Home Economics

This term at his Intermediate school Kien has been doing Home Ec. I loved that option when I was at Intermediate school as well. Back in March when we went to Level 3 lockdown Kien was tasked with preparing some meals or doing some cooking / baking for his home studies. I decided to teach him how to make pizza, from scratch. Kneading dough was a bit tough though with his tiny hands. After a while I had to get in there, but other than that he did it all by himself.

Kien likes garlic pizza so that's what he made for himself.

Home schooling while we were working wasn't easy. I've been working in the kitchen so I had to have him next to me to keep him on task. We also use our windows as whiteboards.

Another session of baking on another day, and this time he made banana muffins.

Sometimes when he has a friend over we'll also do some baking. It's great! It saves me time having to do it, and it gets them doing something useful and off their devices!

Koala and his brother

First blog post for Kien this year. He's been back at school for a week and a bit. His school started late - 7th February was their first day.

Day one at school. He's now senior school - upstairs in the new building.







Day two at school.

Bee School

The first Sunday of every month there is a free natural bee keeping school. We attended the February session a couple weeks ago and it was informative and inspirational. Now that we have the ngahere at Mangawhai we need to learn as much as we can before we embark on this new adventure of having our own hives. Jef and I have been wanting hives for years, but due to so many other priorities in our lives we've not managed it. The more knowledge we gain in this area though will drive us to realise this goal sooner.





Kien was bored in the first half of the session when we were inside the classroom learning theory, but as soon as we stepped outside to open up the hives he was into it.

Art and life

My child oscillates between being delightful and being a down right thorn in my side. OMG, this weekend!! Not sure what's going on with him but he's been so fragile; having a meltdown because he didn't like the hotpot restaurant we went to last night, and then bursting into tears multiple times today because his iPod kept crashing from the stupid game that refused to load. It's enough to drive a parent to alcoholism, I tell you! So as I sip my Bloody Mary on a Sunday afternoon I'm letting him spend all of his points on watching youtube because I just am too tired to nag.

This afternoon, getting him to practice 5 minutes of keyboard was like extracting teeth. 5 minutes! I was rewarding him with 1 point for it too! That's 20 minutes of device time, or 1/3 of $2 if he want to save for Beyblades (3 points = $2). I think I'm extremely generous with the earning of points. But no, when Kien is going through a non cooperative phase the moaning and the groaning can make you feel like your ears will bleed. But this is life, right? As adults we also go through phases, and sometimes we also feel that the amount of effort it takes to, say, do a day's work at our job isn't worth the stress for the $. But if you want to eat, have a house, go on holidays, drive a car, and be able to afford hobbies then you just have to suck it up. The points system I've put in place for Kien is trying to teach him about this - well that's what I'm hoping its teaching him...there ain't no free ride. Either that or he just thinks I'm really mean. He has asked me why his friends can get to use devices FOR FREE. I told him I didn't care what his friends get or doesn't get because I am not their parent. He thinks I'm being unfair. So my natural response to that is...life is unfair, kid. Get used to it. Now go and empty the dishwasher and that will earn you a point.

The other day I was emptying his book bag and found a certificate he got. I didn't get around to asking him abut it. This afternoon I was tidying up the dining table and found the certificate, so I asked him to let me take a photo of him holding it for this blog post. He was like, "oh, when I got it in assembly they also made me hold it to get photos taken."
"What? Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because it was a surprise", he said.
"And you were going to tell me, when?" Do you think he'd give me one photo with a decent smile after our conversation?

At the end of the year the school always does an art exhibition where the kids get to choose a piece to showcase. This is Kien's submission for last year.

The reason I haven't talked about this before is because Kien actually lost the artwork at the end of the year when they were cleaning up. Don't ask me how he could lose something so big - it's an A3 drawing stuck on heavy weighted paper to form a border. Anyway, we thought it was lost forever but then it showed up all of a sudden in his classroom at the beginning of the year. I was so happy when I found out it wasn't lost, because he had actually taken out the top prize for the 7 year olds category.

He was rewarded with $25 voucher at the local book store.

I asked him to explain to me all the details in his drawing. Oh boy, I think that's an entirely different blog post, all to do with nuclear weapons, saving villages and meteors. Yeah, too much for a Sunday afternoon frivolous post.

School field trip to Point Erin pools

It just happened to coincide with my day off so I volunteered go with Kien's class to the pools last Tuesday. Took the bus, had a briefing, and then 4 1/2 hours trying to kill time without killing any kids.

You know what the temperature is like in an unheated outdoor pool in Auckland when its cloudy? And what's worse, they have a giant spa pool for people to sit in to get warm, but it was out of bounds for the children! The kids were in the pool for maybe an hour and they came out blue - ok, not quite blue but definitely teeth chattering and shaking all over.

One hour down, 3 1/2 hours to go - in this caged off area.

The sun did come out later on in the day, and the kids did get back into their wet togs and went back in the water. They mucked around and played with frizbees, flying them over the fences and asking dog walkers and runners to throw them back over. I normally run this route when I'm working from the Hub, so I am all too familiar with this.

Somehow we were all able to entertain ourselves, and then we lined all the children back up again to get on the bus back to school.

Athletics

I went to watch Kien at athletics day at his school a couple of weeks back. I wanted to cheer him on, knowing that my son isn't really into physical activities. But he certainly surprised me! I saw his competitive streak come out. He had such a good time.

He had an initial try of the high jump, but he couldn't get the hang of which leg to throw over first. So he didn't want to do it and basically quit. I had a conversation with him about not giving up and to keep trying, but nope, he wasn't having a bar of it. So I bribed him - give it your best shot, don't worry about what anyone thinks or says, and I'll give you a point. So he did, and the more he jumped the better he was. Here's a video of his last jump.

Here's a link to the video on youtube in the event you can't see it through whichever method you have received this post.

So guess what? He got 3rd place for that jump. Oh don't worry, I've given him lots of talks about how important trying is and that it can pay off. I was also surprised to find another certificate in his bag for coming 2nd for shotput. I must have missed that one.

Then last Saturday he got player of the day at his cricket game for the best bating and straight bowling.

I'm really proud of him, not because of these achievements per se but I see his confidence growing, and he is blossoming and really coming into his own. I love watching him grow.

Kien's keyboard recital

All the hard work and hours of practice he has put in - I'm so proud of him. This is his first year learning to play the keyboard. Although its been hard at times when he just does not want to practice and I think its a total waste of money to pay for these lessons - I know that he will be thankful for the perseverance. It's important to me to teach him commitment, and today was a very proud mummy moment for me watching him up on the stage and pushing through his nervousness. He told me he was scared; that he has stage fright. I told him its okay to be scared, that he can do it. He did it.

Here's a link to the video on youtube in the event you can't see it through whichever method you have received this post :)

School field trip to MOTAT

I try to make at least one school field trip a year, and a couple of Fridays ago I went with them to MOTAT. This was one of those times when I told my boss that I really had to be a good parent and attend this one - being the last field trip for the year and since I have been so busy with work I've not spent a lot of energy or time with Kien. So even though I'd had a short week with being at the conference, doing this was important. Fortunately my manager and my project managers understand, so I found myself assigned to 6 kids on a bus heading to Western Springs.

We had lots of activities to get through, so after our briefing away we went.

My kids were the only ones that wanted to explore the library, and they had a great time sliding the moving walls back and forth. The poor librarian; at first he thought it was really cute, and then 10 minutes later he wished me good luck as I shooed them to the tram station.

These two have never ending conversations about I don't know what.

Then after lunch it was pretty much a lazy afternoon wandering around getting into mischief.

It was an exhausting day, but very enjoyable. After the bus dropped us off at the school gates at 2:30pm the teacher said I could take Kien home. I was like, no way! He's going to after school care. I need a break! So she shipped him off to after school care and I went home and poured myself a large glass of wine, and watched some trash TV on demand, and ate some cheese.