Out and about

Poor little blog - I actually forgot that I had you!  I'm sorry and hope to make it up with this post about our VERY busy past weeks.
We've been continuing working on mapping the world - we've drawn and painted Greece and read about latitude and longitude, and today learned about Ptolemy, the first modern cartographer.  Being a Roman dude we had to draw Italy for him, but our boots lacked well defined toes so we'll redo that map again soon.

Drawing lines of latitude and longitude on an egg.  Not easy!

The elements are getting a good workout too, with the latest chapter on electrons now firmly under our belts.  We have some great experiments in store over the next few days, providing we can get our hands on some tincture of iodine, ammonium solution, and other delights.

We had a great evening with the L and G families over for dinner one Saturday.  As a treat we all joined in making an icosahedron (20-faced polyhedron). Such fun will never be forgotten!

Halfway through making the icosahedron

Last week the girls and I went on an excursion with the G family to Ecolinc in Bacchus Marsh.  H learned about the Diprotodon found nearby and had some fun digging up some fossils and bones.  R and I did a nature walk around the wetlands (which sadly were dry), filled in an activity sheet then headed inside to make our own paints from soil, pva and water.  On a piece of paperbark R painted a lovely image of a blue legged koala sitting on a gum tree branch. (in case you are wondering - no, we didn't make the blue paint!)

A beautiful leaf fossil in Laterite (0-65 m years ago)

This week we've been having some puppet fun:

H and R enjoy distributing these puppets to their friends and tutors - I hope the puppets are enjoying their new homes!

Yesterday we had yet another excursion and had to dress up like this:

 

 I didn't manage to get as fantastic a set of teeth like R's though.
All this gear was for climbing through the treetops at Trees Adventure in Belgrave.

Not a brilliant picture but what a breathtaking place to spend four hours with some wonderful friends!