A new teen!

Our family has started a new phase. We now have a new teenager! A census of family members might read;
AP's: 2
YA's:4
T:2
C:1....can you work out the abbreviations?(hint: the first title is one bestowed on those with a similar job description in "the Coot Club" which is one of our current readalouds)





Mel always puts so much thought into her gifts. T. "cracked up" when he opened her card with its star wars sound effects.Its images(silent as images usually are!)introduce + complete this post.





New teen chose a pasta dish as the main course for his celebration.So rich and satisfying was it that dessert had to follow several days later....although a small piece of cake was partaken of on the day!

This book was a very popular gift and demands a further post later as does a Maths game sent from Auckland.

6 years

We read this picture book today

a quote from it leapt out at me :Current waiting time in detension can be up to six years.

and suddenly I'm back

to a family with 3 young children and a mother who hasn't spoken or left their room

to a visit to Baxter where three young men came up and thanked us for bringing our boys because they were beginning to forget what their younger siblings looked like and it was so beautiful to see children just play again



but they tell me:
we have limited resources



we can't take them all


their taking our jobs

why don't they just go back

and my thoughts move forward to a recent Compass programme that highlighted the reluctance of three young men to come from africa because



they'll treat us like we're monkeys

and back again i remember the privilage of homeschooling two "non-persons" for a term and celebrating the birthday of the youngest with a special picnic in the park, the oldest has a smile that could have lit up all of Adelaide..


even though she'd traveled as a "non-person" ... still kept smiling..... 6 years..........

Nine years young!

Lachlan turned nine. He chose a tiger cake which his talented sister made for him and "fried rice" for his main course (a not particularly asian dish but he likes it because peas are one of his favourite vegetables). His oldest sister sent a wonderful gift with an amazing card...don't know how she finds them! And his two other brothers who were not at home called to wish him a happy day....







































.. I think the photos give testimony that he had one!

Open Day and history week

We had a great morning at Government house Pentecost Sunday. The day was not too hot.

We spotted some odd looking characters strolling about the place!

and learned an interesting history.

There is a room in government house with a very unusual history. By that I mean it is not the sort of thing you would expect to happen in this kind of room! Well the governor(it was in the 1860’s) decided to have a sale of some old furniture at government house. The Police Commissioner was there to choose something for his house or possibly just because he was the head of police. Anyway the sale was held in the dining room. It has a really really long shiny table and people only get to eat there on very important occasions and when there’s quite a lot of people too. I suppose the table wasn’t up then. Now the thing that you wouldn’t expect to happen was that the head of police was shot there that day and murdered! You see he’d given this other policeman the sack because he was drunk on duty and that had made the policeman mad so he’d gone to government house and shot his boss!! We were told that he was hung for this a few days later.(by T(12yrs)

The gardens were looking as if they had suffered from our dry hot summer. But there was still colour

about

and the boys still found things to collect.

At any rate this is a garden that begs to have children playing in it on a day to day basis.

But what of the plants you say, wouldn’t gardens be trampled on, precious specimens uprooted. Yes this is a definite possibility. I have been thinking on this while I read this highly recommended book. If children do not engage with “nature” on a regular basis(daily),climb trees, make forts, sail to forgotten(by us) places, when they are confronted with it this will be

their response .

Years ago when our "oldests" were in a botanical garden they were told off for attempting to climb a very sturdy tree…why? the tree didn’t mind, it almost stood there begging to help them up. Now I know thanks to one of my more informed comments that trees are not just for climbing, rivers are not just for navigating... just as hills are not just for scaling….ok there I’m reminded of some highly esteemed grown-ups who were allowed to just play in nature and whose discoveries we now study as part of our education…enough “talking”, think I’ll go and read my book!

Mondrian art

Piet Mondrian grew up in Holland. after he finished his regular schooling, he studied to be an artist. after a visit to Paris in 1910 he stopped drawing real-life landscapes and portraits of people and turned to abstract images. As one of our favourite art sites suggested studying Mondrian helped us to "step outside the square"(please excuse poor pun)and see things in a different way. Thu we noticed that many of Mondrian's art work was not simply geometric shapes juxtapositioned in any random way but did actually represent what they described. We also learned from his art, the importance of the title of a piece of art.


our first art work was using crayon
















some more work: this time with paper cut-outs.




















our final pieces of work