We've been loving the beautiful Autumn weather. Have only felt the need to light one fire so far and the lack of rain has meant that I am continuing to water the garden occasionally.

We had Danielle's 5th birthday party over the weekend (birthday not till tomorrow).

We've had our final Keas of the term and Nathan was presented with 4 badges that he's earned over the past 6mths. He stood up in front of the group and presented his poster that he'd made as part of his Conservation badge.

Then he also lost his first tooth!

Just in case the tooth fairy wasn't sure where to find the tooth...

Yesterday we sat in the gentle sun watching all the wild birds in our backyard as they came to visit the sunflower plants, feasting on the soil and drinking water from our pond. We took out pencils, paper and the bird book from which Nathan wanted to draw some of the birds and a monarch butterfly that we saw lazily flying around the garden (he then discovered a ruler in the pencil container so proceeded to measure his picture).

Danielle's lovely birds. The top ones are a boy and a girl bird - the circle is them living on Earth. The second picture is of heavy rain that gradually got lighter by the time it hit the ground.

This morning we headed out for a walk down to one of our local playgrounds.

We discovered Club Penguin today, so Nathan had a wee play on that - unfortunately we seen to have blitzed through our broadband allocation for the month now so he'll have to wait another week before he gets another go, so had to make do with the Reader Rabbit CD-rom in the meantime.

We discovered this stick insect in our lounge this afternoon - must have travelled in with me when I was busy in the garden.

Removing the seeds from the pinecones in the afternoon sun...

We heard of a Lego competition being run, so both kids designed their "dream creation" first and then went off to make them.

A home day today...

This morning we spent a bit of time tidying up the front yard in preparation for Danielle's birthday party this weekend.

We then played yahtzee.

I wrote Danielle a list of words that she'd learnt the sounds of but hadn't looked at for 3-4 weeks and she read them out - some by sight and some by sounding.

Sandpit play and keeping up our Vitamin D (Nathan has relapsed with his nephrotic syndrome and consequently his Vit D would have taken a dive despite having just come out of summer - so ensuring we get our daily dose to get his levels up again in time for warding off the winter bugs)

Trampoline

Read Fantastic Mr Fox that has been on our bookshelves for a while

More playdough

Nathan found a book on NZ birds with a short explanation of each that we have had for a while but no one has shown interest in looking at before.

Building with the cuisenaire rods

More Magic School Bus

Bike riding out on the footpath with dad after dinner

Well, I think our caterpillar watching can go on hold for a few days now since we finally got to see one of the caterpillars turn into a chrysalis. We were really surprised how fast the first half happened, in a matter of minutes it changed before our eyes. I just happened to be walking past the last hanging caterpillar and notice it had straightened out from it's J shape and was wriggling around.

The weather took a turn around from yesterday's thunder and lightning storm and was a beautiful autumn day with just a lovely wee breeze.

This morning the kids got out several games to play - junior scrabble to begin with, then Danielle wanted to play Memory.

We went off down to the garden - the kids played and got muddy in the sandpit while I sat and read in the sun with a cup of tea and harvested a few veges for dinner.

Mid afternoon we headed up the line to go apple and strawberry picking and had a lovely time wandering the rows.

Later on it was onto Snakes and Ladders, working out directions with the compass, little imaginary games, Hullabaloo, Lego...

A proud mummy moment. OK, so I'm awed and love everything (almost) that the kids get up to and are enthused over. However, after I'd had my shower this morning I came out and Nathan called me into his bedroom to look at what he'd been writing (this would be his first solo attempt at writing something unknown without consulting me to help with spelling).

"Thes is a book abit Danielles berthday". OK, so maybe not up there with schooled kids, but huge leaps for my wee son and gone from no attempts to this. We had the opportunity to talk about the words that were spelt incorrect and he spotted the errors right away and we talked of the use of the apostrophe.

The rest of the day...

Danielle's gift to me - a rainbow of matchsticks wrapped up pass-the-parcel style!

Nathan asked for playdough today - arrrr, that wet stormy weather must have brought out the urge to get stuck into wintery activities.

They also found a bag of shapes, nails and boards (recently handed down to us from fellow homeschoolers who had outgrown them) to make all sorts of designs.

Friends came to play after school for a few hours of fun. The kids then simultaneously watched some Magic School Bus videos (seems to be the watching of choice in the past few weeks), and playing on the computer on the KidZui website that I've recently joined them both up to.

We spent some of the morning spring cleaning the bedrooms (well, technically autumn clearning I guess) since it's felt that we've gotten by with doing the bare minimum housework over the summer (as it should be!). So the kids got stuck into helping me and were pleased with the result.

There was talk and preparation for Danielle's 5th birthday coming up in about a week. Pictures were drawn and named for friends.

Nathan's been attempting to read everything he lays his eyes on. He's really off and away with it now and spent about half an hour today reading the kids dictionary my mum had bought them (and figuring out how to look up words in alpha order) lol.

Another Danielle led-game. She came up with the idea to make Daisy today. Nathan then made little brother Daniel.

After lunch we walked/rode down to the park for a play before heading home to make pikelets for afternoon tea.

We're STILL about the caterpillars in this house! Just waiting for one more hungry caterpillar to finish munching on pumpkin and turn itself into a chrysalis.

Danielle came out of her bedroom this afternoon dressed with butterfly wings, some "pumpkin" (the playsilk) to eat and then got ready to go into her chrysalis before emerging as a beautiful butterfly.

Nathan thought that looked like fun, so got in on the act. I love that Danielle's leading games equally these days.

More caterpillar capers

We've all been enjoying watching the transformations going on. Is very handy that they are situated right outside our front door, so neat to have a wee peek everytime we venture outside.

Yesterday we'd noticed about 5 caterpillars had wandered off from the pumpkin and attached themselves on the underside of various places (one under the solar lamp, one on the handrail and three on nearby plants). Three more are still munching on pumkin, 1 unfortunately got squashed on the path a few days back :( and 3 of the original 12 are missing in action but perhaps have gone off someplace to make their chrysalis' where we can't see them.

(on the underside of the handrail of the porch)

And then this morning we found this. Another transformed while we were out for a few hours this afternoon.

We've been watching time lapse videos on youtube to get an idea of what to expect and have found out what the differences are between the males and females so we can identify them when they hatch (if we're lucky enough to be around when it happens).

Last week we were outside washing the windows and Nathan spotted a large moth in the dog's water bowl. So he rescued it and watched it as it flapped and raced around on the deck like crazy. After a while it settled down (tired probably) and they investigated it, got the insect book out to identify it and just observe. Later on it had obviously dried out enough and flown away.

Well, our hungry little caterpillars have been busy eating and growing. We needed to buy them some pumpkin to munch into since they'd gone through their plants. They were straight into it!

Sadly, the weather has turned cold this week and I'm not sure they'll survive as they've slowed down a lot. We seem to have really reduced in numbers too, although no sign of where they've gone (unless they went and found somewhere to make their chysalis).
Nathan's been full of big questions...he was questioning car license plates; then, could someone in their car race away from a police checkpoint and why they couldn't just "hide"; then moved on to how many people lived in our country again and how do we know that. A bit of a hard concept to explain I found - the whole big brother thing lol.

There has been plenty of crafting, more booby traps made with the front door and a piece of string, observing the garden as it gets closer to being ready for harvesting and tidying up, noting the changes in daytime temperatures, discussing tornados (as we experienced a mini-tornado last week and we all felt like Dorothy in the wizard of Oz as we raced around in the wild winds and dust to put the chickens away)...

Nathan and I read a library book a few weeks back on how cotton is turned into jeans and the processes involved. He has been interested in flow charts since then and comes out with wee charts for me to look at. This one is about broccoli in our garden. Hmmm, think I could probably introduce flow charts with decision boxes, he'd be into that.

Alien Ears

Lego people house

Nathan wanted to make up the next batch of drinking chocolate. I introduced him to using "units" or "parts" opposed to set measurements and how I also "eyeball" it.

We found 11 of these cute wee fellas outside on our swan plants. Eek, I'm sure they're a bit late in the season to be doing their thing now....and we're running out of food for them. Think we'll be doing a bit of a shop up for new plants tomorrow and failing that will resort to the pumpkin flesh idea.

Nathan's poor wee sunflower that never really got a good start to life, not enough water, and non-nutricious sandy soil. It's only about a foot tall (unless it was a dwarf variety - I think we might have been given this seed). Still looks lovely though.

The afternoon was spent playing with friends, then after dinner off down to the park with dad.

A Fun in the Sun Day

Long live summer!

We spent the day around at my parents house where my step-dad took some of our homeschool group through learning rope skills required for abseiling/descending down a rock face etc by using his training climbing frame set up in their back yard.

After staying for several groups to come through and have their session, we then headed off to Nathan's Keas meet up down at the river where they had a boat race with the boats they'd made the week before. Then skimming stones across the river, swimming, creating mud slides and general mucking around before heading home for a late dinner.

Nathan's really gotten into sticking to task for gaining his Conservation badge for Keas. Yesterday he tended his little garden, filled the pond up again for the birds to have a drink, harvested an armful of veges for dinner and didn't suggest turning the TV on (and thinking about it, Danielle didn't either). He's really taken it on board and went online to check off another day of completing his pledge.

Today was another beautiful end-of-summer day.

The kids were inspired from somewhere to make some puppets on a string.

We went and did our grocery shopping today. Nathan asked for the list so he could read out the items to purchase. He really seems to have clicked with reading now. The phonics programme we have been working on has helped him so much and given him a lot of confidence in just the past week that he started reading an early reader chapter book by choice today. Then wanted to sit with me and read with me helping as required.

Nathan was asking me to show him how to make a flax headband since I'd learnt off my friend last night how to make them. So we harvested some more flax and I sat down to weave them both a band.

Many games played today including Triominoes. Danielle was also keen to play and it was interesting to see how both kids are different with their style of seeking and finding information. Nathan methodically scanned the outer edges for matching numbers to place his tile, whereas Danielle seemed to be able to spot them by doing a "whole" scan of the layout and would spot one. I have also realised lately that she has full number recognision despite me not "teaching" her what numbers look like written down as well as knowing at a glance what the number on a dice is without counting the dots. 

Had to take a photo of this. I was cooking dinner and came out to the lounge to see what they were up to and there they were outside snuggled under a blanket together with Nathan reading to Danielle (along with Danielle's polar bear who was transformed from a dirty grey bear to a lovely almost white bear today as well as we all gave her a bath and lay her in the sun to dry).

The wind picked up so Nathan raced in to find his kite...

Modelling their headbands for Simon once he got home (all dressed in swimming togs to go down to the beach after dinner to make the most of the sunshine since it is due to disappear for a few days). Nathan's headband has been decorated with some feathers from one of our moulting chickens.

We've also been looking and practicing Italian words (just colours and numbers at this stage). Some time in the faaaaar future we intend on doing a trip around Italy. So, no time like the present to get started on another language especially if it will have relevance. Wonder if we can learn two languages at once (the other being Maori since that also has relevance)?

Tuesday:
Nathan started off the day wanting to start to work on his Kea tasks that go towards the badge he'd chosen to undertake. So we looked up whales and why they are endangered. Then read up on Keas. Then he needed to join a conservation type group. So we chose Tree People and he's taken a pledge to help out. He chose from the list and went with not watching TV during the day (they still watch a bit of morning TV though - hmmmm, that would be how the parents get to sleep in till 7.30am). I was kinda hoping he might go for the "do not open the fridge during the day" lol.

We finally finished reading the Wizard of Oz. Danielle loved pointing out where the movie differed from the book. At times I wondered if she was listening to the story, so it was neat to hear her recount back the differences she noted.

Off outside they went to play in the flax bushes out on the front of the street and build huts. They've just discovered this area to play in so spent a bit of time in there before transporting all their flax down into the lower garden to continue their hut building.

Later in the afternoon we headed off to gym class.

Danielle got out the tesselating shapes to play with while Nathan played on the computer for while.

Wednesday:
The kids wanted to go for a walk this morning, so off we set. Danielle packed her new bag (with writing book, pen and water bottle) that I'd just made her the night before (she loved it despite the look on her face lol).

We sat in the grassy area across the road from the dairy while the kids ate their ice cream and I relaxed in the sun. I looked up to see Danielle busy writing in her book and Nathan busy drawing in his lol. The cicadas were out full force getting the last of the summer season.

Later in the afternoon I head them set up a game and play "school" and held writing lessons. Note their bags still on them lol.

Nathan wanted to play on his Reader Rabbit Maths CD which he hasn't done for a while. Danielle then had a go on the Reader Rabbit Reading CD that she's just discovered and is able to do a couple of the lessons.

Danielle got out the Mighty Mind shapes. We've had this since Nathan was about 2 and he used to play with it all the time. Danielle's never shown interest in it before, so it was interesting to see her get it out for a play.

While I was waiting for dinner to cook, I had Nathan bring inside all the flax that they'd been playing with the day before so I could prepare it to take to a friend who was needing help to make heaps of woven headbands for their school's Harvest Festival coming up in a few weeks time (how handy that we had it freshly lying around when she asked if we had any to spare ;)). So Nathan helped me split them and remove the spines.