Painting and Performing Arts

This afternoon the kids wanted to try out some new paints. They were powder paints that needed mixing with water, and instead of making pictures they got into mixing and creating colours.

After dinner I noticed Nathan dancing around and watching his shadow against the curtain.


A month back we'd watched this amazing performance on youtube by Pilobolus (well worth a look if you haven't already seen them). So we turned out the lights (and prepared to get a torch out) when we realised the kitchen light coming through the internal window made the perfect stage and background. The kids had fun creating silhouettes and then I wanted to try out the "dog" lol.

One of those easy flowing days...

Over the past few days we've gotten outside into the garden by 9.30am since the weather is warming up and it feels like Spring is in the air.

The kids were watching a video of Wallace and Gromit this morning - it was quite fascinating and completely different to what they would normally watch. Nathan was surprised when I said that the movie was made from figurines that had been made from plasticine (which was explained to him as similar to playdough).

Today I felt inspired to bring the push-mower up onto the front lawn and Nathan wanted to have a go helping out mow the lawn which took a bit of coordination and getting the right groove for it to work properly.

We then made our way down to the lower garden and set to work on the potato patches we've been preparing. The kids jumped back into their mud-hole that they've been working on for the past few months (which we have now planned to turn into a frog pond soon which we're all very excited about). I dug trenches in the potato patches and Danielle helped me put the sprouted seed potatoes in the holes.

While Nathan was busy climbing up his tree I heard him talking to himself and sounding out words as he was looking around from great heights.

This afternoon we headed off to a gathering and Nathan sat there and counted in his head all the people that were there (22) and whispered to me how many there were. Although he's been counting higher than 10 for a while, I wasn't sure that he could actually count right the way through since mostly he misses the odd number out whenever I've heard him counting.

While the kids were helping prepare dinner, Nathan spotted a set of scales we'd recently been given in the back of the cupboard. So both kids were trying out different things to weigh and Nathan spent a bit of time counting each line to see which things were heavier.


This evening Nathan drew a picture that he explained was him pushing the push-mower and what happened when he cut his finger on the blade (those are tears going up towards the sky) last week. Then on the other side he drew a picture of what he was like before he cut his finger (happy - lol). The long squiggle line on the side is his arm with hand and fingers as they are getting squashed.

The world according to Nathan

We had a couple of friends over to play this morning, at one point the kids settled at the play table quietly for ages as they did drawings.

This must be the first time that Nathan has coloured in an entire picture - it's just never been his thing before.

A few weeks back Danielle dragged a branch inside that came from our fallen down apple tree. She just had it propped up against her wall since then, but yesterday we decided to decorate it with some "butterflies". We used various coloured felting wool and bound tufts together with twisty ties.

Over the past week the kids have watched a heap of new video's that we've acquired. They've helped me make a potato bug to make our own bread (wasn't successful, but the process counts right? lol).

Nathan has been writing almost every day in some shape or form. On Tuesday we were at playcentre and he went around with a pad of post-it-notes and wrote out everybody's names and stuck it on them. Yesterday he wanted to write out the bread recipe for me off the computer and most of his drawings he adds writing to as well now.

We are almost through reading Vin Fiz and his interest in what the words are has really intensified (almost to the point of him not actually listening to the story, but wanting to know what all the words say).

On Wednesday we met up with our unschooling group and had a blast despite all being packed into our tiny house (5 adults and 11 kids).

This afternoon we went to meet up with a group of mums and kids as part of an organic co-op that we've recently joined. So, the kids disappeared outside meeting and playing with the other kids like they've known them forever.

A pretty ordinary day

The day was beautiful, so Nathan requested to go out for a bike ride down to one of the parks. Simon added that he'd like to collect some more pine cones for the fire. Danielle just put in "me too?!". And I pictured a few hours to myself while they went off and had some fun together.

The kids spent the morning drawing pictures and playing out on the deck in the sun - pottering around in the sandpit, playhouse and using various buckets of water from the rain over the past few weeks. They then made their way down to continue on in their mud hole in the garden. After coming in and requesting a bath, they helped Simon out with preparing lunch while I snuck down to do some work in the garden.

After eating lunch out on the deck they headed out to the pine forest for a few hours. Upon their return Nathan proudly announced that he'd done his first (little) jump on his bike.

We then all headed back down to the garden to hang out - moved the chicken's coop, popped some sunflower seeds in the ground, had a play with the push mower, had a swing, bounced on the tramp and general busyness.

At bedtime, Nathan and I recommenced reading Vin Fiz. After a couple of chapters I went to close the book, but he was so into it and requested another chapter, and then another and then another lol before asking to go to sleep.

Home-bound days

The weather's been pretty awful lately, so we've been hanging out mostly at home with only the odd outing.

The kids have been inventing a few new games and carrying on with old ones (taking the baby doll camping, playing puppy and owner and Danielle playing with her dollshosue).

They've both been doing lots of lego building and magnetix construction.

I didn't really realise, but this morning Nathan was watching a show on TV which is a fun science show where they try out different experiments etc. He was fascinated with the wheelchair that climbed stairs and stood up tall. Then this evening after we'd eaten our roast chicken dinner, he announced that he'd put his chicken bones to soak in vinegar for a few days because he was going to see if they went soft. He also wanted to soak an egg in vinegar for a week and turn it into a bouncy ball. Not realising where he'd got these ideas from, I googled it and sure enough.

Nathan and I read Captain Underpants during the week and the illustrations inside have inspired him to make his own book. So over the past few days he's been adding to it. It has adventure stories with pictures, a cover page, and a page with "speech bubbles". It's been cool to see his writing and spelling advancing and rather than only knowing how to spell his own name, he now has a few key words that he writes down from memory (and other words that he's attempted on his own, although they aren't quite right aside from the starting letter and maybe one or two in the middle).

We've been looking at our library books some more and today read a few pages on Friction and tried out a couple of the experiments they listed.

Here they both were attempting to separate two books with the pages interlinked. He even tried the experiment on his Grampy this afternoon who also couldn't separate them.

Today was bitterly cold (awaiting the storm of the decade, although not so intense down our way) and the kids snuggled in our newly arranged reading corner by the fire with Nathan reading Danielle his book.

Nathan and I started to read a book he'd been given for Christmas called The Adventures of Vin Fiz by Clive Cussler. Seems to have grabbed his attention right up and he's enjoying it so far.

And who would have thought a basic paper shredder would have been so entertaining fr so long??

A few weather experiments

This evening Nathan and I got out the weather book we'd picked up at the library a few days back.

First up we attempted to make our own "cloud".

Then decided to make "rain".

(his face wasn't right over the steam as it kind of appears in the photo).

The first experiment didn't make any obvious cloud, but we saw rain running down the inside of the bottle, so in effect was a similar idea to the 2nd experiment due to the hot temperature from below (#1 was boiling water in a bottle and #2 steam rising from a boiling kettle) rising to join with a cold temperature (#1 frozen block of hummus on top of the bottle and #2 a chilled ladle from the freezer).

It was fun though and it made sense to him since he's been very interested for months about the water cycle.