Just a day in the life...

We were back to Playcentre today after the school holidays and the kids were right into it and I think spent the whole morning outside busy.

~ Nathan and a couple of the other kids rigged up the swing barrel and had quite a cool thing going on. They twisted it up as far as it would go, one would hold it while the others gathered up all the balls and filled up the barrel. Then they'd all run clear and watch the barrel spin around and fling all the balls out the side opening as it rotated around. More physics at work...
~ One of the parents made a soapy gloopy mixture which both kids were into, then Nathan took the remaining mixture, added more water and added remainders from the nearby paint pots and did a heap of pouring, mixing and experimenting.

Just as well playcentre is conducive to free play, all about experimenting and not concerned with kids using the materials and equipment in only the "right" way lol.

This afternoon was spent...

~ Watching a Little Einsteins DVD I'd picked up at the library yesterday
~ Danielle discovered some long lost puzzles under her bed and proceeded to do them all and decided to work on one that she hadn't tried before so I sat down with her while she did that.
~ Nathan came down to her room after a while and announced that he wanted to write a story - so he came back with paper and pen and dictated a Three Little Pigs story to me for me to write out.
~ We went down to the garden for a while and Nathan carried on with his "hut building" theme and decided to make a bed. So he collected up bunches of grass clippings and leaves and made himself a designer pillow (I saw him filling in gaps with leaves and continuing to build it up).
~ Nathan wanted me to read the Tintin book to him that I'd also found at the library, so we sat down to that for a while.
~ We then looked through the van Gogh paintings from our library book and suddenly halfway through Nathan was inspired to paint one of them himself. So we got out the water colours and brushes and the kids spent a while painting while I prepared dinner.

~ On the Banks of Plum Creek is really making an impression - I had the book thrust in my face while still sleeping at 7am this morning and Nathan wanting to hear more. He then wanted to make the fish trap as described in the book. Unfortunately we don't have a river and waterfall to catch any lol, but I'm sure we can give it a go anyway and try it out at one of our friend's lovely clear water streams that apparently gets fish. So he's drawn up his plan and this weekend he and Simon can have a go at making it.
~ While I was making dinner tonight which had a cheese sauce, Nathan was watching as I took it steamy hot out of the microwave and wondered aloud how hot it was - so we got down the thermometer and placed it in to see how hot we had gotten up to.