We have had the idea of making a raft for a long time. I had it as a kid and my sister and I built one, it was something to do with reading Tom Sawyer, the bit where they are rafting down the Mississippi living life fully and freely. Of course New Zealand rivers aren’t…
Category: Health and Physical Education
The school of being a hut warden
We have just spent a week volunteering for DoC as hut wardens. It was somewhat more extreme than our campground hosting as it involved walking 15kms on the first day, then getting up the next day to walk not as far but up, up, and more up. The first day went not as well as…
More on water slides..
When adults run a water slide it looks like this: One at a time Evenly allocated water Not much soap Adult does the heavy work Lasts maybe an hour Orderly que down the side Losts of waiting No walking up the slide Waiting until the person who has been gets off the end before the…
Mixed age play
When we put children in a classroom full of children the same age what happens is we reduce learning opportunities. Why do we do it? A lot of this is due to institutional structures. In Early Childhood you have to have particular ratios of adults to children which is all decided by the age of…
On a make..
Helena had her making..making..make hat on today. Make no 1: a mask out of the cardboard packet ginger beer comes in. No 2: a clown’s nose out of a cream bottle No sellotape has been used yet! “look mum, I just think about the grass not string..” later she plaited the grass. No 3: a…
Weird stuff my kid does when I don’t notice.
It turns out she’s secretly actually into gardening… subtly hiding it from me with a “no” when I ask if she wants to help me. This is her garden. I know she really likes pansys. The flowers periodically disappear into potions or get collected for some purpose (colouring cotton buds for instance) then grow back….
You give me fever…
Helena is sick. Last night she had a fever, very unsual, and at one point she woke up but was still dreaming and said something to me about making boats out of clay. She has been wanting to make boats for ages… we mean to make a raft, it was on our list of goals…
Swimming again
Helena is doing the same week long swimming lesson thing again. I am once again impressed by her teacher, she does such good feedback. She really tells the kids what she is looking for, breaks down the elements of swimming freestyle into do able bits. I’ve never quite worked out why the focus is on…
Musing on last school “holidays”…
It’s not as such a holiday for us in that Helena and I have to go and I get paid. So for 8 weeks of the year I visit full time work and Helena goes into care, unusually and importantly for her, they are the same place. I have very little to do with Helena…
I don’t want to leave the house…
Then we got to go geocaching…. (my turn) and it’s supposed to rain. And it’s time for me to make dinner.
homeschoolery 