Since it's been the school holidays we've spent quite a bit of time over the past week and a half socialising and catching up with friends who we haven't seen for a while. It's been great fun, but I also look forward to more days at home.

Nathan's been right into wanting to light matches again lately. After his fire lighting from a few months back, he lost interest. But I think with the cooler weather and darker evenings, he's enjoyed the ritual of lighting candles at dinner time and has even set up and lit a few fires in the woodburner. Danielle likes to blow hers out as soon as it's been lit.

A few nights back as we sat down for a family meal, each of the kids wandered off at some point and I'd look over and first Danielle was sitting on the couch next to us reading a story to one of the soft toys (which she then put to bed under the cushions and the chair on top lol).

Nathan then a few minutes later was over there reading to himself.

I went to the library over the weekend while Simon took the kids down to pick a DVD out. I love roaming around the library by myself. So chose some books for me and then picked a stack for the kids. One of them was of Levers and Pulleys which I thought might interest Nathan - and yep, right away he was into it and wants to create a few of the things in it (once we find some time at home we'll scout around the house and garage for bits and pieces to use).

We've had a lot of rain over the past few days and during the non-rainy times we get down and let the chickens out for a run around. Nathan's been keen on digging up some of the garden beds and all the weeds and has made some interesting observations about the difference in the soil. He's also enjoyed having the chickens come right up next to him as he's been turning the soil over and they've been helping themselves to tasty bits he's exposing.

A comment Nathan made the other day after having tidied up the house before dinner (at the dinner table) "well, that was heaps of fun" LOL - and yes, said genuinely.

Nathan's been watching me cut up onions for ages now, and tonight wanted to give them a go himself. He didn't last long enough to get the stingy eye thing though.

Danielle's been right into playing with the Duplo again lately and integrating it with her dollshouse play.

Sunny Saturday

Once again, we had such beautifully warm weather.

This morning the kids and I got down into the garden to do some weeding and planting some winter vegetable seedlings.

Nathan wanted to get the paints out, so they found some stones, sat on the grass and painted while I sat in the sun reading.

After lunch we decided to walk down to the dairy to buy iceblocks. So Nathan on his bike and Danielle and I walking, we got our iceblocks, sat down on a grassy mound near the shops and people-watched in the sun for a while. The kids then wanted to go down to the beach, so we wandered up the road further to a different beach access we hadn't been down for years.

After a play around we wandered back home again. Danielle did well and walked the whole way which took 1.5hrs by the time we got home.

Both kids plonked themselves down to watch a DVD, Danielle fell asleep while I made dinner.



(oh, and not my shoes, it's common at this end of the beach for walkers to leave their shoes on the wall while they walk).

We met with our unschooling group today. The lovely Sharon and her gang came up for lunch first before heading off to meet up with the others.

We all met up first to construct some boats and rafts to float down the stream at the park we were going to.



Bush walking and flying foxing

A home day

The rest of our week will be a social one, so it was nice to know that today we had no plans and would take it as it came at us.

The sun was out and it was warm after the cold snap we'd had over the weekend.

Pottered around this morning, the kids pretty much did their own thing. They both got into dress ups throughout the day.

Danielle played at her dollshouse for a few hours (she's become very particular about where the things go and I watched her for a while as she played with the baby, it went to the toilet, flushed it, washed hands, had a bath, then got into bed - repeat!) and Nathan played with his lego.

After both kids playing with the skipping rope for a while, Danielle sat tying up a skipping rope around one of the chairs for ages - she got quite frustrated at times, but persevered.

The kids love making their own chocolate milk, and Danielle has a definite preference now for making her own.

Nathan made a horse which both kids played with at various times.

As I was browsing my cookbooks to decide what to eat for dinner, Danielle was flicking through one of the books pretending to eat all the meals.

We read books in the sun. And I then spent a bit of time getting to read my book in the sun too with the kids happily entertaining themselves.

We decided to get some fresh air and exercise this afternoon and went for a walk (
Nathan riding his bike) around the block and decided to collect treasures on our travels. We went past the beach briefly - but didn't stay - to collect more items for our bag and carried on, bumped into one of Nathan's friends walking down the road so stopped for a little chat before heading back home.


Nathan spent a bit more time in his mud hole out the front (where the well was originally dug).

The weekend

We've...

Had visitors - interesting to note both kids responding differently (more maturely?) to a wee active almost 2yr old who they haven't seen for over a month. I noticed Nathan being tolerant and I noticed Danielle not screeching at being shoved and having toys taken off her - she's become more positively assertive and less fearful.

Nathan had a birthday party to attend on Saturday, so we dropped him off and Danielle and I went down to the mall and had a fluffy and a muffin together and bought an Insect book for Nathan's birthday in a few weeks.

The kids have played in the sandpit and made huge messes.

Plenty of reading books together.

Pitching in around the house with tidying and cleaning.

Nathan went down to the BMX track with Simon this afternoon and had a blast.

The kids had many games they initiated which involved rescuing Danielle's baby which was stolen during the night (?), dolls house play, a little playing outside (but not the greatest weather), lego, drawing, more "Magic Tree House" travels, DVD and video watching...

The past few days both kids have been playing a lot of board games, making lego creations, drawing on the magnadoodle, making paper airplanes (Nathan's started making his own) and drawing. Danielle's been focused on dollshouse play again which she hasn't been into for quite a few weeks.

Nathan's loving his audio book CD's and I've figured out a way to help him with his letter F pronounciation. I heard him one day chanting Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum after listening to Jack and the Beanstalk and realised that the F sound was coming out perfect, but when he says fish, finger, five, four etc they come out with a P sound. F sounds are usually developed by the age of 4, but the speech language therapist wasn't concerned because when she tested him he was able to make an F sound in the middle and end of words and felt that they would come with time - that was a year ago. So once I realised he could make the F sound when he wasn't even thinking about it (and using new made up words where he had no previous habit formed on their use) I made up a little game where he chants Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum, Finger/Fish/Five etc and it comes out correctly. I've even heard him self correcting himself using the chant when he's said a word with a P sound when he knows it's an F.

Nathan's Tadpole


Danielle playing with the pattern blocks


Nathan's cemetary of "head stones"


We had some friends come and play this morning and Nathan decided to empty out his room to make it safer for his friend with the broken leg (not sure of the logic really lol), so they had her set up on the bed and they laid out all their bedding on the floor, put soft toys all over to jump over (not the friend!) and put on one of my CD's to dance to. Danielle then found some felting wool and asked me to set her up with the water and soap, so I put that out on the table and all the kids worked up at the table and made felted balls for a while.


This afternoon we set of to the supermarket to do our shopping which was full of many interesting discussions.

A dirty day

It kind of started off slow today with the kids just mooching around the house.

We played a few games of memory and Nathan is right into a new puzzle with sides and markings for the pieces underneath - I just clicked the other day that this style of puzzle is quite different to the big floor puzzles where you really need to look at the picture (and straight edges) to put it together. I noticed with this puzzle that he was matching the baseboard markings and it wasn't about the picture on the puzzle that interested him so much. He then seemed to have a speed contest (about 5 times lol) with himself as he remembered where all the bits were to go.

When setting up the memory game we need to lay out 9 cards across and 4 cards up - I have started to verbalise the way I use simple maths on a day to day. I thought that since we don't sit down and "do maths" that I should really be talking a bit more about the maths in our day to day life (I do for things like measuring when cooking, counting and subtraction etc) but realised that I use it much more than that and a simple way to just introduce him to number concepts was to just "talk out loud". I showed him how I counted in 2's, 3's, 5's etc - not in a lesson way, but just that I found it interesting and then the multiplication of 9 x 4 was an easier way to work out how many cards there are rather than individually counting them. Not sure at what point this approach will annoy him, but I'll just go with it for now (and follow his cues) as a means of exposing him to the ideas rather than thinking he should be absorbing what I say lol.

Around 11am I decided to go outside and plant some daffodil bulbs and Nathan was keen to come and join me (Danielle spent a lot of time this morning drawing and wrapping up things using sellotape and scissors). I have a garden bed in front of the house that was perfect for them. I asked Nathan to figure out even spaces for the 7 bulbs that we needed to plant, and his estimates were great. We then dug the holes, added some compost and we figured his hand was about 10cm long (the depth the bulbs needed to be planted), so I suggested he burrow his hand in up to his wrist and then put the bulb down that deep and then cover them over.

I went inside to prepare lunch as we were due to meet some unschooling friends at 1pm. Meanwhile Nathan continued to play outside and rediscovered his well from yesterday. He decided to fill it up with water again - when I came out to let him know lunch was ready, he was covered from head to toe in mud. Jumping down into the muddy hole proved much more fun than winding his bucket up and down too many times LOL.

So we eventually headed off to the playground to meet our friends. The kids discovered two huge dump-truck sized piles of damp sand that had been delivered down in a lower field and proceedded to jump and slide all the way down. Another set of clothes were needed once they were done lol.

Nathan then made a friend at the playground and they headed back down for another play before heading off home for some stories while waiting for dinner to finish cooking. Nathan asked me to help him read his Dick and Jane book again (it's the first time he pulled it out for about a month and remembered quite a few of the words from last time).

The bathtub definitely had the signs of plenty of dirty play today.

The Well

Nathan has been wanting to dig a well (well, a mini one lol) since reading about Pa digging one in Little House on the Prairie. So today we remembered about 4pm, and felt the need to get outside for some fresh air after having been inside for the afternoon (we had been out at playcentre in the morning). It was a bit of an on and off rainy day, so a break in the drizzle meant we could get to work.

We decided the herb patch was the easiest place to dig (and found a few stray potatoes that were missed when we dug them up).

After checking that the hole was big enough to fit the bucket...(and I had got the knot tying book out again to figure the best way to get my rope up either side of the bucket without mucking around doing lots of knots and several strands)

He then filled the hole with water

Note how the original cross bar was wood, but after re-assessing our design (and quickly googling some ideas), we figured that a smooth pole would work better (one of his juggling sticks) and interestingly the picture I googled was almost identical to ours (in a larger model of course lol).

Not sure what Danielle was creating with all the painted stones piled up with soil...

More random ramblings and reflections

Sometimes I feel misunderstood (and sometimes I should just close the lid on my laptop to spare myself reading things I don't want to). And a lot of the time I feel like a bit of a weirdo with our desire for the simple life and with some of the parenting choices we've made (and of course now adding home education into that mix). But at the end of the day, we choose what we do for our family because it's right for us. We don't make these choices to compare ourselves against others or as a challenge to others to do things differently or to "make" them feel certain ways. I blog here as a record for myself, for the kids dad who like many is out of the home for 10+hrs a day (he loves to read about what the kids have been up to and to look at the photos) but also to connect with like minded people around the world.

Unschooling in this house is not about me, the mum, over-scheduling or *making* the kids do as many activities as they can pack into a day. Nathan is very self-motivated and loves doing a wide range of things - I can't imagine telling him he was learning too much today or coming up with too many interesting or fun ideas and that some people might think he is doing too much (or that his mother is making him do too much lol). He generates his own ideas probably 95% of the time and I just run with them when I can. Some days we do seemingly "nothing" and that's totally ok. Every day has such a seamless flow to it. We don't go on many field trips or outings aside from visiting a few friends, the library or getting out into nature by visiting the local beaches and parks - but the learning just keeps on going despite that! Around here, books generate a lot of Nathan's inspiration - they really open up our world.

I'm not a highly energised person, but if I've been sleeping well the days are generally going to go well; not enough sleep - well, they're more of a challenge. It is important to me that I re-energise myself frequently during the day which can happen by reading a book, having a cup of tea, browsing the internet or meeting up with friends for the kids to play. I know that blogs can come across all rosie - but as we all know there is a flip side when there are days that the kids are at each others throats and I spend my day constantly working through issues such as sharing their things, yelling at each other and trying to minimise the irritation and frustration in myself in dealing with those issues.

Overall, we aim for a simple, meaningful life that is relaxing, enjoyable, satisfying and fulfilling.

It really is an Unschooling life for us and I love it!

One of those perfect unplanned days

Today started off with no plans and we were just relaxing around the house doing not a lot of anything.

I then recalled that the local Waldorf school was having it's Harvest Fair, so we took a walk down to that for a few hours. The kids watched a puppet show, had a gelato and wanted to go on a horse ride. Whenever there are horse rides, Nathan wants to have a ride. So we queued up for ages, Danielle finally got bored after about 15mins of waiting and Simon and her wandered off to find something else to do while Nathan continued to wait very patiently. So he had his ride and thoroughly enjoyed it.

(A pic of Danielle waiting with her riding hat on all ready to go - but the wait was just too long which was a shame since it's the first time she's been really keen to have a go).

Nathan had heaps of fun in the garden this afternoon while we were digging up a grassed area to plant some herbs. He discovered plenty of bugs in the soil and attached to the wood that was removed. He found a centipede that entertained him for a while (fortunately the little ones are harmless!).


Both kids then got right into helping plant the plants, we talked about the compost we've made from all our vege scraps over the past year, why we put compost in the hole before the plant, how to tease out the roots of the plant, filling the hole and watering it.


Yesterday, the kids and I just hung out at home before heading over to friends for dinner.

Danielle getting enthused about being tall enough to try out the running bike.

Nathan had me pose with his "bouquet of flowers" he made for great-nana since real flowers set off her asthma. (ignore my triple chin lol).

Danielle building with the blocks

Little helpers?

We went and visited our friend with the broken leg this morning and Nathan got to give her the doll he'd made - he's been asking for days when he can give it to her. I think she liked it (he gave it to her in another room).

After lunch I decided to get stuck into some cleaning around the house. The kids helped out a bit - Nathan helped me mop the floors and Danielle picked up toys off the floor to make way for me to vacuum.

They spent ages out on the deck making a right old mess - but they were happy and busy.

We don't have set chores around this house - but then clearly I don't either lol hence the state of my kitchen! But the cool thing is the kids love to pitch in and help out in whichever way they choose - kind of how Simon and I work the house jobs too, we each have our favourites and those that we trade off. Maybe that will be another post for another day.

This and that

We've spent a few relaxing days enjoying the beautiful blue skies, no wind, even if there's been a chill in the air.

Sand pit play, the playground, meeting with friends, board/card games, DVD's, collecting and eating feijoas...

(lighting a fire to have a smoking volcano)

Tuesday

It was a playcentre day today and both kids had heaps of fun. We set up a water trough with different sized cylinders and they all did pouring with dyes, water and oil, then had other pottles with a concoction of baking soda and coloured vinegar. All the dyes and oils ran together in the trough and became a big murky slimy brown mess, but it kept them entertained for a good few hours.

After lunch Nathan watched a few DVDs, after having switched from daylight savings time, the early morning wake ups are catching up on them with over tiredness, so I'm trying to get them back on track (and more importantly for my own tiredness, have their wake up times back to 7am or after) - so a restful afternoon seemed to be what they wanted after such an active morning.

Nathan helped make our taco's for dinner by lining the taco shells up on the tray and wanting to put them in the oven, he then cooked up the minced beef. After dinner, the kids set themselves up a confidence course arrangement using all the dining room chairs and other bits and raced up and down the house for 1/2 hr before getting out the memory cards again before heading off for stories before bed. We also finished The Wizard of Oz.

For the record, bedtimes have reverted back to the old style for now - non-coercive, relaxed, yet parent-led - no set time, but somewhere between 7.30-8.30, seems to work well for them anyway as they visibly flop around that time. Nothing happened to take us back to this way, but after being away on holiday where things were all over the show (without drama) we just fell back into this pattern without much thought.

My day....and the kids had a dad day

I had a sleep in this morning (who am I kidding, I always get to sleep in while Simon gets the kids breakfasted until I get up before he leaves for work).

Simon took the kids down to the park this morning, with Nathan on his bike and Danielle riding in the seat on the back of Simon's. They went puddle jumping after all the rain overnight and came home soaking but having had heaps of fun.

Meanwhile I pottered around, did a bit of decluttering and tidying, a bit of housework and a bit of nothing.

I threw together some lunch for them, then headed out on my own to stock up on a few things I was needing and browsed the bookshop before visiting my nana (without kids since she is suffering from a mild pneumonia) and getting home in time for fish and chips on the picnic mat on the floor (our local f&c shop has just started doing gluten free which is so cool).

The kids had built a hut under the dining table, had watched a DVD, were playing card games and had helped out in the garage.

Throughout the day I read books to the kids, played memory with Danielle and then read some more Wizard of Oz to Nathan at bedtime.

Another rainy day

Nathan wanted to continue on with making the doll for his friend. She really needed some clothes, and a means of standing up. So I went through some of Danielle's outgrown clothes and found a left-over baby pair of jeans with a ruffle at the bottom that I thought would work. I decided to not fuss with them too much, made a dress and a headscarf, added some eyes and they were done. I had a bit of a giggle afterwards though and realised that they were wearing the "homeschoolers uniform" - apparently anyway (and going by the previous site I googled), after reading an online discussion about 'denim jumpers' which I had never heard of before, except in New Zealand we would just call it a dress, coz a jumper is what we call a sweater lol. Not that *I* own a denim dress - skirts yes, but not a dress. So anyway, they are wearing denim dresses - not the most fanciest of dolls, but Danielle likes her one and the smaller one is for Nathan's friend.

Out of the blue this morning, Nathan said he wanted to make a scarecrow one day (inspired by Wizard of Oz I suspect), so we'll pop that onto the to-do list one of these days.

We decided to go off to the library late morning and chanced upon a Sustainabily Expo next to the library which we had a short wander around as well. Nathan enjoyed making a couple of friends with some boys playing with the foam blocks at the library and they entertained themselves (with Danielle keeping up with them) while I loaded myself up with books.

The kids sat out on the porch for a while drawing with the chalks and Nathan began writing out all the numbers to 25, then skipped to 100.

We sat down to read one of the books I'd found at the library and read up on the Sahara Desert. We read of scorpions, so Nathan wanted to find out more information about them. Interestingly, NZ and Antarctica are the only two countries that don't have scorpions (I knew NZ doesn't, but was surprised to know that other than Antarctica we were unique like that). It also made him think of wells and he wanted to dig a little well complete with bucket and rope - so I suggested we make a mini version one day (inspired by Little House).

He then wanted to make a paper bag for the doll, so after googling some instructions that didn't seem too detailed, I liked this method. Nathan helped with some folding, cutting and pasting.



Nathan expressed interest in my sewing machine, so I set him up with some fabric and he happily sewed away for a while. Meanwile Danielle was playing with my pins, so I found her a felted ball my nana had made her as a baby and she poked them into that.



A few pics of the kids hanging out...and then transforming our lounge using all the cushions and yoga mats and geting crazy.


A friend dropped over some audio books on CD, so Nathan went off to his room and listened to them for ages - Danielle would join him, but kept annoying him by chatting and trying to play with him lol, so she came out and pottered around with me.

The kids helped make dinner, I read some Wizard of Oz to them while they finished eating and we waited for dad to arrive home for some more fun.

Dull in weather...but not in ideas

It was a gloomy, drizzly day all day today. I actually welcomed it, as it meant we could stay in and just *be*.

Nathan was at a bit of a loss and lolling around asking me what we could do - it's not often he's like that. It didn't take him long though to get over that. I suggested he get his Dangerous Book for Boys out and see if there were any inspiring ideas in there he wanted to try out. I recalled seeing some marble games, so asked if he wanted to play a game of marbles. Since we couldn't set it up outside (and we don't have a large concreted area anyway) we marked out the inner circle using string (I had him measure the circle to have a diametre of 30cm). We had a great time trying to aim our shooters for the marbles.

He then went back to wanting ideas on what to do (doesn't realise there is a word such as "bored" lol), so I just bounced the question back to him "what would you like to do?" and after a pause he said "I want to make W a present!" (his friend who broke her leg yesterday), "I want to make her something pretty". So I asked if he wanted to make her a beaded bracelet, and he said no, he wanted to make her a doll. I asked if he wanted to attempt some felting and make a soft doll for her out of felt. He agreed, so we set ourselves up with some felting wool from my craft drawer and set to work (going from my memory since it's been 18mths since I felted - and only once).

(we just tied a bit of string around a bunch of wool and separated out some arms and a body - no idea what I was doing lol)

(looks kinda cute here)

(but kinda scary here once wet and soapy)

Maybe I'll go off and google some ideas on what to do with it.

While I made some zucchini jam the kids went off and raced around the house playing and roughhousing for ages - I guess being cooped up in the house does eventually bring on the need for exercise.

We decided after lunch that we would go out and do our groceries despite the drizzle, got home, kids watched a DVD, the rain stopped so went to hang out in the garden with the chickens for a while, back inside for some games (memory) which Danielle's really gotten the hang of in the few days we've been playing it.

We finished up the evening by reading some more Wizard of Oz before bed.

Peaceful Thursday

We had a really lovely day today.

Nathan seems to be going through a morbid stage at the moment and really trying to make sense of death.

He started off building himself a coffin out of couch cushions.

We then headed off to the garden and pottered around. We pulled weeds and chatted. Nathan started to talk about Milly (the dead chicken) again and was wondering what would happen if we buried her when she was still alive. So I explained that Simon and I knew she was dead because she wasn't moving, wasn't breathing and her body had rigor mortis. That then led to more questions. He then did a bit of math by using our many pets (chickens, dog and fish) as counting examples (and poor old Milly featured as a subtraction example).

We discovered our vege box had been delivered while down in the garden, so the kids got all excited unpacking that and scoffing feijoas that arrived and Nathan was inspired to make a person picture using vegetables and fruit (the corn is a mouth - and it's a boy ;))

Nathan pulled out the playstation for a 1/2 hr and then requested to bake some muffins. So we got those started and ate lunch while they were cooking.

Nathan wanted to go off for a bike ride, so we went and ran a few errands before going for a leisurely bike ride/walk and play at the park.

Danielle and I discovered our reflections in a stream as she was peering over the side.

We came home and hung out in the garden again, played memory and waited for dad to arrive home.

Full on Wednesday

This seems to be our mid-week thing lately.

Well the morning started with lots of tears from both kids as they just couldn't seem to get their groove with each other and whatever else was going on...boy, it took everything for me to keep things moving without myself losing the plot too...

Finally, things calmed down when I got the vacuum cleaner out to have a clean up before going out (Nathan took on that task which he enjoys doing) - I think the distraction seemed to do the trick and stopped them from antagonising each other.

Then we headed out to the park to meet up with some unschooly friends for 3.5 hours (both kids are forming friendships which is neat to see), we then made our way home in time for another friend to come and visit who we hadn't seen for about a month.

The kids then helped chop the veges to make a soup for dinner - while watching over that cooking we played some of Danielle's new games she got for her birthday (memory and snakes and ladders). We spotted a few fallen feijoas outside, so went to collect them, but there were only 3 there for now.