this, it at least allows them to think in Manx for a bit.
Once Oshin was up again (with Cori having sorted out her soon-to-be patches for a quilt she is to make of clothes from the kids we're too sentimental to let go of entirely), we had a video call with my family, though Granny was too rubbish at technology to actually join in!
Then the ball pit came out!
As you can see, it is all Oshin & Orry, causing havoc. In contrast, Finn was quietly reading a magazine in a corner!
Here is the sort of jeel those younger two can get up to, and why they enjoy playing with each other so much, often to our despair!
Since it was the weekend, we got out the last of our cones from the ice-cream delivery and treated ourselves. Of course, Oshin wasn't going to miss out!
You will have noted, perhaps, that the boys were in pyjamas - this is true to the new weekend/weekday rule - that they get to divide the weekend from the week by not wearing clothes. Also different is that we're not doing exercise on the weekend, but instead doing our Dance Party, where someone leads everyone else in a dance to music we pick at random. We also treated ourselves to a half-hour-long yoga session today, making good on their constant requests to do them when we scroll through for the shorter ones during the week. (This one, on Pokemon, to be precise!)
A good day!
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