I received some water marbles with an order I made. So we decided to see what they were like. We added a tube to a bowl of cold water according to the instructed ratio. The marbles apparently increase in size over the course of 6 hours. This kids were quite intrigued by this and came back to check at least every hour! That night we put the balls in the bath. A bit of extra fun 🙂 The glass bowl that the balls were kept in was also put into the bath. Alex noticed that when you view things through the bowl in the water, they appear to be a different size. So I turned the bowl upside down so he could see the opposite effect. I’m getting better at not expecting him to tell me his observations, or questioning him about it – that was for my benefit, an assessment of sorts. I sometimes make observations of my own when I find something genuinely interesting, to share my excitement. But I don’t fake them anymore – if Alex wants to share his ideas, or ask questions he is free to. I don’t want him to feel like everything will become a ‘lesson’.
We’ve had a quiet week at home except for the usual classes to attend (martial arts & gym – we’ve quit swimming). The kids, especially Daniel, have watched ‘My neighbour Totoro’ heaps! Daniel loves the catbus. It’s pretty much the only thing he sits to watch, even trains (aka Thomas Tank Engine) gets a limited amount of attention from him. We started to watch Arietty, but neither kid found it that interesting. Vio and I are quite keen to explore the other movies by the same studio producers.
Our garden has been beautiful in spring even though it’s been chilly. Alex has really loved the flowers and so we’ve picked a few to look at through the microscope. We also noticed new leaf growth and saw that odd numbers of leaves occur as there is always on at the end. This was true for the roses, we didn’t look any further than that.
We’ve had lots more families coming to park day. Alex usually objects to leaving, which is becoming quite hard to manage as unfortunately I have to work in the evenings. We may have to back off of the park days. Alex is often not keen to go anyway, but is happy to see kids once he is there.
I had wanted to take Alex to Artplay at the weekend to do a workshop, but he was very reluctant so I didn’t push it. I don’t want to force him to do things, but I think it’s important we try new experiences and take advantage of our time and opportunities. But we have so much time, it’s not urgent. It’s just that most of the time, Alex is glad to have done that something new, and even if it doesn’t lead to anything else (it doesn’t have to), it was fun anyway.
The kids saw that I had painted my toenails, and so asked that I do theirs. Â I had also bought them some transformer tattoos and so I had to talk them out of using all 150 at once! Their arms are covered!