Grace put together this video on how to make Chagga banana stew as part of a cultural project. Other than some help setting up the tripod she did this entirely on her own.

Today was just a chill day. We went for a walk in the rain during the exercise power hour, drank coffee, ate pancakes, watched a movie, rode around the pool on our bikes and planted some seeds in our newly dug veggie bed.

It is good to just be together. It doesn’t have to be super special or meaningful time – sometimes it is just the time together that matters.

In other news Adam wants his email address to be BFG at sausagetown….I’m not sure that is a good email address for anything on the Internet.

Workers Day…or as we now know it, Slightly More Free than Yesterday Day. We took to the streets with the hordes of people for a bike ride.

It was a stunning morning and the joggers, walkers, cyclists, dog walkers, and skateboarders ruled the road. We literally had to avoid people just to ride down the road.

There was a joyous buzz in the streets as people greeted each other and just enjoyed being out for a bit. I don’t think the irony was lost of anyone.

Eli was inspired by the book they’re reading to start carving. He got out his pocket knife and some of the few blocks of wood we have and began on his mission to make everyone a carved Christmas gift.

This also included a good cleaning of his work bench and a phone call to Gogo to ask her all about the wood carving she used to do

At the end of the day Adam says, sadly, “It was a bad day, Eli didn’t play with me enough today.” So Eli says,”Don’t worry Adam, tomorrow I’ll pay with you whenever you want to.”

Jumping has been big this lockdown, and lately the morning stoutness exercises involved jumping in three different ways to all the cards in a deck

We did a lesson on adding up consecutive numbers today, which Grace quite quickly seemed to get (or at least she memorised the formula quickly). Here is the lesson:

Grace, Eli and Adam were up early and playing a jumping game. Someone would draw a card and then the would do that many jumps, knee drops and bum drops – 3 jumps per card in the playing deck (sans jokers).

Afterwards Grace and Eli went off to figure out how many jumps they had done from the cards.

They got to the right number – 1092!

Later in the day while I was mopping the playroom I looked and this and started thinking about how to get to the answer without counting. 3 x each of the cards in a suite is the same as 3 x the sum of the cards in the suite. 4 x that (for each suite) and the answer should be there. So, how do you calculate the sum of consecutive answers? I see a maths lesson in the future…

Grace made us pizzas and we had an outdoor pizza “picnic”

This was followed by a tour around the he garden, with Grace, Adam and Eli being the tour guides. I can’t remember exactly what they called the different paths, but it came down to something like the beautiful path, the good path and the terrible path.

This did include some activities which we all know are going too lead to itching

And itch they did. Luckily we managed to get them into a bath just as the itch was beginning.

When the delivery of laminating pouches and cardboard is one of the most exciting and memorable things of the day, then you know that your life is being consumed making schooling materials.

Donné has been working like a machine finding materials online, printing, laminating, cutting, and thinking about what else she needs, how to run this “school” thing and organising life around online class meetings, snacks, learning and lunch.

We are very lucky to have her pouring herself into managing the school situation we currently find ourselves in.