Over the last week we've been making our way through out library books and some new ones that I bought a wee while back.

We decided to try and grow crystals from baking soda. They're getting there, but are *meant* to be stalagtites, but these appear to be growing up!


We decided to do one of the activities out of the Story of the World activity book and here were the kids "cave drawings".

After looking at an Eric Carle artbook today, Nathan wanted to trace the blue horse and then collage it with his own decorations.

And Danielle accessing the newly arrange craft materials...

Danielle brought some more flowers to me to help with pressing.

The bird feeder we made last winter (can you see it disguised in that picture lol). I was sorting through the pantry this morning and discovered the bird seed in there, so we went and filled the tray up. It was gone a few hours later so got another top-up. We spotted a large Tui up in the tree making some loud calling noises while we were at it.

Both kids have been listening to a lot of audio stories lately. We have several CD's with fairy tales on them, and Danielle must have been taken with the one of Snow White as she was playing with her doll later on and then decided she was going to be Snow White and came and told me a lovely story about her and then made up a really different ending (where Snow White and her step mother ended up loving each other and went off and had a happy life).

I thought it would be quite nice to see if Danielle was ready to listen to longer chapter books now. So we popped down to the library this afternoon and got out The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton. I read this to Nathan when he was 4.5 and he loved it. He's been asking for me to read it again, so we thought we'd give it a go. She'd rather play quietly while I read or look at photo's, but still seems to be interested anyway. Nathan's loving it again and is beside himself with excitement and wishes he had a tree just like it in our backyard.