There's a bear in there, and a chair as well...

Play School is great!

In 1988 (after over 20 years) the BBC took a decision to scrap the programme. I'm not sure why they reached the decision, I guess it's pretty old fashioned in format and the more trendy CBBC that in part replaced it may (or may not) be more in keeping with today's generation of pre-schoolers.

In Australia however the show is still going strong. It's kept the format of Jemima, Big Ted, Little Ted and Humpty (the big four) and there's a host of presenters and songs.

As with the show I remember as a child, a lot of the things they do is based around home-made things (wooden spoons, plastic bottles, cardboard boxes etc) and sometimes you get the feeling they've thrown things together five minutes before the show goes to air, but to be honest it all adds to the charm of the programme.

On Sunday Play School came to Canberra. The ABC tour the show around the country and take the big four to the masses. Sunday's show featured guest presenters Teo and Abi. The two of them energetically danced and sang their way through 50 minutes of songs taking the packed hall of kids with them on an adventure to Humpty's picnic.

Audrey and Eli were enthralled. It was a really well put together show and the presenters hung around after the show to meet the awe-struck kids. As is the way with these things the merchandise table at the back took us for $30 for a Big Ted and $20 for a couple of Play School plates. Personally I'm sure any yellow teddy would have sufficied but even at 3 Audrey is wise enough to know the difference. Big Ted is now toy no.1, probably until next week sometime when something else catches her eye and both Audrey and Eli have taken to sweeping their food off the plates to see the picture of Jemima et al underneath. Still, it's a small price to pay for a good morning's entertainment!

Here's some pics.

Teo and Jemima look out into the audience

Audrey and Eli look back agog - expressions they maintained for 30 minutes or so

Teo and Abi meet Eli and Audrey.

Eli does Easy Rider

Ballerina Party

Audrey was invited along to one of her friend's 'Ballerina' Party this weekend.

We've never really encouraged the pink outfits that seem to be de rigueur with 3 year olds at the moment, but I guess it's a sign of how little influence you actually have over your children that Audrey wears a pink fairy princess outfit almost every day.

She was joined at the party by throngs of other would-be princesses. We speculated where the cross over between angel/ballerina/fairy occurs, it seems a pretty universal outfit and the boundaries between each classification are fairly loose.

The party was monumental for lovers of all things fairy. A mass of pink sweets, favours, decorations even a pink fairy castle piñata which was joyfully smashed by the (older) boys at the party with a cricket stump.

I don't think either Audrey or Eli have eaten quite so many sweets(Aus:lollies) in the whole of their lives. They were absolutely wired on sugar by the end of it.

Audrey capped it off by winning the fairy princess statues dancing competition. It was funny to watch her disappointed reaction to winning the 1st prize (a make an angel kit) when the kids who had been knocked out in preceding rounds had all collected sugary pink "musk sticks". (Amy fortunately nicked one before the end for her)

Audrey eats her 15th lolly

...then devours a cake

Audrey in the garden

Here's Audrey adding sand from the sand pit to the vegetable patch

Fairies

Audrey spotted an old picture of her with her brother dressed as fairies and wanted to dress him up again in one of her spare fairy princess dresses. Poor kid..

(he doesn't seem to mind though)

National Gallery of Australia

The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra has just undergone a major face lift with no less than 11 new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Galleries as well as a new shop and cafe. We liked the old gallery but the new one is even better!

It's only a few minutes drive from our place and so I took the kids there while Amy enjoyed a trip to Coles supermarket!

The new galleries are great. We particularly liked the dingos in the North Queensland gallery.

The gallery also owns a version of Monet's Waterlillies (Nymphéas) click here if you don't know what it looks like. We looked at it for quite a few minutes until Audrey turned to me and said, 'There's no frogs', which I thought was a pretty decent observation.

We discussed that perhaps Monet wasn't all he is cracked up to be as an artist. It's tricky drawing the back legs of frogs, and perhaps he just didn't fancy it.

A couple of pics from dinner time