Hospital-schooling

Well, not really an experience that we needed to experience even if it was quite educational.

Nathan was admitted last night and diagnosed with a kidney condition that will mean ongoing treatment for months or years to come. Sucky.

However, seeing things on the bright side as does my wee man, he saw the whole thing as an adventure and remained his usual full of energy, ask a million questions, chatting to anyone and basically speaking whatever was going on in his brain.

Getting Emla cream on his hand to numb the skin (and the funny large plasters to hold it in place).
Having a catheter put into his hand and fully watching the process.
How cool his blood looked (and the amount dribbling out the end all over the nurses hand and bed).
Why they bandaged it up with a splint on it (he announced "well it was exciting when I first got it" when he had kind of got fed up with it and not being able to use his hand lol).
The bed that goes up and down and headrest up and down. Even got off the bed and had his nannie drive it so he could inspect how it did that.
The funny noise with the doctor tapping his tummy to hear the fluid inside.
The band around his arm when his blood pressure was taken.
The ultrasound - announcing that his kidney looked like a bean and the feel of the gel.
Having the cathetar removed and how painless and quick it was.
How his dinner arrived in a covered plate.
The cool syringes that were used to measure his fluid intake and for administering the medicines (and for playing with).
The funny looking container he had to wee into.

So, a full 24hrs for us and we're glad to be home in our own beds tonight.

Danielle's been playing with her new teaset a lot since she got it for Christmas.

Nathan spent a lot of the morning playing with a bottle of bubble mixture. He was doing all sorts of tricks and discovered what he could and couldn't get away with. He had the bubble moving around the wand in a circle if he rotated his hand, the wand was used to bounce the bubbles, he noted that the big bubbles floated slowly and the smaller ones tended to rush to the ground.

Mid-morning we headed down to the library to return a massive pile of books and came home with a new lot.

After the kids had some lunch and watched a DVD we headed outside. They headed straight for the pear tree and began climbing. Danielle had a lot of confidence to start wanting to move up one of the limbs to a higher spot. Nathan was up on his usual pozzy and removed a supple branch, twisted it around and announced he was the king of the tree before it was dismantled and he was back to rope tying. Danielle then wanted one too, so another was removed and she wanted to be the Queen of the Butterflies. I asked her if she'd like to decorate it with some flowers which we did.

And here it is now on her wall.

The kids then wanted to fill the paddling pool and while Danielle was doing that, Nathan dropped his old bike that is now Danielle's into a dip in the ground and used it as a "training bike" coz the rear wheel would spin around.

This evening Nathan felt inspired to make ship. So he headed outside to collect up some cardboard boxes and spent a while constructing it. It had a steering wheel, sides, a swimming pool and passengers.

Christmas fun has been had and we're now moving back into summer holiday fun.

Nathan finished writing his Mr Magic book for nannie and grampy and gave it to them for a Christmas gift. He moved from me spelling out the words to him, to doing some copy writing since I was a bit busy needing to get multiple things done, so that was a little different for him. He has plans for more books in his series.

It was interesting while he was having me spell out the words, he noted the irony in the letters he was writing and the sound they make. When I said 's' he said "that should start with an "e". After a moment of clicking to what he was meaning it was amusing to me to note how his mind worked. Then I would say 'c' and he's say "that should start with a "s" and giggle, then I would say 'f' and he'd say "e" and I'd say 'm' and he'd say "e". Kind of like the time he was adament that the word "one" wasn't really because it didn't start with a "w". Confusing is this English language.

I got Nathan a Tintin book for Christmas, so we were reading that before bed. One of the frames had some writing in cursive and he wondered in amazement that I could read it when "it was all joined together". So I explained what it was and isolated several words for him to read which he did so he realise he could and it wasn't all that different to printed letters.

A Rainy Inside Day

Yesterday was rainy, cold and windy and was actually quite nice to have a reason to have an inside day.

The kids busied themselves playing with the papier mache tunnel they'd made.

Watched Cats on video.

Read books.

Drew pictures.

Nathan finished writing his Mr Invisible book and wrapped it up for Simon.

Both played mummy and daddy games with the soft toys (I love how Danielle when she's playing has started referring to her babies as "little one" as in "sleep now little one", "hello little one", not sure where she's got that from). They carried on with the game today and wanted me to help tie up a couple of the playsilks to make hammocks for their children to sleep in.

Played with the magnetix.

Nathan wanted to play a numbers board game we have. I'm not keen on it at all (it was one that my mum gave us and was one we had as kids lol) but I decided to get out the cuisenaire rods to help calculate. It was a multiplication game (had to roll two dice to move and jump the horses over the fences) so really too advanced for where he's at, but I guess it's a way of showing that numbers can be used in different ways. He figured out counting by two's when I lined them up that way if it was a 2 times number. I discussed 1 times tables as well which he "got". So yep, I guess it was of value even if the overall game was too advanced and he actually surprised me by wanting to play it to the end, I thought he would have enough of it before then.

Danielle's well and truly hit the "why" stage. It's felt like a long time coming, but is neat to see her wanting to know more about the world around her and how it's been in her own time.

After dinner once it had stopped raining but was still chilly, the kids wanted to go bounce on the trampoline. So to stop their clothes getting all soaking I suggested they put on their togs. Nathan decided his wetsuit might be a better choice lol, so off they went.

Yesterday we had some of our homeschooling group over and had a bit of a solar-cook up. Nathan had decided he wanted to run a "fire drill". So in the morning he had me list out the people who were coming so he could write down their names on his roll for checking off. Not long before everyone left, he had us all gather out by the letterbox for our drill.

Today was fairly relaxed although we needed to go down to Playcentre to do a bit of end of year clean up and the kids had a final play with some of their friends before the holidays. We popped by some other friends on the way home and then spent the afternoon just chilling out.

They had out the magnetix, hung out in the garden and on the trampoline, played a maze computer game that came with a maze book that I'd got Nathan since he's right into them at the moment.

Nathan brought inside the tunnel that they'd made the other day and wanted to paint it up.

Then we got out one of our library books and found a craft that they wanted to do. Making a wand for Danielle and a hiking stick for Nathan. The foraged around the garden for suitable sticks and then pasted and tied things on them.


This evening Nathan helped me prepare the veges for dinner and while chopping them up was telling me about a couple of books he wanted to write. Mr Invisible and Mr Magic. So once dinner was cooking we sat down and stapled together some paper to make the books and then he started his books.

After dinner, they went out for a walk and riding bikes/scooters with their dad. When they returned Nathan brought out the Dick and Jane book and sped through a bunch of pages recalling some words that he stumbled over last time and there were a few that he stumbled on again.

Yesterday was the kids last day at Playcentre. It coincided with the end of year breakup. We started there 18mths ago and it was when Nathan had just turned 4 and Danielle 2. We joined knowing that we were going to be homeschooling and I wanted us to attend a centre that was non-structured, child-led play and it was great being a parent co-operative. We have made some good friends over our time there who we will keep in touch with. I was reflecting the night before whether I had made the right decision for us to leave (Nathan could keep going as they have a homeschooling policy that would allow us to continue as long as we liked) but everything just felt "right" and no gut wrenching feeling that might tell me otherwise.

We were fortunate to have one of the mums who is a professional face painter come along and we had a wee shared morning tea to send my two plus one other off.


Last night we went for a walk around a few streets that had some Christmas Lights displayed. I had managed to get the kids to have an afternoon nap so they would be all bright and perky until dark (not till after 9pm). We came across one cool house where the guy who owns it was right into the whole thing, brought out a candy cane for the kids and a little glow-stick thing.

Today we had a quiet one at home as a break between a few busy days and some more to come.

Nathan wanted to make his own board game including a dice.

I was chatting on the phone and my lovely boy collected some flowers for the table.

Nathan was wanting to dig for potatoes today and came up with this lot.

Danielle's been right into the magnetix still and it's cool to see her skill with them developing.

Nathan *still* playing with his blocks that he got for his 1st birthday.

We spotted this lovely waterlily in our pond today. Seemed to appear totally out of the blue!

A Summery Saturday

The kids started doing some puzzles this morning and Nathan pulled out his dinosaur puzzle which led him to ask questions about how they became extinct. We did a bit of googling and then got out his dinosaur book (I'm thinking I must have the only 5yr old who has never been interested in dinosaurs lol). It had a few crafty ideas which led him wanting to make a model of a trilobite which we decided to do a little later.

In the meantime they were keen on making a hut, so rather than constructing something inside I suggested we make one out on the front lawn using the bamboo shade structure we made during winter with the intention of growing some vines over it (which just hasn't happened yet). So I slung some sheets over it and pegged them on. The kids then proceeded to turn it into a campsite by getting out their sleeping bags and cushions.

When this was done Nathan was back onto wanting to make the trilobites, so I bought outside some materials that we could use and we intended on putting them into our paddling pool that is currently full of seaweed after they brought some home from the beach when they were out with Grampy a few days back (I'm intending on making some seaweed tea for the garden, so multi purpose ;)). So looked just right for an ocean setting.


(Gross looking water eh? Who knows how long I can stand that being left to brew...)
I had forgotten about a friend popping in with her boys and at 9.30am I was still in my PJs constructing the playhut when she arrived. So a hasty getting dressed and the kids had a little play before they headed off again.

After lunch, Nathan then moved on to browsing through a science experiment book I'd found at the library and he was keen to do a yeast experiment. So we set up the jars and followed the instructions. He was rapt with the results of the yeast in warm moist temperature.

While the yeast was doing its thing he then moved on to wanting to make a tunnel like one in the book using cardboard, scrunched up paper and papier mache. So we made up some paste using rice and the kids set to work. It's now outside drying so it can be painted.

No day is complete at the moment without using the hammer for SOMETHING. Lately it has been for smashing ice. Many an ice lump is being made throughout the day - there are buried mandarins and toys. But the hammer was then used to puncture the plastic on top of the yeast to see if it would explode.

This evening after Simon returned from work and scoffed down his dinner we headed out for the local Carols by the Sea. After a 1/2 hr of listening to the singing they wanted to head to the playground, but that was too crowded so we wandered over to the beach. What a perfect evening for playing and building. Nathan wanted to make a teepee, so they gathered driftwood and built. Danielle added something and when daddy asked what it was for she replied "it's the water for the garden", then Nathan brought over a large log that was too big for the hut and he said "that's ok, this one can be for building the vege garden". I like the way these kids think lol.

On the way back to the car the kids spotted four dead fish in various states on the beach (probably dumped by the fishing boats returning back) and they were thoroughly inspected and flipped over with a stick, one was even being devoured by a seagull. Blech, but they were interested...

Finally, time for bed. They have been taking to both going to bed in our bed and then being transferred into their beds when we go to bed. Nathan read one of the Dr Suess books - it's interesting to notice him trying to read it by memory and then realising that he's said the wrong word and go back and correct himself.

Phew! One tired mama needs to sit down with a cuppa tea...

Summer fun

Wow, time's flying by!

We've had a few end of year BBQs, swimming at the pools and down at the river with our homeschooling groups with just a good mix of just chilling at home. Summer is here good and proper now and we're soaking it up.

Today the kids Grampy took them out for the afternoon. He took them for a drive to an inlet area, got out the Canadian canoe, popped them in with the dog and walked them around in it. Nathan got to try out some paddling and really enjoyed it - Danielle not so much. They cooked up some sausages at the beach and munched on ice blocks on the way home. They collected me a variety of seaweed for my compost and washed it all in the paddling pool along with their wetsuits. Good fun!

I've been hunting out summer events and things to do with the kids. So far I've come up with going to see the Dragonboat races, Chinese New Year celebrations, Baby Proms, and a night light display at the botanic gardens as well as camping at the organic river festival (Nathan always looks forward to the pony rides). Along with the organised events we'll be camping in the backyard, more canoeing and kayaking with the grandparents and perhaps a spot of fishing at some stage, harvesting a lot more yummy fruit and veges from our garden and whatever else comes up in the next 4 months.

Conversations...

It was just one of those days where Nathan must have been pondering things and wanting to chat about it all.

This morning after getting dressed and while I was tidying up the bedrooms etc, Nathan came and started telling me about "the market I'm going to set up". I questioned him what market that might be and he enthusiastically started telling me how he wanted to set up a stall outside the house to sell excess produce from our garden. We had briefly discussed something like this probably 3-4mths ago, so it was neat to see it as something that made an impact on him. The kids then moved on to playing "shops" with the cash register.

As part of an ongoing understanding about families and how people fit together and him observing differences in family structures he announced that when he grows up he wants to be a daddy to children with no daddy. We haven't discussed the different scenarios around this as yet.

The kids made some Christmas cards for their grandparents and put together a collage on a canvas frame for their nana using the hot glue gun.

While I was preparing lunch and Nathan was sitting up at the bench chatting to me he suddenly asked me if he had layers. Hmmm, my thinking quickly took me to Shrek (which he hasn't watched for a long, long time) and he confirmed yes, that's what he meant. So I explained that yes (from my perspective) he does have layers - the outside that most people see, what he talks about, his interests and his moods, then there's a layer in from that that Simon and myself see a bit more of than other people and then there's probably a layer inside that that only he knows about - his thoughts and feelings etc. Interesting.

We raced off with our prepared lunch and met up with our unschooling group (recently renamed as natural learners) for a walk, swim and bike rides.

Over dinner I mentioned how the meal delighted my taste buds - he queried what I meant, so we had a wee discussion about taste buds and their purpose.

An all round pleasant day.

A full on weekend

On Friday morning, Simon went away for a mountain bike race with some friends. The kids and I had no plans for our weekend at that stage but boy did it fill up fast.

Friday was spent getting groceries in the morning, home to pack the bags with togs, towels and food for swimming with the homeschoolers and a play at the park afterwards and home in time to get some dinner on.

Saturday we went to the kids grandparents by 9am as they were going away on holiday and we needed to sort out some things for them, dropped their dog off to the kennels and decided to go to the markets. The afternoon was spent around home.

Sunday morning saw us on a train by 10am to travel just down the line to a local school fair and back home again by 12.30pm, had the friends that we went with over to play for a while, then headed off to some other friends for a catch up, then off to playcentre for a parent meeting and the kids all had a play for a few hours followed by fish and chips for dinner and home for bed.

Phew! Exhausting, but fun. The kids spent every night in my bed - plenty of room with just the 3 of us, beats the usual 4 of us squished in there at times. I had Danielle put herself to bed there on the Friday night and when I discovered her fast asleep - the window as still wide open, bright day still, curtains open and the birds chirping, then Saturday night Nathan put himself to bed there and then Sunday night they both put themselves to bed there. Mama just pretended she had no idea what was going on ;).

Today, we just spent it at home. We put up the Christmas tree, the kids made up various games, looked through their little boxes of baby cards and memorabilia, watched a video or two, bounced on the trampoline and hung out in the garden collecting veges for dinner. I got a bit of much needed housework done. At some stage Nathan told me that 2 + 2 + 2 was 6 and had me sit down with him for a while to write out some numbers.

I keep finding toys wrapped up in sellotape (by Danielle). And a lot seem to have acorn tops stuck on them...

We made a spontaneous visit to the local markets this morning since we were dropping my parent's dog off to the nearby kennels. Eating locally made ice cream. I had no shoes for the kids, but I came up with a pair of Nathan's gumboots for him floating around the car, and found a smaller size of the same for Danielle in the back of the car in amongst the emergency supplies. She was dubbed the Taihape Fairy by a few of the stall owners lol. They wooed their way with the cheese lady and she gave them the last (but opened-and-taste-tested-so-no-point-having-on-display) block of sheep's milk feta which was YUM! We were looking at the locally made pork sausages and Nathan wanted to try an unusual looking variety (and gluten free). So I think we'll be having an international meal of cheese and sausage tomorrow!

Danielle wanted a hat for her doll and I noticed this going on...;)

(and yes, that's a sleeping Nathan in the background, guess those 5.45am starts are doing him in - coz they sure are doing me in...)
This afternoon Nathan got out a maths workbook and wanted to do a few of the things in there.

It really is almost summer

Wow, the weather has really warmed up in the past week and we've been enjoying more time out in the garden, going for walks and thinking about Christmas and the summer ahead of us.

Today we went for a walk and gathered together some materials to make some decorations and blogged about here.

We also read quite a bit, the kids played on the computer on the starfall site for a wee while and then Nathan created a game for them to play (I love how he turns a technology game back into an old-fashioned game - kinda lol). He asked me to use the hand controller and he would be the character of the game who would jump, leap, run, spit fire out his mouth etc. Danielle then had her turn.

We had some firewood for next winter delivered the other day and it went across our whole driveway. So Nathan made a path down the side for us to get down to the garden still. Later on in the day (yesterday) he then wanted to make a track through the centre and spent time working on that and carried on this morning. I'm thinking it's work in progress as there is still about a 1/4 to go.

A catch up of photo's

My mum gave me a CD of a bunch of photo's from over the past year and it had ones of our caving trip we did over winter and a few from my brother's wedding from a few weeks ago.






(I'm sure this photo makes me look wider than I am lol).

Today started as usual with me on the computer while the kids watched some TV.

I had the kitchen clean and the washing on by 9.30am and we sat down to read together.

Nathan was going through his bookcase to find something we hadn't read for a while. I spotted our Dick and Jane book and asked if he'd like to have a go reading from it. This book used to drive me bonkers from the time it was given to me by my mum (surely only bought for the trip down nostalgia lane lol) and it's been probably 6mths that I have read it. Prior to reading age, it would send me around the bend reading the nonsense sentences, but now I can see the sense in reading it together now that he is at the age of knowing some words and having the ability to sound out others. We sat down to read and got through 55 pages (if you are unfamiliar with these are books, they have pages with maybe 4 lines of writing and each line with 4-5 words on it). Each story is perhaps 4 pages long and this book is a bunch of stories one after another and each builds on what was read in the story prior. Kind of a cool idea now that I can see how it works lol. Anyway, he was so into it and it gave him such confidence that he knew almost all of the words or was able to think on them for a few seconds with just the occasional help from me to get him going that he didn't want to stop.

We then found a spider that must have somehow fallen into the washing machine and it tumbled out dead from the washing. The kids were fascinated with it's large size (well, large by New Zealand standards, but my Australian friends laughed at me lol) and Nathan raced off to get his New Zealand Life Size Guide to Insects and proceeded to identify it. We weren't too sure though and googling images of them just gives me the creeps after a while lol.

After lunch we met up with our unschooling group down at one of the local playgrounds for a few hours before returning home to let the chickens our for a run around, check out our pond to see if we could find our new frogs that we were given yesterday (but not to be seen, although Simon and the kids spotted one poking it's head out from under a lily pad yesterday evening) so I'm sure they're in there somewhere.

Random daily maths...

Yesterday I made a bunting for Danielle's wall and Nathan was asking me how I made my cardboard cutout of the triangle. So I showed him how I had made a rectangle, found the centre on one of the short sides and drew lines from the dot to meet the corners of the opposite side and how that gave me an isoceles triangle.

After feeding the chickens this morning, we stopped on the way back up the front path to the door and munched on very plump sweet peas for a while. Nathan showed me that the peas when split open had alternating patterns of peas and was adding the sides together.

We were looking at one of the sunflowers that has gotten quite tall just in the past few days, so we measured it and I popped it onto a piece of paper that we can look at once it's fully grown.

Another day in the life...

We had our home day today. Boy, did *I* need it too. It is definitely days like these that I love about unschooling and can truly appreciate the "learning through life" the "organic learning" the "natural learning" or whatever you want to call it.

Sure learning happens all the time for everyone, but since we rely on this style as our primary means of learning I sometimes wonder if it really can work out longterm. I had a bit of a week of feeling overwhelmed, reflecting on and getting angsty over whether I was doing an injustice to my children by unschooling, blah blah. Yesterday morning I met up with a friend for coffee while the kids played in the adjoining playground and it refreshed and revived my soul. Then, a wonderful flowing day like today (which do seem to happen quite frequently even if I feel that sometimes they're not often enough) make it all so worthwhile.

I was also able to pinpoint where things felt off during the week - as I often read on online unschooling forums (and witness it for myself), kids *will* feel boredom and loll around and appear to not be getting anything out of the experience, but before you know it they move on into a new phase and discover new things, get creative, burst forth with curiosity and questions once again. It's amazing to just let it happen and know that they will move on past it pretty quickly and given the space and time to do so. So, after Nathan having a few flat days where he seemed tearful over many things, bored with life (even though he doesn't say so, his body language speaks it for him) and nothing seems to interest him nor satisfy him for long he seemed a changed we lad this morning too (and consequently wasn't annoying his sister and setting her off either!). Seems we had spent a few days bouncing off each others moods and we all needed a bit of balancing out again!

First up, after a bit of morning TV for the kids and internet time for me, we made some yoghurt and squeezed a bunch of oranges to make ice cubes that the kids love to chomp on throughout the day. We then decided that we'd make some little cheesey bread buns for lunch so got that going too.

We then read from our latest Laura Ingalls book "The Long Winter" and it seemed to spark a few things for Nathan.

He was asking what muskrats were and why and how they lived in mud huts. After a bit of googling, this inspired him to want to build his own. So we went out to the garden and he collected together materials for mixing together and worked on moulding it to the shape he wanted. He had decided he would make a little hut for our new frogs to have as a shelter when they arrive next week for our little garden pond. We set it to dry in the sun and when checking on it later as we went to feed the chickens, we discovered it had bird footprints in it and was partly scratched away! Still, hopefully it will survive long enough to dry out completely and see how we did.


(check out the change of clothes in between shots - no wonder I wash so many clothes a day...)

Danielle spent a bit of time working on her swinging and singing...

From reading The Long Winter we also got on to discussing seasonal changes and how animals and birds instinctively know when to migrate, when to build and extra insulate their sleeping place for the winter, and how their fur coats grow thicker and then thin out again as summer arrives.

We watched a large flock of blackbirds (about 20 of them) descend on our garden in one spot and constantly jumping, flying, leaping around for a few minutes before moving on. The kids were fascinated and it was one of the first things they told their dad about when he arrived home after work.

We wondered where the chickens were. We'd let them out to roam around but all we could hear was a huge clucking/squwarking racket coming from the nesting box. All three of them were squished in obviously trying to (or wanting to) simultaneously lay their eggs!

While doing a bit of tidying up and household work together this afternoon, Nathan was continuing to make sense of death, birth, marriage, having children and family trees and how they all fit together (including step parents and children) - these were once individual topics, but I notice they get blended and roll on together during our conversations these days.

The topic then moved on to animals in the wild and their life and death cycle. He then mentioned someone needing their heart cut out and a new one put in and wondered if that could happen - so we discussed donors. And then pondered if we could eat heart which lead onto discussing offal. He then asked about when I had broken some bones as a child - the hows and whys which then moved on to technology. Love it! I broke a bone at school and my mother couldn't be contacted, he wondered why not, so I explained how there were no mobile phones back in those days and we had no answer phone - so when the school couldn't get my mother at home, there was no other way of her getting the message. This of course led on to inventions and inventors.

During the afternoon I was sorting out booking a campsite for some summer camping in January. Nathan has been looking forward to camping again since last summer. So he wanted to write out a list of what we needed to take with us. While working on his list he was having me help spell the words out but had things click with turning a noun into the plural form (without me mentioning about nouns and plurals just yet though lol).

This afternoon the lego came out which hasn't really been played with so much recently. He picked up one of his little cars and decided to have a go at replicating it out of lego.

Later on the kids wanted to jump on the computer for a while, so I showed Nathan a new website I'd come across with some games based around animals - it had games based on mammals, birds, amphibians etc as well as what were herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. I wandered off to read a book in the sun with a cup of tea and they then switched to the Reader Rabbit Maths CD for a little while.

As he was watching me prepare dinner he was chomping away on a few of the nacho chips we were going to be using and started rattling off a few number additions based around how many he was eating and had left to eat and asking what some larger numbers were added together. A few days back we were talking about roman numerals again as they came up in one of the library books we had out. Our dominoes were sitting nearby at the time and he started fiddling with them and forming the numerals.

This evening while we read a few more pages from The Long Winter he picked up another book we had started but put aside (The Hobbit) and said that The Hobbit had more pages than The Long Winter. But after showing him how to flick to the back of the book and compare them we discovered that there was a difference of about 50 pages.

Such simple things to be talking about and learning from - but no less significant...

Crazy busy times

Wow! We so need a quiet day at home but it's seeming next to impossible lately. We've been catching up with friends, making time for family, playcentre, 2 x different sorts of homeschooling meet ups a week and it doesn't leave a lot of downtime. It's all fun, fun, fun but Nathan has been asking for some time at home so this week I have managed to save one day where that will happen.

However, there always seems to be time for drawing and reading.

I discovered this, this evening after returning from dinner at nannie's house.

I haven't seen Danielle draw a map before, nor much more than people, so it was neat to find it. She rattled off to me who was who and what all the features were.

This afternoon Nathan and I wandered around our herb garden as I was checking out what I had growing. He was quizzing me on what they all were and was having a sniff of them all.

The kids found an old sprinkler in the garage and set it up for a wee run around in in the gorgeous warm sun and devised ways to stop the water without turning off the tap (squeezing the hose or grabbing a cardboard box and using it to shield them as they put it over the top etc).

Last night we went down to a local event to watch the fireworks display for Guy Fawke's Night. The kids had a great time out and even managed to stay awake for the display which didn't kick off till 9pm when it got dark.

We've finished reading On the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls-Wilder and I picked up the next in the series to begin soon. In the meantime we've been reading a few other short stories and poetry at bedtime.

Out of the house day...

We headed off to do the grocery shopping this morning and a few new conversations were had - guide dogs, donations and petrol prices.

After getting home and putting away the chilled and frozen items we gathered together what we needed to go off to the local outdoor pools for meeting up with the homeschooling group. The kids had heaps of fun (even Danielle who fell under twice but was quickly plucked out by me before she took in any water - I'm consistently amazed at quickly and quietly and how little she struggles when she goes under...). Nathan was introduced to 4 other 5 year old boys and joined in a game with a bunch of other kids his age which was retrieving some battens that were tossed for them to bring back.

We came home and had a rest from all the sun by reading a bunch of books including some library books I'd grabbed for them last night. We then moved on and played a game where we took turns building beetles.

Once the day had cooled off and the garden was getting a bit of shade we went down to let the chickens out for a roam around while I resumed a little weeding and thinning of some carrots (which Danielle decided needed to eaten right there and then). Nathan had taken a small table, some paper and pencils down with him to do some drawing. He spent a while drawing under the shade of a tree and then climbed up his pear tree, found a comfy possie* and sat up there drawing and thinking for a while before announcing that he never wanted this tree cut down.


*I've just learnt something - I know that word is slang for position, but just googled the spelling since it's the first time I've written it and found out that it was made up during WWI by the Aussies (but was probably the Kiwi's who made it up...;)).

Last weekend we went away and the kids experienced a bunch of new things. We flew down to the south island for my brothers wedding. It was their first time on an aeroplane which they thoroughly enjoyed, before jumping in the car for a 4hr drive which had a bunch of interesting things to look at on the way.

The day after the wedding we went for a drive around the area and looked at the hydro dams which were right next to the town we were staying in. At one of the dams there was an information centre which had a fantastic educational set up with working models of how hydro power stations work to create electricity. Both kids had heaps of fun pumping, winding and pushing levers to get the model to work.

They then went for a paddle in the very cold lake before heading back to the house we were staying in.