Santa brought the kids their very own hiking tents. So we thought we would test them out with a short but steep 6km 1 night hike up Gheerulla Bluff to Thilba Thalba remote bush camp, which forms part of the Sunshine Coast Great Walk 

Kids have been on quite a few extended hikes now carrying packs, including Hinchinbrook Island earlier this year.  But while they have been little people, we have had a really light 4 man hiking tent to enable the 4 of us to do these hiking trips, and distributed the weight of all our gear and food so that the kids only had to carry about 5kgs each, gradually increasing it as they got older.  This is the first time that they have had their very own tent to carry, so they were pretty keen this time to carry all their own gear, clothes, food and water!

They packed their own packs, didn’t weigh each item (like we did for a maths activity when we packed for Hinchinbrook), just used their common sense and spatial awareness learned from previous hiking adventures. Their packs ended up being about 8kg each.

Kids also pitched their tents, and pulled them down to pack into their packs themselves.

The Walk is a grueling climb, but awesome views at the top, and a nice lookout at the camp area to have cuppas 🙂

Great little, but still challenging hike for the kids’ next level of hiking 🙂

They won’t need to carry their tents on our Himalayan Trek, but all the little training adventures add another layer of experience and fitness  🙂

 

So now Lucas’s turn…$100 cash for 5 days worth of meals, breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for the whole family 🙂 Click on the link for full details of the challenge.

His menu plan nice and healthy and tasty, and costs calculated from Woolworths website

His list for stuff he has to buy, and stuff already in our cupboard he needs to pay proportionately for.

Just like his sister, he made a video of his shopping trip. He’s made lots of animation videos before, but this was his first time chopping and editing video footage in iMovie.

He’s only 11, but I totally stepped back giving no help in his menu planning, budget calculations or shopping list.  I thought that he would make a few mistakes, to learn from of course, but he walked me through his plans and calculations and they were meticulous.  He spent $80.50 at the checkout, owed me $8.40 for items that we already had in the fridge/cupboard, and was reimbursed $10 for proportions of food that he did not need in his shop.  He’s planned a pumpkin soup that will do 2 dinners, making a new Persian dish but substituting the lamb for cheaper chicken, making his own chicken stock for his chicken and corn soup, and made changes during his shop to take advantage of the specials.  He ended up with $21.10 change that he gets to keep…as long as we don’t need anymore food for the 5 days.  I am really impressed and looking forward to his dinners….I already know he is a good cook and will deliver on his plan…

Will post a review on both of their challenges at the end of the week 🙂

Preparing for our Annapurna adventure and recording all our learning from it is helping the kids learn how they can achieve their own goals.

Undoubtedly ‘money’ is a necessity if your goals are adventures like going to Nepal to hike around a mountain!

Kids have been working hard to save money for the gear we need to hike safely in Nepal, and have already saved over $500!

But we will also have to think about a daily budget for meals and accommodation while we are on our trek….to make this trip affordable for us we must set a daily limit.

Kids have both really enjoyed watching the ABC series ‘Teenage Boss‘ with Eddie Wu, where kids get to manage the family’s budget for a month.  So they set their own little challenge:

Planning and managing our meals/snacks for the whole family from a Monday to Friday, with $100 budget.

Aurora’s challenge:  Mon 10th Dec to Fri 14th Dec
Lucas’s challenge:    Mon 17th Dec to Fri 21st Dec.

Challenge guidelines :

• Plan breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for 5 days (Mon -Fri), with $100 budget.
• Shop for the food for the 5 days’ meals.
• Manage the food allocation to all family members, including cooking dinners, allocating lunches etc for the 5 days.
• If food that we already had in the fridge/cupboard was used, the cost of the item will need to be added to the expenditure.
• If spices/condiments used, then a proportion of the cost added eg. spoonful of curry powder might be 20 cents…as it is impossible to buy new condiments for all meals within the weekly budget.
• Kids get to keep any money left over!

Here is Aurora’s menu plan, she figured even on a budget she could make the food desirable and healthy, catering for everyone’s diet needs,  lots of veg, and a little treat of an After Eight Dinner mint each at the end of the day:

Here is her shopping list, she looked on the Woolworth’s website for the cost of each item, so that she could estimate the cost and ensure that she didn’t go over budget:

Aurora was given $100 cash, and off she went to the shops (with Lucas helping her).  Her shopping bill was $61.80.  She calculated that she was going to use $16 worth of food we already had in the cupboard.  So she came well under budget…and has $22.20 as a buffer over the week in case she underestimated the amount of food we need 🙂 …or gets to keep it if we don’t need anymore food!

She also edited this little video of the shop trip, ‘Teenage Boss’ style:

Awesome job up to now, but how will she go over the week with the food that she has bought???? Will we starve? We will have to wait till Friday to find out….

In the meantime, Aurora came home from a track session at 6.30pm Mon evening and got straight into making our dinner, then prepared Dad’s lunch for him to take to work…I think she has this better than Mum 🙂