Aimed at primary and intermediate aged children, their families and teachers, Incredible Science is a fun, free day of interactive activities, lectures and shows highlighting the fun and diversity that science offers.

Also at this website they have some experiments to try at home, and some explantory videos about aluminium, anatomy and the rocky shore to name but three.

{I get nervous about putting links to other websites because I panic someone's going to tell me I'm breaching copyright. I've noticed a few people/organisations have tapped into my blog(s) because I've linked back to their sites and I always wonder if I'm appropriately displaying their details without breaching anything.}

When it comes to this particular website I'm excited about sharing it because it's run by The University of Auckland's Faculty of Science. As the website says, it's -

• I still can't afford to buy Beta [yet], so we are doing things in our own way again.
• We've moved into multiplications. Some days I think, "Yes, they're ready for this," but other days I think, "hmm, maybe not." In particular, I think tamāhine 1 needs to step back for a bit because she's mixing up her numbers when she's adding now, eg if I ask her to multiply 4 x 7, she may say two sevens are 14 and two sevens are 14 but if she tries adding them together she may say 82 instead of 28. It's a hard transition to understand that multiplication is simply fast adding. She can look at the multiplication sign (x) and just go blank. She can easily rattle off 7 plus 7 or 7 minus 7, but when she looks at the multiplication sign she stumbles. When I say "what's two sevens?" then she can rattle the answer off quickly, yet if I say, "what's 2 times 7," she takes a long time to click. So to me, that means we need to take a step back. We'll stick with the skip counting she does know and only try a maximum of two multiplication questions a day mixed in with her addition and subtraction rather than 10 multiplication questions.
  
• I always try to encourage the kids by reminding them they know lots of mulitiplication already: they know their 1s, 2s, 3s, 5s, 10s, 11s. They don't realise it, but they also know a chunk of others, eg 1x7=7, 2 x7=14, 3x7=21, 5x7=35, 10x7=70, 11x7=77 ... so really, there's only a few blanks that need to be filled eh?!!! That's a definite positive in my books.

• Tamāhine 1 has for some time now, grabbed a book and started to read on her own. I try to be within earshot to listen in ... without making it too obvious so that she's not deterred by mum's eavesdropping, lol. Sometimes I'll let her make the odd fumble and carry on, but other times I will simply make a point of asking what she's reading and depending how the conversation goes, I may get her to re-read a section and that way she will read the word correctly. It feels like only yesterday she used to pick up a book and make up the story by looking at the pictures. Now my little girl isn't so little anymore and is able to read - for the most part - an entire book on her own.

• Leaps and bounds - the two older kids are making lovely progress with their writing. Glancing at tamāhine 1's exercises each day, I can see her efforts improving which is lovely.
• Tama 1 has begun to use cursive writing when he writes his little "play" stories which is great. I've altered the way we write a couple of letters to move him from being too flowery which can sometimes make for difficulty reading of a word, such as the letter 'w'. Sometimes it can become muddled with the letter following the 'w' as he tries to 'flow' it across if you catch my drift. But really, in all respects, he does have a lovely style - but then I would say that, because it looks so much like my own, hee hee. "Funny that," you say! He is copying my writing of course!
• I must mention tama 2 also at this juncture. Isn't it amazing how the children's first letter writing looks so much alike? I do remember noticing the similarities between tama 1 and tamāhine 1, but it seems so much more evident now that tama 2 has joined the writing journey.

• The children are now attending Lake Rotoma playcentre Tuesday's and Friday's. Whaiāipo and I are desperately trying to find another family vehicle because rather than spending money on dear old Dora the Explorer, we could buy another runabout. So, we're starting to save towards a secondhand people mover. I mention this because I don't want to disappoint the children by saying we can't attend playcentre because the car has gone kaput! BTW, although I shared their first attendance on this blog, I will keep the bulk of all other attendances to the correspondence blog because afterall, they are interconnected. So follow this link if you'd like to view some of our recent days at Lake Rotoma.

• I don't think it's anything new when I say the kids are getting into motorcross, so it won't be earth-shattering news when I announce the children attended their first motorcross race on Sunday the 15th of March. In order to be eligible, they required boots, helmet, goggles and sturdy clothing. So, on the weekend of Uncle Craig's birthday we headed over to Te Awamutu to buy two pairs of boots ...