Today was a home-day, which it feels like we haven't had for a while.

This morning we squeezed a bunch of oranges with a new citrus press that we were given which made the job much easier than hand-squeezing them over one of those cone things.

We then made a loaf of bread for lunch and while I was in the mood I made up some garlic butter and we coated some frozen bread crusts that have been piling up in the freezer and turned them into little crusty snacks.

The kids spent ages just playing together today - trampoline, sandpit, building huts and being animals.

We read many books.

Danielle spent about 1/2 hr this evening dancing to a CD she popped on. It was interesting watching her and she was basically choreographing a dance as she went. She had some pretty fancy moves in there lol. When a fast song came on she told me it would be too hard so moved on to a different game and made a volcano in the centre of the floor with "hot lava" around it.

Yesterday Nathan wanted to spent a bit of time reading some of his early reader books (I'd got a few of the Dr Seuss ones out of the library after someone from playcentre had suggested them). To appeal to his sense of humour, while he was riding around on the trike while I was gardening, I initiated a game where I'd say "you're a d-o-g" and he'd say, "I'm not a DOG" and I'd say "you're a c-a-t" and he'd say "I'm not a CAT!" etc. Later on he was inspired by something to write out the alphabet which he hasn't done before. It was like his writing was done by a different child, it seemed very smooth and regular in size which was interesting.

I am aware that we don't seem to cover what might be seen as "maths" as what other kids would be covering, but when I was discussing it with Simon last night, I realised that Nathan is certainly being exposed to many concepts on a daily basis and I just know that it will all come together for him. Just yesterday he asked me a few times what the time was, got my coins out of my purse and asked me what each of them were, helped measure out the portions for making drinking chocolate, used the digital scales when making the bread and noting the numbers rising and when to stop, when doing the groceries he pointed to a price label and told me that that is the price, counts random things all the time and told me today that 102 was more than 101.

This morning Nathan asked where the string was kept. So after locating that for him he disappeared off to his room and after about 1/2hr called me in to show me what he'd rigged up. It was some sort of invention. It was just unfortunate that a 2 and a 3yr old came today to play and it didn't last long enough for him to finish whatever it was that he had started.

He then moved on to wanting to make a gift for a friend and drew her a rainbow (wanted to know what order the colours are in, so I told of the Roy G BIV mneumonic that I learnt when I was younger), then cut it up to make a puzzle, made a box out of some cardboard with my help, put everything inside and closed it all up (we made a closure by attaching a circle of cardboard on the main part of the box, put a piece of wool through the flap lid and then wound the wool around the circular piece to open and close it.

After reading about whittling in My Side of the Mountain, Nathan has shown an interest in what it was, so today I gave him a pocketknife I'd set aside for him and he gave it a little go on a piece of firewood.

This evening, after Nathan had taken himself off to bed early, Danielle got out a box of game pieces and proceeded to have a very indepth game with them. I returned from putting Nathan to bed and she told me about the table full of food for the party of people that she'd set up. There were wonderful little conversations going on between all the people - apologies for knocking another guest over, saying goodbye to others as they sat up at the table etc. She plays like this quite frequently and easily an hour or two at a time. The game changes and then forms something new. She plays like this with her dollshouse, a bowlful of stones, a group of figurines or a basket of plastic animals. No matter what she has, she can turn it into a very imaginative set up. I don't recall Nathan ever really playing like this, so it's all new to me.


Danielle is loving our Bad Jelly the Witch book lately and it's the most requested book of the moment. She's been busy making her own book which she started yesterday (by glueing heaps of pages of paper together) and then today she started drawing pictures and "writing" (squiggles) on some of them.

A round up

We've been to a birthday party (and Danielle was so cute telling me that people she'd just met were her friends and could they come to our house one day lol), we visited a local bird sanctury yesterday with playcentre which we hadn't done before and it was great fun, the kids have been down to the beach a few times with Simon in the rain bundled up in raincoats and boots, Nathan's had his activity books out again and he's continued asking many questions about scorpions. I finally got around to buying him an analogue watch which he's quite taken with.

Nathan's shown an interest in making his own paper (this came via several avenues - wondering why Sam in My Side of the Mountain wrote on bark instead of paper and why the Ancient Egyptians drew on walls). So we decided to have a try one day making our own paper - kind of ironic really, that modern homemade "paper making" methods just recycle paper lol. But it will be cool to add different textured items and natural items and see what we create.

Today the house has been covered in post-it notes by Nathan with labels of what things all are. Yesterday when we went to the bird sanctury he wanted to take a notebook and take notes. He's been increasing his ability to decode words when we're reading (it seems that some days he just wants to listen to whatever chapter book we're reading, and other days he's focusing on the words and hunting for ones he knows or recognises parts of words).

Danielle's been busy doing plenty of drawings and spent ages today with some waterpaints she saw me sorting out when I was tidying up their craft supplies.

Discoveries

Nathan was standing in the lounge this afternoon chatting to me while swinging a heavy glass-bead necklace horizontal to the ground around in a circle. He then questioned why the necklace rose up as it swung faster. Hmmm, my dodgy physics knowledge was challenged while I muttered that I thought it was because of centrifugal force. I got so hung up on wanting to label it that I missed the opportunity to just answer the question and note our observations (speed, weight, force etc) which would have likely met his need at the time. He wasn't interested in finding out more at that time, but I'm continuing on with my education right now lol. (feel free to confirm or deny this!)

We also received a bit of flint in the post today for our emergency kit (also of interest to Nathan since the boy in our latest book (My Side of the Mountain) uses it to light his camp fires), so after trying it out he asked further about what it was and why it made the sparks.

Today also had him continuing on with asking a variety of questions about Early Man, helping snip up lengths of branches in the garden for our mulch/compost/firewood, visiting with a friend, doing some grocery shopping for playcentre, writing a list of what we achieved today and what things we still needed to do (complete with ticks and crosses), helped prepare veges for dinner, watched a DVD and had a bit of time on the computer with a reading CD-rom.

Garden-schooling

It's still interesting to me how a lot of interesting discussions start while just hanging out together.

This morning I was down digging and moving some soil from when Simon made the kids their sandpit. I was digging away and Nathan was just hanging out nearby and somehow the conversation moved onto tools (since I was using a shovel at the time). From there the conversation turned to when tools were invented and how early man would have originally gathered food and gone about daily life without tools. He was able to say that early man would have used then used wood, stones and fire since there were no places to buy or manufacture tools/weapons as there are today. When we came up for lunch I got out our book on Early Man and he was interested to continue finding out information about the different time periods when and how tools were probably made and the way fire was likely used. Later on after dinner he was recounting various stories to Simon about how they hunted and the tools they used.

This afternoon we met up with our unschooling group down at the park and then we wandered down to the beach and did a bit of beach-combing after the recent storms.

A few nights back there was big thunder storm and large hail stones began to fall - that went on for over 1/2 hr and there was so much hail piled up that it looked like we'd had a heavy snowfall. The kids were just about asleep, but I got them up to have a look outside. I then ran out there and built a snowman for them which took till 2pm the next day to melt. For a town that doesn't get snow, this was certainly a surprising event for us.

The kids watched a little of the Olympics the other night and saw a bit of gymnastics. Today Nathan was playing with some plasticine we got yesterday and was making his version of a what a gymnast could do (to do with going up a ramp, down a slide, run across the mat, bounce on the springboard and land).

Danielle then made her version too.

Danielle's dog house from duplo.

Today we had a friend over to play and they all got to try out the new sandpit and playhouse set up. The chickens were right in there too pecking around.

Danielle washing a range of stones and pieces of tumbled glass.

Yesterday we went to the firestation again - only this time with our local homeschooling group. We haven't met up with any of the other homeschoolers before, so was great to finally meet up with some of them. Nathan took an interest today in using his ruler that they were each given and was measuring things around the house.

My schoolie unschooler

Every few months Nathan goes through a "workbook" kick and gets out the various books that his grandmother has given to him. They usually live in the bottom drawer in the kids craft area rarely seeing the light of day.

When they do come out, it's interesting to see what activities he gravitates towards. For ages he would pull out the writing books and did that last week and if he came across a maths type page he'd skip right over it. This week he's been into the maths book. Yesterday he'd turned down a page with some experiment type activities in it to do at a later stage (I don't think they actually were activities to physically do, but we turned it into one).

So this afternoon he got the book out again and turned to the page on measurements and volume. We set up a line of containers in the kitchen. He filled the first cup and drew a line on it and he then marked each of his other containers with the estimate of where he thought the liquid would come up to. The champagne glass (which isn't in this photo) and the tupperware container did stump him.

From one pile of dirt to the next...

Whereever there is a pile of dirt...you will find my kids in it.

So, the mud-hole that has been around for months may now be decommissioned as a mud-pit and turned into a frog pond, but that hasn't stopped the kids moving onto the next place lol.

Simon dug them a sandpit today, and with the pile of soil that came out of the hole it opened up a whole new source of entertainment. And then when that soil pile was tossed down off the retaining wall it made a soft jumping pile. The fun just keeps on.

This evening, Nathan and I started reading My Side of the Mountain. I think I'm in love with this book already (must appeal to the living with nature, foraging for food and adventure side of me) and we've only read two chapters. Nathan's pretty taken with it too and asking a million questions already...what is flint, what is tinder, why couldn't Sam get a drink of water from the stream at night, why did he run away from home...

A craft day

Yesterday was cold with on again-off again rain (with a bit of hail thrown in too).

I had bought the kids a Rainy Day book a while back which they hadn't really looked at, and yesterday Nathan pulled it out and wanted to do a couple of the things in it.

So first up we made some Salt Dough (using flour, water, oil and salt).

They then rolled and cut it (note the rainbow on the table - our house has them hanging all around it).

The recipe suggested that it could be baked and painted. So we popped some cut outs in the over and while that was cooking we mixed up a batch of muffins while the oven was hot.

After lunch, Nathan wanted to make some little cloth bags which were filled with rice (or lentils in our case). This was his first time at hand-sewing. He chose and made a design (with my help) for the face and wanted to give the hot glue gun a go too.


The kids played a few CD-Rom games, played with the triominos, painted their baked salt dough cut outs, read books, and Nathan got out some of his activity books that he wanted to work on for a while.

Here is Nathan the Bat.

Danielle modelling her "refashioned" skirt from an old dress of my mums that I made while we were all in a crafting mood.

Painting and Performing Arts

This afternoon the kids wanted to try out some new paints. They were powder paints that needed mixing with water, and instead of making pictures they got into mixing and creating colours.

After dinner I noticed Nathan dancing around and watching his shadow against the curtain.


A month back we'd watched this amazing performance on youtube by Pilobolus (well worth a look if you haven't already seen them). So we turned out the lights (and prepared to get a torch out) when we realised the kitchen light coming through the internal window made the perfect stage and background. The kids had fun creating silhouettes and then I wanted to try out the "dog" lol.

One of those easy flowing days...

Over the past few days we've gotten outside into the garden by 9.30am since the weather is warming up and it feels like Spring is in the air.

The kids were watching a video of Wallace and Gromit this morning - it was quite fascinating and completely different to what they would normally watch. Nathan was surprised when I said that the movie was made from figurines that had been made from plasticine (which was explained to him as similar to playdough).

Today I felt inspired to bring the push-mower up onto the front lawn and Nathan wanted to have a go helping out mow the lawn which took a bit of coordination and getting the right groove for it to work properly.

We then made our way down to the lower garden and set to work on the potato patches we've been preparing. The kids jumped back into their mud-hole that they've been working on for the past few months (which we have now planned to turn into a frog pond soon which we're all very excited about). I dug trenches in the potato patches and Danielle helped me put the sprouted seed potatoes in the holes.

While Nathan was busy climbing up his tree I heard him talking to himself and sounding out words as he was looking around from great heights.

This afternoon we headed off to a gathering and Nathan sat there and counted in his head all the people that were there (22) and whispered to me how many there were. Although he's been counting higher than 10 for a while, I wasn't sure that he could actually count right the way through since mostly he misses the odd number out whenever I've heard him counting.

While the kids were helping prepare dinner, Nathan spotted a set of scales we'd recently been given in the back of the cupboard. So both kids were trying out different things to weigh and Nathan spent a bit of time counting each line to see which things were heavier.


This evening Nathan drew a picture that he explained was him pushing the push-mower and what happened when he cut his finger on the blade (those are tears going up towards the sky) last week. Then on the other side he drew a picture of what he was like before he cut his finger (happy - lol). The long squiggle line on the side is his arm with hand and fingers as they are getting squashed.

The world according to Nathan

We had a couple of friends over to play this morning, at one point the kids settled at the play table quietly for ages as they did drawings.

This must be the first time that Nathan has coloured in an entire picture - it's just never been his thing before.

A few weeks back Danielle dragged a branch inside that came from our fallen down apple tree. She just had it propped up against her wall since then, but yesterday we decided to decorate it with some "butterflies". We used various coloured felting wool and bound tufts together with twisty ties.

Over the past week the kids have watched a heap of new video's that we've acquired. They've helped me make a potato bug to make our own bread (wasn't successful, but the process counts right? lol).

Nathan has been writing almost every day in some shape or form. On Tuesday we were at playcentre and he went around with a pad of post-it-notes and wrote out everybody's names and stuck it on them. Yesterday he wanted to write out the bread recipe for me off the computer and most of his drawings he adds writing to as well now.

We are almost through reading Vin Fiz and his interest in what the words are has really intensified (almost to the point of him not actually listening to the story, but wanting to know what all the words say).

On Wednesday we met up with our unschooling group and had a blast despite all being packed into our tiny house (5 adults and 11 kids).

This afternoon we went to meet up with a group of mums and kids as part of an organic co-op that we've recently joined. So, the kids disappeared outside meeting and playing with the other kids like they've known them forever.