Weekly Wrap-Up: Two in one

I am so ready for this weekend. The last two weeks have been full and generally rather busy. Here's a bit of what we have been up to.

The weekend before last we opened our home to a teen friend of the kids and she had a birthday party here. It was a pleasant evening with loads of great kids coming and going and enjoying themselves around the pool and braai. The past weekend we enjoyed a braai with family friends too. Keren and I also visited the Portobello Road market. A lovely girl's time out.

The pace of school has been stepped up....

Some of Keren's books arrived and we expect the rest in the week ahead. We love her new curriculum and she loves the fact that she can tick boxes as she goes. She has been working on English, Afrikaans, Math and Life Orientation. She is reading Lord of the Flies and The Hobbit for her literature studies. She managed to complete a weeks worth of work in Life Orientation in one day! It is good for her to get ahead in certain subjects as she will need to make up time on others when those books arrive.

Her art has also kept her rather busy. Her visual diary is looking great...

 I love her next Mona Lisa...

Her research essay was presented in an interesting way...

Today her art class went on an outing to the National Gallery.

Zak decided it was time to loose the locks and his new haircut looks rather good on him.

He has been drawing too...

and at art class they have been working with clay. 

This week we are enjoying reading The Swiss Family Robinson together. I can't believe we haven't read it before. I love the footnotes on natural history that add facts to the story. 

Basketball practice is in full swing twice a week and he played a game on Wednesday. A fantastic action packed game in which his team won 28-14. 

He enjoyed his nature club outing to Kirstenbosch Botanical gardens last week.

Keren and I have been enjoying early morning walks with walk/run for life 3 times a week before school. She tends to run and walk but I prefer to walk. The summer mornings are beautiful and it feels great to exercise. She has also resumed ballroom dancing and is enjoying it immensely. 

There were more exciting parcels in the last weeks...

The one shown above was from a family in Ireland. It was part of the International Children's Book Exchange, but the sender and I had been in contact and decided to send more than just a book. 

We received a friendly letter from the family, telling us all about their lives in Ireland and the area in which they live. Included were some old Irish Punts which are out of circulation in Ireland since they have switched to the Euro. Maps, traditional Irish recipes and a wonderful Irish Mussel Cuisine recipe book made up the remainder of the parcel. The Jaffa Cakes went down really well, we love Jaffa Cakes and those were excellent! 

In return, we made up a South African package including a letter, SA mini flags, rooibos tea, a pamphlet displaying our National symbols, SA coins, a Zulu beaded bracelet, a sand art card of the SA flag and spices for Cape Malay Chicken Breyani . With a bit of horror I now realize I totally forgot to put a book into the package! 

Another parcel came from a family in USA.  The family lives in Boone, North Carolina, and we are eager to learn about their rich history. We also look forward to reading the historical biography of Daniel Boone.

Besides the wonderful surprise parcels, the high-lite of the last week was definitely our visit to the Da Vinci exhibition at the Waterfront.

Having read about this genius, it was amazing to see replicas of his art and inventions. A once in a life time experience that has made our learning real and memorable.

We enjoyed exploring life sized interactive machines. It felt as if we were at an old fashioned science center!  It is amazing that one man came up with as many concepts as he did. I particularly enjoyed his anatomical drawings. 

 

I loved the delight expressed by Keren when she came face to face with the Mona Lisa. Having been the focus of her art over the last couple of weeks, she was absolutely intrigued by this section of the exhibition. She really appreciated the beauty and mystery of this masterpiece. We all discovered so much more detail to the Mona Lisa than we had noticed before. There was a replica of the original and the colours were just magnificent...soft and so much detail which is missed when one looks at the now faded and darkened replica as we know it.

This exhibition has now been extended until March 23rd and it is highly recommended if you have not yet been!

We enjoyed strolling around the Waterfront and browsing the craft stalls and of course we had to get a pic with our famous mountain!

Josh heads of to work daily and is enjoying his work. He booked himself a driving lesson this week...all on his own steam. It is good to see him taking ownership of things like this.

The week drew to a close with Keren as master of ceremonies at youth again tonight and Zak all dressed up in shirt and tie for the evening of fun.

Weekly Wrap-Up

Another week rolled on by, so fast it seems....

Every morning Josh was up bright and early, dressed smartly and ready to set off to work. 

He seems to really be enjoying his work.

 Around here we miss him....we miss his loud music (believe it or not), we miss his wit and humor and his built in body clock that always tells us when it's lunch time. I miss his coffee making and I miss that he is not sitting over at the computer when I glance across the room.

  Keren misses him popping his head into her room animatedly to share a joke or a new song. 

But he is happy and glad of the weekend to rest.

I love the time we have alone each morning in the car on the way to dropping him at work. We get to chat, just the two of us and it's wonderful to connect with him. I love too that my favorite nursery is just around the corner from his work and I get to pop in there whenever I like. This week I popped in and got some leek , gem squash and red and yellow pepper seedlings at a rand a piece which is a real steal!

Keren spent much of the first part of the week prepping for her art exam on Wednesday and writing another art essay. Once over the hurdle of the exam, she was able to relax a bit. 

She brought her current piece she is working on home. 

I really love it and can't wait to see the finished work.

We had a lovely surprise this week when a parcel from China arrived. It is part of an International Book Exchange we are currently doing. As the sender could not find much written in English about China or a book suitable for the teens, she sent us a lovely package filled with interesting goodies and treats. 

There were stickers, a notebook, chopsticks, two packets of green tea from a reputable Chinese tea shop, 

   

peach gummies and crisped rice chocolate! 

We were also sent the link to a traditional Chinese story. 

The kids were thrilled with the lovely parcel.

We continued with our online cooking course with Yuppiechef and Zak and I made the best ever peanut butter cookies! They are made with oats and we added peanuts to the cookie dough.

 I love that they are not too sweet. 

The guys enjoyed them in lunch boxes!

 Definitely a recipe to make again! 

You can find the recipe on their website if you would like to try it.

Zak had basketball practice and an away match this week.The match took place at the American International School and was complete with cheerleaders cheering the home team on. I felt like I had been transported into Disney Channel! The match was sadly lost, but the kids still had fun. 

We didn't get to do a huge amount of reading together but Zak has discovered the joys of reading to himself this week and has been devouring a pile of books borrowed from a friend. It is wonderful to finally see him developing a real love of reading. He can be found with his nose buried in a book early morning, noon and night time before nodding off. 

Zak and I enjoyed a morning out in nature on Friday with his Science club.

 Our task was alien hacking, but more on that in another post. 

The week ended with the kids all going off in different directions. Josh to a friend, Zak to a go-carting party and his first night at TPC youth and Keren left early to prep for youth and help run the evening. 

Today the younger two have a fun day with a 12 hour long birthday party at Ratanga Junction!

Life is good and it's been a great week!

The Cape of Good Hope

Early last month we took advantage of the free entry offered to SA citizens at our National Parks. 

Despite it being a school day, we enjoyed the freedom and spontaneity of making this a field trip day. 

We fetched some friends and went off on an adventure for the morning.

We drove out on the coast road, alongside False Bay, heading south to Cape Point. Along the way we stopped near Miller's Point to admire the views of the bay, and in the hopes of possibly spotting a whale or two...

 The kids ran down the hillside onto the beach and enjoyed clambering over huge granite boulders.

Sadly no whales were spotted.

We headed along the winding coast road, enjoying the views and looking out for baboons and whales along the way. Finally we reached the Table Mountain National Park, The Cape of Good Hope.

 The park encompasses 7 750 hectares with a 40 kilometer coastline of beaches, bays and sheer cliffs. It is vast and diverse with rocky mountainous areas , beaches and open sea. The Cape of Good Hope is popularly believed to be the meeting point of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans , but geographically these oceans meet at Cape Agulhas National Park.

There are at least 250 species of birds and numerous small animals in the park . Larger animals are a rare sight. We were lucky enough to spot a herd of Eland grazing as well as a troop of baboons in the distance.

The Cape of Good Hope is an integral part of the Cape Floral Kingdom which is the smallest but richest of the world's six floral kingdoms. There are numerous indigenous plants and some that do not occur naturally in other parts of the world. The scent of fynbos is rich and aromatic. 

A scent I never tire of.

We enjoyed driving through the park on roads we have not taken before. 

We stopped at Olifantsbos Point and strolled to the look out point.

The views spectacular....

While climbing around on the rocks, our friend shouted out that she found a clay head. 

Of course we thought she was joking and we all climbed up to take a look....

There it was, nestled in the rocks.

 A surprising and rather strange find.

 We really could not figure out why this sculpture was hidden in the rocks in the middle of nowhere!

We made our way south to the parking lot,  curio shops and restaurant.

 The view looking back over False Bay, just beautiful!

 The sea was flat and glassy and numerous fishing boats dotted the water below.

Instead of taking the funicular, we opted to walk up the mountain to the old lighthouse.

View of Dias Beach.

 There were bus loads of tourists making their way up and down. I reminded the kids we are privileged and blessed to live in a truly beautiful city and that many travel from afar in order to visit this place.

Once again, the views from 200 + meters above the vast swirling ocean...incredible.

We reached the old lighthouse, 249 m above sea level.

The new lighthouse was spotted in the distance on Dias Point.

The kids thoroughly enjoyed the morning out in the fresh sea air and taking in the views of this world heritage site. 

Before we left, we bought some postcards to use for cultural exchange parcels or postcrossing.

Thank you to Hip Homeschool Moms for the opportunity to link up with their Field Trips Around the World series.  We hope that if you haven't visited the Cape of Good Hope, you will!

Bastille Day Celebration

During the school holidays our neighbour and his son decided to make a replica of the Eiffel Tower.

 The neighbourhood kids had fun joining in and adding a piece in here and there....

July 14th , Bastille Day, came around and our wonderful neighbourhood decided to have a celebration and enjoy some French cuisine together.... 

French loaves and various cheeses with French Onion soup were the order of the day.

I made the soup using a simple recipe that was delicious. The soup should be served with toast and melted cheese on top, but we enjoyed it with fresh French loaf and cheese instead.

We took the opportunity to learn more about Bastille Day and the French Revolution, and enjoyed watching  a spectacular on-line clip of the Bastille Day Fireworks.

My youngest enjoyed cooking us a delicious French chicken and sausage cassoulet.

 It was great to learn a little more about France and enjoy their fabulous food!