A pretty ordinary day

The day was beautiful, so Nathan requested to go out for a bike ride down to one of the parks. Simon added that he'd like to collect some more pine cones for the fire. Danielle just put in "me too?!". And I pictured a few hours to myself while they went off and had some fun together.

The kids spent the morning drawing pictures and playing out on the deck in the sun - pottering around in the sandpit, playhouse and using various buckets of water from the rain over the past few weeks. They then made their way down to continue on in their mud hole in the garden. After coming in and requesting a bath, they helped Simon out with preparing lunch while I snuck down to do some work in the garden.

After eating lunch out on the deck they headed out to the pine forest for a few hours. Upon their return Nathan proudly announced that he'd done his first (little) jump on his bike.

We then all headed back down to the garden to hang out - moved the chicken's coop, popped some sunflower seeds in the ground, had a play with the push mower, had a swing, bounced on the tramp and general busyness.

At bedtime, Nathan and I recommenced reading Vin Fiz. After a couple of chapters I went to close the book, but he was so into it and requested another chapter, and then another and then another lol before asking to go to sleep.

Home-bound days

The weather's been pretty awful lately, so we've been hanging out mostly at home with only the odd outing.

The kids have been inventing a few new games and carrying on with old ones (taking the baby doll camping, playing puppy and owner and Danielle playing with her dollshosue).

They've both been doing lots of lego building and magnetix construction.

I didn't really realise, but this morning Nathan was watching a show on TV which is a fun science show where they try out different experiments etc. He was fascinated with the wheelchair that climbed stairs and stood up tall. Then this evening after we'd eaten our roast chicken dinner, he announced that he'd put his chicken bones to soak in vinegar for a few days because he was going to see if they went soft. He also wanted to soak an egg in vinegar for a week and turn it into a bouncy ball. Not realising where he'd got these ideas from, I googled it and sure enough.

Nathan and I read Captain Underpants during the week and the illustrations inside have inspired him to make his own book. So over the past few days he's been adding to it. It has adventure stories with pictures, a cover page, and a page with "speech bubbles". It's been cool to see his writing and spelling advancing and rather than only knowing how to spell his own name, he now has a few key words that he writes down from memory (and other words that he's attempted on his own, although they aren't quite right aside from the starting letter and maybe one or two in the middle).

We've been looking at our library books some more and today read a few pages on Friction and tried out a couple of the experiments they listed.

Here they both were attempting to separate two books with the pages interlinked. He even tried the experiment on his Grampy this afternoon who also couldn't separate them.

Today was bitterly cold (awaiting the storm of the decade, although not so intense down our way) and the kids snuggled in our newly arranged reading corner by the fire with Nathan reading Danielle his book.

Nathan and I started to read a book he'd been given for Christmas called The Adventures of Vin Fiz by Clive Cussler. Seems to have grabbed his attention right up and he's enjoying it so far.

And who would have thought a basic paper shredder would have been so entertaining fr so long??

A few weather experiments

This evening Nathan and I got out the weather book we'd picked up at the library a few days back.

First up we attempted to make our own "cloud".

Then decided to make "rain".

(his face wasn't right over the steam as it kind of appears in the photo).

The first experiment didn't make any obvious cloud, but we saw rain running down the inside of the bottle, so in effect was a similar idea to the 2nd experiment due to the hot temperature from below (#1 was boiling water in a bottle and #2 steam rising from a boiling kettle) rising to join with a cold temperature (#1 frozen block of hummus on top of the bottle and #2 a chilled ladle from the freezer).

It was fun though and it made sense to him since he's been very interested for months about the water cycle.

Taking those interests further

Yesterday we popped into the library to get a fresh batch of books.

We got some new books out on the solar system and as we were looking at it later on, Nathan was recounting the properties of the planets from the last time we read about them. This book went into more about other concepts we hadn't already looked at, so was cool to see the interest continuing. Danielle was snuggled up with us too and interesting in the pictures of the stars and comets.

Another book I picked out which he'd been asking me a lot about lately was what Force was. Upoon reading it, I noticed it was pitched at the right level for where he was at too. So we look forward to reading that together and trying out some of the experiments.

As we continue to make our way through Farmer Boy (it's been a long read lol), we read of how Almanzo loaded the logs up onto the sled and transported them around. We then got out the cuisenaire rods and reinacted the scene (despite the flat sides making the logs unable to roll). Nathan was keen to give it a go in real life some time with available logs lying around our property.

It's time

Learning to read the time has been one of those concepts that I've wondered about how you go about "teaching" to kids. But in usual unschooling fashion (or perhaps driven by my cluelessness on how to formally introduce it) it's started to happen all on it's own - or more likely it's always been happening but I just see a *shift* from where he's been at for a while.

About a year ago Nathan became interested in time and would ask what time was showing on the analogue clock on the oven and quickly got the hang of the o'clocks and would announce it if he noticed it going past the hour. Since then, there has not been a lot of interest and I've just spoken about things in regards to time - when we're due somewhere, what time it is now, when someone was coming over to visit etc and he's experimented with using time in his discussions such as "we've been doing this for 11 hrs!".

In the past few weeks as he's climbed into my side of the bed in the morning, he's taken to watching my digital clock and wanting to know the time. He'll read out the numbers and ask me what time it is (to which I mutter my response). He then watches for the number change and I then mutter the next time (with variances on how I present it - quarter past 7 or 7:15).

I think it might be a good time to get him his own watch.

Nathan the teacher

I find this interesting - but Nathan LOVES teaching and explaining things to Danielle. I hear them down in the bedroom and he'll talk to her about things in books whether it's how to pronounce a word, what certain things are, or things that he heard the speech language therapist working on with her.

The other day they were playing with the blow-up globe (throwing and kicking it around) and she brought it over to me and pointed to New Zealand and said "My home". The only thing I can think of is that her big helpful brother pointed that out to her since I certainly haven't yet lol!

A bit of planning?

Lately Nathan has really been delving into more complex areas and asking the same question in many different ways trying to grasp and understand concepts that in the past he was happy with a very simple explanation. I get the feeling he's hit a new level of development and realises there is so much more to know and he's just so keen to tap into it.

Interests have been in...

Planets, the universe, gravity, water (where it comes from, how it stays on the earth, clouds and rain etc)

The human body - breathing (oxygen, air, gasses, energy), blood circulation, illness, what happens to the physical body once it dies

So this evening I asked him if he'd like me to organise a few extension ideas on learning more, to which he replied yes. Yikes! While he's happy to have me read books from the library about these things, I want to bring in some other means of finding out more. Just not sure how to approach it really - but I guess the key is to be OK about coming up with some ideas but then accepting if they are of no interest or if we veer off elsewhere which is totally cool with me.

The kids get to relax

After being away, we decided to have an ordinary at-home day today. We so had it lucky with the weather for our trip - today is back to rain!

The kids started off using yesterday's vege box to make a robot which they took turns using and "controlling".

Nathan got out several board games over the day - the shopping game (he's getting the idea that the counters have different values when exchanging them for items), snakes and ladders and traffic jam. Danielle is showing interest in joining in these more advanced games, and although they are mostly too old for her she enjoys teaming up with me and joining in.

They watched the BBC Walking with the Dinosaurs video and for the first time Nathan was really interested in watching it and was recounting things he was listening to and relating them back to me and tying things in with other books on evolution we have read (and realising that not only cows have calf babies when he was watching about one of the underwater mammals).

Later on, he wrote a letter to a friend who isn't well at the moment and when we went out to get groceries he posted it off. While I was making up my shopping list, Nathan wanted to write out his list too (he announced "I love writing!").

Danielle spent over an hour playing with her dolls house - she relocated all the furniture and dolls to the play table and had them playing up there for a while, then they all packed into the car and were transported to the couch where the game continued. I heard a lot of dialogue to do with holidaying, bathing and eating.

While out shopping, Nathan asked if we could have soup for dinner. However, I had already prepared dinner so suggested that he make up a menu plan for the rest of the week. So we sat down and he spent a bit of time making suggestions and asking me to dictate them out for him to write down - it's now stuck on the fridge. Tomorrow night we are making pizza. I like it when all I have to do is cook - half the task has been taken care of with someone else deciding what to make!

Over the past few weeks we've had many in depth questions...

~All about how and why Simon's shoulder got dislocated (falling off his bike)
~Caves and everything about them
~What real life cow pats look like
~Snow (and that it wasn't powdery like he expected (as in flour))
~Why do some other kids go to school (and is totally ok about knowing that other children do their learning at school and he does his at home)
~Asking the meaning of every "new" word he comes across

And I'm sure over the approx. 10hrs in the car for our holiday we had so many more questions that I can't remember even half of them!

Mid-Winter Fun

We have just returned from a 5 day holiday and had a great time away. After the previous few days of awful stormy cold, cold weather, the conditions couldn't have been more beautiful (despite the freezing cold - but hey, it is *mid winter* afterall lol).

We set off mid-Sunday morning and took our time driving to our destination (staying in an old farm house) in time for putting dinner on to cook.

The first day we went off caving with my parents who had also travelled up with us and were organising caving with various groups of people over the next week. Why in my mind did I imagine a lovely large cave opening off ground level? When in reality it was a small slit in the ground? Yikes! For one who hasn't caved before I put on my brave face for the kids and in we went. Nathan turned out to be a natural caver (not surprising really considering his climbing skills elsewhere). Danielle wasn't too sure, but was ok as long as Grampy carried her for most of the way (she did venture off on her own a few times which was great to see her relaxed enough to do that). We crawled through one squeeze (which was interesting with Simon with an arm in a sling from a recent shoulder dislocation), crossed an stream (using grampy as a "rock" to stand on), sat and looked at many stallegtites and stallegmites and saw a few glow-worms when we switched our headlamps off.

(photo's to follow - I didn't have my underwater housing for my camera with me).

The next day we drove to a local beach for a few hours. All wrapped up warm in the chilly sun the kids had fun collecting shells, stones and drawing in the sand. Simon and the kids grampy tried some surf casting, nothing was caught, but there were plenty of fish nibbling.



For evening entertainment we had my mum's Wii Fit with us which was great fun and meant a few late nights while exercising lol.

I had expressed interest to my mum about learning how do flax weaving. So she bought her books and tools along and I made my first few pieces. I made my first pieces for Danielle (a basket and a headband) which she was very pleased with. The kids were enthused about helping prepare the flax and after they'd gone to bed we got into weaving.


The next morning we said goodbye to my parents and headed off to stay with friends for the night. That afternoon we headed up the mountain to have a quick play in the snow and then the next morning returned with our friends for sliding around on a tarpaulin before heading off home after lunch.


(yes B, I did nick your pic off facebook since mine were all back of head shots lol).

Well, in the past few days we've done lots of reading of our new library books (today we read about mammals, amphibians and deep sea fish). I can so see the gaps in my own education! *blush* I would have thought I'd know that a unique feature of a mammal is that it makes milk for it's babies (and here was me thinking it was only because they were warm blooded).

Yesterday I took the kids to see Kung Fu Panda. It was both kids' first time in a cinema and it really was about the *whole* experience lol. Nathan told me afterwards that he tried to sit still but he just couldn't. Fortunately, aside from the friends we went with there were only 2 other people in the theatre.

Nathan raced off yesterday and was busy at the activity table making a picture, he then raced into the kitche, got out the toaster and popped some on - he told me he was making me a special meal to go with my love letter. So I had peanut butter on toast and a mug of water in his favourite cup.

We had playcentre this morning and then later on this afternoon we ventured down to the garden since the sun was out. Both kids headed straight for the big hole which was once a garden bed and has been work in progress over the past 6wks. After all the rain we've had it was a giant mud pit and the kids spent ages having it squishing between their toes and came out with mud up to their knees - the mud-monster was sucking their toes. So inside for a hot bath since it was icy cold outside and this is what my bath looked like afterwards. Yuck!