It’s not the last week of March, but I am just beginning my blog posts on March! I’m desperately trying to catch up so that I am only a week behind, that way I hope to remember more meaningful things like conversations and little interactions, rather than just places we go.
We had our first co-op excursion. it was to Bundoora children’s farm. I’ll be honest, it was a little disappointing. We’ve been there before, and so had expected a little more than the tour we got, which was very rushed. It was also very hot! The kids enjoyed their tractor ride, Alex had 3 kids trying desperately to sit next to him, which ended in tears for one child as he only has 2 sides! The guide talked to us a bit about emus mostly, showing us an egg. The kids got to pat guinea pigs, feed goats, bottle feed a baby goat (well, touch the bottle for a second anyway) and visit the chickens. We spent the rest of the time playing in the nature park, it was just too hot to wander around the farm.
Kids had fun, though Alex and one of his good friends were clashing a little and needed some space from each other! We got an ice cream as we left and Daniel got terribly upset as he didn’t get the same as Alex, and it was a bit of a disaster, poor bub.
I found Alex a website that shows retic mutations, and the names as he’s been watching breeder hatchings recently and we hear al these names like platinum, sunfire etc and don’t know what they mean. http://prehistoricpets.com/c/24/reticulated
The next morning, the kids were painting with the watercolour tubes in mixing palettes. Alex picked retic colours: yellow, grey, black and white.
We headed to our HS park meet at Brimbank, where a ‘Bush Toys’ workshop had been organised. Alex and Daniel of course both made snakes, but their attention to this task was quite limited and so they went off to play. Again a hot day, and so we had ice creams. The kids played together at Bunjil’s nest, and after everyone had left they came to tell us that the area had been trashed by some of the older kids. So they helped us clean it up. Alex asked me if he could go to a friend’s house. I was quite torn about this, he’s never been anywhere but family and childcare without Vio or myself. There was less than 2 hours before swimming lessons anyway, so I said okay. We have known the family for 2 years, one of our first homeschool connections, and I have been to their house. I think otherwise it would be a definite no! needless to say, I drove away with my stomach in knots, like I was leaving my boy behind. Daniel screamed ‘my brother!’ all the way home. I think i sent about 5 text messages to the mum in those 2 hours, lol. Swimming was fun though, we played ‘catch the robber’. Alex played Rebels on his iPad in the evening, he comes over to tell me what one of the characters is saying, and added that he can read now (he’d memorised it, or close to it). He’s been asking about spelling recently. he’s been asking about spelling recently – there’s a character in Wild Kratts named ‘Sweet Tweet’, and Alex asked asked me to spell it and then commented on them both having 2 e’s. We talked about them rhyming because of it. During a game of animal charades that we had tried to include Daniel in (with limited success but lots of fun), Alex picked up the Alligator card. He would usually have said it was a crocodile from just looking at the pictures but he looked at the letters and read A L, then concluded it was an alligator.
The end of a hot week saw us revisit Plum garland at South Melbourne beach with different friends. The kids swam, collected shells, found a jellyfish, cuttlefish bones, a crab and a pufferfish. The kids then went into the playground and worked together on the waterplay area to build a water way. We had a really fabulous day. We took the crab home and noticed it had no eyes and that the two large red spots on it were mimickry and some missing legs. We looked at the flat parts on its rear legs and talked about how it was probably to dig itself into the sand. then we looked it up and found we were right http://portphillipmarinelife.net.au/species/4017
