Alex is 7! He wanted to be told happy birthday on the minute he was born.
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I made some oobleck in large buckets and the kids had fun jumping in it, sinking into it, throwing it, punching it, and touching it. We talked about solid/liquid properties and how this material had both. Alex started to smear it on his legs and said he thinks it would make a good armour as when you got punched, it would be hard!
Alex got interested in watching the world’s strongest man as he saw a man pulling trucks. So we found some shows on youtube and watched them.
Alex has used some of his birthday money to buy a membership on school of dragons game and got a skrill. He has been playing quite a bit on it.
Daniel and I have been playing with some little avenger figures. he asked all their names, and remembered them – then we split them into good guys and bad and then fought.
Daniel has been keen on breaking and mixing eggs recently, and is able to do it unaided.
We’ve been hiring movies as Foxtel and Netflix seem unappealing at the moment. We watched Pete’s Dragon. Alex said he loved it, although it took him 2 attempts to watch it to completion. At one point, the dragon gets shot with a tranquiliser – Alex said it was a sleeping potion. It ended up on the trailer if a truck – Alex asked how the people managed to put it there! There was also a moment where the truck brakes failed, vio said ‘uh-oh, now they can’t stop’, to which Alex replied ‘he can just switch off the engine’. So much logic!
Alex put a 5c coin inside a balloon and asked me to tie it off. He spent the next 30 minutes playing with it! He got the coin to spin inside, he would yak the balloon vertically, and throw it in the air to see which way it went and what would happen. vio and I both watched him, silently. That took a lot for me – I urged to talk physics with him, to check his learning and teach him. He probably would have stopped. I’m glad I didn’t. I believe he learnt so much more than any physics experiment could have taught him. He may not have the scientific language right now to explain and support what he witnessed in his experiments, but when he comes across it it will make perfect sense because he *knows* it.
Alex told me he knew another special number – 24 as it was 3×8. I told him that whilst he was right about the solution of 3×8, it was not special to computers. you have to keep doubling 8, so after 8 it’s 2×8, then 2x2x8 etc. He worked the next number out to be 32. I should have told him to start at 1 and avoided this 8 issue, but I think it started from seeing some data memory stuff and he asked about it. I told him about double the next one and he asked me to keep doing it, when I got to 64 he said ‘that’s a stack!’ (minecraft). the at 128 we thought it was the height of blocks you could stack, and he tested it but it was actually 256 which is the next double number! (I think that was part of an upgrade.) But great he could see those numbers in use.
We looked up an eagle of Australia that looks like the american bald eagle as Alex claims he saw it. It turns out it lives in NT though!
Alex has been using percentages as chance recently and changes them. I throw in a ‘but what if…’ and he changes them. he always add them to 100 though! Daniel has been counting higher, and has developed one-to-one correspondence. He’s interested in written letters and numbers and nearly always can say if they are letters or numbers.
I had noticed how much the kids liked an iPad version of snap and so I bought some Avengers cards to play with. We played snap and match. I’ve noticed that on a particular day where Alex was having a hard time being responsive, that he was not able to play match well. On other days he has been very good at the game. Interesting to see.
We’ve of course read some books, mostly from the library. Alex and I started a famous five book but he wasn’t keen to finish it. But he loved a book about carnivorous dinosaurs, and Daniel loves Maisy still. We watched ‘walking with monsters’ series. Alex watched the whole series (about 4 episodes) straight! Daniel not so interested.
Outings
We visited Bounce trampoline park. Alex had a great time there – lots of homeschool friends came. Alex managed to do a jump that he couldn’t do the last time we had visited – jumping over an obstacle and back up in only 2 bounces. He also dropped from the high jump that was new – he didn’t even hesitate! Daniel was not tall enough to do this one and fortunately was not terribly interested. The kids made some new friends and saw old friends for the first time in a while.
At Currawong Kids this week the kids were really happy to be there, we saw a dead fox that the ranger allowed us to inspect as he collected it. We went into the rangers office and saw lots of taxidermied animals. We climbed up the ‘cliff’, wandered down to the creek, played games, took a sit spot, received a nature journal and made first entries – Alex drew a fix for a younger sibling of one of the kids, someone gave Alex a cordage bracelet. We met some new people – it was a nice start to the term! We stopped at Ceres market on the way home too and the kids got a lemonade as they didn’t have the same kombucha as at Varis.
The second week of CK was very hot. Alex had a difficult day. We all did! He wasn’t responding to cues from other people showing dislike for his actions towards them. probably needed more downtime this past week. there were lots of games as we all had lower than usual levels of patience and tolerance! Towards the end we dipped our feel in the creek – the water quality is not good after the recent downpour. We had spray bottles filled with water in an attempt to keep us cool!
We went to the ‘Not Going Back to School party’ at Geelong Adventure park. It was a long drive and an early start, and the kids asked how much longer and how far. So when we were close I answered ’10km to go – 1km is 10 x 100m races’. Alex worked out that we had 10000m to go – he said it’s too far to run! We had to wait a long time to get in, which is hard for everyone but especially Daniel. Once in we headed straight to the rides. Alex and Daniel went on an aeroplane together, then we all went on a rollercoaster. Alex had to sit by himself, I was surprised at how okay he was with this. They loved the rollercoaster! the kids went on the go-karts too, but complained it was very slow. We played minigolf, went on a few other rides after lunch and then did archery and water play. Alex went down a huge slide, i couldn’t believe it! We really enjoyed floating around on the inflatable tyres. We stayed all day, and the kids crashed in the car on the way home where they chilled out on their iPads.
We visited the new children’s gallery at the museum. I found it quite overstimulating – the mass of colours gave me a headache! The kids enjoyed the butterfly pattern making the most and the dance floor. They climbed through the nets and tunnels, and spotted their favourite animals in the displays. The outside was better, and my headache eased. the kids played with giant foam blocks and made a track out of it. Then we dug up dinosaurs in the sand pit, looked at giant, beautiful rocks. There was a column of liquids to make bubbles flat up, Alex concentrated so hard on making them as small as possible. We checked out the dinosaur gallery and the bugs as Alex wanted to see the ants. We saw the spiders and read about how webs were made.
We took the tram to Fed Square which made Daniel very happy as he’s been wanting to do it for ages! We went to ACMI. Alex played minecraft on the Xbox immediately, played on an interactive game, played PS4 Fifa, and some fighting game with Daniel. Daniel played on the iPAds reading/playing with books. We got him the gruffalo game for his own iPad later at home. The special effects section of ACMI was really cool, and the kids spent a long time playing there. there was a matrix like activity with a booth that took photos around you as you jumped, some shadow effects and more.
We’ve been for a swim at MAC and met up with a friend of Alex’s. He took his snorkel and used most of the time, along with his water skipping toy. The friend actually played with Daniel more!
Socialising
Being the start of a school year, there are new faces in the HS community and Alex was quick to make friends with a younger boy (5) who was wearing a ninjago t-shirt when they met.
We’ve visited the kids grandparents, and Alex of course goes off to see the pigeons every single time, Daniel has been following too and shows interest. Though he’s not as hands-on as Alex was at his age. Alex asks Gigi to take him out in Romanian – he’s been asking to learn it.
We attended a birthday party at a centre called Action Sports – the kids are hosted in 3 games – football, AFL and party games. Daniel got to join in too and Alex came out dripping with sweat! They got 2 lolly bags each! Their eyes were shining, however they took bites out of so many things and tossed them away. There was a second birthday party too at the birthday boys house. the kids played. Alex didn’t get involved in the lego play, more the physical stuff.
We met up with a christian homeschool group. They are fairly open to all. Alex spent the first half of the park time riding his scooter and jumping a ramp that another kid (older) had brought. He also asked to be timed doing laps. once his best friend arrived, he spent some time with her and they took all our food and headed off for a picnic together! Siblings in tow. Then they all got stuck into some water play.
We have done our usual homeschool group at Brimbank. The kids have enjoyed scooting around. There were some new families. Alex was very friendly and kind – especially to a little boy whose mother was very amazed and grateful to Alex. The little boy had a glass eye, and the mother was talking to the kids about it. Alex was fascinated. The kids played at the sand pit, and they got interested in bows and arrows so one of the mums made them using grasses and sticks. Alex gave a long time friend one of his lego carriages as we couldn’t settle on an appropriate gift for him.
The neighbours have been over a few times, they’ve been out back playing football, hover soccer and roblox mostly. On one hot day we got the slip n slide out, and Alex visited their house.
We’ve also visited cousins and had BBQs and plays together,
Activities
A hot day at athletics and Alex didn’t like it much. he found it hard watching his friends get their silver PB medals, but he was very humble and congratulated them. He got a PB in hurdles and had to run 400m for the first time, so he decided to take it really slowly to ensure he got a PB next time around. He’s had training too, and asked if Daniel could join in the races which he loved. The following week at athletics Alex got 2 PBs – in long jump and shot put, and spent the inbetween times playing football with his friends. Probably his favorite thing about LA! He spotted a spider in a tree that lots of kids were attacking and he got quite angry about it, but showed this through displays of threatening behaviour towards them.