Cultural Festival Day!

I know I say that my work has been busy, and I guess I can't complain when sometimes the extra stuff is self inflicted. Still, this day, extra work that it is aside, is totally worth it and lots of fun. I run a 文化祭 (bunkasai) cultural festival day for the whole school. It's changing gradually each year and the kids love it. That said, it always required some prep work. 

This year, I had my ninja throwing boards that I painted for the 2025 festival ready to go. I also had the set of blue bean bags I'd made for the first one we ran back in 2024. I needed two additional sets of bean bags (one yellow, one white to match the sports teams we have), but thankfully, Steve's mum came to the rescue there. Not only did she cut all the fabric, but she sewed and filled over 200 bean bags for me as well. Good thing I blogged about it back in 2024, because that post turned out to be the best instructions to follow. 

Rachel came with me to school in the holidays for a day and did some prep work on the boxes I needed for a relay game as well as the shoe boxes I used for a sumo game. 

She also helped me paint the background for this six-metre long cherry blossom mural. 

This was a collaborative art work that the year 1 and 2 students contributed to on the festival day. They added the cherry blossoms all over the trees. 

I've been asking at school if I can paint murals, but the answer thus far has been no. This, however, feels like a step in the right direction. It's hanging where the Year 1 and 2 students put their bags, and you can see it all the way from the carpark because it's so big. Really brings some colour and fun to an otherwise boring wall. Wonder what we will do next time. 

Study Makeover (and Misc. New Year Holiday Things)

We didn't go anywhere over Christmas last year. It was very much a stay home and rest kind of break. Steve had ten days off work, but instead of trying to put in any kind of travel or get away, we just stayed home. It was surprisingly relaxing and also productive. 

Belated Happy New Year:
Rachel with her latest balloon creation to celebrate the Year of the Horse

Thanks to working in the tech industry, Steve gets a laptop upgrade every two years, which means we have older, but still great laptops just lying around the house. Since Sophie was moving into high school, and the girls are both just generally older and more capable with computers now, we thought we would actually set up the study with spaces for them to work in. 

The study is Steve's official office, since he works there everyday. It's got his big desk with all the screens and gadgets, but it also stores a stack of other stuff. We had the piano in there, under the shelves we had installed back in 2013 and all our extra musical instruments and cases in the corner. The shelves had initially served the purpose of holding our DVDs, but was currently holding our board game collection. And against the wall under the windows, was three 2 by 2 cube storage units (hand me downs from Fi) that had a collection of things from tech stuff to kids toys. 

This is an older photo, but you get the idea - stuff!

Knowing we needed to put two desks in the room ment we absolutely needed to clean out everything else. I did a huge cull of all of the games, and the kids toys, and all the craft supplies that I still had from when I ran a Family Day Care. So much stuff. But it was great to get rid of - most of it went to other people, or sold on marketplace. Not to landfill just yet. 

We also realised that we'd need to paint one of the walls, which had been hiding behind the piano. After the renos were finished in 2019, I had used the leftover wall paint to paint the entry, hallway and most of the study before I ran out. Since the final wall was firstly in the study (where really only Steve went) and secondly hidden behind a piano and some very full shelves, it was not worth getting more paint at the time. Now, however was different. So we took everything out and I painted the wall. 

And reinstalled the shelves. 

Twas beautiful! 

Two trips to Ikea later and we also had desks to set up and arrange. The piano (and other instruments) didn't fit back in, but they are not taking up too much space in the dining room. The girls both have smaller desks in their room and we had office chairs for them (that we picked up free from a furniture company down the road one day). Rachel has put her office chair out in the study and is using a big stool in her room while Sophie is doing the opposite. 

Everybody loves the new set up and the subsequent gaming that came with it. Steve and the girls are loving getting into playing together. Meanwhile my space is still round the corner near the washing machine and though I'm apart from everyone else, I love my sewing space so much that I can't complain. 

This whole study makeover was completed in the ten days (though I guess I did lots of the culling of things in the lead up to facilitate it) which was pretty cool. At no point did we feel rushed to get it done and Steve had a sleep in every morning. The right kind of holidays. 

Sophie enjoying the slow holidays making crepes in the pan she got for her birthday. 

Organised School Painting: Ninja Skills

Organised as I am, I finished this school year by preparing for an activity that's happening in March 2025. Since I've taken over as Japanese teacher, I've run a full day of "Cultural Festival" activities, otherwise known as the 文化祭 (bunkasai). It's a pretty huge day, with all students from years one to six participating in 12 round robin activities. When I ran it earlier in 2024, we had a group of Japanese students visiting, so there was a mix of Australian and Japanese culture. Next year is all Japanese activities. 

I was inspired by another Japanese teacher to have a ninja-skills station and needed some resources to make it work. Luckily I had a bit of budget left this year and the school groundsman was willing to help me get what I needed from Bunnings. Largish pieces of MDF, a bunch of extra pine beams, some hinges and screws were the main part and then of course - some paint! 

Even more amazing than being this organised was that when the kids finished school and the staff week rolled around, I was ahead on my paperwork and had the time to spend getting this done at school in office hours. One of the groundsmen also helped me out by cutting these big circular holes in MDF. 

These ones are for the kids to throw bean bags through the holes. They will have support beams on the back to hold them up on the oval. I was pretty stoked with my ninja - especially the green one who looks very invisible from the right angle. (Notice that pink goes good with green? If you know, you know.)

My other two boards have yet to be finished - I need to add dowels to the balloons in the Pikachu one for the kids to throw quoits at. Poor Pikachu is a little fat in the face, but I think he does an alright job of being iconic and recognisable. 

I knew I'd be going for an "up in the air" theme with the Pokemon boards, so I quizzed a bunch of grade five kids in the last week of school to get ideas for who else I could put in the air with Pikachu. "Dragonite", "Charizard!", "Areodactyel".... The replies were enthusiastic but also way too tricky for me to paint. 

So I went with Butterfree, who is chasing away a Charizard through the clouds. I'll add dowels to the clouds on this board. Not too bad for ten hours of work if I do say so myself. And I got to listen to podcasts and loud music while I did it. Now to keep going with my tedama production and another activity so I'm ready when March rolls around. Teacher life! 

Farewell to Single Digits

Just like that, Rachel is 10. 

As with Sophie, we celebrated with a room make over for the birthday girl. Rachel is a bit of a hoarder of the most random stuff, so I was honestly pretty stoked to have a reason to completely empty her room and start with a clean slate. She had a lot of random boxes that she often just piled things into that I was resolute were not returning. We emptied it all out into the living room and I began painting.

Thankfully, Rachel did come to the party and the clean out was not too painful. I think it helped that a couple of weeks earlier, Maria had done a sewing machine upgrade and given her old one to Rachel. Within half an hour of having it, the sewing machine was set up and making heat packs, which was great, but Rachel did notice that it was tricky with all the other stuff on her desk. 

The colour chosen for the feature wall (done with much less deliberation than Sophie) was Hot Pop Blue. I was a little dubious, but on the wall it just looks bright and fresh. Also a bit Greek Island holiday. She used birthday money to buy her desk and is planning on a cow-themed chair or curtains too. 

Rachel has been leaning hard into her love of cows for at least the last twelve months. She's had her beloved cow Moo-Moo since Christmas of 2019 and Mini Moo-Moo since January last year. Maybe it was Mini Moo-Moo that really increased her interest in these funny animals. In any case, when it came to her birthday cake, she asked for a cow. 

And I delivered. 

We had a family afternoon tea with onigiri, cheese twists, fruit, pumpkin scones and a cheese board. All easy fare and enough kids among all the cousins and family friends to keep everyone occupied for a couple of hours of eating and playing. 

Happy birthday Rachel. We love you; crazy, cows, double digits and all. 

Library Mural: Part 2

The second installment of the school library mural! This was completed with a bunch of parents who had time on the holidays in the first week of January. We had a stack of kids come and just hang out with us too while we completed the next panel. 

The first part we did in the September holidays last year. This second part of the mural continued the lorikeets and native flowers around to another wall. This banksia flower below was done by a student who graduated grade 6 last year! I also let my girls help by allowing them to paint some of the background blue between the leaves (after I cut it in of course). 

We got more creative with the design as we went, and also updated the first part with an upgrade to the wattle blossoms and the grevillea. I think there is more we could add, and the leaves behind our original lorikeet still need to be continued over onto the next wall, but after two solid days of painting, we were all a bit done and just had to call it. Maybe next holidays we will do some additions and finish the final panel (the wall to the left of the original - biggest one yet)

Even though it was fun to paint, I think the best unexpected bonus of this mural is that now it makes it really easy to tell people where P&C meetings are - head to the building with the lorikeets! :D

Library Mural: Part 1

 A little project for the September school holidays: just painting another mural at the girls school. This was designed by a local tattoo artist and is on the walls of the Library building. The decking outside the building has garden beds with grevillea and wattle flowers in it, often frequented by the colourful noisy lorikeets that inspired the mural. 

We did this one panel, but the plan is for the mural to wrap around to the adjacent walls too. Maybe next holidays? 

Measuring Time

I was honestly not sure I'd get any posts out in February this year, but I've found myself with an hour to spare so I'm figuring, why not. Time to catch up on some things I guess. 

Sophie had a birthday in Jan this year which was a bit of a milestone. Double digits. Can it be true? Must be, because the earth is still turning and we are still measuring time by rotations around that sun, so here we are: 10. 

For her birthday, this cool kid got a fun family afternoon at South Bank with a chill BBQ dinner and lots of chocolate cake. 

Her present this year was a room makeover, which we asked the family to contribute to so Sophie could have some autonomy over it, in lieu of usual presents. So just before I spent 40 plus hours painting the ground at the girls school for a week, I spent ten hours painting Sophie's room. 

We had gone to Bunnings and looked at paint colours together in December. Sophie had selected a range which came home and were stuck up on her wall for consideration. Slowly she would remove the ones she didn't want until she decided on the Tsunami colour for her feature wall. Since I was painting the feature wall, it made sense to repaint all the others to match the house while I was at it. 

After that, Sophie had a bit of cash to use to decorate. She chose to buy some LED lights, a Squirrel Girl poster and the white desk you can see in the corner. Other family gave her things for the room - the cute lantern balls, the light box, the collage art on the door. Sophie had fun setting it all up and making it hers. 

Lastly, she had a park play date with her small group of core friends on a Friday in the holidays. Since they are all avid Wings of Fire fans, I took them to the park with the dragons, and Sophie had a dragon guarding her cake, which was full of all the chocolate treasure a girl could want. 

Mural Painting

There was a bit of a lull in January this year, about a week before I was supposed to go back to work, and I realised no one had done any painting at school over the holidays. The P&C have been quite prolific at painting things since 2020, when we started with a tuckshop mural (and then moved on to a garden themed one, the entire prep area and pavers in a garden. This year there was also an ANZAC mural of poppies and a spontaneous bush turkey, but I don't have photos of those.) 

We have a couple of murals that are pre-approved and are really just on the wait list that will get done when people have the time. The school admin also have a wish list of murals that they want done mostly to increase the kids gross motor skills. It was this list that I was looking at when I text my friend Imogen (who usually organises painting things) to ask if she was free to tick some off. 

The fates aligned and Imogen was free, so the two of us went up to school and got to work. We decided that it was time for the senior side of the school to have some love, since we had thus far painted predominantly in the junior half. The mural on the wish list from admin was a city scape with roads that the kids could walk down, give directions with, or drive cars along. 

We cleaned it back and discussed the new mural. Happy with the city scape with all it's learning applications, we began mapping things out, but of course, we didn't want to just paint a boring city with houses and trees. So what was a city, became a rather enormous zoo, complete with oversized animals of every kind, including the mythical. (My justification there is that it gives students the opportunity to use their imaginations, and increase their creativity: learning yo!)

I think between us, Imogen and I spent at least 50 hours painting the mural, and we had other people come and help out too. It's certainly time intensive when you decide to upscale and take the entire area available. When Imogen mentioned that she would label all of the animals (since that's what you'd see at a Zoo), I jumped at the chance to add the Japanese names as well. And when we couldn't find a good inspiration picture for the emu, we pivoted to add a crane. 

The whole mural is difficult to photograph, since it is pretty huge. We talked about adding cool looking insects in the two yellow roundabouts, but when it came to it, we didn't quite get there. Sophie and Rachel, who had been pretty heavily invested in the mural since I dragged them up to school with me while I painted three days out of five, have been vocal in their disappointment. Steve has come to my defence though, given the sheer amount of time I'd already spent at their school painting things. 

For the most part though, the mural is fun perfection. We've given it a protection coat and roped it off to let the paint set before the kids start running all over it. I hope they love it as much as we do. 

Paver Painting

Continuing with the legacy I'm leaving at the girls primary school, here are some more things I've painted! 

These pavers are going into a garden area that we are replanting this year. Last year we fundraised and re-edged the whole garden. Step one complete it was time to rip out all the old plants, put some new dirt and fertilizer in and plant it out with lovely new plants. 

Part of the strategy to keep the kids off the plants when they run through the garden was to give them stepping stones to run on instead. And why have boring plain stepping stones when you can have beautifully painted ones? We asked each class to choose an animal, and then I sketched and painted them on. 

And I'll tell you what, I'm pretty gosh darn pleased with how it turned out. 

The last two pavers with the bees were for the working bee days (see what I did there?). All the kids that came on those two working bee days were invited to have their hand prints added to make flowers for the bees. 

So proud of how it looks!