Once more unto the breach, dear friends...

It's the beginning of the academic year here, and with the daddy and biggest sister in the house trotting off to their respective schools, I thought it was time for us to get into a bit of a rhythm again too.

We start each year with a little celebration, including some little gifts in lieu of new school bags etc -

The kids each got a new Suzy's World DVD (they love Suzy Cato, and when I spotted these for $5ea I couldn't resist. I know they'll be watched over, and over, and over again. And you really can't beat her baked beans digestive system demonstration....!), Eli got a new pack of dry erase/whiteboard crayons, and "I Can Read With My Eyes Shut" by Dr Suess, Lexi got a pencil case with some pencils, eraser, and pencil sharpener, and Maia got a fabulous set of fabric alphabet letters, by my clever friend Monique of Neak Designs (who doesn't have a website, but you can see some of her things here on Facebook)

Maia isn't the only one who loves them!

and any excuse for cake, even better when they can make it themselves with minimal input from me!

 they used this easy recipe from Annabel Langbein

The rest of the week we had a gradual introduction to our usual stuff, the kids made cards - Eli made one for his dad, Lexi made one for her penpal -

Lexi made us pikelets for lunch - 

 (for international types, pikelets are a bit like a small pancake or flapjack, but also a little different in a way that I can't quite work out. Anyway, very tasty with cream & jam, or maple syrup)

They started some copywork to help with their handwriting, taken from Eli's new book -

 Lexi made a pinwheel from our Discovery Box, which she is going to pop onto DIY.org too

(incidentally, if you haven't discovered DIY.org yet, you really should go check it out! It challenges kids & teens to try new skills, create, and invent. It's fabulous.)

Lexi taught Maia to play "Hoses & Ladders" - courtesy of fire safety themed book covering from the NZ Fire Service -

and we went with some friends to explore one of our city's newest attractions for kids, the Splash Pad at Potters Park in Balmoral -

 we pretty much had it to ourselves since everyone else was in school, which is definitely one of the perks of this lifestyle!

July 2013

With the new baby a couple of weeks old already, and daddy back at school, July meant us getting back into our activities too!

We cleared all of the weeds out of one of our vegie beds, and planted strawberries instead -

Inspired by Steve Spangler, we had a science day -

(it didn't pop, but it did deflate quite quickly!)

Maia liked the balloon rocket

and the parachutes....

well, I wouldn't want to jump out of a plane with one!

We did the ol' 'trace around yourself' thing -

mostly as a writing exercise, rather than biology...

(apparently Eli has a hcamots)

the ubiquitous maths -

and Maia worked on becoming even more doggedly independent -

The Discovery Chest's first outing

As soon as Lexi spotted the Discovery Chest, she wanted to give one of the experiments a go! (So that was a win from the get-go as far as I was concerned!)

She chose Spinning Colours -

 and she even enjoyed it so much that she fell for the cunningly placed spare two circles of card in the kit -

So that was an excellent debut for the Discovery Chest!

The Discovery Chest

 In preparation for this year, I bought this book, and it's companion Nature in a Nutshell -

 Because really, how can you go past the "10 minutes or less" selling point?!? Of course you can stretch all of these out to weighty lengths if you like, but they're not inherently time consuming.

Each page has easy to read material lists, procedures, and an explanation for the phenomena exhibited in the experiment. I really wanted to incorporate lots of hands-on science work, so this is perfect!

To make *actually doing them* easier once we start for the year, I put together the Discovery Chest!

It's got everything we need for each experiment (well, almost all of them.. I'm still missing a few things, and I flatly refuse to put live insects or a fish skeleton in the chest!), bar standard stuff like bowls & scissors, in labelled ziplock bags! There's a few spare things in there as well.. Now the kids just need to pick a page from the book that looks interesting, or that is related to something else we're doing, and find the appropriate bag!

There are all sorts of interesting things in there - magnets, balloons, coffee filters, modelling clay, LOTS of cups, funnels, tubing, magnifying glasses, felt pens (markers), rubber bands, LOTS of string, coat hangers, etc etc etc..

If the kids are interesting in repeating an experiment the bits can go back in their bag, and if not, then the materials get added to the spare stuff bag for free experimentation!

Funnily enough while I was still sourcing all the bits I came across this Pin, which is a very similar idea, and she's helpfully shared all the experiments that she used!! I'm going to incorporate some of those to our chest too :-)