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: science
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…
STEaMs
Is an acronym, in our little jargon world of acronyms, for Science, Technology, Engineering, a very little a for art (just a token), and Maths… Today I heard it called what it really is, “job training”, readying our kids for those jobs of the future. It has become a buzz word, something your kid needs…
Classification according to….
We have a massive collection of plastic animals some of which I brought when I was teaching in a Montessori classroom and we were doing classification so they represent a range of major animal groups. I seem to have lost the birds since then. Helena has always liked these and the collection has grown to…
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…
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.
Maps..
Helena got lost recently, she went on ahead and when the somewhat slower 3 year old and I arrived she was gone. It was a very stressful hour as she happily went the wrong way, realised, turned around and came back. Unfortunately I’d given her the car key so couldn’t go looking. In some respects…
learning facts – the magic school bus effect
“I like the magic school bus because it teaches me facts. It tells me interesting things. The magic school bus is cool because it tells you true stuff. It, the bus, can turn into different things. I like looking at the different suits Ms Frizzle is wearing. I really like Carlos because he’s funny, they…
homeschoolery 