Wow, this week has been huge! Natural learning packed in everywhere. I have so many photos, and I can’t pick and choose so I’m just going to put them all in here. So many beautiful moments of learning through everyday life. Children truly amaze me with what they can come up with when given the time and freedom to do so. I just love to watch it all happen and hopefully you do too! You can also see some other beautiful examples of natural learning this week from Jess at Memoirs of a Childhood, Kate at An Everyday Story, and Rachel at Racheous- Lovable Learning. I’d love for you to comment and let me know what you’ve been up to as well!

We started the week with another creek day with friends. We meet up fortnightly for the kids to explore and play outside and they just love it. I’m not sure what’s happening here. Some sort of group meeting before they headed off in the other direction. Watching the kids in nature is one of my very favourite things.

There seemed to be a LOT of painting this week and my 5 year old was very interested in painting sunrises and sunsets. We often see the beautiful colours of the sunset from our house and I think we are going to have to get up early and take her to see the sunrise soon too.

Under the sea painting with oil pastels and watercolours. Miss 3 loves to draw with white oil pastels and then paint over them to watch the drawing appear.

Don’t you just love the super vibrant colours of liquid watercolours? They are a favourite here and got a lot of use this week. I love how supportive of each other my girls are. As they were working my 5 yr old commented to her sister, ‘Wow, look at your painting. You’re really into abstracts at the moment’.

This is a vase of roses. As my 5 year old worked on it she told me about how bees can not see the colour red and that she was painting this picture for a video she was going to make. She plans to set up a back drop with all the things she has learned about bees and make a video about everything she knows about bees and how to attract them to your garden to give to any friends and family who want to learn more. I was blown away by her idea. What a fabulous way to represent her learning!

More painting and a new idea! Using the biscuit cutters they use with play dough as stencils.

On a walk around our neighbourhood the girls discovered the wattle trees were missing! On closer inspection they realised that the trees were still there, they just looked different. The flowers had died…

And now they were producing seed pods!

Littlest girl discovered something new on our walk too. Ants to chase!

The girls asked for some new play dough.

A birthday cake.

Making prints.

Maths was BIG here this week. It started with the play dough being weighed.

Miss 5 bought me the cuisenaire rods, abacus, and 100 chart to play a little game we made up about a year ago. I make a number with the rods and she has to figure out what it is. Then she makes the number on her abacus and finds it on the chart. She loves it and always asks me to try and ‘trick’ her. So far no luck, she gets them all right.

Maths continued at the shops.

More beautiful loose parts creations.

Writing music notes for a ‘percussion song’. I actually have no idea how she knows they are music notes or what percussion instruments are.

Dad had some days off this week and there were some jobs to be done! There are always little helpers willing to learn.

We took a trip to the beach with friends and made some sand sculptures with plaster of paris while we were there. Aren’t they beautiful? Like taking a piece of the beach home with you. You can find the instructions here.

Miss 5 learnt to plait! She was very proud of herself and is working on friendship bracelets for all of her friends.

 See you next week!