Bats and flying objects

We are settling into our new life in Paramatta. And by this I mean that we now are the happy owners of a library card and have over 30 library books on our shelves. My voice is hoarse from reading so much but 6 weeks was a long stretch of time without unlimited access to books. Coupled with this renewed book enthusiasm is a renewed learning binge. We let our schooling become lax over the weeks of our holiday and now that we are back in a routine we are making up for lost time.

I got overly enthused about exciting lessons plans. My excitement wore off on Aurora but after a few days of full on quest for knowledge she started to rebel with my plans and come up with her own. Luckily her idea of rebelling against schooling is to sit on the couch and read. So we are both the victors here!

Nonetheless, she is an eager student. I decided we should explore the mechanics and history of flight so we have been busy throwing things off bridges, playing computer games where we apply the principles of flight in designing airplanes, and reading reading reading. I don't think I really quite understood how airplanes fly until now. And I really never expected the piece of paper to glide better than a paper airplane My hope is that we get so into the lesson plan we manage to sprout wings and fly.

We were all impressed with the bats in Cairns and when I chanced upon the hanging grounds of the Paramatta bat population I decided we should be not only impressed but also better versed on bats. So we have been reading a small stack of books on the topic and we went to the river at dusk to watch the bats wake up and take flight. Our hope was to chart their flight patterns but it was dark and with the sky filled with thousands of bats it is really hard to make heads or tails of any sort of pattern and we instead resorted to the scientific method called "awe."

Our learning has also been given a boost by the illness in our house. While stomach bugs are a real drag they do force you to spend more time indoors studying.

Still asleep...

A few early risers...

waking up their friends with their noise...

And awake!