“There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.”... and LEGO

As the school year comes to its final week I am reminded that it's business as usual for us homeschooling families. There are no term times for Opeie and although he gets to spend some awesome quality time with his brother over the 6 week holiday, our learning continues because the home education has become a way of life now. This morning as we chatted about what we were going to be doing, I said 'time for us to wind down a little this week' but with out realising we transformed our morning game of hockey to a fun spelling exercise. This is the magic of being a creative and ever evolving teacher to an equally creative 6-year-old.

There is something to learn in literally everything we do and LEGO has added creativity into so many of our fun activities. The building, following instructions and symmetry of many of the builds have been such great lessons for home education and the huge variety of parts, figures and animals mean that there is no end to the mini role playing we can do, which does wonders for both creative thinking and confidence building. Remember our post about the Berlin wall?



The great thing about LEGO is that they are constantly reinventing themselves with new themes and when it comes to their brand, LEGO City has for us been the strongest line for its educational value. This range has given us the chance to talk about volcanoes, arctic exploration, Space and last year the Fun in the park kit gave us such an amazing chance to talk about diversity throughout the world.





LEGO has now joined forces with National Geographic kids on their LEGO City jungle range, which has again given us everything that we need for another LEGO themed project. Weve been learning about the wildlife that can be found in the jungle, different foods that can grow in the climate and about indiginous tribes that live in these jungle areas. as with many of the newer city kits we've also been able to cover the importance of gathering information and learning from these areas and what a huge part science plays in findings.



"The partnership has come about to inspire children to explore, discover and learn about jungles and the importance of their preservation", Which really is a great reason to be partnering up. I like to think that a lot of Opeie's learning is making him more aware of his surroundings and he is also receiving a great understanding of the amazing world that is out there for him to investigate.









the new range has been a huge hit with the boys and Opeie's new love of jungle animals has got him looking at the Jungle exploration site kit and the Jungle halftrack mission kit so that he can roleplay with the new jungle cats from the range (I'd like to get my hands on these myself).

The entire range can be found HERE.

This amazing team up also offers LEGO fans the chance to win a very exciting prize with the LEGO City Jungle competition. Further details can be found at www.lego.com/jungle

Good luck to any of you entering.

"It's impossible to be unhappy in a poncho"

I spent yesterday complaining about the weather as it was chucking it down all day and like a big kid I wanted to go and play outside. Today the sun came out which was great but after the arrival of a fun package around lunch time we found ourselves hoping for rain, typical. Scooting is big business in our house, it takes up the bulk of our outdoor play time and I love it just as much as the boys (if not a little bit more, shhhh...).

Today before making the most of the glorious sunshine, Opeie excitedly opened our lunchtime delivery to find inside a Micro Waterproof Jungle Croc Poncho and he couldn't wait to get it on. It was clear from the get go that the large pocket upfront was only going to be used for one thing, comfortably ferrying Opeie's best friend Rose about. As expected the delivery was the catalyst for and afternoon of scooting (like we needed an excuse).

We were hoping for a light shower to put this stunning piece of Micro-Scooter genius to the test. But apart from a light dribble it was dry and sunny, not that we were complaining as dry floors mean safer scooting. Opeie loved wearing a top that wasn't restricting his movement and he said he felt like a colourful batman. The Croc print (also available in heart print) on the poncho is adorable and it matched Opeie's Scootersaurus safety helmet  perfectly. As Seth now has a matching helmet too Opeie asked me to wear one of them as he was worried about me hurting myself. It actually never crossed my mind that I wasn't setting a very good example by not wearing a helmet myself, so I think its about time I got one too, I'm thinking the new Bern Matte Black helmet , maybe with the Elk Coolcase over if it fits (well I've got to embrace my inner child).

Our matching helmets received quite a bit of attention from passing dog walkers which was great. One elderly couple even stopped us to compliment Opeie on the Poncho, it was definitely an afternoon of stylish scooting and he was loving whooshing around with his new "cape" on.

The most important feature about the Micro poncho's aside from the adorable kitsch print is how the entire thing can be folded in to the front pocket and zipped away for when its not needed. If that wasn't awesome enough there are three velcro fastening straps to attach the small bag to your scooter (Yes! Micro-scooters are amazing and they think of EVERYTHING).

We were a little disappointed at the lack of rain (I can't believe I'm typing that), but there will be many, many scooting adventures to follow and I'm sure we'll put Opeie's new fashion accessory through its paces. Until next time fellow scooterers (still not sure about that word haha).