Catching up

The boys' team won the Sydney Robocup Junior competition, to much smiling and excitement. They got called up in front of the whole school assembly the following Monday and Declan described the experience. Sadly, they did not make the final in the NSW competition.

Declan got an award for looking after Kindy kids in the playground at the same Assembly. Definitely one for parental pride that one, especially as they only give awards at full school assemblies in very rare circumstances.

Both boys have racked up a pile of Distinctions in the UNSW competitions in writing, English and spelling.

Callum fulfilled the requirements for a School Pennant. His third in his career at Cammeray. He has also received awards from the school for debating and his leadership in school sport Tae Kwon Do.

The boys are doing after school TKD again and enjoying it. They are also doing swimming and finally making some progress. Cal's breast stroke in particular is getting to be good.

The boys have had terrible coughs for several weeks now. Declan's in particular has been awful and he's on antibiotics now. They've both missed several days of school partly to recover their energy, partly to try to stop them spreading the germs to others.

School Council

Declan once again came runner up in his class' vote for their school councillor. He wasn't that upset by it, seeing it (rightly) as a popularity contest that he did pretty well in. That means he gets to go along if their designated councillor is sick, but so far that hasn't happened.

High school

We've got the results for Callum's application for selective school. Callum got into Manly Selective (his/our first choice) with a score of 258. After a small amount of angst (we had pretty much decided) we turned it down, so Mosman high is now 99% where Cal will go next year. He won't wear a uniform, so we've been stockig up on cool tshirts for him.

Robots

Callum and Declan are part of a school team for the Robocup. They are making an automaton, with separate programming for the head, two arms and three legs. Callum has an arm, and Declan has one of the legs.

The idea is that their robot will dance along to Rolf Harris' Jake the Peg, with appropriate actions at each part of the song. The competition is on Sunday.

School holidays

Those of you who follow our travelling blog, will know that we went to Malaysia for the second week of the school holidays. Despite a certain amount of sickness (brought with us from Sydney) we had a great time, going on a jungle walk, seeing a great science museum, and bathing baby elephants.

The first week (after the performance weekend) was taken up with various little bits and pieces, including a day playing with Finn for Declan and a great day at the Powerhouse learning how to program Arduino.

Theatre

The boys finished their semester of Saturday mornings at ATYP with a performance season of the show they had been working on. It was a show of mixed up children's tales. Declan played a narrator in his show about a girl who had been visited by a fairy who did her homework for her (and he got a great laugh), and Callum played Willy Wonka who had lost his Oompa Loompas (and did an excellent maniacal laugh).

They did three shows, so that they could get an idea of what it is like doing a season. By all accounts, the first performance was the best. The video is here  http://youtu.be/bsds8rgCcC8.

General Updates

It's been pointed out to me that this blog has been neglected of late, so I'm going to put up a whole lot of quick updates about what's been happening. They will be completely out of order, so bear with me.