and Alma joins me at the “Birds” exhibition January 2013 Updates: Some more updates, among them: New routines, Hahgoot starts Year 2 and Alma joins me at the “Birds” exhibition

After 5 days of jet lag and adjustments Hahgoot was back to herself and back to school, this time in a combined Year 2\3 class. She was very excited to meet all her friends from last year. It was also quite nice to be back into warm weather. As I knew we missed the really bad heat waves (it reached 46 degrees one day in January!), I didn’t dare complain...

It was nice to be back in routine, at school and at day care. Alma had a really good start back at day care, with very little crying and a growing interest in her peers. The trip was really good for her confidence and social skills.

The grandmothers made lovely food, but it was nice to get back to cooking and eating our familiar foods.

We might have another early reader soon... We discovered by chance that Alma can start to match letters using the chart and magnets. We might have another early reader soon... I took advantage of the many changes that we went through and introduced a new routine: a chores chart. There are 8 tasks the girls can do, in various degrees, and each time they complete a task they get a sticky note with their name to put next to the date. Each weekend Barak collects the notes and gives them 20C per chore. Alma was very excited about the new routine, Hahgoot not so much...

At the Penrith Regional Gallery the “Birds” exhibition opened (I worked on the online education kit voluntarily last year) and I went with Alma to have a look. It’s a hands-on interactive exhibition targeted for the under-12’s. There are four rooms. The first one is The Science Room.

The second is The Balance Room. You can buy for $2 a small kit to do activities in the space but I didn’t get one for Alma as she’s too young. She had plenty to do in the space anyway.

Alma liked the balance room. The artworks are incorporated in the room in a way that both adults and kids can enjoy them and have their own personal touch to the space.

The main feature of The Song Room is a funny political video art, with bird chirping sounds.

The Portrait Room gives kids an opportunity to write what the birds say and also dress up to have their portrait taken

The other exhibition that was on at the same time was a Bonsai and Japanese stone raked garden. Alma found it very hard to NOT pick up the pebbles... but she was very good and well behaved.

She was so relieved and happy to play with the pebbles in the gallery’s parking lot... We collected things on the way home that were relevant to the exhibition we saw and made a collage when we got back.

In our next presentation: February updates