We are very rarely at home all day these days, but today was as close as we get!
I started the day earlier than the kids, catching up on email. And then Boom! They’re up. Then it was a quick breakfast for C while watching Mythbusters. After that, it was time to play Fluxx – a great game of learning how to cope with change in a controlled way – the rules and win conditions always change. C loves it.
While we played that, J did letter practice on C’s tablet – strictly monitored because she broke her own tablet a few weeks ago. She’s managed to muck around with the language settings and is learning Russian letters. Then she watched a little Pocoyo in between mucking about with some water. After 2 games ( 1 win each), it was snack time. Afterwards, J asked me to read a Santa Claus story. C got on the computer and continued his scratch work from yesterday.
There was a brief pause where we talked about the latest scientific hypothesis of no big bang, before settling down to watch a TEDx talk on ‘Is there an equation for intelligence?‘
After that, it was shower time as we went on a quest to buy some turkey from the butcher … the two of them have a running joke that whenever they are cross with each other, they’ll say crossly, ‘Go eat some turkey!’ and they had decided they wanted to try some. It was a decent walk but poor J fell over and scraped her knee, so in the pram she went after the dirt was washed off. Then after a quick trip to the bakery (bread rolls are de rigueur), we arrived at the butcher. Only, alas! They had sold out of turkey. The butcher offered the kids some smarties as compensation, which was well received.
Then on the way out, C noticed the height measurements on the side of the door … and our lovely butcher gave him a quick lesson in crime detection! Apparently almost all doorways have coloured height measures for the CCTV cameras – so they can know the height of criminals… and then on to a talk about their tallest customers who have to bend to enter and a quick lesson in converting feet and inches into decimals and fractions.
Another long walk home in the heat, having a chat about trees along the way and back home for a lunch of mini-frankfurts while watching Heston make the largest icecream ever. Then it was time for their own ice blocks – it’s a hot day here and well, icecream.
Then C and I had a quick discussion about political journalists as we watched a segment of the 7.30 report about how we were watching a battle with words, not swords. J decided to have a look at Toy Story Yahtzee, mainly to look at the pictures and sort them into colours.
Orange Lamp – it works! |
Then it was time for experiments – and today we made an orange lamp and tried to create a banana lamp – alas on the latter, it didn’t work.
C decided he needed to do a little Kahn academy (maths), while J disappeared into the bathroom to do a little more self directed water play. Thankfully by the time I rescued her from the sink, she was only cleaning some of her plastic toys, not flooding the bathroom.
J then begged to play ‘the fish game’ again – letter practice, but once she had the tablet reneged and started playing cool maths games instead – problem solving with shapes, with occasional help from mum. C decided he’d done enough maths and went to play the scratch version of minecraft someone else had written. He was determined to create his own ‘jumping’ game.
A quiet afternoon followed and then it was finished off with DH and C playing a game of fluxx while J did some music games.
Then it was dinner and the Princess Bride to finish off – which was a little too much for J – she was worried Buttercup would never make it home.
And that’s a quiet stay-at-home day!
This post is part of the All Aussie Not Back To School Blog Hop!
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I enjoyed reading about the natural learning opportunities in the day mixed in with the more formal studies:)