Enjoying summer..

while it lasts.

A couple of weeks ago we caught up with a bunch of other homeschoolers for a morning at Cornwallis Beach. It's a great place, bordering the Manukau Harbour, but close enough to the harbour entrance to have lovely clear water and not be so tidal that the water just about disappears entirely, like happens at some of the beaches closer to home! 

One fascinating aspect to this beach is the combination of normal, beige coloured sand from the harbour, and the black, iron-rich sands of our west coast beaches -

It was just after low-tide when we went, so not so good for swimming, but fantastic for exploring -

and there is grass and shady trees right next to the sand, so it's perfect for relaxing or playing games

Nothing seems to make this boy quite as happy as a good tree.

then once the kids had got tired of the beach, we went for a geocache hunt, one of which took us up to the memorial at the top of the hill -

which looks back over Cornwallis Beach -

and the entrance to the harbour -

and the bays around Huia - 

On our way down the hill, I spotted some white daisies, which means only one thing to us educatory types - 

the green hardly worked at all, mostly just added a slight tinge to the edge of the centre, I wonder why that was?!

This is the perfect experiment for illustrating the need for a control, especially when one doesn't appear to have changed much!

Crater caching

Have you ever heard of Geocaching? I had come across the term years ago, but never really thought about it. Then a friend mentioned a couple of time that she had taken her boys out geocaching... and then eventually (a bit slow off the mark) I decided to find out what it's all about!

I won't go into all the details, there is a much better explanation than I could ever give on the link above, but basically geocachers have hidden little containers ALL over the world, and you have to hunt them out, using GPS co-ordinates, some stealth, some puzzling, and sometimes a bit of scrambling too.

 This is a screenshot of the Geocaching map of One Tree Hill Domain / Cornwall Park - 

 Each little symbol is the rough location of a cache. As you can see, there are 16 of them, just in that one little patch of Auckland! The smiley faces are ones we've already found :-)

We were visiting Greenlane Hospital again, so took the opportunity to pop next door to the park, and hunt out some caches!

We found a tree that you could climb right through the roots of - 

We climbed up the side of the western crater

(that's our 7 seater car down there!)

Paused to rest our (ok, my) legs at the top of the ridge,

then descended into the central crater, where evidently it's a 'thing' to create pictures and words out of the volcanic rocks that litter the grassy crater floor -

You can see the long U-shaped western crater and kidney-bean shaped central crater really nicely in Google Maps - 

Then we trekked back to the car...

Before a quick run up to the top-

Then into Stardome!

So it was a pretty fun morning out, and one of the reasons I think geocaching is great for kids is that it really gets you exploring in-depth in places that you might never otherwise get round to visiting, or possibly not even be aware of! Despite using a GPS (or in our case a GPS capable phone + the c:geo app, and apparently there are some brave souls who are GPS-free cachers!) it's a good introduction to distance, cardinal points, and co-ordinates, and you often have to solve a puzzle to get the real co-ordinates, or follow a clue to find the actual cache. In fact, I've just solved one of the One Tree Hill puzzle caches by using the Arecibo numbers! Now we just have to go see if I got it right....

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!

Day at the museum

Yesterday marked the first of our 3x per week hospital trips, which would naturally be a pretty dull 2 hour round trip, most of that spent in the car. So instead of coming straight home, we went further afield instead, to the Auckland Museum!

It's free for locals, and a wonderful resource! We haven't been in a while, so the kids were very keen. Unfortunately someone forgot to replace the memory card in the camera, so it was the dodgy phone camera to the rescue!

First stop is always the volcano room! The museum is actually built on the crater rim of Pukekawa, one of Auckland's oldest volcanoes.

It's nice getting to watch a volcano being created right outside your window, whilst being in complete safety!

Then off to explore...

Spotting the live cave wetas -

Mealworms and assorted things in jars -

Playing with the electronic microscope -

Watching crickets -

And finding Nemo -

The armoury and WWII planes are always interesting -

There's also currently a free special exhibition on called Moana - My Ocean, which takes you from the tiny creatures that live near the surface of the water, right down to the denizens of the deeps in the Kermadec Trench.

I thought this was a cool idea, a giant pink anemone made from pool noodles forming the walls of a 3D cinema space!

And this was cool, a wrap-around projection room showing how a 'Bait Ball' of small fish is created & how the various predators manipulate it - 

And who can resist some sharks?!?!