Goodbye Thing, you sing too long!

What a long day! Jodie and Laura came by for a catch up this morning, with Alice taking great joy in the task of "unshying" Laura. All her own idea, which seemed to work wonderfully, Laura didn't want to leave when it was time to go!

Learning Hub today was fantastic. Several new faces, and two exciting activities. Lettuce spinner paintings and votive candle holder painting. The lettuce spinner painting covers how colours mix, as well as how the colours spread with the centripetal force. The kids (and I) found it very interesting that the closer to the centre the drops went, the less they spread. Most cool, plus we have some really groovy art to frame for presents. Painting the votive candle holders was also fun, the paint is translucent to allow the light to get through. We need to let them sit for 24 hours, then bake them for 30 minutes in a 160C oven. We will be doing more of both activities here at home tomorrow, along with toothbrush spatter painting and tennis ball painting! Fun, fun, fun!

Alice had a wonderful time choosing books at the library, and one of the staff over-heard her reading, congratulated her and gave her a sticker, which was lovely for all involved. She is moving into level two books that have a bit more of a story-line, so she's beginning to see the point of it all a bit more.

Piney-4-kids was an excellent experience, and we will enjoy our visits there each month for the next twelve months (we miss December and July...). Penny is excellent with the kids and how she delivers the material to them. In the pre-activity discussion Alice was the only child who knew that the Noongar word for willy wagtail is djitydjity. We went for a bush walk around Piney Lakes, and I am amazed that such a wonderful resource exists so close to home, FREE! and I've never utilised it. That will no longer be the case, I'm an addict. Penny found a clicking froglet to show the kids. The clicking froglet is the smallest frog in the Southern Hemisphere, and is one of the seven native frogs found in Piney Lakes. It grows to about the size of an adult thumbnail, but the one we saw today wouldn't have been half that size. We also saw fungi, lichen, banksias and many quenda holes where they dig for food. They dig quite deeply, only in one direction and they don't leave scat around the hole, whereas rabbits dig all around the hole and leave scat to mark their territory.

We have at-home work for the month, which is to make a poster about one of the plants or animals we saw or heard at Piney Lakes. Alice has already chosen to do hers on the clicking froglet. Should be interesting!