Nov 3 - 13

As the months fly by I find that we are unschooling more and more.  Even though we tell each other that we do want to learn languages and history and maths and science (and we really do!), whenever I get out the books or worksheets it all seems so boring and contrived and irrelevant to what's going on in our lives.
So whilst the books were sitting neglected and gathering dust these past ten days, we've been doing this:
 
1. Botany Scavenger Hunt.
Whilst taking a lovely, wet, early morning walk in a local park H and R hunted for interesting leaf shapes, flowers and seed pods. A very gentle and enjoyable introduction to Botany.

2. Caring for Cookie.
R found this little one in our garden while out on a treasure hunt. She certainly found a treasure!  Apparently possums often reject their joeys if they are stressed or sick and this was the second joey found in our garden. The first was even smaller and was already dead when P and the girls found it two weeks ago.  This one - we named him Cookie- was still alive but oh so cold.  He was tiny (only 6 cm long), hairless and very underdeveloped.  We took him inside and wrapped him in a woollen beanie, bought some native animal baby formula and fed him for almost two days before he slipped away. This is a terrible photo but it was dark and P and I were bleary eyed from waking every two hours to feed him and to reheat the heat packs.
When we fed him his little paws would curl around our fingers, his tiny mouth opening, searching for some milk from the syringe. Cookie was precious indeed.

3. Enjoying each other and their babies.
I'm not sure if it was due to caring for Cookie or not, but suddenly both girls started acting very maternal towards their baby dolls again. H and I looked on as R gave birth to her baby Poppy, and special beds were made up for the new arrivals. The girls took loads of photos of themselves with their daughters.  I love that they have the same eye colour as their babies.
Of course all this play acting led to many questions about babies and childbirth, the most important one being "Does it hurt?"

 

4. Recycling Crayons.

We had a big clean up yesterday and I found a forgotten box of old crayons that nobody ever used. We broke them up, melted them down and made cool multicoloured crayons.

The big clean up resulted in the girls now having their own rooms once again. H immediately got busy setting up her Sylvannian families in their new digs on top of her desk,

..while R made the most of her new play area on the now empty top bunk.  Today they both spent most of the day up there using it as a gymnastic apparatus (climbing up, jumping off, timing each other) before it transformed into a restaurant.

The dogs love the new arrangement too and had a sleepover on the futon last night.