Catching the Magic

Things I’m Loving…

Posted in Learning & growing, Loving & Not Loving, Sarah on November 16th, 2012 No Comments »

Tweet A Monday that started with rain and wind, where the only sign of summer was the strawberries on my muesli, gave us a breather in the afternoon. Sunshine peeked from between the clouds as Sophie and Alice ran around Katherine Mansfield Memorial Park playing ‘peek a boo’ with their little wooden dolls. After school [...]

Walk through the tulips with us…

Posted in Alice, Garden, Sarah, Sophie on September 19th, 2012 No Comments »

Tweet It’s nearly Spring Festival time in Wellington’s Botanical Garden and the tulips are as glorious as ever. It’s impossible not to smile when faced with all this joyful colour – from bright sunshine gold… To carpets of pinks… They always surprise me with their resilience against the seasonal spring battering of Wellington wind and intermittent [...]

Grass | LOVE | Photo a Day May Monday & Tuesday

Posted in Garden, Sarah on May 15th, 2012 No Comments »

Grasses rippling in the breeze in our garden

Tweet Couldn’t resist combining these two, as I LOVE the varied GRASSES of New Zealand. So many colours and such varied textures – from coarse and spiky, to fine and wispy. In my back garden we have a steep bank, where nothing much else would grow successfully, and the native grasses that carpet the surface of [...]

Things I’m Loving: Nature abound

Posted in Alice, Charlotte, Garden, Loving & Not Loving, Sophie on February 10th, 2012 No Comments »

Tweet It has been a week of celebrating the beauty of nature. ♥ Loved learning of New Zealand’s native trees and the amazing variety of different trees the world over. ♥ Loved identifying different tree species in our garden at home and in Wellington’s Botanical Garden with Sophie and Alice. Sophie worked so enthusiastically and [...]

Flying into February

Posted in Garden, Sarah, School hols on February 1st, 2012 No Comments »

Tweet A visitor to my garden on Monday marked the start of a new school year and the end of the summer holidays. I have a special affection for Monarch butterflies. To me they are spiritual guardians, carrying messages from loved ones. After Charlotte set off happily to school on Monday the butterfly soared into [...]

Engineering in the garden on a Sunday afternoon

Posted in Garden, Silent Sunday on November 7th, 2011 No Comments »

Tweet Sometimes it’s so nice not to have to be anyway or even want to go anywhere. It’s great to have a home and garden that we enjoy ambling around in. This Sunday was just one of those that called for some home-time chilling. My view from the sofa… Though Dan did need to take [...]

As a British Mum, living in New Zealand, I write about 'Family Life', 'Family Fun' and 'Schooldays', along with capturing all those magic moments with 'Photography'.

I've been blogging since I became a parent in 2003 and it's been a source of positive inspiration, a way of keeping family overseas connected with our growing children and we've made amazing friendships along the way too. We're set to relocate to Santa Barbara, California, later this year - which will be a whole new expat adventure for us!

Thank you for stopping by (if you would like to know more visit the 'About' page!).
Recent Posts…
- Prose for Thought – If the rain could wash his pain away…
- Grateful for the little slices of life that make up every day
- After ‘3am In The Morning’ I am hanging out for ‘Midnight in Paris’….
- Silent Sunday
- Prose for Thought – Lovers Winter Retreat
- #FMSPhotoADay | 7 – 13 June
- The weekend before the man of the house returned
- Sometimes time apart is a good thing
- Prose For Thought – The Bond
- LOVING #FMSPhotoADay Challenge | 1 – 6 June
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Education sites we ♥
- BBC – Learning Zone Broadband Clips
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- BBC Schools Number Time
- Brain POP
- Cooking with Kids
- Donna Young – Printables & Resources
- Enchanted Learning
- English Games – Topmarks UK
- History for kids by BBC
- Home Education Foundation NZ
- Homeschool Share
- Jolly Phonics Worksheets
- Khan Academy
- Languagenut NZ
- Linguascope – French/English
- Lure of the Labyrinth
- Mathletics NZ
- Maths Games – Topmarks UK
- Maths NZ with IXL
- Museums: Wellington
- National Geographic Kids Animals
- National Geographic Kids Countries
- No Excuse List – Learn Anything, FREE
- NZ Marine Studies Centre
- NZ Maths Centre
- Poetry for Kids
- Science Learn
- Starfall's Learn to Read
- Storynory – Audio Stories
- Study Ladder
- Te Ara Encyclopedia of NZ
- Te Papa Museum Education Programmes
- TED Ed Lessons Worth Sharing
- The Magic School Bus
- WickED Maths Games
- Young Commonwealth
Home Education & Unschooling blogs
- Balderdash and Blokus
- Ben and Me
- Classroom Free
- Completely Cottage
- Cottage Tails NZ
- Enjoy Life Unschooling | Resources
- Homeschool Creations
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- Learn at Every Turn
- Learn Live Love Laugh Learn
- Living Montessori Now
- Magical Mouse Schoolhouse
- Preschoolers and Peace
- Rosie Boom
- Ross Mountney's Notebook
- Snapshots – Jen
- The Pukeko Patch
- The Unconventional Parent
- Unschooled-Kids NZ
- Wandering The Road Less Travelled
Quotes on Learning

“You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” – Galileo

“I was happy at home with my toys in my nursery. I’ve been happier every year since I’ve become a man. But this interlude of school makes a somber grey patch upon the heart of my journey. It was an unending spell of worries that then did not seem petty, and of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction, and purposeless monotony.” – Winston Churchill

“Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.” – Beatrix Potter

“It is… nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.” – Albert Einstein

“I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.” – Agatha Christie

“My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.” – Margaret Mead

“I was undisciplined by birth, never would I bend, even in my tender youth, to a rule. It was at home I learned the little I know. Schools always appeared to me like a prison, and never could I make up my mind to stay there, not even for four hours a day, when the sunshine was inviting, the sea smooth, and when it was joy to run about the cliffs in the free air, or to paddle in the water.” – Claude Monet

“Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.” – Plato

“How is it that little children are so intelligent while men are so stupid? It must be education that does it.” – Alexandre Dumas

Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” – Oscar Wilde

“How could youth better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?” – Henry D. Thoreau

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein

“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.” – Carl Rogers

“Children are born passionately eager to make as much sense as they can of things around them. If we attempt to control, manipulate, or divert this process, the independent scientist in the child disappears.” – John Holt

“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch out of a free, meandering brook.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Education: free and compulsory – what a way to learn logic!” – Frank van Dun

“From my grandfather’s father, [I learned] to dispense with attendance at public schools, and to enjoy good teachers at home, and to recognize that on such things money should be eagerly spent.” – Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Roman Emperor

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” – William Butler Yeats

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” – Aristotle

“Do not train children in learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” –Plato

“To develop a complete mind: study the science of art; study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.’ – Leonardo da Vinci

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

“It has been said that the primary function of schools is to impart enough facts to make children stop asking questions. Some, with whom the schools do not succeed, become scientists.” – Knut Schmidt-Nielsen
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