Making Christmas crackers

I had them draw a picture that I then traced onto tea towels using a laundry pen as gifts.

Making and writing Christmas cards for grandparents and their friends.

This afternoon I was having a cup of tea and reading a bit of my book while Danielle played Starfall on the computer and Nathan was in his room drawing. Nathan came in to show me his "newspaper" he was making. I'd been telling him how when I was younger I made a newspaper with puzzles, articles and drawings. This was his version. He started off by drawing pictures showing how Earth revolves around the Sun (seems to be exploring this topic every now and again) and then asked for other ideas to fill in the page. I suggested he consult the calendar to find out how many days till Christmas and then I told him that Summer Solstice was just before that, so he added that too. He had a game of noughts and crosses and then wrote out some maths problems for the reader to solve.

Danielle was then inspired to make a house under the dining table, so they moved on and did that for quite a while.

We've had our last gym class for the year until after the summer holidays and Danielle got to try out Nathan's class for 5-7yr olds and had fun, so she'll be joining that one in February and the only difference being that I won't be on the floor with her and she'll need to follow the teachers instructions. Will be interesting to see how she gets on with it.

Yesterday Nathan started to fly a paper plane at me and wanted me to read the message inside it. I then sent it back with a message for him - and back and fowards it went!

An impromptu experiment...

The washing machine was going a few days back and the kids were outside in the front garden and heard the water pouring out into the drain. So around to the side of the house they went to watch it coming out (and noting the 4-5 different pipes feeding into the drain). Nathan went running inside the house and then out again and said he'd put a small leaf in the tub to see if it would come out (I suspect he missed it). I then had them wait where they were and wait for the surprise. I rushed in and tipped a bit of blue food colour into the tub (ours fills up with water and spirals down the plug hole) as it was continuing to drain the water. As I was coming back out I heard them all excited at seeing the blue foamy water coming out the other end.

And then finishing the day with a pillow fight.

Sunday morning had us attending the kids end of year gymnastics performance. Danielle did hers (lying on the floor with her friend as they do "log rolls") but Nathan wasn't so keen when it was his turn.

After Saturday's treasure hunt, Danielle disappeared off to do some drawing and came out with these "clues" for nannie where she gave instructions for us to go on our own treasure hunt.

Nathan was "invested" into Kea scouts today. Here he is super proud in his new uniform (got the scarf and woggle today). Also did his first "ride on the road" there. Usually we have him ride on the footpath whenever we go out, but I rode down with him and we went on the road for the 3 minutes it takes to get there.

Playing with his marbles they were each given at Keas today.

Yesterday as I was hanging out the washing, Nathan asked if he could make his own little herb garden. So he set to work filling an annoying hole in the front garden. He lugged up a bag of compost from the lower garden, found some soil to mix into it, planted out some tiny herb seedlings I had on the go along with a few vegetable seedlings and a sunflower seed in the centre.

Meanwhile, Danielle was inside keeping herself busy with some lego.

The afternoon was spent with friends we haven't seen in about a year. Was cool to see the kids just pick up where they left off!

Today started out with no plans.

At 9.30am I decided to surprise the kids with a visit to the movies to see Where the Wild Things Are. A few scary bits for Danielle, but they otherwise they really enjoyed it.

After lunch a friend called to see if we wanted to go swimming, so after chucking some dinner into the oven to start on auto-timer we were off for the afternoon and got home in time for dinner (Simon had just arrived home from work before us and was pulling it out to serve up!).

We then headed out to a BBQ this evening that was at a farm and the kids had a ball. We started off doing a treasure hunt to get to see their property. The kids then raced off to play with other kids there as we caught up with old friends and met new ones.

Horses seem to appear in our lives quite a lot! The cheeky wee calf then grabbed the piece of paper on the ground (our next clue!), so Simon had to retrieve that from him.

Nathan finally got his windy but no-rain day, so we headed down to the local park this morning. Brrrrr, it was freezing (so much for summer!) - back to wooly hats and padded jackets (well, for me anyway lol).

We then decided on the spur of the moment to join up with the homeschooling group for a tour of the local chocolate factory (lol, for all the years I've lived here I've never even been in the shop and it's just down the road from me!). Here the kids were with their hairnets on before the tour. Was really interesting! Nathan asked where the chocolate moulds came from and was told they mostly come from Holland.

Danielle had the clock cards out this afternoon and was showing me the o'clocks as she figured them out. Then moved on and kept asking what time the clock then showed when she moved the hands around to random positions.

We played Memory many times!

Read all our new library books. Me reading to them. Nathan reading to me and Danielle. Danielle "reading" books on her own.

Nathan chatted to me while I cooked dinner and was asking about a couple of fruit flies he saw flying around, so we set a small glass with a bit of apple cider vinegar out for them to see if they'd be attracted to it and discussed why that might be. Experiment still on the go.

I got quizzed on math problems again!

Read more Heidi.

A picture of Danielle's. She's very much into using ballpoint pens for her pictures.

Have just noticed on closer inspection that the boys have just hair on top and the girls have hair on all sides. The man on the right with the boxes next to him is our vegetable box delivery man who comes on a Thursday.

The randomness of the past 3 days...

Reading on with Heidi.

There's still been a big Party theme going on lately. Nathan designed a game "pin the beak on the duck" for them to play.

Sandpit play - pouring water through a buried hose to see if it would fill up the other side and sweep around underneath to a pool on the other side (and yes that is an empty beer bottle Nathna is using that Simon left down in the garden from watching them on the tramp after work one night).

Monday afternoon Danielle and I dropped Nathan off to Keas. They were meant to fly their kites they'd made the week before, but the weather didn't cooperate. He was super proud of the uniform that he was given. He gets invested next week and can then start to earn badges to put on his hat.

Deciding to make a herbal wreath using some lavender branches that I had cut off the bush that broke with some awful weather a week back. They had been drying hanging in the front porch (until the howlign gales broke the string holding them up) and I wasn't too sure what to do with them. Nathan helped me cut off all the flowers and put them in a bowl. Then I thought they might make a good base for a wreath.

The next day (after it had stopped raining) we gathered some herbs and greenery from the garden to thread into them - fennel, ivy, thyme, oregano, rose geranium, lavender, feverfew, violets, calendula, thyme and lemon balm (as well as some pink flower growing in my garden).

(my one)

(Nathan's one)

 Danielle chose to just gather flowers in her apron but not thread her wreath up.

We've had out our Family Math book and I found some activities to do with Time since it seems to be a big one for Nathan at the moment.

First up I set up our bedroom clock under the oven analogue clock.

They then both drew clocks (Danielle was focusing on identifying the numbers on the clock she was copying from and writing them out) and drew on the times that things often happen around here. Nathan realised that his get up time and bedtime were the same (they're not in reality, but he chose those times since they sometimes happen that way). He then worked through some problems using our toy clock where I asked if it was 6 o'clock and then 2 hrs passed what would the time be etc.

They then did various things to see how long things took to do such as how many times could they write their name in 1 minute.

Danielle's taken to quizzing me on what numbers add up to as well lol. Gotta keep me on my toes!

There was a thunder storm this morning which had us feeling the vibrations of. So off outside to sit on the porch under cover from the downpour and watch for lightning. Nathan retrieved a book we have on weather and we read up about thunder and lightning while we waited for it to pass over.

After lunch we headed off to Danielle's gym class.

Then to the library for an hour before heading back for Nathan's gym class. During Danielle's class, Nathan was asking the gym teacher how some of the higher equipment was used, so she said when we came back for the after school class she'd get her 8yr old to show him what he does on the rings.

This coming Sunday they will both take part in a Christmas display where each of the classes do a demonstration.

We were out of the house early today to meet up with friends about an hour away. Played in the park and ate ice creams at the beach.

On the way home driving past the estuary I noticed the tide was out. So as we got further towards home, we pulled in and checked out the rockpools for a while.

Got home mid afternoon for a late lunch. I had a rest with a book while the kids went crazy for a while. Simon will be home tomorrow evening after being away for 4 days, so I'm sure they'll have plenty of stories to tell him about.

They were into board games early today. Junior Scrabble and Whoosit (Guess Who). Grampy turned up for a visit so they showed him their milk/food colouring experiment and that moved on to discussions about light and colour. Nathan asked Grampie how many times he'd been around the sun and he answered correctly but loved the question.

Out came some letter bingo cards I'd made up a while ago to help Danielle learn the letters and they wanted to play a game of that using the scrabble pieces - so I was the caller of the letters and each of them and Grampie had a card to fill in.

Reading more Heidi (about 2/3 through now - Danielle seems to only tolerate 1 chapter at a time).

Nathan was asking me about some numbers on the packaging of a tent that Simon had bought us a few nights back. So I introduced him to the concept of 50%.

Off to a BBQ with friends for the afternoon (despite the miserable wind and rain). A late visit in to Nannie and Grampie's on the way home.

A Few Days...

Gymnastics.

Playing at the park and chatting to newly made friends

Reading Heidi

There was a party going on here today (Danielle's sign saying Party here today)

Pass the parcel for all their friends

Animals had a bit of a game going on

This was a cool experiment! It used a plate of milk and we dropped in a little food colouring. This experiment shows about surface tension - the milk is denser than the colours, so they just sit suspended towards the top amongst the fat of the milk. We then dropped in a few drops of dishwash liquid. The colours went crazy and were zooming around the plate! What happened was that the dishwash liquid broke the surface tension and began to break down the fat and therefore making way for the colour to move around, the more fat that got broken down, the more the colours could move (well, that was one explanation I read). We did notice that it took quite a bit for them to blend. Unlike mixing colours together and just ending up with a murky brown, the colours just swirled and worked their way in between each other and very gradually blended. Even after about 5mins of gently moving the liquid with the spoon we ended up with a marbled effect.

(oops! Non friendly video, best with sound off lol - next time I should watch it properly before posting!).

Questions about why we could see the moon during the daytime lead onto reading up about moon cycles (how many weeks in a calendar month, months in a year etc) and the Earth orbitting the sun. Nathan plans on asking his Grampie how many times he's been around the sun next time he sees him.

We've had friends pop in for a visit.

A gorgeous day meant a visit to the local outdoor pools for the first time this season.

There's been painting of hands

More being quizzed on math problems (there seems to be a big focus on "how many weeks/days/months till....Christmas/camping/my birthday/till we stay at nannie and grampies". It's doing my head in a bit lol, but all in the name of learning I guess!

Riding at the BMX park with dad, going to Kea's and making kites to fly next week.

Danielle wanted to play with the clock and cards again this morning, so I moved on from the o'clocks to the half-pasts.

Danielle had her eye on a princess hat from one of our library books. When I was out yesterday after dropping Nathan to Keas I popped into the stationery shop and picked up a few supplies, so we made these up this morning.

A lovely mouth action shot going on there lol!

And a crown for Nathan from the rest of the card.

Hanging out in the garden eating yummies!

Playing on the swing.

Nathan and I played with the Set cards this afternoon.

Both scrapping over who gets to vacuum the floors....righto!

Danielle's following the same way as Nathan with asking me to spell out words of all her favourite things and people for her to write down. Interestingly though, she doesn't know all her letters so is learning as she goes, whereas Nathan somehow figured them out when he was 2 so just moved on to having me spell them out for him.

Reading a lot of Heidi today!

The kids set up a store each again today. We decided to put price tags on things and Nathan was at the cash register taking the money and giving out change. At the end of the "day" we tallied up our day's takings.

The tape measures then came out and both were running around measuring things.

(Danielle measuring her new chair that came from Freecycle)

Cracking open a dried acorn from off our nature display

Since my sewing machine came out a few days ago, Danielle's been wanting to do some sewing. She decided her baby needed a little apron as well. I sewed the main part and she decorated the pocket with swirls of sewing.

Nathan then wanted to make his doggie a hat. He did all the sewing himself with my help at guiding the fabric.

A bit of magnetix

Then pancakes for lunch. We moved on with the fractions and discussed what would happen if we split our 1/3 in half again. Then showed how the bits all fitted together differently.

We made a rhubarb and apple crumble for pudding tonight (has been a favourite lately). Nathan wanted to share the recipe with his nannie, so wrote out the recipe to give to her when he will see her on Sunday.

Danielle got the playdough out.

We continued on reading Heidi several times during the day.