the comet that killed the unicorns, pt 2

So, as you may know (or may not, and if you don't here's the post), we spent a while talking about comets and other small astronomical phenomena, and then made some craters in our sandpit with rocks. This is the next part of our comet related fun.

We screwed up several pieces of newspaper and taped them together in a sort of ball shape:

Then we got out our overalls, mixed some PVA and water together and did some papier maché, covering the whole ball with newspaper and glue:

Then we left it to dry overnight:

Next morning it was not completely dry, but dry enough to get on with the next bit, which was attaching the tail. I'd found a couple of websites which had given me some ideas on how to finish our comet off so we got cracking. We used curling ribbon, and plastic bags cut into strips, and then taped them onto the comet. We also stuck a stick in the bottom. Which, of course, refused to stay stuck, so now it's just a hole.

Then we covered it in blue and white tissue paper stuck down with a PVA/water mix. That turned out to be a complete nightmare. Tissue paper doesn't stick, it rips. And mushes. And when it does stick it sticks to your fingers instead of to whatever you're trying to stick it to. Tiny and Small went off to play while Little and I persevered and eventually we ended up with this:

Then we left it to dry. Again.

Little and I then looked up some info on unicorns. I was going to ask her to write down everything we found out, but instead we played a game of "what doesn't daddy know?" and it turned out, he didn't know quite a few things about unicorns! We also found a website which lets you turn a horse into a unicorn/pegasus with a few mouse clicks (will add the link later when I find it again!). Little was so thrilled with it she made me take pictures of a bunch of different ones that she made. I put them all together into a collage:

Next morning we got our PVA out again, and stuck on some sparkly stars and glitter. Because clearly you can't have a long drawn out art project without glitter. Or something.

Getting stuck in.

Sparklies.

The finished product, complete with scary smile.

I was going to do a video of a demonstration of the tail, but we've not got around to that yet so you'll just have to wait! However, you can see a picture of it hung up in the living room:

Finally, we all drew pictures of unicorns:

Little Clanger's rainbow unicorn

Small Clanger's unicorn picture, complete with obligatory erupting volcano

Tiny Clanger's unicorn

Mummy's unicorn

So there :) not bad going for a single sentence from a film, eh? Next up is the centre of the earth and how it's absolutely nothing like the portrayal in the film... that'll mostly be for Small, mainly because I can get volcanoes in there. We borrowed a volcano book from the library van on Friday, it's a little complex for him, but it does the job - the boy loves volcanoes (as you can tell, by the volcano in the picture above)! I see volcano building and bicarb and vinegar experiments in our future. Which is fine by me because they don't involve glitter. I am done with glitter for the rest of the year now. Seriously. I think I got some up my nose. I violently sneezed so many times after we did the glitter thing that I think I might've actually sneezed some of my brain out. Thank god for tubes of glitter glue is all I can say! You get all the sparkle without the head-shattering sneezes.