This week we headed out nearly every day. It was another hot Tuesday, and so coop was at Watermarc which is an indoor pool. What a fabulous place! They have this huge playground inside with slides and plenty of water features. the kids were fascinated by the giant bucket of water that poured over everything. There was a warning siren, and whenever they heard it they’d race to where the water drenches you entirely! It’s quite a shocking experience! Daniel played with his little friends too. The kids also swam in a shallow pool, though Daniel couldn’t touch the bottom but seemed comfortable and swimming with his vest on. Alex challenged himself to swim from one side to other underwater, which he did. Then he and the other older kids would time their swims and try and improve them.
I strewed a mirror book with tangram shapes, beads and other bits. The kids noticed it, had a quick play but didn’t really engage. But the great thing about strewing is to just let it be and not get offended by getting it wrong sometimes. I really think it’s worth doing to have new experiences presented without strings attached. It could so easily be made into a lesson, but when there is no choice the learning is not sincere. I’m still finding this a tough thing to let go, sometimes I want to tell him more than he wants to hear because I feel he ‘should know’ or ‘well you asked so now listen’. Instead of this new play, they wanted cuddles inside the ‘hideout’ (formerly known as the cubby that is still up!) We got some feathers in the mail from someone who saw that Alex collected feathers from a fb picture! Alex was so excited. We identified 2 out of 3 of them as peacock and sulphur crested cockatoo.
I had organised a ‘Clean Up Australia Day’ event at Brimbank Park. The kids were amazing, I was particularly impressed with Daniel. We collected rubbish in playscape and en route to the river. We collected several bags, and amongst the rubbish was an arrow! We went in to the rangers office and rang the bell. Alex spent the next few minutes investigating how the bell worked before they were treated to a free ice cream and had a play with the other superstar litter pickers. We had another great evening at the swimming pool with Daniel swimming with only noodles for support, and lots of play between us and another girl Alex got friendly with.
The next day, in hindsight, was overload! We went to Latitude with a friend who’d just had his cast removed and wanted to climb! It was fun, as was the park afterwards, but Alex was a bit moody. So I cut the play date short and brought the kids home to unwind. It was great timing as we got home to our Monarch butterfly chrysalis arriving in the post 🙂
It seemed it was my turn to be moody the next morning! We headed to the city on the train and went to Artplay for an exhibit called Colourbox they had that the kids didn’t get much out of unfortunately! Alex made a snake of course.
They did enjoy the play at Birrarung Marr. There were two homeless people sleeping there, I was interested in Alex’s opinion of it as the school teachers accompanying school children were quite rude about the situation and prohibited the kids from doing so much. After we got on a tram to the State Library to visit Play Pod. The theme was ‘the very hungry caterpillar’. The kids loved dressing up as butterflies and they made butterflies at the various stations, checked out the light box, drew pictures. Daniel had enough and was overwhelmed and tired. But when we got outside he seemed fine, and so the kids played on the lawns and giant chess before we got ice cream. Both of them fell asleep on the train on the way home, so I stayed on the train to the next stop and back! Alex wanted to stop at KMart and spent his pocket money on transformers.
Saturday was a needed quiet day after the busy week. So Alex had football in the morning. the rest of the day was filled with reading together (Alex wanting to read 13 storey treehouse), watching TV and playing chess. We did have Vio’s uncle’s birthday in the evening. Alex played with his cousins and another girl – mostly hide and seek and tag. Was nice to watch them altogether.
Sunday was the long awaited model train exhibition at SAndown. We went last year, and ALex remembered when we got there. He was excited to see the biggest layout was of a freight yard and there were trains with lots of carriages, of which he counted of course. We found another layout of bullet trains – and all three were japanese trains that resembled his transformers bullet train team! What an exciting find 🙂 The remote control trucks were new to us but very much liked, and the model city being attacked by tanks was a favourite by many! The kids would collaborate and try to shoot back at the tanks and avoid their attacks, in a game of war. We had a few rides and headed home. Great day as always as the boys just loves trains.
