Things I’m Loving – Technology & Nature

This week, we’ve embraced both technology and nature in our learning and play. There has been plenty to love in the mix…

â¤ Nature putting on a show, a stone’s throw from Wellington city, with Stingrays in the lagoon on the waterfront….

â¤ Technology keeping Shakespeare in vogue and making it all the easier to digest (Miss 7 enjoying ‘A Midsummers Night’s Dream’ – reading via ‘Eggspress’ – from Reading Eggs) as well as helping to motivate my home learning daughter with her spelling, grammar, comprehension and writing skills. Miss 3 enjoys it too, now that she’s able to work the mouse on the laptop – she also enjoys Starfall Phonics.

â¤ Great Apps for Android and iPhone/iPad-toting folks that make learning fun and fill in five minutes, anywhere, anytime – Miss 7 is loving ‘Word with Friends‘, ‘Scramble with Friends‘ and ‘Hanging with Friends‘.

â¤ Minecraft for keeping our older children (and our neighbour’s children) equally amused and entertained, as they spend hours engrossed in creatively building and adventuring in imagined worlds. As described on the Minecraft website;

“Minecraft is a game about breaking and placing blocks. At first, people built structures to protect against nocturnal monsters, but as the game grew players worked together to create wonderful, imaginative things.

It can also be about adventuring with friends or watching the sun rise over a blocky ocean. It’s pretty. Brave players battle terrible things in The Nether, which is more scary than pretty. You can also visit a land of mushrooms if it sounds more like your cup of tea.“

â¤ Chalk town taking over our driveway and filling in hours of evening play time with our neighbour’s children.

â¤ Cloud chasing and reading stories about rain dancing (we now have a total ban on outdoor water usage in Wellington – useful information on ways to conserve water usage here).

â¤ Bringing dinosaurs and butterflies to life with drawings and paintings.

â¤ Baking with ‘Dora’ (I couldn’t resist falling for it – Miss 3, Alice, loves Dora…). The first week has been baking banana muffins, complete with learning about the goodness of fruit and vegetables, where bananas grow, all the healthy treats that can be made with them (particularly like the banana on a stick, rolled in honey and dipped in nuts and seeds idea) and learning a little Spanish along the way (useful for our move to Santa Barbara).