Butter numbers and monkey flowers

This photo was taken at 5:45am. So it's already clear that the days have started getting shorter. Rachel gets up at 6, so within a little while she will get to enjoy some sun rises too. On 22 Dec the sunrise was around 5:25.

We got some more milk yesterday as we wanted to have a go at making butter. First to get the cream off. I wanted to try syphon the cream off and the girls enjoyed seeing how that worked.

I was thankful to find this bit of tubing and quickly cut it to an easier size (and it's quicker with three going at once).

We had taken some cream off the previous bucket too, so we had 1 leter of cream.

I was surprised at how long it took to finally get that lovely yellow butter forming. 30 minutes. I have learnt since that it's best to leave the cream for 3 days before making butter. So perhaps next time it will go quicker.

I also got more instructions since on how to get all the buttermilk out. But we were all quite happy with the results. We got 200g of butter and 700ml buttermilk. The girls enjoy drinking the buttermilk but I will also use some of it for baking.

Ruth continues to LOVE her Math-U-See Primer. She is very good at reading 0-5 but struggles a bit with 6,7,8 and 9. So she keeps her puzzle handy for reference. This has been great as she can now count from 5 up. When children start to count they have to always go back to 1. So if you give them two apples and then add one they will not start at 2 but rather re-count the first two. They learn the rhythm of 1,2,3,4 and so it's great to see her move to the next phase - to be able to start at a different number and count on.

When I watched the introduction on the video he specifically said that some younger children are ready for the ideas in this book but may not be ready for the actual writing of the numbers. I thought this would be the case with Ruth. He suggested that the child just narrate and the parent does the writing. But Ruth has proved me wrong and she is doing a great job with writing the numbers herself. Sometimes she still looks at the puzzle to check where to start but she is amazing me as she just continues to learn so much.

The girls enjoyed cutting these monkey masks out today. And I enjoyed making these new table mats. A friend blesses us with these lovely calenders every year and so I was able to get 6 flower pictures for our summer place mats.

The girls were thrilled when they saw the new table setting. Complete with little candles that smell like roses. We light the candles at every meal now and the smell is just lovely.

For the first time since Jaz has come to visit Tiger was happy to stay on Rachel's bed while she read. Up till now he has just been so on edge that he would run out as soon as we took him into the room. She did have to hold him for the first few minutes but it was lovely to see that he had settled in for a sleep.