Black Out

Last week we had a big storm over the weekend that brought down a lot of trees in the area (and around Sydney). The power went out. We were fortunate having it come back after just 24 hours, while others had it out for a week. Poor things! School also had the power out until Thursday morning. Monday a message was sent home saying that learning would be impacted because of the weather. I still sent the kids because I figured that I would still teach if we had no power - just take the kids outside and make it a different learning setting. Tuesday morning they still had no power. A message was sent out that they would have limited staff and that lessons would be impacted. The line 'limited staff' made me think that I should keep the kids home, so I did. They were home Tuesday and Wednesday which they were happy with. Thursday power was back on so they headed off to school. Then on Tuesday night we had another big storm that took out our power again. In the morning the power was still out. Daniel and Eliza were both dressed ready for school for if the power came back. An email was sent saying that learning would be impacted again so I decided that if the power wasn't back on by 9am I wouldn't send the kids to school. 

Power wasn't back on at 9am so I told the kids to get changed and we hopped into the car to go to the Reptile Park. Of course just as we were getting into the car, the power turned back on but I decided that I'd stick to the plan. On the way I told the kids that they were going to be doing some homework after it. At school Daniel has been learning about adjectives and descriptive texts. Eliza has been learning her treasure words 'I, was, the'. So I told Daniel that he had to choose 3 different animals from the Reptile Park to describe in a 'who am I' game and Eliza was going to write a recount using her 3 treasure words. I told Alexander that he was going to draw a picture of his favourite animal too. The kids were fine with that.

At the park they were great with taking turns to decide what animals we would go and see. The platypus was having a great time playing in the waterfall. It is one of my favourite animals.

Alexander wanted to see the kangaroos and give them a pat.

Daniel wanted to walk up to the nocturnal house to see the animals in the nocturnal house. Alexander wasn't keen to go in because of it being dark but was keen to sit on the frog. What is with my kids and the fake animals?

We went and watched the show while the kids had a snack. They decided that they wanted to pat the crocodile too.

After the show we walked past the tasmanian devils who were having a bit of a run around.

Then we headed up to see Eric the Crocodile. He was sitting in the water resting. Daniel was excited to spot a couple of lizards that were running around the park.

We then went down to say hi to Hugo and give him a pat.

By now the kids were quite hungry so we headed to a table to have some lunch. There were emus in the park again so the kids weren't keen to sit in the picnic space on the grass after emus tried to eat their food before. Instead we found a picnic table beside the grass but out of the fenced area. I thought it was safe. Then a rainbow lorikeet came and landed on the table. Then another one, and another one. There were heaps! I told the kids to close their lunch boxes while they ate. They did well with this, but the lorikeets had no fear. They wouldn't even fly away when I tried to shoo them. Clearly they are so comfortable with people feeding them.

We decided to pack up and move to another table.

Cheeky birds. While we finished eating another couple sat at the same table and they were bombarded with the birds too. They didn't help the situation by feeding the lorikeets too.

After lunch the kids had a great play at the park and then we headed to the shop. Eliza was keen to get a toy snake. James and I decided that the kids could use $20 from their money box that we were going to bank soon to buy something they want. Eliza and Alexander both wanted to get a snake and Daniel is keen to get beyblades at a later time. We welcomed Sasha and Flynnie to the family.

When we got home the kids sat down to do their writing/drawing. I was proud of them doing it without arguments.

I loved Eliza's writing! She has already come so far in just 3 weeks! She was sounding out her words, doing finger spaces, showing pride when she spelt a word correctly, focussing on using full stops and capital letters. It was wonderful!

I was proud of Daniel and the descriptions he came up with. Some were my ideas to get him writing but most of the descriptions were his own. We talked a lot about pencil grip which he still needs to work on and about sounding out words and reading his sentences to make sure what he wrote makes sense. Can you guess what they are? (Answers at the end of the blog).

I love the painful call for when I've lost my pack. Beautiful description from me asking 'how does the dingo sound?'

And Alexander was very proud of his snake drawings. He wanted to have lines drawn on his page like the big kids.

I wrote this blog post last night when thinking about teaching and these teachable moments.

'This morning the school had a blackout. After last weeks blackout I decided that I wouldn’t send the kids and instead took them to the Reptile Park. Of course power came back on just after we left. Anyway, the kids had a blast looking at all their favourite animals, patting different ones, spotting lizards roaming around and learning some new information about the animals.
When we got home Eliza wrote a recount using her 3 treasure words from school (I, was, the), Daniel wrote descriptions of 3 different animals he saw as a ‘guess who I am’ game and Alexander drew lots of snakes (on lined paper because he had to be like the big kids).
Moments like this make me miss teaching. Watching Eliza sound out her words and focus on doing finger spaces, listening to Daniel come up with describing words, trying to grasp the confusing world of the English language and the sounds of letters, going through Daniel’s work with him helping him see where mistakes were and working with him to try and change them.
I will get back to teaching at some point. I miss it but it’s just not quite the right season for me yet. When I think of it, if I was teaching then I might have missed out on the moments that came from today :-)'

I am glad that I paused and realised that if I was teaching I would have missed out on these moments with my own kids, at least I would have missed out on this moment yesterday. I know that some people have no choice but to go back to work, and I am so very grateful that I have this opportunity to spend time with my kids. I am so grateful that I can help my kids learn even when they're not a school. And I'm thankful that my kids have been teachable, well yesterday they were teachable. :-)


By the way, the answer to Daniel's who am I are:

And the dingo.