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.