Since we moved to New Zealand three and a half years ago I have been involved in the creation of more dioramas than in all the other thirty-five and a half years of my life! Why, oh why do teachers here insist on torturing the parents of their students with their fiendishly designed demands for dioramas?
This project required Charlie to depict five of the challenges that early settlers to New Zealand faced, with, economic, cultural, environmental and social challenges all represented.
Charlie chose to create a cemetery in which we have Donald McDonald (a playmobil fireman morphed with a pirate to depict a settler) contemplating the graves of his family. These include Doreen, his wife who died in childbirth and his son, Darwin, who died due to poor medical care (social issues), his brother, Jim, who died in a land battle with local Maori (cultural misunderstandings over property) and brother in law, Will, who died because he was forced to learn a new trade to earn his living and found himself to be not very skilled at whaling (economic challenge). Poor Donald has laid his axe on some nearby rocks for a moment (represents the thick bush needed to be cleared for farming - environmental challenge) to wallow in his isolation and homesickness (social).
A very mournful but highly effective piece of work, Charlie!
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Diorama
Since we moved to New Zealand three and a half years ago I have been involved in the creation of more dioramas than in all the other thirty-five and a half years of my life! Why, oh why do teachers here insist on torturing the parents of their students with their fiendishly designed demands for dioramas?
This project required Charlie to depict five of the challenges that early settlers to New Zealand faced, with, economic, cultural, environmental and social challenges all represented.
Charlie chose to create a cemetery in which we have Donald McDonald (a playmobil fireman morphed with a pirate to depict a settler) contemplating the graves of his family. These include Doreen, his wife who died in childbirth and his son, Darwin, who died due to poor medical care (social issues), his brother, Jim, who died in a land battle with local Maori (cultural misunderstandings over property) and brother in law, Will, who died because he was forced to learn a new trade to earn his living and found himself to be not very skilled at whaling (economic challenge). Poor Donald has laid his axe on some nearby rocks for a moment (represents the thick bush needed to be cleared for farming - environmental challenge) to wallow in his isolation and homesickness (social).
A very mournful but highly effective piece of work, Charlie!
At the park
Rich is away in Melbourne at the moment and in an effort to retain sanity we all took a walk down the bush track to the park for a play and to feed the ducks. Ted was anything but relaxed as I insisted that he sit and watch the ducks while they were being fed. This is one of the saddest photos we have of him, I think. He is really, really wishing he could be in the thick of things.
It was a beautiful afternoon and we played much longer than we planned and watched the sun set over Upper Harbour.
Birthday Cake
When it was time for the cake we all sang Happy Birthday, while Adam chuckled away. He loves singing and music and always claps and bobs up and down. The cake was decorated by Grace and her friend Keita, and represented a TV remote, which is Adam's favourite toy.
Our Baby is One!
What a happy year. Adam turned one on the 13th of June. Amazing to think that it was a whole year ago that we were bringing our tiny little boy home and the girls were putting him in a cardboard box. We had a great day. Robert, Chern and Torin came up to celebrate with us. We turned up the music and did some dancing with balloons.
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