Tui's poem

Kaimanawa Horse Poem

I wake up to the golden sun shining
I stretch and stand
And gallop over to meet my herd
We nibble the fresh grass
So juicy and sweet
We run across the plains
Happy to be free
To do what we please
We are happy to be
kaimanawa horses.

By Tui

More Cat and the Hat!!

This picture of the cat was drawn by Pearl.

The chook and fish pictures were drawn by Jacob. He has really come a long way with his drawing lately!

The title page picture was also done by Pearl.

We have other pictures (some by Tui)

but I don't have room here for them all!

The new version of The cat in the Hat

Today we took the Cat in the Hat a step further and wrote and illustrated our own book!

The kids are pretty pleased with the end result and Mum and Dad are pretty proud too!

Tui typed the story on to the computer, Jake and Pearl drew pictures for it and wah-la! A very cool book!

Mmmmm yummy!

Here's Pearl (and kisses) enjoying the the Banana muffins. I'm told they were delicious!

Hot off the press.....I mean oven!

Yum! Banana muffins for lunch!

We read the classic Dr Seuss book 'The Cat in the Hat' and then we wrote a list of our own rhyming words.

We decided to borrow "The Cat" and "The Fish" for a while and we came up with our own story...it dosn't make much sense but it was a lot of fun!

The cat in the hat

stood on a chair

He ate a nice juicy pear

and read a book about a chook

who wanted bake

a chocolate cake.

Yum! Yum!

Bake a cake

"No! No! "said the fish

"Don’t bake a cake!"

"what a terrible mess you will make!"

A mess

A mess

A terrible mess !

A date

on a plate

Some milk on your toes!

ah - choo! Ah - choo!

A sneeze in your nose!

Flour!, flour! every where!

Please take more care!

A terrible mess!

Mess!

"Make that cat go" said the fish

“ that is my only wish.

The fish got his wish

and the cat in the hat went home.

Typed by Tui

We got the part where the fish was telling the cat to go and I said that we needed a ending for our story....so Pearl said "I know! We put a full stop!" Not what I meant but I am glad she has been listening!

When we finnished our story writing we decided we were soooo hungry we had to do some baking of our own. Fortunatly we didn't make as much mess as the cat!

Hello family and friends!

So great to get your emails telling us that you have *visited* us! Please leave us a comment because the kids really look forward to seeing them, especially when they have written a story or something similar for you all to see....you don't have to have a blogger account to comment...I have changed the settings so anyone can comment. Many Ta's. :)

Monday Maths

We have this neat little house so we decided to put it together. Jake counted the long sticks (14) Pearl counted the short sticks (12) and we counted the brackets and joining rods. We sorted into piles and then had to follow some dodgy looking directions.....why is that a line drawing isn't as easy to follow as it looks? Anyway with a bit of problem solving and logical thinking we finally got the house together! Don't know that it will get a permit though.....

Jake and Pearl(and Jojo!) enjoyed peanut butter sammies and read books in the hut....check out our Monkey Maths too....

14 long sticks, 12 short, 10 brackets, 8 joining rods...

This the house that...Jake & Pearl built!

My holiday with wild horses.

It was Monday, I woke up very early and I had hardly slept all night. I was too excited to sleep because I was going to Taupo on holiday. For one whole week-or two if I am lucky!
My family and I were going to the Kaimanawa ranges and I was really hoping to see some wild horses.
When we got to the reserve I immediately heard winnieing, stamping and galloping.
My wish had come true! I was surrounded by 12 wild horses running around. One of them was chasing its tail!
They were happy to be free and I was happy to see them free too. When it was time to go I said “but Mum do we have to go? It is so much fun here!”
I still wanted to explore and take photographs for my album, so that when we got back from our holiday I could show everybody what it was like at the Kaimanawa ranges.
When we got back to our home in Tauranga I told every body how beautiful it was over there. They all said it was so beautiful that they wanted to come so I said “ Come on mum please can we go?” she said “ Yes! I suppose so hunny bunny. “
I speed back down the stairs saying “Yeah! She said yes!”
We all hopped in the car and drove back to Taupo, when we got there I showed everyone around the lovely grassy plains and we were lucky enough to see some more wild horses.
I love the ranges and that was the best two weeks of our lives!
By Tui.

Why won't the cat stay still so I can dress her?

Yesterday we went to a 'wooly show.' A wooly show is a minature horse gathering, where all the horses still have their wooly winter coats. Check out the pic of the 'cute as' horse dressed as a fairy for the fancy dress show. Awwwww. There was a bumble bee horse, clown horse and Hawaii horse to name a few. Pearl came home determined to dress our very unimpressed cat and was quite disgruntled when it turned out the cat had other ideas.....why won't she stay still mum?
We only (only?!) spent an 1 1/2hrs there, we intended it to be 20mins max!! But it was a good opportuntity for Tui to learn even more about horses and to catch up with Jessica. I don't know who is crazier about horses! The horse owners were all pretty helpful, keen to talk to us all and we learnt that...in the early 19th century min. horses were used in coal mines because they are tiny enough to fit in tunnels and strong enough to haul coal, min. horses are a breed made by man, initially for the Royal children of England (late 18th Century?) and minature horses can be inside pets! One lady had hers inside until it was 5 years old....

How big is a baby Giraffe?

How tall is a Giraffe?

I found a great book'Zoo Math" at the library using real life problems that real zoo vets need to use math to solve. Today Tui had to help choose the best crate design to transport Twizzle the Giraffe to her new home. Twizzle is 4.2m high and 3.5m wide and she needed a crate taller and wider than her. Using a process of elimination(taking into acount other things such as the placing of the ventilation holes and the type of roof) she had to had to decide on the best crate for Twizzle. Tui also had to convert metres into centimetres to work out the Giraffes height and legnth in centimetres and then Jake, Pearl and Dad measured out 420 cm to put the size into perspective! Check out the photo (with them at the top of the fence) and imagine the head at the top of the tape measure! The photo of Pearl sitting on the pole is of her measuring the height (200cm) of a baby Giraffe (called a calf.) They were blown away at how tall they are and even more impressed that a male is even taller!

Sun Flowers, seeds for the world.

Today the kids made potatoe print sunflowers for our earth unit. They had a great(messy!) time making them and we discussed all the ways we use the sunflower, seeds for human and animal food, sunflower oil for cooking, flowers for decoration and the benefit of having Sunflowers growing in the garden- attracting insects and birds that in turn play another role in the garden. We talked about keeping the soil healthy, composting it and preventing poisons from getting into the dirt and we looked at places in books that were badly poluted in the world. The kids were quite surprised to see Polar Bears scavanging in piles of rubbish on a river bed and to see beaches that have been deserted because of the high level of pollution.

Tui's post.

It's rubbish/recycling day so we used the opportunity to do a bit more on our earth project and math at the same time. Jacob lined up the recycling into groups and Pearl counted all of the items. Tui worked out all of the following information then put it into a bar graph and then wrote this 'report'
We sorted out the recycling and this is what we found,
This week we recycled 3 milk bottles 4 cans 2 glass bottles 3 containers 3 bags and 1 coke bottle.
To work out how much we recycled each month (If it was the same each week) we multiplied everything by 4.
Milk bottles. 4x3 = 12
Cans 4x4 = 16
Glass bottles 4x2 = 8
Containers 4x3 = 12
Plastic bags 4x3 = 12
Coke bottles 4x1 = 4

Then we used a calculator to multiply everything by 12
Milk bottles. 144
Cans 192
Glass bottles 96
Containers 144
Plastic bags 144
Coke bottles 48

This survey did not count paper and carboard or any thing that we have kept to reuse.

Book worms

For free choice today Pearl and Tui chose to read and

Jacob decided to type a passage from a

Captain Underpants book. It was the first time he has ever typed using the keyboard proparly and he had trouble finding all the letters

(why isn't the b next to a? why are they capitals but write in lower case?) but he persisited with out getting frustrated (yay!) and when he was finnished he said

"man, that was hard out on my brain!"

Haha, go Jake!

Flash as flash cards!

Our alphabet flash cards have been so useful we decided to make some number flash cards using photocopy paper and old postcards. (2 birds, 1 stone!) We made them first thing so they could be dry in time for the afternoon and the kids had a great time playing number games, sorting and trying to find the right number ie: I saw 10 motorbikes and then I saw 3 more, find the card that has the answer..... Jacob and Pearl can both count to 14 so the goal is to be able to count to 20 and to learn to read the numbers. So far so good. Tui is obvioulsy to old for this so she's doing a unit about pie charts and bar graphs and will be recording some of the information we have found out for our Earth unit.

Motorbike maths

See 'Jacob at work' for blog write up!

Tui's Blog about RDA.

This is me riding Mystic at RDA. I go each week. Mystic is a beautiful chestnut mare and she a quater horse. Mystic has a 3 year old foal called Starlight who is dark brown.

Starlight keeps trying to rub againts the fence and eat the salt block!

When you ride you have to be careful because horses don't like it when you elbow them in their flank! It makes them twitch around!

I have just started riding another horse each week and her name is Sophie and she is a bush pony.

Sophie is new to RDA and still gets anxious when she is by the ramp so I need to get on quickly. The horses like to get a carrot at the end of the ride as a treat and Sophie has better table manners than Mystic!

I love riding the horses and helping to groom them at the end and I can never wait till the next ride!

By Tui.

Tui's maths

Tui has been doing subtraction for a few days so
we decided it was time to do fractions.
Dosn't she look sophisticated with her new glasses?

Clever kiwi creations from recycled materials

Book work done for the day and just enough time before swimming to do some art work.

Goal: to create something new from recycled materials.

Tui made a card using horse pictures (what else!) for a sick friend, Jacob made a dragon from an egg carton and Pearl made a rabbit from a cat food box. We have a 're-use' drawer at home for art projects and the kids can help them selves as long as they clean up afterwards. The latter requires working on! Using recycled materials for projects is a simple way that they can help the environment (and my pocket!) while developing their own skills and confidence.

Jacob at work

Photo 1 Jacob finishing off a picture he made using a ruler and felts today. Jake recently bought his own ruler using part of his pocket money and he enjoyed making this so much he made another one in his free time! Tui recently did a math unit on measuring (mm, cm, m) and Jacob and Pearl helped us brainsotm ideas on why it was important to get measurements right...Jacob loves to build things so this was a practical way ( we don't have any wood at the moment!) for him to learn how to measure correctly and we found out that when you don't measure correctly things don't always work out. (Hence his chimney that required renovations!!)
Photo 2 (Opps, I cant seem to add it to this post after it's been submitted! Check out the post called motobike maths)The biker dude is going for a spin around the block and Jacob has to rule the lines, (following logical order of numbers) then work out how many rocks he has to dodge (17) and how many houses and trees he had to go past. Goal: For Jake to learn to count higher than 14 and to learn to read the numbers so he knows what order to put them in! No wonder he has renewed interest in maths! No prizes for guessing who helped design this worksheet!

Tui's poem

Goal: to write an original poem using lots of adjectives.

Birds singing.
And the sun is shining.
What a beautiful thing to see.

The soft golden sand under my feet and between my toes
Going to the beach is great fun.

By Tui

2nd August

Social Studies

This term we are doing 'Our Environment' as our unit for social studies. We are using art (kids are painting the blue base for their earth pictures here) to record our activities and to reinforce our findings.
Our main focus is our environment (locally) and what we can do to help make it 'clean and green'
such as recycling and planting trees and what role birds, insects and plants play in our environment. It is a fun unit and is usually done on our 'Fun Friday' if we have done all the other work we set out during the week!

Home Ed update

Hello All!
Well I just read a awesome blog written by another Tga home-edder (try finding that in the dictionary!!) and I am feeling all inspired and motivated. I have been looking for a good way to record what we do for our family and friends as well as ERO when the come and see us and this could be it!
I prefer the term home educating instead of home school because to me 'home school' implies that we do all our learning at home.
We try to utilise time spent travelling by doing 'quick fire questions' and it is amazing how many topics we can cover! Te Reo, Math, Spelling etc as well as general knowlege questions. The kids love it and because they're not under pressure it is fun way of learning as well as providing a bit of competition. We also have Ten pin on Tuesday with the TGA Home Sch group, horse riding for Tui on Wednesdays and Swimming for all 3 on Thursdays.
We're not 'unschoolers' we have set activities each day such as math and hand writing but I try to be flexible and to do them in different ways for example, yesterday we did math work using crayon and dye instead of pen and paper and today we used Dora the Explorer to make maths a bit more interesting. Last week we made cards for some up coming birthdays and Jacob wanted to try paper weaving which led to us talking about 'the olden days before sewing machines...' It was great fun though I am glad we didn't have to make a whole cloak!
I think it's important to follow their interests and to allow them extra time to continue an activity they are enjoying instead of 'turning them off' learning because they don't see the relevance or find it boring but structure and rules also have their place or we would never get anything done!

Obviously not everything we do will make it on to the blog spot but I have big ideas about updating this weekly, though in reality I am already far to busy so Tui will be able to show off some of her computer skills too and make posts on behalf of every one.

Don't forget to leave comments- we will look forward to them!