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.

Playing shops with dad (he particularly enjoyed shopping with his little bag lol).

Nathan's painting of his dragon from last week.

Nathan wanted to do his chromatography experiment again.

Sandpit play - discovers with baking soda and water

Danielle collecting lavender with me to make a lavender oil.

Making a lean-to after reading more about early man.

Watering the garden and observing how everything is growing.

Danielle happy with her "Heidi" apron for collecting flowers and bits and pieces from around and about.

Reading more Heidi

Nathan attending Keas and going on a scavenger hunt to nearby sand dunes, beach and reserve.

Gymnastics.

Playing with friends.

Painting.

Writing stories.

Lots of Lego play (Danielle followed the instructions to make her person and then built the car).

Nathan's car garage he designed (with opening door) and then made up the car from his instructions.

Danielle's been mothering her polar bear (her fav cuddly toy), he's been born and breastfed, and looked after when he was sick.

I get tested on my maths lol "what does 10 + 5 + 6 =?" and when I get the answer right "hmmm, good!"

We made a start on reading Heidi today.

Danielle got out the Let's Shop game so we did a bit of buying and selling (she was bothered that she had to hand over her money to buy items and would have preferred to keep her money and not buy - I like! lol).

Nathan then got out Mancala again and whipped my butt.

Danielle painted some pictures inspired by Heidi.

Nathan quizzed me on new words he must have been mulling over: buffer and dock as well as a few phrases I can't recall.

Nathan helped me peel a heap of green apples we had hanging around from our vege boxes over the past few weeks - so they were stewed up for the freezer (next time I will get the dehydrater off my parents to preserve them that way).

After lunch we headed out to see some friends and both kids got into some more painting. Danielle painted a rainbow with a unicorn on the top and Nathan painted a very long dragon that looked like one of the brightly coloured costume ones we saw at the Chinese New Year Festival earlier in the year. We will pick it up at some stage (was still wet) and stick on our hallway wall I think!

This evening Danielle was intent on making a gift box to put a bunch of her things in. So we googled how to make a bow from ribbon so she could put that one of her boxes.

We finished our chapter book and tossing up whether to re-read Heidi or Farmer Boy (for Danielle's benefit).

Last week a friend handed down to us a marble run set. The kids played with it almost non-stop for 3 days (aside from leaving the house for outings or me kicking them outside when the sun was shining).

A few days back the weather was gorgeous so we set out for a morning walk and to do a bit of medicinal plant foraging.

We attended a birthday party for a wee friend on Sunday (the kids reminisced about it being at our old playcentre). There was much preparation in making pictures and cards to take along.

I read them a library book yesterday that Nathan had picked up from the non-fiction area in the Puzzles and Riddles section that inspired Nathan to grab pen and paper and write a poem (or maybe it was prose or just freestyle poetry...I certainly don't know enough about literature!). It was a story about a magician being sent to find the philosopher's stone and the illustrations inspired his writing.

I was flying in the air
Softly and gently
And then I landed
On my feet

(Was spoken with plenty of drama, emphasis and specific pauses particularly between the last two lines). I heard him pacing the house with his page of writing raving like a mad poet lol.

While out in the garden in the afternoon we spotted a heaps of strawberries starting to grow quite big as well as our wild blackberry vines taking off. The kids decided that there were fairies looking after them and Nathan came up with the name Berry Fairies, so they proceeded to make them a little house to live next to the berries to keep an eye on things.

Today we headed off for a walk along the local river (Simon had switched his days off from work so we had him home today) and I got to forage some more.

Home for a smoothie with dandelion leaves this time (using our new glass straws).

After dinner Simon popped out to get The Princess Bride on DVD for the kids before I went off to work. Danielle fell asleep but Nathan really enjoyed it (but did observe a few scary bits that I'm not sure Danielle could have handled anyway).