We Are Moving :)

The motor camp where we have been staying for the past 12 weeks is just wonderful.
Aside from the fact that it is family orientated, one of the other things we have been enjoying is the fact that it is winter and there are not many people around.
I should actually do a blog post just on the motor camp, because if you are ever in the area, it is wonderful place to stay :)
Any way, we don't want to be here in the summer when it is super busy, and our whole idea of living in a bus has to be, finding some land we can park up on for a while and make it our home.

We put an advertisement in the local paper and got 2 phone calls.
The second one was the perfect place for us.
We went and had a look at it on the weekend and fell in love with the feel of it straight away.

Now it's not as flash and new as the motor camp, it has a lovely rustic homely vibe to it.
This lovely man had a few acres and has turned that back part of it into a place that people can park there buses up, for as long or as short of time as they like.
There is room for 4 buses and you get a fenced section to do what you like with (with in reason of course).
We can be connected to power, water, and have a place to dump waste.
He is setting up a cubical, that will have a regular toilet, shower and washing machine to use.
In our section he will be building a little shed with a deck for each bus and we can plant our own vege garden if we like.
We also have access to a fruit orchid with lots of different fruit trees.

Now that we have found this place, we can't wait to move and settle in.
But it won't be happening for another month yet.
Sorry I can't share photos yet, but trust me, once we have moved and we are all settled in.
There will be not stopping me.
So watch this space, and in a months time you will get to see our new place to park and call home for a while :)

Oh and I will do a blog post on the motor camp we have been staying at too.

Questions? Anyone?

Lately we have had a couple of questions, in regards to our new way of living.
It got me thinking that some other people may have questions too.
So I thought I would write about the ones that have been asked so far, and a couple of others that I can think of.
Please if you have any questions, I would love to hear from you.

These are a couple of questions we have been asked :)

1) How do you deal with living in such close confinement, especially during the crappy weather of winter?
I found this questions interesting and a bit hard to answer.
I guess it is the first thing you think about when you go from a 2/3/4 bedroom house to a bus.
When we chose our bus, we really wanted one with a bit of personal space, so that if we all just wanted to chill out on our own, we could.
There are not a lot of campervan, motor homes, fifth wheelers, house buses, that cater for families.
Which is a bit sad in my opinion.
It would put off a lot of families from giving this kind of thing a go, even if it was just for a holiday.
Any way, at the back of the bus is mum & dad's bedroom, we have a proper wooden door, with a lock on it, if needed.

That's our area behind the door.
We have a hanging organiser for putting anything and everything into.
Then where those pink curtains are, that is actually bunks with 2 beds on each side.
Since we only need to really use 2 beds (lower ones where the curtains are), the top 2 are used for storage.
I put curtains on the lower 2, so that the kids could have their own private space to retreat to when they want too.
Miss Personality loves snuggling into her bed and watching a dvd on the portable dvd player when she just wants to veg out.
Miss Blondini (14), loves hiding out in her little private space as well, so she can do what ever it is she does on her cellphone at night.

Then there is another door, that can be shut to seperate the bedrooms from the living part of the bus (kitchen/ dining/ lounge area).

2) Why would you pay the same amount as what you would to rent a house, but chose to live in a bus?
We didn't have the cash to buy our bus outright, so we found an opportunity to rent to own.
So at present it works out the same (roughly) as what we would pay to rent a fully furnished house.
But to us, we will own this at the end of 2 years.
If we rented a house we wouldn't own it at the end of renting it.
We look forward to the day when we do own our bus and have less money to pay out each week.
That is our goal, well one of many goals for what we want to achieve in the next 10 years.
But it's not just that, we have embraced the opportunity to live a simplistic life.
Does not mean we go with out, all though sometimes having restrictions on internet can feel that way.
But there is more to life than endless supply of internet, power, and water that you don't have worry about how much you have, when you need to full up, or how you will empty toilet tank if the pump doesn't work,lol (been there, done that).
We are learning so much about ourselves and that we don't need a lot to be happy :)

Some questions I thought you might like answered :)
1) What do you use to cook?

Our kitchen looks like any body else s, just smaller :)
Gas stove to cook in, which is run by a gas bottle that we fill up every 2 weeks.
Everything that we need to eat off or cook with fits into the drawers in our kitchen :)

2) Do you have a television?
We haven't watched regular television, since everything went digital in New Zealand.
When we lived in a house, we just paid for extra internet and watched everything online.
Now we have a television, but we chose to use it just for watching dvd's.
The local library has become very useful for this, as you can rent a dvd for a week for fairly cheap.

3) What do you use for internet?
At present mobile internet is pretty expensive in New Zealand.
So we chose to pay for a little bit extra on our mobile phones and use them as hot spots.
Telecom also has this awesome deal, that if you are near one of there 700 hotspots in New Zealand, you can access 1GB of free data every day. So we certainly make the most of this option when we can.

Any way that's all I can think off for now.
But if you have any other questions of curiosity about our bus life, I would really love to hear from you :)

Bus / Life Learning Week Twelve

We are slowly getting back into some what of a structure, what ever that means,lol.
I mean we usually still get up out of bed when we feel like it, generally go with the flow of what the day brings.
So I guess not a lot changes,lol.

We put and advertisement in the paper for next week, to help us find a more permanent situation to park our bus in. Was shocked at what the local newspaper charges now to have our advertisement in the paper for 2 days.
But this also opened an opportunity to talk to Miss Personality about how our advertisement gets from the piece of paper I wrote it on, to getting printed in the newspaper.

Monday 21st July 2014
Miss Personality made a friend with a girl who arrived in a caravan with her family on the weekend.
I wrote up on the our whiteboard (the fridge,lol), the key learning areas, so that Miss Personality could chose activities that could tick off a few key learning areas.
I know this isn't natural learning, but it is just my way to get her to do some hand writing, spelling, reading, and maths every day. It is her choice what it is, and she seems to like being able to put a tick next to each thing :)
She gave herself a time schedule to get it all done, as she wanted to go see this friend before they left.

She made a triple link chain bracelet, from memory, while eating breakfast.
Then Miss Personality and mum followed a previously downloaded YouTube tutorial on how to make Marge Simpson.

Since we have limited internet access, we have found a website that you can download YouTube tutorials onto your computer, and save for a later time.
So we make visits to grandma and use her internet to down load the tutorials we would like and then do them later, without having to be connected to the internet.
For anyone interested, this is the link:
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001002.htm
We have managed to use it for all our tutorials and sometimes you can even download education movies off YouTube too.

Miss Personality then chose to do some maths on the ipad, using Doodle Maths.
She earns points when she answers so many maths equations correctly, and then can use the points earned to buy things for her pet penguin :)

Miss Personality then wrote and email to her friend in Australia.
She had gotten distracted with all the things she had been doing over the school holidays, that she had forgotten.
She got me to help her sound out some of her spelling words so she could hear the letters, or she would use her Spell - Write book.

She then did a page from her Comprehension and Written Expression work book.
Had to read an article and then answer some questions about it.

After she had done everything she needed to do, she went and did minecraft on the ipad.
She got very excited when she realised mum had updated the app, which allowed her to have a pet puppy.

Later that day it was time to go to her Musical Theatre lesson.
In 10 weeks they are putting on a production on The Little Mermaid.
I am looking forward to watching my little girl on stage :)

Tuesday 22nd July 2014
Mum decided it would be a good idea to put together loom band kits for different figures to sell at our market stall we are going to do next month.
Miss Personality decided to pull apart her mermaid, and re make it, so she could count how many bands of each colour she had used, so we would know how many to put in a kit for it.

Went into town to get the car checked out for a Warrant Of Fitness.
We talked about what makes a car safe to be on the road, what things a car needs to pass it's WOF.

Miss Personality did minecraft on the ipad while we waited in the waiting room for our car to come back.
Mum came up with an idea, and mentioned it to Miss Personality, which she liked.
She creates a world in minecraft called Storyland.
When she finishes reading a book, she creates a icon/ symbol that reminds her of the book she has read, then puts a sign on it saying date, when read, and title of book. So she started this while we were waiting.

When we got home, I asked Miss Personality to go to the dairy and get me a bottle of milk, so she chose to ride there on her scooter. She loves running little errands for me to the dairy :)

Watched some dvd's.
Merry Madagascar
My Little Pony

Made some more bracelets using her rainbow loom.
Finished listening to the audio version of Middle School - My Brother is a Big Fat Liar by James Patterson.

Wednesday 23rd July 2014
I have some lapbooks that I had downloaded back when we lived in a house with lots of access to internet :)
I asked Miss Personality if she would like to do one, she chose Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

So I reserved the book at the local library and also got the dvd's of the 1st and 2nd movie of it.
Miss Personality and I took turns reading a page each from the book, while she was eating her breakfast.
While reading the book, I got out my measuring tape to show her what 15 inches looked like.
Miss Personality struggled with pronouncing a few words from the book.
She likes it when we do a bit of a word test, which is where we read the book, then I go back and ask her if she remembers what this word is, getting her to say it outloud. Re visiting the words she struggled with. She is so proud of herself when she remembers them :)

Miss Personality then went off and did her personal jobs,
When she was finished we watched Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs dvd.

Miss Personality, while watching the movie, decided to put some coins that were on the table, in order of the year on them.

She also decided to create a picture using coloured pebbles :)
                                   

Also using our montessori inspired maths resources, the red beads and little cups, putting them in groups of 20 to work out the total of all the beads.

While eating lunch, Miss Personality did the first activity of the lap book.

Then she chose to watch dvd of High School Musical 2.

Thursday 24th July 2014

Miss Personality added another icon to her world 'Storyland' on minecraft.

Watched dvd of Madagascar while eating breakfast.

She chose to change a theme to one of her worlds on minecraft to a christmas theme, so decided to add snow to everything.

She then made a kitten using her rainbow loom and watching the tutorial on YouTube down load.

She then went and did her personal jobs, had a shower and washed her hair and dried and put away the dishes after that.

Miss Personality did another activity from her lapbook.

She had to put together a map of Chewsandswallows, using the information from the book and movie.
Her map had to include a compass rose and a map key.
She did another activity from lapbook about rubbish and recycling.
We talked about where our rubbish goes and what happens to it.
How we can recycle.
In the information she was given, it said the average person made 4 pounds of rubbish a day.
I asked her to use my digital scales and weigh out what 4 pounds would look like using a bowl with water in it.

Then I asked her to calculate how much one person would make in a week, then a year, then how much 3 people (how many in our family) would make in a year.

While eating her lunch, we followed a YouTube tutorial downloaded, to make a evil minion pencil topper, on the rainbow loom.

Then Miss Personality watched a couple of dvd's while doing her minecraft on the ipad.

Barbie and A Christmas Carol

Cat in a Hat.

Friday 25th July 2014
Miss Personality played games on the ipad in bed, cuddles up with mum.
Where's My Perry?
Virtual Villagers
Magical Puzzles
She then had breakfast, and did her personal jobs.

Then mum and Tara followed another YouTube downloaded tutorial and made a snake with our rainbow looms.

Miss Personality went to the dairy and bought us some milk.

She then made another evil minion from memory on the rainbow loom.
Made a cookie on the rainbow loom, with no tutorial.

Watched a dvd while doing minecraft on ipad.
Arthur and The War of 2 Worlds.

Read a book before bed by herself and then dad read one to her before she went to sleep.


Another full on week for Miss Personality, with many opportunities for structured learning and natural learning to take place.
We still have no regrets about choosing home schooling for our daughter, even on those days where Miss Personality and I are sick of each other.

Had an opportunity to share the information that I have learned about home schooling to a family living in a campervan with 2 young children, at the motor camp.
Was really nice to see another adventurous like minded family, doing something different with their children :)

Bus / Life Learning Week Ten & Week Eleven (updated )

Well as far as terms go, we are in our 2 week school holiday break.
All this means for us, is that we don't get asked "Is there no school today?" when we are out and about,lol.
Also we tend to stay away from the popular areas or places that school kids generally hang out in, during the school holidays.
Not because they are bad, just that those places are just over run with children.
We like it much more during the school week, when there is not as many people around :)

After our lovely weekend in Gisborne where hubby and I got to spend some time with our lovely grand daughter and her parents.
Miss Personality got to spend a weekend with her grand parents, which she hasn't been able to do for nearly 3 years. She had a blast and came home full of chatter about the things she did, what grandma had brought her things she had observed that had been different and similar to the way we do things.
I guess there wasn't too many similarities given we live on a bus and all :)

Miss Personality also got to have a friend, who is also Miss Blondini's sister (figure that one out,lol), come sleep over in the bus.
Miss Blondini's sister had asked to sleep over after coming to our bus and getting to see where her big sister gets to sleep every time she comes to stay.
Miss Personality was so good, her friend was a little un settled during the night, given she was sleeping somewhere different. Heard Miss Personality trying to console her and support her through it, during the night. " If you just think of something fun to do tomorrow, it will help you get to sleep", also " I really would like you to get some sleep so you will be all happy tomorrow and won't be tired".
Gee I wonder where she has heard that before,lol.

Then Miss Personality got to sleep over at her friends house.
Her friend that had a sleep over when they discovered the hedgehog in the camping grounds during the daylight.
Miss Personality's only request was to be allowed to ring us at bedtime :)
She got to make her own mini pizza with her choice of topping.
Had ice cream sundae for dessert and her and her friend, and her friends two siblings got to camp out in their play room, on stretchers and in sleeping bags.
The next day they went to some glorious gardens called The Looking Glass Gardens in TePuke.
She had an awesome time.

Next day she had another sleep over at her big sister Blondini's mum's house, whose other sister slept over in the bus.
It's great we have such an awesome relationship with Blondini's mum and her family. Blondini's sister in her mum's family is only 9 days older than Miss Personality, so they have all grown up like one big happy family.
They had an early night and just cruised in bed watching dvd's before time to turn out the lights and go to sleep.

Over all Miss Personality had a very exciting and busy school holidays.
And she loved every minute of it and can't wait to have all her school friends over again next school holidays :)

Bus / Life Learning Week Nine

Monday 30th June 2014
Miss Personality has woken up with a sore tummy and isn't feeling 100% at all.
So we are just going to watch dvd's and see what she feels like doing.
Hope fully she is feeling better soon.
Watched a few episodes of Dr Quinn Medicine Woman.
Brought up conversations about prejudices and depression.
Miss Personality decided to text dad, so she could tell him she was sick.
Watched a dvd - Free Willy - Escape From Pirates Cove.
After she had watched it by herself, she came and told me all about the things she had learnt about Orca/ Killer Whales, including their echolocation and how it works.
She then drew a picture on the fridge with the whiteboard marker pens.
Added some more rows to her knitting of Barbie's sleeping bag.
Re watched dvd Super8.
Miss Personality was curious to know why it was called 'Super8'.
Dad explained to her that it was the name of the camera the children used to make their movie.
She was very interested in how the kids were making their movie.
Asking lots of questions about where they were filming and why, about their special effects they had used to make one of them look like a zombie.

Tuesday 1st July 2014
Well it must have been a 24hr thing, as Miss Personality is feeling a lot better today, thank goodness.
Miss Personality got all her personal jobs done quickly so we could go to grandma's house.
Mum had some washing to catch up with.
Once we got there, Miss Personality got straight into her activities we had discussed the day before.
Since we don't have a tv on the bus, going to someones house usually results in Miss Personality becoming a tv zombie.
So she had to do her assigned activities first before she could got relax in front of the tv.

Miss Personality decided to write up her list, so she could keep track of what she needed to achieve.
Mum didn't even need to ask :)
And I commented on her effort to write nicely without being asked too, which was great to see.
She decided to do 3 pages of her word find workbook.
It covered topics like gadgets and gizmos, inventions, some explorers.
She noticed that some of these things had dates as to when some things were invented and when certain people had explored. So she added these dates to her time line.

She then went on to do 3 pages of her maths workbook.
Then 3 pages of her science workbook.
It covered topics like light and shadows, materials and light, the sun and shadows.
I asked her to read to me out of the workbook, the information, so that she could get help pronouncing any words she was finding tricky.
She then did 2 pages of an activity called Spelling Rules.
It helps with certain words that can be tricky to spell.
Miss Personality finds it difficult to get her brain into gear when it comes to creative writing.
Maybe it is more my fault as I haven't done enough of it with her in the past.
But hey, if they are not interested, I can only do my best :)
So we had pre discussed doing an acoustic poem.
She had liked doing this for her butterfly unit study we did.
So we decided to do on on Chocolate, for her Charlie and The Chocolate Factory themed unit.
First I had to get her to brain storm as many words as she could think of, to do with the word chocolate.
It took a bit, but once I got her focus, she came up with heaps of words.

Then she started her poem by doing a draft copy.

After her huge effort she had put in, I said she could go and watch some tv before we went back to our bus.

Wednesday 2nd July 2014
Miss Personality started off her day having breakfast, doing her personal jobs.
She read some pages from her Garfeild comic book.
She then decided she wanted to start her good copy of her acoustic poem from yesturday.
I asked her to go over her draft copy for spelling mistakes and then talked about ways she wanted to present her poem.
  
Very impressed with all Miss Personality's effort with her poem.
She did an awesome job with it and was very creative with her presentation.
She then went on to do some pages of maths from her workbook.
Then while she was waiting for to do some loom banding, she watched a dvd of Scooby Doo.

Thursday 3rd July 2014
Well it was payday today, which means shopping day and running errands.
We went to Bayfair shopping mall and bought dad's birthday present.
While we were there we caught up with a friend of mum's.
Miss Personality always enjoys having an opportunity to chat with someone other than mum :)
She was also very helpful in helping mum's friend find the things she was looking for in Kmart.
When we were finished we went to the library, to return some books & dvd's and then get out some new ones.Miss Personality found some more Garfield comic books. Mum found another dvd of CSI NY, since Miss Personality enjoyed watching the last one so much. Mum also found a couple of books I thought would be good to read together with Miss Personality.

Both are in diary format, which I think would make the story sound more real.
Will get around to reading them to her at some stage, if she is interested.
Went to the supermarket.
Miss Personality always enjoys pushing the trolley and putting all our things on the conveyor belt counter.
She had a conversation with the checkout lady, as she was curious as to how the counter top moved and stopped on it's own.
I love the way that home schooling opens up the opportunity for Miss Personality to learn about life from life.
She gets to talk to so many interesting people in her travels, and I am sure most people enjoy the conversations too.
When we got home and unloaded everything, Miss Personality made a fairy wand on the loom band from memory, from the day before.

She also made a mermaid :)
She then went on to watch some episodes of CSI NY.

Friday 4th July 2014
Last day of school term today, not that it means that much to us, as we all know every day we learn, whether it is structured learning or not.
Miss Personality is very excited to get to go stay with grandma and grandad this weekend.
Was so cute though, because as much as I feel that us spending 24/7 together, and I get the feeling sometimes that she would love a break from me. She asked if she could ring us every night including tonight.
She helped me pack her bag and organise everything she wanted to take.
Did her personal jobs, dried the dishes and put them away, and emptied the rubbish bag and put in a new bag.
Miss Personality made another mermaid on the loom band.
Then followed a YouTube tutorial to make a minecraft spider.

Then when she had finished that she went off to start listening to and audio book called Middle School - My Brother is a Big Fat Liar by James Patterson and Lisa Papdemetriou, while following the words in the book.

Then she watch the dvd Looney Tunes .

Once dad got home it was off to grandma's and grandad's for the weekend, while mum and dad went to Gisborne to visit Mr Confident and his fiancee and their little girl. We also got to spend time with Mr Affectionate as well. It was an awesome weekend and as per usual the weekends are never long enough.

 Grandad got cuddles (hubby).

 Grandma got cuddles (me).

We tried to sneak Miss Lilliah into our car, but we think we would have been in trouble when it came time for her next boobie feed :)