Here we are again, another week has passed! This week was all about visits with friends and family, getting outside, and flowers! Enjoy 🙂

We started the week back at the creek with friends. They are busy here making a ‘fairy world’. Let’s just say things got a little heated this day and there were a lot of conflict resolution skills being practiced!

While we were there we were lucky enough to see this goanna! It hung around for quite a while and the kids were able to watch it pretty closely.

The addition of a mirror to the maths provocation from last week added another dimension to the play. Unfortunately I forgot to take any photos of what they did with it.

Miss 5 has been complaining that she can’t ‘write small’. What she means is writing on the lines properly. I printed her a sheet that shows how the letters are supposed to sit on the line and she was so excited by it. She got straight to work practicing. I think we’ll be trying this handy trick soon too!

A trip to visit the girls great Nan. One of the things I love about homeschooling is that we can spend time with extended family members whenever we like! The girls love watering all the flowers for her.

They even caught a butterfly, after watching it drinking the nectar from a flower. Miss 5 was excited by the flowers and kept telling me how much she loved them and really wanted to paint some. We came home with a container full of flowers for the nature tray.

I love this picture, it’s a little glimpse into her at this age with the friendship bracelet and loom band bracelets on.

Some journaling using the new journal prompts. Someone wasn’t going to be left out.

Miss 3: ‘I’m thinking of covering the whole paper blue and then I can make patterns’. I just love when she comes up with an idea of her own. Being a younger sister she is often following my oldest daughter’s lead. It’s nice to see her leading the way.

An early morning bush walk because they wanted to find some bugs.

More flowers were collected.

Another butterfly was caught and observed!

One of their favourite things is climbing rocks. This provided much entertainment!

Miss 5 took some magnifying glasses, her bug book, and nature journal on our bush walk. Before we left she sat down to record what we had seen. All of this was her idea. I don’t think I can say this enough: kids want to learn, they never need to be forced. They show me this every day.

We have also been reading ‘On Beyond Bugs‘ by Dr Seuss. The girls really like ‘The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library’ series. They love all the Dr Seuss stories, and these particular ones give them a lot of information on things they are learning about, in a fun way.

An invitation to paint flowers.

I really liked my 3 year old’s painting of a flower. She doesn’t paint recognizable things as often as her sister does, preferring to experiment with colours and painting different lines and shapes.

More reading this week. I have talked about the readers we use before, we are still loving them! My girls love anything by Julia Donaldson. You can find them at Book Depository, or Amazon.

Some play with kinetic sand and marbles.

Sorting out some grapes for her and her sister, I got a beautiful little insight into the mind of my 5 year old.

‘Mum, when I’m counting I can make the number flash in my head, so I know where I’m up to’.

This afternoon we could see smoke everywhere that looked to be coming from a road right near us, so we walked over to see if everything was ok. There was a fire by the road!

Another lady who was there told us that she had called the fire brigade already so we waited for them to come and watched as they put out the fire. The girls loved it, telling us repeatedly ‘I can’t believe I saw a real life fireman!’

How was your week? What did you learn? Who did you meet? What were your children passionate about?

As always, stop by Racheous – Lovable Learning, An Everyday Story, and Memoirs of a Childhood to see what natural learning looked like in the homes of some other Australian homeschoolers this week.