Additional usage for Minecraft: bribery.
Tao asked for Minecraft after lunch, I told him I wanted them to get maths bookwork done first. They very enthusiastically grabbed their books and we got cracking. Tao leaped through most of his questions with little drama except he wanted to work out everything in his head and was getting very frustrated when he couldn't. I once more recommended trying to memorise the times tables at the front of the book and told him there was exactly nothing wrong with using the multiplication grid. He seems to think it's beneath him at the moment. Ruan is finally starting to get place values. She had a hissy fit and refused to do her book initially because "it's not fun". When we started drawing caterpillars with ten segments and eggs on the whiteboard insead she started getting it, so instead of lots of sticks we drew caterpillars and eggs in the workbook as well. Tao started struggling after a while so I let him just go to the end of the section he was on before we called it quits.
Both the bigs did about the requisite amount of Reading Eggs, with Tao reading a non-fiction book this time and then the comprehension quiz to get another trading card, and Ru getting another critter. Cub has been repeating the exercises he likes as well as carrying on with new ones.
The bigs did their last Scitech lesson on Wednesday, and Quadrapop came over so we could plan Hub stuff. I let the kids off training as they were exhausted after Sciteching and playing all day and brought them to next training. Their favourite instructor wasn't there so they joined in a bit with the normal training and Tao amused a Chinese gentleman waiting outside for one of the students by copying James as he yelled out the moves we were supposed to be doing in Cantonese.
We headed up to Jurien Bay to spend a day of Easter with Josh's side of the family. There is a rather cool playground at the beach with the jetty which had a lot of sand play activities, such as pushing it through various shapes to sending it up a conveyor belt, onto a paddle wheel and making two cups balance once full of sand, as well as a finger maze. The kids had a blast up there, and the trip back was easier than the trip up.
We're planning on getting more plants from the nursery to replant our vege patches as our attempts to grow from seed have failed catastrophically with some unexpected winds blowing all our egg carton seed trays over. In future we are going to store them somewhere a lot more sheltered.