ANOTHER catch up lol

It's just not the same blogging without photo's and I've been holding off while I get my other computer back to download and upload pics, but anyway, I'll just to get it all down and add pics later.

We spent a few days at home this week which really is a rare thing. Once we've decided to stay at home, the kids just relax into it and it's amazing how the day develops and the things they get up to. They don't generally feel the need to watch any DVD's either on these days which is interesting.

We got down to the library during the week and found another Magic Tree House (surely we must be at the end of the series by now lol), and started reading an Encyclopedia Brown book. Today we will go and pick up On The Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder which we had reserved.

We went out for a walk one of the days (when the wind had dropped), met and chatted to various people walking down the street and Nathan has now met a few of the neighbourhood kids who have been hanging outside after school in the past few months. So most eveninigs we go out there with him on his scooter to hang out too.

Yesterday we spent the morning with some online friends. We then headed off to our local homeschooling talent show where we watched kids playing violins, an electric guitar, a harp, singing, dancing, reciting poetry, gymnastics etc. It was a fun afternoon out.

This morning Nathan was asking what "counting my two's" meant (after having watched Franklin on TV during the week). So after explaining that he then asked what it was to count by 10's, 5's, 3's, 7's etc.

Design and build!

Yesterday morning Nathan got up early and was at the activity table busy drawing. By the time I got up and came out to the lounge he showed me his creation. It was a plan of a bridge that he wanted to build. So once we were all breakfast'd, dressed and sorted Simon and Nathan went down to the garage and collected together a collection of wood, nails and tools.

Nathan provided the ideas on what he wanted, and Simon helped create it. Nathan wanted to help saw, measure and nail with this as the end result.



Danielle had her own hammer and spend ages banging nails into her pieces of wood too (today at playcentre she spent a bit of time at the carpentry table creating an aeroplane complete with milk bottle lids, beads and popsicle sticks.

Both kids got really involved with tonight's dinner. It was to be a vegetarian dish. So we popped down to the garden to collect silverbeet, some onion weed and a variety of fresh herbs. Danielle loves washing things in water so her job was to wash all the the veges. Nathan cut open the packet of noodles, peeled the onion and watched while I chopped up the garlic and onion. Danielle added the tinned tomatoes and both kids helped stir the sauce, add various other ingredients and just generally helping out.

Another catch up

Writing...
~This morning we did our groceries and as per usual Nathan likes to write out our shopping list.
~He's been practising the formation of a few letters (g and y mostly) and has found that it is easier to form the letter in a fluid formation rather than drawing the tail on separately and forgetting which side it came out of.
~He wrote a letter to his grandad who lives in Australia which we also need to post off.
~He's been into copy writing out some of his favourite books

Today we attended a homeschooling event that was an International Day. We visited about 10 countries where there were displays of food, crafts to make and general information about the featured countries. The kids each had a "passport" they made at the start and each country they visited stamped their passport. Danielle spent ages writing various letters on hers.

We've finished reading James and the Giant Peach and have now moved onto Robin Hood which both kids are enjoying.

Poetry

Nathan's been quite into rhyming and playing with words lately.

Today while we were down in the garden digging up the potato patch, we were watching one of the chickens jumping in the holes as soon as I'd dug it out and eating up all the worms. I must have used the word gobble and somewhere in Nathan's memory a poem was remembered from a little book of poems that I have from my childhood. It was one by Spike Milligan called "A Thousand Hairy Savages".

A thousand hairy savages
Sitting down to lunch
Gobble, gobble, glup, glup
Munch, munch, munch

So he started trying to remember it and then the poem turned into one specifically for the chicken who was gobbling up worms for her lunch...(if only I could remember it).

Once back inside later on, he located the poetry book and brought it out for me to read from. He was focused on listening to those poems that rhymed and would announce if they did or not but found it interesting when I told him that many styles of poetry don't rhyme.

Yesterday afternoon Nathan continued on with his ball of string and knot tying. His knots have definitely progressed to being reliable and real knots now. He attached one end to the chair in the dining room and ran the length down the hallway to Danielle's room where he attached it to a basket handle full of heavy toys. Then he made a tube out of paper and attached it around the string and made his "roller coaster". Then Danielle wanted to get in on the act so he made her one too.


They then attached string to a toy (Danielle chose her baby doll and Nathan chose his blow up world globe) and wanted me to sling the string over a hook coming down from the ceiling. They then used the strings to pulley them up and down over and over. Nathan then moved on to other heavier items and experimented with items that could be swung around etc.

Shame I can't load pics up due to my USB port on my computer being damaged yesterday sometime.

Learning when you're not even trying...

This morning we had a couple of friends who we don't see that often come to visit with their younger boys.

It was one of those meet ups where I kind of felt like I needed to justify or explain how the "learning" happens without following a curriculum. It wasn't that I felt judged, but knew I was answering their questions so they can understand and see for themselves how this all works - and I want to show natural learning in a positive light instead of hiding away from confrontation and perhaps appearing blase and vague which I can be when not confident. So the more practice I get the better! Of course, if they'd interrogated me and challenged me that would be different LOL!

Well, without them even noticing, there was plenty of learning going on and for fun I pointed out where it was happening...

~ Nathan wanted to make them muffins and measure out the ingredients.

~ He then brought over some paper and was writing out everyone's names and in the process was covering spelling, reading and writing and pointed out that my friends name couldn't start with an E when it sounded like it would start with an I. Very true - and proved to her that he is thinking about what he is doing. (And he passed with her "testing" of "what word could I be thinking of if it starts with TH?" and his response was The). And pointed out that a word on the sheet of paper he had said To.

~ He was talking about the ages of the kids that were there and got onto that Danielle was 3 and he was 5. When she was 4, he would be 6, when she would be 5, he would be 7 etc. He got stuck though when he said Danielle would be 9 and he would be...10 (since he was using his fingers to do the math lol) - he knew that wasn't quite the correct answer and didn't follow the pattern he was doing but moved on to other things. I haven't yet pointed out how to get past this as I would love to see him "get it" on his own.

~ The morning also consisted of constructing a tunnel and ramp for cars to zoom down using cardboard tubes cut and taped, drawing pictures, reading stories together, constructing huts and jumping platforms from the couch cushions and making cheese on toast for lunch (did the slicing of the cheese using the grater, putting them onto the bread ready for grilling).

And that was all before mid-day...

Sunday was Fathers Day so we decided to go on a family bike ride and take a picnic lunch with us.

Where we ate our lunch we could hear the miniature trains running, so jumped back on the bikes and made our way over there where the kids and Simon had a ride.

On Monday, Nathan sat down with Simon while he was reading his mountain biking magazines and wanted to cut out pictures that appealed to him. This morning he wanted to paste his pictures on a piece of paper (found some artwork from playcentre) and write (is into speech bubbles, so I cut out shapes for them) what it was about each of the pictures that appealed to him. I encouraged him to think specifically what it was about the pictures that he liked rather than just a generic "I like this picture".

Nathan spent a bit of time drawing this picture of a castle and wanted me to write out a story that he dictated to me.

This is Danielle's picture that she made her nannie (and used about a whole roll of sellotape lol).

Yesterday we took a day off playcentre as Danielle had an ENT appointment in the city. So to make the most of it, we decided to spend the day in there since we rarely make it in.

We started off visiting Te Papa (our national museum) and it was the first time that Nathan in particular was into the displays themselves rather than just enjoying the experience of being there. Danielle loved pushing all the buttons of the interactive machines and displays.

Then, since it was raining we headed out to the airport since we couldn't do any of the various walks or parks. So we watched aeroplanes and drank coffee.

Off to the hospital where we waited for an hour for our appointment before heading to a friends for dinner and the kids to have a good catch up and play.

Today our unschooling group came to our house and we spent a few happy hours outside in the pleasant afternoon with the kids entertained on the trampoline or in the sandpit.

I was writing an email this morning with Nathan hanging over my shoulder. He's showing an interest in noticing words within words and likes to point out that if he removed several letters what the word would say (ie look). So we talked about look, looks, looked, looking.

Nathan got out the cuisenaire rods this morning and started making shapes and talking of the numbers used to construct them.

Danielle's carrying on with her keen interest in asking and pointing to words when reading to her.

Nathan wanted to help me cook dinner tonight and cut up the silverbeet, turned on the element, put the onion and garlic in the pan and cooked it till soft, added all the chopped up veges, cracked the eggs and whisked them up, helped grate the cheese and opened the tin of salmon - I think he can make the entire frittata next time...;)

We've had several extended conversations over the past week...

Erosion - man-made and natural (saw some for ourselves and made a decision to not contribute any further, saw some footage at the museum yesterday of natural erosion)
Tornado's This has been an ongoing discussion for a while
Volcano's This topic also comes up almost every week and has done for months now - saw plenty of footage at the museum yesterday which renewed his interest
Sandstorms (started off telling Simon that he looked like someone in the desert when Danielle put her muslin blankie around his head) - so we googled images of desert headwear and then YouTube'd sandstorms.

Thursday...
We've finished My Side of the Mountain and started on James and the Giant Peach which we're over halfway through already since he loves it so much. We spent a couple of hours today reading it along with a few new library books we got out.

A few lovely spring days...

It's interesting how the kids really get into things when they aren't waiting around to "go out". It's like they can relax and just get on with it rather than biding time.

Yesterday morning started off just hanging out at home and Nathan went off to set up a train track in his room. He called me in for assistance when he wanted to intergrate some dominoes into the mix. So he came up with this design and I assisted with making it happen since it was getting a bit too frustrating for him after giving it many goes.

We then headed out to meet up with our unschooling group to hang out at the beach.

Danielle holding up a couple of "rocket ships" that her and Nathan had made.

Nathan the "bat boy".

Danielle spent ages this morning creating a picture/collage for her nannie. Then she wanted to write her name on it so I wrote it down on another sheet and she gave it a good attempt at forming the letters. That's the first time she's wanted to try letters, she's been keen for a while writing squiggles to sign her work.

This morning we read from our Hans Christian Andersen book. I love the illustrations in the book we have and have been taken with them since we got it a few years ago. So instead of dreaming that I too can draw (I have a big hang up about not being artistic) I decided what better way to go than to actually sit down with some pencils and just go for it. So, while I was inspired by this picture to just draw (and copy!), the kids got into their usual drawings with their natural untampered confidence and we spent a pleasant hour just creating. I had fun and so pleased I gave it a go. Danielle has taken an interest in words on the page and page numbers and spent a bit of time pointing to words asking me what they were. Could be because Nathan is getting into it and she's aware that he points and asks heaps of questions about reading, but it was neat to see that she's noticed there is something more to me reading stories.

This afternoon Danielle bought the skipping rope out to me and wanting to do some jumping over it. So after attaching it to a chair and me on the other end they then moved on to wanting to go under the rope. So I told them about doing the limbo and we looked up YouTube for the "limbo rock" song while they were doing it.

Then we clicked on some African limbo dancers who were playing their djembe drums, so Danielle grabbed our one and was playing it for Nathan as he did the limbo lol.

Nathan had asked to make muffins this afternoon, but upon searching for ingredients we realised we'd run out of eggs and oil which really make our gluten free recipe work. So we settled on cheese scones. Now - I'm not really a baking kind of mum and don't often bake and often "new" recipes are a real disaster for me lol. But, I forged ahead, was getting all flour all over my black cardy and was cursing the problem when I realised I could be one of those organised baking mums who actually wears an apron! AND, I actually have a handful of aprons that I gotten as hand-me-downs from my nana which I have never worn before. So in the name of appearing like a baking-mum I popped it on and Nathan took a photo lol.

(And yes, the scones were a disaster lmao! But bless my lovely kids who are used to my baking - they still ate the crumbly things that were dry and yuk lol).

About 3pm we felt the need for some fresh air and exercise, so instead of suggesting the kids go out to bounce on the tramp I suggested we go for a wander around the block. Nathan grabbed his scooter and off we went. On our travels we met the owner of a local historic building that often hosts local community events (as I was eyeing up a chained up planter box making plans to do a bit of guerilla gardening and plonking some vege plants in there next time I walked past lol) and he came out to chat.