Watching Shmoo playing outside this afternoon... digging in the dirt; throwing a ball; swinging around on the old Hills Hoist clothesline using the makeshift swing that the OH rigged up for him; drawing and making up and solving maths problems with the new pack of sidewalk chalk; and rearranging his 'Kitchen Christmas Tree' - a small, thin branch that he has propped up in front of the kitchen window and decorated with old kitchen utensils.

This afternoon Shmoo and I had to brave some rather extreme fog to head into town. First stop was the doctor's where I had to have bloods done. Shmoo was fascinated and the GP was happy to answer Shmoo's questions about how she got the blood out of my arm and into the vials.

Then it was on to the post office so that Shmoo could post the drawings he and his brothers did for their dear little friend. We bought a prepaid envelope and Shmoo carefully wrote the address on the front, sealed it up and put it in the postbox. Then he noticed all the PO boxes on the wall so we investigated those and watched as some people came to check their box. Shmoo counted along with the numbers on the boxes and puzzled over why there were some missing numbers. We then discovered that at the bottom of some of the columns there were a few unused and unnumbered boxes, so Shmoo went back and counted again, working out what the missing numbers were. We noticed that the rows of boxes were grouped into threes so were able to have a go at counting by threes and figuring out what 6 sets of three equalled.

As we exited the post office we heard a ding ding ding and Shmoo was delighted when he realised that a train was about to go through the crossing. We ran up to the end of the block so that he could stand by the fence and watch the train go whizzing past. After the last containers had gone past we raced halfway back down the block and peered up to the end of the street, watching as the train went through the next crossing.

Before heading home we stopped by the bakery and bought a special little treat to share with everyone. Back in the car I asked Shmoo to count how many biscuits were in the container (6). But, as there are only 5 of us, what should we do with the extra biscuit? Shmoo's solution: feed it to the cats. :)) I told Shmoo that I didn't think the cats would be that keen on a biscuit, plus it would be pretty tricky to divide 1 biscuit up to share between the 5 of us... so he could have the extra one to eat on the way home.

 

Play/Learn

A morning at the park and beach with another homeschooled friend. The kids had so much fun playing in the park and then exploring the beach. They searched for shells and fossils (and Loo found lots of fossilised dinosaur poo apparently); examined the little creatures growing on the rocks; played in rock pools; explored the seaweed; watched someone kitesurfing; watched a boy spearfishing and then (cautiously) examined the pufferfish that he mistakenly caught; and so much more! Natural learning in action. :)

   

 

Getting There