We've been catching up with my niece and nephew over the past week. So great for the kids (and me) to get to re-know their cousins (and meet one for the first time).

Nathan and his cousin got to do some more climbing on Grampie's climbing frame - he jumps at any chance to have another go. Danielle chose not to have another go.

Danielle's polar bear had a bath out in the morning sun the other day.

We've started rereading My Side of the Mountain. I really enjoy reading this book with all it's wild food gathering, food preparation and self sufficient living talk. Nathan started writing down a list of everything that he didn't know about so we could research into things further.

Nathan noticed that a couple of our chrysalis' have changed colour again - so googling confirmed for us that they are almost ready to break out (they have gone a brown colour with the orange bits on the wings visible inside).

Yep, an hour later I noticed it hatching out. So we sat and watched it for an hour or so as its wings filled up and flattened out and Nathan noted that it was a girl. We came back later and saw that she had walked up the curry plant further and was flapping her wings more regularly and wandered across our hands as it took its time to orientate itself. Danielle announced to her "welcome to our world little butterfly". We saw it do its first fly across the lawn before we left it to it. Amazing how that consumed most of our afternoon.

While hanging out the washing on the line this morning Nathan and I had a bit of a discussion about how the sun and water are vital for life on earth which led onto plants and photosynthesis, so I'm sure that will lead on to some further discussions later.

Danielle's been very busy creating more Beado figures over the past week.

They've been blowing bubbles and doing a bit of kitchen science with various combinations of oil, water and powders.

Playing "pairs" and "set".

Nathan found the Mad Libs book, so we all had fun filling out some of those with silly stories.

Danielle wanted a cradle for her polar bear. So I got her to bring out the little soft bed she has, found a half piece of firewood and voila! a cradle lol. She was pretty happy with it.

Danielle had out her paper dolls with clothes and they both played with them for a while.

This evening Danielle made a book, filled it with pictures and then asked me to write in the story for her.