wasp faces and sand lessons

'Did you know that wasps have such scary faces and legs because they lived a long time ago with the dinosaurs? I know 'cos Asha told me so.' This is words of wisdom from Clay this morning in our school lesson. He is coming along in leaps and bounds as he sits alongside Asha in our school lessons. He has really picked up on the reptiles here. His attention span is probably typical for a 4 year old, but he will sit and study the reptile ID book for ages, entranced with working out which snakes live in 'our' desert. Quite often there is a photo of a reptile which was taken on one of the reserves here. We did school this morning up on the dunes. We spotted a sandy goanna on the way and Clay and I got close enough to touch it. He was so excited to see it wiggle as it ran away. Up on the dune we looked at different patterns, the dunes in the distance, wind ripples on the sand. Then Asha proudly spotted a snake track, moving right across in front of us. Luckily the kids learnt how to tell if it had moved through before or after us, and it was before. We checked out some cool bugs and rocks with a magnifying glass, picked some flowers for the new Field officer arriving today, then went back to the car as we were all starting to sweat. It was about 9am, and too hot to enjoy being outside. We then went back to the house and made posters of what we'd seen. Don't get stars in your eyes though, most of my days for the last month have been very long and in 4 walls as Al has been out chasing fires...and they're still burning....