Brrrr, cold today!

The kids had a few imaginative games going on this morning which carried on for a few hours.

We then went and weeded a large pot out on the deck and Nathan wanted to plant a bunch of mint seedlings into it so we can make masses of mint pesto at some stage.

Bounced on the trampoline till lunchtime.

Watched a DVD.

Played with lego.

Read some Magic Faraway Tree.

Went over to Grampy's and played with all the toys there.

On arriving home Nathan wanted to play with the baking soda and water and then add colours. Since we only have one colour of food colouring he set himself a challenge to find other available sources from around the house. We talked about how in the old days when they didn't have food colouring in bottles, that people used (and still do) plants, flowers, vegetables to colour fabrics. We will try onion skins next time I save some.

I had peeled a beetroot for dinner, so he popped the ends into the water and got pink.

Then ate a tamarillo and added a few seeds into another glass and got purple.

He chopped up some limp leaves of silverbeet and got a pale green.

Danielle then got in on the action and added flower petals to her glasses.

A friend popped around in the early evening for 15mins, so a quick run around with their friend.

Sent and email reply back to his Nannie.

Danielle was looking at one of our activity books and wanted to make a little bed for her soft toys out of cardboard boxes and shredded paper. This is Nathan's one and it has things on top for "insulation" (Danielle's was down safely in her room with her while she sleeps).


(Nathan objected to the book's suggestion of making a cage - his is a free-range rabbit who lives in a hole under the ground and who can run free and do what he likes). This was actually *my* toy rabbit from when I was his age.

Finished the Magic Faraway Tree.

Snuggled down in front of the fire in pj's, listened to a story made up by me and then tried to go to sleep but nope, ended up in my bed! Danielle was already snuggled in her bed - her 5.30am wake ups are taking a toll on her!

Nathan was busy tying knots this morning and then got out our knot book wanting to try out a few different ones at some stage.

The day started off beautifully so we headed down to the local playground and took a couple of pieces of cardboard with us to do some sliding. We'd seen some kids doing it last week so thought we'd have a go as well.

The two of them hung around in the shrubby, bushy area around the outside off on adventures together for a good half hour where I couldn't often hear or see them. Was nice to have a safe area they could explore on their own.

I read a book and sat in the sun on my picnic mat.

They came back for food and I read them some more from The Magic Faraway Tree. We then headed back home for lunch.

The rain then arrived and the kids found a range of things to do.

Nathan played with his parachute he'd made the other day...

Both helped me cook dinner...

They listened to more Fatcat and Fishface.

Read more books.

Nathan replied to an email from his Nannie.

Got out the dress ups and watched a DVD.

Yesterday morning we hung out at home. The kids wanted to "play school" and asked me to be the teacher. How ironic lol. So I took the opportunity to "teach" Danielle some letters of the alphabet and work on her speech therapy hehe.

In the afternoon we caught up with some good friends who were visiting nearby. It was neat to see the kids just pick up where they left off 6mths ago.

An email reply came back to Nathan from his Nannie (he'd sent her a message last week) and surprised himself at being able to read probably 90% of it including words I would never have guessed he knew lol.

We did our grocery shopping this morning and Nathan has taken to wanting to tell me which item is the best value (I let him know which ones are the same size) and he reads the label to figure out which price is cheapest.

After lunch we went down into the garden and popped our first lot of garlic cloves into the ground and I planted some seedlings I'd picked up at the supermarket. The kids spent a bit of time climbing the pear tree, stomping out paths between the vege beds (chickweed is growing abundantly atm), Nathan spotted worms while Danielle swung her baby on the swing.

The rain then came down and we made our way back inside to read a bit more of The Magic Faraway Tree. The kids then wanted to build huts from the couch cushions, and decided that the rooms they made would be in the Faraway Tree. Danielle wanted to be Silky (the pixie) and Nathan tried out various characters (the angry pixie, saucepan man and moon-face). I was designated the role of one of the children from the cottage and we all went on some adventures visiting different lands.

They popped on a CD I'd picked up from the library the other day called Fatcat and Fishface. Such a cool and funky CD. I really enjoy listening to it too. I'd never heard of the band before but they've been around since the late 90's and won children's music awards. I even needed to go and buy us our own copy (the Best Of that was released last year!). The kids just both got crazy and danced like mad to it.

Nathan found a lump of charcoal that fell out of the fire last night and decided to try out some writing using it.

Some of the library books I'd grabbed the other day were a series on the history of Kitches, Bathrooms and Bedrooms. Nathan's been particularly fascinated in the Bathrooms one (along with the mildly gruesome stories that accompany some of them).

This evening Nathan decided to open up a large packet of toilet rolls we'd bought today (yep, we're all class around here with our homeschool supplies!). He spend ages stacking and knocking them over (I'm sure some here are now grossed out that they are now all rolled over the floors?). As he was stacking he was asking me questions about which I thought were higher etc and I took the opportunity to explain odd and even numbers to him. He likes asking me all sorts of maths problems throughout the day (has realised that more than 2 numbers can be added together and likes to give me a random bunch of numbers and ask what it is).

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.

Into Winter...

Still much of the same stuff happening around here really.

Going for walks on nice days (collecting and smashing ice slabs taken from the chicken's water bowl, the dog's water bowl and the bathtub in the garden for water collection due to a particuarly heavy frost yesterday).

Plenty of writing, drawing, figuring out numbers, making books, playing with lego, board games, puzzles, watching DVDs etc.

We went to the library yesterday and that always seems to liven up their curiosity and inspiration.

Nathan's been really into Pompeii and volcanoes and all the questions that could possibly be asked around this. I felt that I must have been missing explaining things to him because he would ask the same question over and over and over many weeks (but really I just think it was something that needed the time to process). He was struggling to process why the people died in their city and didn't leave. We have a documentary video that he'd been watching, we'd looked up the Net and then at the library I found a book that looked promising. We've read it over the past two days (I wasn't impressed having it thrust in my face at 6.30am this morning to launch right into it, so managed to set that aside till I was at least functioning lol). It seems to have explained things for him and was written by an archeologist who helped uncover a neighbouring city called Herculaneum. The book was written with a non-fiction story about her life as an archeologist and her findings as well as a fiction story slotted in amongst the chapters on how life might have been.

Yesterday on the way home from the library we went to a playground and Nathan wanted me to reread him one of the Magic Tree House books on Pompeii and Mt Vesuvius - so we did that while Danielle swung for half and hour (and apparently was dreaming of animals and butterflies!). He was interested to note some similarities in that story to that of the book written by the archeologist.

Then they got out one of the books we found at the library with some kitchen science experiments. First up we made the classic gloop one using cornflour and water. That was fun for about an hour!

This afternoon Danielle wanted to get out the face paints and have her fingers painted. Nathan soon wanted some of that fun too.

Meanwhile, Nathan got to put into action a plan that he's been talking of since the weekend. He'd found a length of spare hose and some old ice cream containers and wanted to make a water contraption. Since I wanted to be sure that his plan was the same as what I was imagining it to be I asked him to draw it so we could plan best how to use our resources (once they were cut up there wouldn't have been anymore to get it right) - so once I had confirmed this we figured out together how he wanted it and he set to work.


And it worked!

A few nights ago I had the urge to rearrange my lounge (I do that a lot - and Simon has just learnt to roll his eyes at me and get down to work lol).

I moved all of the kids visible toys from our main sitting area in the lounge and popped them in the far end of the lounge that used to have their activity/craft table (just left some things in two drawers like jigsaw puzzles, cuisenaire rods, geoshapes etc). Since Nathan has outgrown the table height and Danielle is quite happy to sit whereever, we moved the table out and I set the area up with their things including all the board games that used to be in the lounge as well. Nathan got a new bed/desk for his birthday from his grandparents and so most of their drawing materials are now in his room and any crafts/experiments can be done at the dining table (which was getting used for that anyway since their other table was really just a surface to collect junk! All their craft materials are now in some big drawers in a scotchchest that sits in the dining room next to the dining table.



And a length of cord strung up down the hallway for their artwork.

This evening Nathan wanted to write a list of things he wanted to do tomorrow, so set about writing a To-Do list with my help.

Moving into winter

It's all about catching the outside days while we've got them. Simon had the afternoon off work on Tuesday since he had to work a half of his day off on Monday. Since the sun *finally* came out after a wet weekend we headed into the hills for a walk that we hadn't done before.

This morning we got out our Earthwise book and turned to the Winter pages. Something that I've often wanted to try only never gotten around to it. We made a quick version of a Pomander with an orange and cloves. I may investigate making one using other spices that I dry off as well.



And then there's a lot of the usual questions about all sorts, asking what words say, how they're spelt, figuring out how the larger numbers all fit together, writing notes and messages, playing with lego, hanging out in the garden and sandpit, riding bikes, doing some housework and cooking, watching DVDs and cutting up paper, and more paper.

Last week I ordered a book called The Story of the World (Volume 1: Ancient Times) and it arrived today (seems to be quite big in the homeschooling world). Looks really interesting so far and I really like the way it's been written - the kids were drawn in right away. Seems a really easy introduction to history with a lot of potential for delving into topics further as they want. The activity book that accompanies it should arrive in the next few days as well - kinda mixed about it as it seems to have a lot of "busy work", but my two quite like doing things like that anyway, so they can just pick and choose what appeals to them.

This morning Nathan made a kite for his cousin that he wants to post to her. I'm thinking he was inspired by all the wind outside.

Danielle then made one to take over for her Grampy this afternoon.

This afternoon Nathan got out the Set cards. If you haven't heard of these, they are fantastic and quite addictive. Nathan got these for his 5th birthday and we've pulled them out now and again and really have fun seeing how many sets we find. So far we've only played with the one colour, but I reckon he'd be ready to move on to all colours soon (me and Simon just played a full game for the first time). It's certainly not just a kids game and one that would appeal to most people. Just check out the reviews on Amazon.