Home's Cool Co-op gets busy!

Due to all sorts of real life reasons, our co-op has not met as regularly as should have, but here is some of what we have been up to!

Having learned a little about Zimbabwe, we baked some traditional sweet potato cookies.

 These were really delicious!

My sister lent me a wonderful book , "Wild Honey", set in the Matobo Hills in Zimbabwe and the children and I are thoroughly enjoying this read aloud.

In our co-op time, we have moved on and done a study of Zambia. We are far behind Craig on his journey through Africa but that is ok.

 The children and I regularly read the blog updates and I am convinced that Craig is meeting with angels in Africa! The goodwill shown to him has me in tears and other times we laugh like mad at what Africa is really like. It makes for most enjoyable reading.

The children came up with a wonderful idea to raise funds to support funding for wheel chairs, given out on Craig's journey through Africa. There were many meetings and much planning went into their "event". As Zak is a Chaeli Campaign Ambassador, he needed to have a project to raise funds for, so it was great for him to have the girls on board too.

They were kindly sponsored a delicious luxury hamper to raffle, which really helped boost the funds they raised. 

Their main event was a quiz night aimed at youth but due to a poor response, fun loving adults were invited to join in too. Tickets were sold, the kids got donations of the most amazing prizes (by themselves),and had to write up their own quiz questions in the various categories too.Lots of hard work but so worth the growth and learning that took place.

The quiz night was a great success and loads of fun and laughter too.

 There were 4 teams and the kids handled themselves very well. Zak welcomed the guests and they were shown a clip on what Walk4Wheels is all about. The kids had to fight hubby off as he would have loved being the quiz master!

They took it in their stride and fun was had by all! 

The winning team, seen above with Zak, Keren and Jenna...the wheels behind this great evening! 

The best part was that each participant won a prize of some sort.

One of the lovely moms at Keren's craft club won the luxury hamper.

 Her little girl sweetly told me how much she loved eating all the chocolates in the hamper!

The kids went to hand over the money at the Chaeli Cottage last week. 

They raised enough to sponsor 3 a bit days, R770.00 in total. 

Here they are, picking the days they want to sponsor. 

Hard work, but so worth it!

 Well done Home's Cool Team!

Crazy, busy and full...

Yes , that is how our week has been....crazy, busy and full!

As you see we are still enjoying near perfect summer weather with no rain. We are thankful for the pool which has been used much in the last week. Early morning dips, in between lesson dips, late evening dips, dips with friends!

We spent a wonderful evening with hubby's parents and his cousin who was visiting from Holland. It was great to see her again as it has been years. It was good for the kids to get to know one of their Dutch relatives too! We were spoiled with treats from Holland , chocolates and "dropje". Dropje, Dutch licorice has a delicious salty flavour and my kids devour it when they get hold of it!

We also had the pleasure of seeing friends who are visiting here from the UK and old friends from our Dar es Salaam days.

An impromptu summer evening braai, with a friend and his kids, had the kids swimming way into the dark hours of the warm summers night.

School has been happening this week , though different in many ways.
J & K have spent many of their "school " hours working on their animation videos. But more about that in another post. Karate lessons began in earnest this week with the two of them training in the evenings, and J giving lessons two afternoons and his usual Saturday morning class.

We had an outing to the aquarium....

 (more on that in another post to follow)

Our co op started up again this week after a long break. It was great to get together again and learn about Zimbabwe. The kids did some map work, learned about the people, resources, natural wonders and more.

Our cute nephew/ cousin came back to us this week for a morning as his mommy went back to work. He has grown so much and is very mobile as his little arms and legs carry him all over the place at quite a speed! We only take our eyes off him when he is sleeping, securely strapped into his pram!

Tonight hubby and I look forward to a friends birthday party and tomorrow I look forward to relaxing at home before another busy week begins.

Co-Op gets out and about

As I mentioned in the last post about our Co-op, we had a wonderful visit to The South African Museum during Heritage Week. Entry was free and that spurred us on to make the trip. It had been the longest time since we had visited there and the kids were filled with excitement and wonder!

To celebrate Heritage Week, there were various additional exhibitions and the kids enjoyed taking part in weaving a Heritage Day flag. A very kind lady patiently helped them and explained how to weave on the large loom. Each child wrote a message on a strip of fabric which was then woven into the flag.

The messages woven into the banner would then be removed at the end of each day and displayed in the trees for all to read and remember to protect our heritage. (grr, can't get rid of these silly lines under the writing!)

We enjoyed the exhibitions show casing the people of Southern Africa.

It amazed us as to how real these statues seemed... as if they might suddenly jump up and get on with their daily lives!

The children were fascinated by the rock art of long ago, depicting the lives of those who were hunter and gatherers in our beautiful land.

The whale well never ceases to cause me to stop and think of the wonders of creation! The 20.5 metre whale skeleton with it's huge gaping jaw is incredible!

We took a relaxing tea break out in the Company's Gardens.This beautiful old garden was first established in 1652 by the Dutch settlers to the Cape. It has been enjoyed by many locals and tourists since it was proclaimed for public use in 1848.

We enjoyed watching the Egyptian geese with their "teens". They were really tame and the kids had fun feeding them scraps.

This cute squirrel also kept returning for his fair share of treats offered by the delighted children.

As we were right there and had time on our hands, we strolled over to the South African National Art Gallery. There was an exhibition of Tretchkoff's work which was truly fascinating and interesting!

A fun outing enjoyed by moms and kids alike!

The journey has begun!

Craig has taken his first steps towards Egypt.

He left the Chaeli Cottage last Saturday with a great send off !

We were not all able to see him off as K was competing in a Western Province Karate competition, but thankfully part of our "Home's Cool" team was able to.

I was sad we could not be there to say goodbye but would not have missed her competition and seeing her get a medal for anything!

We are following his journey and it is amazing to see how South Africans are welcoming this young man and supporting him as he makes this incredible journey of goodwill.

His first stop was in the northern suburbs of our city where he did his first handover of an assistive device to a little girl with spina bifida.

Naturally the children have been learning about different disabilities in the last week so that when we read of the people whose lives Craig is impacting, they have a better understanding of the various disabilities.

Days before his send off, we received an urgent email from the Chaeli Cottage to ask us to create a video of what we had done in our co-op so far. The kids had great fun putting together a short clip and I was grateful that a friend had popped in and could cue them as I filmed....could not have done it without her!

The girls came up with a fabulous idea of raising funds by doing a pamper party for little girls. They created beautiful invitations and they hope to raise enough to sponsor a day.

As part of their learning about SA and Heritage Week, we had a fantastic outing to the South African Museum and the National Art Gallery...that deserves a post of it's own though!

They were so inspired by the rock art that tells of lives lived long ago. They just had to do some rock art of their own!

As the artists of long ago had made their own ink, it was fitting that they did too.

Red ink was made from frozen berries that had been thawed, vinegar and salt.

It was pushed through a sieve and then art began in earnest!

Instead of paint brushes, they used feathers and created some gorgeous art.

The week before the kids had enjoyed working with clay too.

Z's rock art and his clay elephant.

The two girls created the cutest African huts from clay and their rock art was lovely too!

Our co-op days are such fun!

This post features on the South African Carnival of Homeschool Bloggers where South African home schoolers share experiences, ideas, philosophies and much more. You can join the carnival too by heading to the South African Carnival of Homeschool Bloggers sign up page. In the meantime, head to SACH Carnival #8 - Support Groups and Co-Ops for this week's carnival. We hope you enjoy the carnival as much as we have!

'Home's Cool" Co-op has more fun...

We have had more co-op days with our friends, enjoying learning about our diverse country.

We had to make Milk Tart!

A delicious proudly South African desert.

We learned about all our national symbols

... the Springbok, the Blue Crane, the King Protea, the Yellow-wood Tree and the Galjoen...

We learned about the National Coat of Arms and what each item on it symbolises.

9 provinces were found and marked on the maps and we talked of how there were only 4 in days gone by.

We learned of the different languages and ethnic groups in our rainbow nation.

We have talked.....

..... and talked

........and talked

about our land with such a rich heritage, diverse cultures, abundant flora and fauna, incredible landforms

and

turbulent history.

We have enjoyed creating Ndebele art.

We have scoured the Internet to answer the curious questions posed by the children

but

most of all we have had a great time enjoying learning together!

As part of our South African cookery, my kids were keen to make Vetkoek (literally translated as fat cake), a traditional Afrikaner pastry, thought to have its origins in the Dutch oliebollen and since they are of part Dutch descent...

Why not?

They made the dough and left it to rise while carrying on with the mornings activities...

They were fascinated at how 'alive" the dough seemed as it bubbled and moved!

The dough is flour, water, sugar and yeast, which is then deep fried....

What memories these brought back from my childhood days...

Our dear Xhosa nanny, Agnes, used to make them for my siblings and me!

This post features on the South African Carnival of Homeschool Bloggers where South African home schoolers share experiences, ideas, philosophies and much more. You can join the carnival too by heading to the South African Carnival of Homeschool Bloggers sign up page. In the meantime, head to SACH Carnival #8 - Support Groups and Co-Ops for this week's carnival. We hope you enjoy the carnival as much as we have!

"Home's Cool" Co - op

This week saw our co - op taking off and we had two fun days learning together.

We began with large maps of Africa, filling in all the countries that Craig will be visiting and tracing his route through Africa.

It amazes me that this young man is making this remarkable journey on foot from Cape Town to Cairo!

The kids so enjoyed the map activities.

We read snippets from various websites about Africa, just adding to their general knowledge of the continent we call home.

We spoke about why we are proud to be South Africans.

We brainstormed ideas on how we would raise funds for the Walk4Wheels campaign and came up with some fun ideas.

As we have to give a team name for the school fundraising activities , we came up with the name

"Home's Cool".

As his starting point is South Africa, and it is our first country study, we learned a bit about the SA flag and the children coloured flags as well as adding maps of SA to their notebooks.

It was fitting to get the kids into the kitchen for home economics (and a night off for the moms!)

We enjoyed a traditional meal of Bobotie that night, which of course is not complete without Mrs Balls Chutney!

On day two, we read two books about Nelson Mandela and the children learned new things about the man called Madiba.

We learned the history of South African leaders and the National Anthem. We did notebook pages on Nelson Mandela.

Hands were kept busy while the moms took turns reading....

..... beautiful collages of African animals on an outline map of Africa!

It certainly has been a lot of fun so far and we look forward to next week.

This post features on the South African Carnival of Homeschool Bloggers where South African home schoolers share experiences, ideas, philosophies and much more. You can join the carnival too by heading to the South African Carnival of Homeschool Bloggers sign up page. In the meantime, head to SACH Carnival #8 - Support Groups and Co-Ops for this week's carnival. We hope you enjoy the carnival as much as we have!