Sonshine Ranch

We took Misha to Sonshine Ranch today to join a group of homeschoolers for some horse riding, flying fox, rope swing & a water confidence course. It is a pity that this was only aimed at the younger children as I think Jesse would  have really enjoyed taking part in those activities too.

Sonshine Ranch is a Christian outdoor recreation centre situated about half way between Papakura and Clevedon. It is an hour South-East from Auckland International Airport, and forty minutes from downtown Auckland. Getting there was our biggest challenge for the day. Even though it is just 50km from home, this trip during peak hour traffic took us just over an hour & a half. That being something to get used to when we used to drive almost 80km to our family in Vanderbilpark in half that time.

First up was the flying fox, which for some reason he refused to do even though he had  done the one in Stanmore Bay many times. Maybe this one seemed a bit too intimidating having needed a harness & being so much bigger.

We did however manage to convince him to give the rope swing a try after which he figured the flying fox wouldn’t have been so bad. Had they swopped these two events around he may have even attempted it later.

The horse riding was probably his main reason for agreeing to go. After this he was all relaxed & not concerned with all the new faces at all. This of course would have been the best ice breaker. Had he been in the first group, I guess everything would have been different for him.

After horse riding it was time for lunch.

Then off to the water confidence course.

Below we saw an amazing display of teamwork as the little girl in front got stuck getting to the other tire because she was so small. It took about 10 minutes for the kids behind to swing at each other hard enough to push her far enough forward to reach that tire as they had to get her out of the in order to finish their own course.

Having had an eventful day by 13h30 the kids were getting ready to head back home.

School Term Start

Here in New Zealand the schools close later in December than we’re used to & hence only start early February. Although we already started school straight after New Year because we still prefer to take short breaks more regularly in the year, we have to wait for the school term to start for homeschool activities to commence.

  

 

This year our first activity was stopping by the annual Auckland Home Educators picnic today. The boys met some new people there, but unfortunately none that live close by so they can see them more often.

Jesse tried his hand on some programming at The MindLab. However most of their classes are aimed at 16 & under so he got rather bored so will stick out the term & then we’ll have to find him something else to do.

Whilst waiting for Jesse, Misha & I joined another Kiwi mom & her 2 younger kids for a walk through the area & ended up doing some geocahing. Misha got to navigate on the phone whilst moms just followed along. They did find 2 caches & got very close to a third one but due to not having a special tool we weren’t able to retrieve it. We figured we’d bring some tools next time we’re in the area for that one.