Other Winter Break Activities (Catch up post)

 For the rest of the girls winter break (which is three weeks in length here, and usually runs from late June until mid-July), the girls elected NOT to do any camps. Mike and I were not very comfortable with them sitting home alone ALL day, so we tried to work some early days to get home to the girls and take them to do things around Canberra.

First up in school break fun- The National Museum of Australia.  It is right on Lake Burley Griffin, as has a beautiful view of the lake. It took us a while to visit this museum, only getting there after living here over a year, which is too bad because it is a neat place to visit.  The museum preserves Australia's social history, exploring the key issues, people and events that have shaped the nation. We were lucky enough to sign up for a special class being taught by indigenous artists on textile block printing.  It was a lot of fun, and we got great new tote bags out of it.

Lauren cutting out her design

Lauren preparing to print her design

Both masterpieces

Next we visited Mulligans Flat Woodland Sanctuary. It is beautiful conservation area in Canberra's north. It has a big fence around it keeping out predators like foxes, rabbits, goats, and deer.  

 

We lucked out because they took out some lizards they have at the Sanctuary and let the girls hold them.

 

 Another thing we did was go to the Botanical Gardens at night for a special night program that involved full sized moving puppets.... it is a little hard to explain but it was cool.

And finally I took the girls to the Royal Australian Mint. They were less impressed with it than Mike, which is why I took them separately.  I didn't want them to ruin anything for Mike.  We found out how tall they were $1 coins.