Yesterday was entirely spent out of the house. First up we headed off to visit a friend with a week old baby. The car drive there involved several themes - power lines and substations which we talk about a lot on this particular route; and a lot of talk about Mount Everest (or, The Mountain of Everest lol) and Nathan wondering if the surrounding hills were like The Mountain of Everest. We hadn't spoken of ME since we last googled climbing gear required a few weeks back. I find it really interesting how these things just pop back into his head and it's almost like he's carrying on from where he left off. He's certainly into building on his theories and ideas nice and slowly as they take his fancy.

Danielle was into watching the trains as they went by and was quite inquisitive on this trip. Often she's fallen asleep 5mins from getting in the car if she knows it's a long trip so misses out on the sights.

It also meant I was able to sit back and drive and listen to Nathan informing Danielle of all his favourite things he's often chatted to me about over the years - such as the tunnels through the hills, the forests, the waves, the houses in the hills etc.

After visiting our friend we then carried on and headed into the city to catch up with a friend who's recently moved (and got to see mummy using the map every 5mins since it was very foreign territory and a few missed turns!). So it was great for the kids to get together with her before heading back home for dinner.

Today was another beautiful cold sunny. It was grocery shopping day, so as I was about to write my list out Nathan wanted to start it off for me. I dictated and he wrote, he got through about 10 items before having enough of that.

The kids spent a lot of time today playing a game which worked around Danielle's current interest of being a "puppy dog". So Nathan built her a house, told her to go to sleep, to wake up, fed her and put a bowl of water down for her etc. That game went on for a good hour or so and then carried on again in the late afternoon.

I rearranged the kids sandpit and playhouse and moved their play kitchen out into it to free up space in the house. So that got them involved in a fresh environment for a while.

The kids were excited this afternoon to see a group of sparrows up on the fence jumping into the bird feeder to eat the seeds we'd put out for them.

Nathan wanted to get out on his bike, so we went for a walk/ride around the block, stopped off at the beach on the way past where the kids climbed on the rocks, drew pictures and their names in the sand before heading home as the sun was about to set. It got cold so suddenly and we could start to see our warm breath in the air.

The kids played on Starfall for a while as I got dinner ready and then dad was home.

Another lovely unschooling day.