A Net in Time

links again

2012-01-28T08:10:00.002-08:00

All for the boys. Crafts and what not that boys will like. :)

Student of the Word Curriculum. is a K-12, Bible-centered homeschool curriculum for Christian parents who desire to disciple their children not just educate them. The goal is to know God; the method is discipleship, and the main text for all the subjects is the Bible.

Spiders and Lego

2012-01-24T08:18:00.000-08:00

At breakfast we did our normal reading

10 minute stories

Today's story was about a fellow who was very lazy and how he learned not to be so very lazy. The lad says "I liked it!"

World History

We continue learning about Knights and Castles. Today we learned about how a person learns to be a knight.

We continued work on our spider study
The lad was very eager to do this. I had promised him that we could play with Lego today and build spider webs and a spider with it today. :) Here's to creative thinking! :) So today we focused on learning about different types of spider webs.

Webs have different purposes, according to the individual species of spider, how it captures or stores its prey. Spider's silk can be used to help small, young spiders transport to new areas (ballooning) or be so strong that it is used to make fish nets, as with the Nephila spider web.
Other types of spider webs:

Tangled Web Spiders
Tangled spider webs consist of a shapeless jumble of threads attached to a support such as the corner of a ceiling. Cobwebs are tangled webs that have collected dust and dirt. Cellar spiders, the comb-footed spiders (included black and brown widow spiders), the ogre-faced stick spiders and common house spiders are spiders that make these types of webs.

Sheet Webs

Sheet webs are flat sheets of silk between blades of grass or branches of shrubs or trees. Spiders that create sheet webs also spin a net of crisscrossed threads above the sheet. When a flying insect hits the net, it bounces into the sheet web. The
spider, which hangs upside down beneath the web, quickly runs to the insect and pulls it through the webbing. Sheet webs last a long time because the spider repairs any damaged parts. The bowl & doily spider, the filmy dome spider, and the platform spider form sheet webs.

Gum-footed Webs
Gum-footed webs consist of tightly woven silk strands attached between two branches. The upper strands are dry and built in sheltered areas away from sunlight while the lower strands are built in exposed area and run down to a bottom branch where they are attached. Each of the lower sticky strands are covered in sticky droplets and are attached weakly at the bottom. When an insect walks into the sticky silk strands its struggle break the lines moving the web upwards and lifting the prey off the ground reducing its chances of escaping.
Redback spiders create gum-footed webs.

Horizontal Line Webs
Horizontal Line Webs are made up of one simple line of sticky droplets stretching across low vegetation, bark and leaf litter. Spiders that create this type of web pull the line taut by keeping the slack silk underneath them until an insect hits the line. When that happens, the loose silk whips along the line and tangles the prey. Cribellate spiders and other pea-sized spiders create these webs. Pic from here.

Bolas Spider Web
The Bolas Spider Web is a very simple web designed for their unique method of hunting. In order to hunt and catch male moths, the bolas spider sits on a horizontal line and spins a single line with a sticky silk tip that dangles from its leg. While
waiting, this spider will emit a scent similar to a female moth. When the male moth comes toward the spider, the spider swings the sticky strand in a circle and captures the moth, pulling the strand in to feed.

Triangle Webs

Triangle Webs are created in the shape of a triangle, hence its name. The spider weaves silky strands of spokes and spirals that connect to all three strands. The triangle spider waits at one end of the web for an insect to land. When it does, the
spider shakes the web so the insect is caught and cannotescape.

quite fascinating all in all. hard to find images of all the different types of webs. As I find them, I'll add them in. :)

We built a couple of lego webs complete with spiders.

And then did some spider math. I started out with 10 spiders sitting in a tree and then a variety of things happened, at one point we were up to 54 spiders in the tree and eventually got down to 0 spiders in a tree. All done verbally and mentally with the occasional bit of help from a calender and pencil...he is only 6 after all! :)

Woven wonders

2012-01-23T05:40:00.001-08:00

Homeschool Program: Woven Wonders

today the lad will be learning the following:

Children 5-12 will learn the basics of hand-spinning and weaving while applying skill and artistry on their own woven piece. They will learn to spin wool from fleece by hand, create a handloom, and weave on it.

The rest of the day he will spend at gramma's while hubby and I kibitz about.

some pictures of yesterday's learning at the London Art Museum

12 year old lad he spent time chatting with about science

backlooming I think this is called

learning to use a spindle

he couldn't manage the spindle and the part that moves the yarn up and down so I helped

what he managed to do before getting bored and frustrated.

He also learned how to make a rope which I thought was rather cool.

and he learned about making a simple loom using carboard.

It was all quiet sit down work so we let him learn and then we let him chat. We left a bit early since he was done, we were done and had an errand to run before going to gramma's.

Sea Urchins and more

2012-01-19T13:02:00.001-08:00

Today was a good day for homeschooling.

At breakfast we did our normal reading

10 minute stories

Today's story was about Rip Van Winkle. This story got an immediate thumbs down from the lad. Not sure why as I find it an interesting folk tale.

World History

We have started a section on Knights and Castles.

On with the rest of the day...we started later than anticipated, and went past lunch, but we had a good and interesting time.

While Homeschooling today, in the background I had playing various programs from Homeschool RadioShows. Not saying we listened closely, but every once in a while the lad would ask...is the boy safe mommy? Is the winter over? What happened to the ship?

We followed a plan again.
We started off the day talking about how our eyes help us do things. And then we drew a picture of a globe. Then I covered the paper up with a box with a hole cut into it and said..."draw the globe". It was interesting to see how they came out...definitely not as good as when we could see what we were drawing. Then we tried with some simpler things...circles. boxes, triangles. and then with other ideas...pencil, bowl, plate. we made some observations
1. our eyes help us alot
2. if we practice we can get better at drawing without looking
3. not everyone has the same trouble drawing without looking...sometimes the lad could draw something better than mommy with or without looking, and sometimes mommy was better when she couldn't see.
4. drawing without looking takes longer to do.

We did pages 172, 173-176 in numbers and counting. One page had him colouring bubbles a different colour depending on where they were in the counting line. For instance... 1-25 colour blue, 26-50 colour yellow, 51-75 colour red, and 76-100 colour purple. I thought this would be an easy reinforcing activity for him and was surprised at how much he struggled with it. Not sure how to build up his confidence in this area.

Word of the day: abbot - a leader of an abbey

Verse of the week: Eph 4:32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Animal of the day: I had planned to do penguins. that was thoroughly nixed by the lad. he wanted to do SEA URCHINS! So we studied sea urchins. YEAH!! for the internet. Pages we found helpful: google images, enchanted learning, and a couple others. I always find it frustrating when website contradict each other so we basically just generalized. It was neat to look at this animal... but boy are they spikey! We found were some different sea urchins lived on the globe and practiced saying the names of the countries.

Did lesson 9 in First language lessons. This lesson involved looking at a picture and then talking about it. We figured out common and proper nouns to use with it.

And finished off our work section with pages 7-11 in Daily Smart, then skipped a bunch of pages and did a maze. this brings us to the addition/subtraction section which will be on par with where he is in Math Reflex.

We played a game. called mousetrap to finish out our day. :)

this made me hoot!

2012-01-18T12:46:00.001-08:00

A slow day, yet study accomplished

2012-01-17T10:34:00.004-08:00

At breakfast we did our normal reading

10 minute stories

Today's story was about A fellow with a really big nose and all that happened with him. It was just an odd story. It did point out the value in not believing all that you are told though.

World History

We have started a section on Knights and Castles. The lad is captivated..and all he wants to do is build a castle for one of his toys. Made schooling a bit of a challenge. :)

We then moved on to working with math using reflex. He continues to gain in fluency. While he did this, I got the dishes done. :)

We continued work on our spider study

We learned there are three suborders.
We built a spider using a laminated one we had.
We talked about all the different parts to a spider.
We learned about spider eyes, moulting, etc.
We reviewed what we did previously.

The lad played with Lego building something for the castle that was needed.

We then worked on our animal of the day. Leopards. :) We did the snow leopard to be precise.

we watched part of this series of videos.

we laughed at this

Fact that the lad liked: they live up high in the mountains.
Sad fact: they are highly endangered.

Word of the day: abbey - a place where monks and nuns live, work, and pray. Usually connected to a church.

We will play for a while and then hopefully make some cookies. :) We had planned a walk to the library but we have buckets of cats and dogs falling from the sky and being hit by a falling cat is not our idea of fun. :) Even if a boy child says "can I have one of those falling cats?" :)

we made these cookies

Oatmeal chocolate Chip cookies

1 c. butter
1 c. white sugar
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. peanut butter
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. salt
1 & 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 c. milk
4 cups instant oatmeal
6 oz. chocolate chips

Mix all together well.
Drop by spoonfuls on cookie sheet.
bake 10-12 minutes at 350.

Sites to look at more

2012-01-15T20:30:00.001-08:00

NEA for martin luther king studies.

Puritan's home school curriculum.

homeschooling Carnival.

OLIN's carnival.

homeschool showcase.

Armor of God object lesson.

Dairy Farmers of Ontario.

Frugal homeschool - facebook.

Ontario Homeschoolers - facebook.

Homescholing Sidetrack

2012-01-13T07:45:00.005-08:00

We were just about to start our homeschooling and hubby sent me this link.

That of course led us to look up where New Guinea was.

And to getting out the tape measure to we could see exactly how long 7.7 mm was (the size of the frog). Here is a recording of this little frogs mating call.

Rather neat eh?

At breakfast, we did waffles as per the lad's request, and then we did our normal reading

10 minute stories

Today's story was a lesson in not getting into things you aren't supposed to.

World History

Today we learned about how the viking age came to an end. We learned about the power of the living Lord God over the Viking gods and how that was instrumental in vikings becoming Christians.

We then got captivated by this youtube video

Once we stopped being distracted, we worked on Studyladder. We studied the solar system, did math, did blending of CL and BL, and talked about kitchen safety and implements you use in the kitchen (did this by actually showing him things in the kitchen and demonstrated their use). :) One of the things I like about StudyLadder is that I can offer variety. I can also take their ideas and use them as jumping off points.

As a reward for doing good work I let the boy child work on building yet another boat. He's working on making a big ship with cannons using scraps from around the house.

at lunch we learned about this guy... a carnivorous caterpillar in Hawaii. :)

we also learned how tabasco sauce is made.

and then the rest of the day was free and clear for playing,working, helping, walking, and just being alive on a snowy, blustery day in Ontario.

Lemmings and more Oh My!

2012-01-12T18:46:00.003-08:00

At breakfast we did our normal reading

10 minute stories

Today's story was a chinese folk tale about how Peking became a great city. (involved some bad dragons and a buddhist monk)

World History

Today we learned about viking runes. Only 16 runes in their alphabet. Intriguing. The boy was quite interested in the pictures they drew to remember stories about people who died. And how they thought runes could make people better.

Sight words reviewed: yes, you, are, please.
New Sight words: yellow, run, egg and three. He got a bit overwhelmed with this today. Not sure why.. he found it easier when I put the words into a sentence. that earned me a smile. :)

We did lesson eight out of First Language Lessons, Levels 1&2

We learned more about common nouns and proper nouns. :)
He was able to make his own sentence with a proper and common noun.
"Milo chased the kitten into the bathtub. Chase didn't like that."

The Complete book of Numbers and Counting, pp 166-170.

We did more on place values, some the same style as last time, but others in a different way. I found it interesting how just changing the style stumped him. Though once he understood the words and how it was done he went through it easily.

Our animal of the day was the Lemming. This simply thrilled the lad. he likes lemmings. :)

We watched a variety of lemming videos and even saw one where people captured some wild ones and overnight were able to tame them down enough they could handle them without being bitten...and then released them to the wild after they were done playing with them. We learned they can be kept as pets. We saw one video that made us sad... people cornered a lemming and put it into a defensive mode and then kept teasing it...went on too long and then they let it go and did it again (then I said enough of this, they are being mean). the lad asked "Why did they do that mommy? Why would they make him so mad all the time?" I find that type of behaviour bothersome. tease an animal sure...but don't be mean about it.

What else did we do.. we did a snow search and find. This is a big floor colouring challenge. Can you find the hidden elements? the lad finds them and colours them, I read the captions to him and colour in some of the rest. For a lad who dislikes colouring pictures other people drew, this works for us. :)

The rest of the day was spent playing and cleaning up more of his room. We are DONE except for the additional of craft materials to his big box. By evening I had a child complaining about his tonsils being sore. I am getting rather sick and tired of sore tonsils and sore ears. I want my boy to be healthy all the way through!

blog posts I like

2012-01-11T19:57:00.002-08:00

Ten Reasons We Are Loving Using Ambleside Online

teacher vs facilitator - i personally see myself as both :)

Marco Polo Study.

Graphing coins.

Skating, Spiders and more

2012-01-11T08:44:00.010-08:00

At breakfast we did our normal reading

10 minute stories

Today's story was about the littlest mermaid. he stopped eating so he could listen and said "i liked that story."

World History

Today we learned about what vikings did when they died. Bodies were treated very respectfully and generally burned at sea or on wood platforms.

Today we took advantage of the free skate (parent/child/senior) at the local rink. We had a good time. It is good to see the lad getting better at his skating all the time. At times he was skating independently, and frequently he can make it around the rink without falling. So nice to see him improving his skills.

We then moved on to working with math using reflex. He continues to gain in fluency.

We then started out spider study. Click on the picture to learn where to purchase it.

This is an ebook. You need to print off the learning activities that you wish to do. You can put it into a file folder or use paper to make it into a small book. entirely up to you. I asked the lad what he wanted to do.. "put it into a file folder mommy". it's all good to me.

so today we read a poem Don't Eat Spiders - by Robert Hiedbreder

Don't Eat Spiders   By Robert Hiedbreder
Daddy said to me, "Don 't eat spiders, Don 't you dare.
They may be delicious, But I don't care.
Don't eat spiders, Alive or dead,
Don't eat spiders, That's what I said.
Don't eat spiders, Even in play,
Fried or mashed, Or in any  way
Don't eat spiders, That's what I say.
Never, ever, That's what I say!"  
But I answered Daddy, "Tell me why ! 
Will I get sick ? Will I die ?
 I'll eat spiders, I don't care.
I'll eat spiders On a dare".  
I ate a spider Off the ground.
I swallowed a spider, It wriggled around.   
SUD-DEN-LY..... I grew eight legs,
They're skinny and hairy.
I shrank to a spider, Creepy and scary.
I sit in a web, I eat dead flies,
I watch the world With eight beady eyes.
So don't eat spiders, I hope you see,
Unless you want to be A spider like me.
And don't eat spiders. Do you see?
Cause if you eat spiders  You might eat me!

This poem made the boy smile. It really caught his imagination.

We learned that spiders come in: yellow, grey, brown, black, white, orange, red, and green.

While he was colouring the above I used these questions to stimulate his brain. :)

What if there were no spiders in the world?
- we'd have a fly planet and we would have a cloud of flies

- web, house, spider, fear, flies, jumping.

A spider makes me think of
... interesting ones in the garden.
...webs
...webs in my hair!
...flies and mommy being scared. :)

- I would tell them about the spider in case they are scared of them.

How many ways can you get a spider out of your bed?
- spider treats
- slide a paper under him and take him away
- catch him in a jar

We learned some vocabulary: acre, molt, carnivores, oviparous, and arachnids.

And all spiders have these common characteristics.

 All have eight legs
 All belong to the arachnid family
 All have two main body parts
 All spin several different kinds of silk, although not all produce webs
 All have fangs
 All make venom to paralyze or kill their prey
 All are carnivores
 All are oviparous
 All molt several times during their lifetime

From a spider unit study i picked up at a yard sale this summer we found the letters to spelling out spider. This gave the lad a chance to sound out the word spider.

It was a good start to a study. It will take us a few days to finish it.

January 10, 2012 - what we learned today

2012-01-10T18:25:00.004-08:00

Good time homeschooling today.

I had planned to let the lad do Studyladder and Reflexmath while I got our Spider study ready to do. But it took WAY longer to get everything cut out than I thought it would so... we didn't do The spider study, it can indeed wait for another day.

On Studyladder the lad practiced counting by 2's, he did some art, some science - learning about precipitation, and we studied the orchestra. It was kinda funny when we were studying the orchestra. Flutes apparently make him think that there were "bunnies in the house". He likes the bass sounds in the woodwinds, but dislikes the bass sounds in the brass instruments. I found that quite interesting. In ReflexMath he did well. He worked on his addition and subtraction, he played a new game to practice his math and it was really cool to see him progressively learn more and more. :)

I got him started on a new to us program...he didn't much like it. Fun4theBrain. I don't know if there are other games but he was wildly unimpressed with this one. Ah, just looking over their site and apparently there are a whole variety of them. So we'll have to check out some of their other ones.

But that game led us over to another one... animal jam. He had a lot of fun figuring this one out. Is it particularly a learning game? Not really...but he did have to problem solve and that's always a good thing. :) And he was a good and helpful lad whenever mommy needed help with things today. And that is always appreciated.

At supper we read our normal breakfast books.

10 minute stories

Today's story was snow white and the seven dwarves. he found it interesting...and wondered why the lady had to be so mean all the time to Snow White.

World History

Over the holidays we got into the history of vikings. He's really enjoying learning about them, today it was about viking gods. "mommy, why did they have to make a pretend god with cats pulling the cart?" I told him I had no clue. "mommy, why did they have to kill people and animals for their pretend gods?" I don't know buddy, people do funny as in sad/bad things when they don't really know who God is.

I got him out in the yard for some exercise. The plan was that he would go for a walk with his dad while I did up the dishes and made supper but... daddy got distracted by the vehicles so he went out in the backyard instead.

He wanted to work on the snow sculptures but that proved problematic. The snow was soft. So the making of a cat was out, this proven a challenge. What could he do instead? So he went with his old standby, when all else fails...make a skyscraper! :)

Tonight before bed I read him the standard books - a poem from a reader, a bible story, a story of a missionary, and his current two favourite books. He likes me to tell him a story from my head at night and sometimes I don't have a story so I use cheats. Sometimes I have him pick four pages from a stack of "make a story" pages I have. But tonight I did something new...which totally intrigued him.

Grandma gave me money for Christmas this year. I used it at Scholar's Choice. I bought a game of perplexous, Rory's StoryCubes and a travel hide/seek game called waterworld. With my $5 off member coupon, the fact that they had a 20% off sale, and my christmas money I managed to only spend $3. :) WOOT WOOT!

Anyways, Rory's Storycubes. Shaped like dice. They have 9 in a box, each dice has a picture drawn on each side. You pick a few, roll them out and then tell a story. (at least that's how I used them tonight). The lad was quite intrigued by this and asked MOMMY! Can I tell YOU a story?

Sure buddy go ahead. His pictures were a fish, lightening, and a skyscraper. His story as told via my memory.

Once there was a fish in a lake, he liked living there. There was a skyscraper a bit away from the lake. Then there was lightening! The fish was scared as he didn't want it to hurt him. So he hid. The lightening was really loud and it made the sky scraper lean away from it. It leaned and it leaned and then it fell down on the fish! (make fish struggling noises). The fish managed to get away (and that's is all I remember because something odd happened in the story and I totally lost my concentration).

Not overall bad for a six year old on the spur of the moment eh? :)

Anyways, the lad's favourite books at the moment.

Chester. This book by Melanie Watt. Makes him laugh. Chester is one funny, but disobedient cat. Melanie ends up on the wrong side of the line. Chester well...he learns a lesson by the end of the book. :)

Fox Hunt. This is a very cute book. I've looked for more by the author but can't seem to locate any locally. Will have to keep my eyes pealed at library sales and garage sales. Fun, enjoyable book. Watch out fox.. Hiram on the prowl.. but Festus and Mercury might best you yet!

Word Studies in Math...what is appropriate or not

2012-01-09T05:35:00.004-08:00

a facebook friend directed me to this post about using a historical event in math.

Parents of students at Beaver Ridge Elementary School in Norcross, Ga., are outraged at the school district's response to the reports of using examples of slavery in math word problems, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

The word problems in questions include references to slavery and "beatings," according to the paper.

"Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?" and
"If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?"

It's not just the word problems that are sparking criticism, but the way it's being handled. According to the AJC, district officials said the elementary school's principal will "work with teachers to come up with more appropriate lessons."

District spokesperson Sloan Roach told the station the teachers were trying to incorporate social studies lessons in math problems for a "cross-curricular activity."

Roach went on to tell My Fox Atlanta that, while the the questions were inappropriate, she doesn't believe the teachers meant any harm.

"This is simply a case of creating a bad question," Roach told the station.

Parent Terrance Barnett told WSB TV that having to explain the questions to his child was painful.

"Something like shouldn't be imbedded into a kid of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, any grade," Barnett told WSB TV. "I'm having to explain to my 8-year-old why slavery or slaves or beatings are in a math problem. That hurts."

I have to ask as a homeschooler....how is this any different than using a Christmas theme, or a hallowe'en them or a theme on Egypt or the Middle Ages?

Granted... I doubt that as a parent/teacher I would put in a question of "how many beatings a day did this slave get"... but I fail to see why people are getting so bent out of shape.

Slavery was an event that happened in history. It is. Yes, it has emotional impact. Yes, it was a difficult and dangerous period of time. I get that. I understand it. But as a unit study loving mother/teacher... I don't understand the furor being created over it.

I would hope that the teachers aren't just throwing the information into the math questions but are actually using the math as an integral unit. As in... we are learning about slavery now and these are the issues around it, and yes, we do math as part of the learning process. IF the math is being used in a way that is divorced from the larger teaching aspect of slavery then I would have more of an issue. In that case I could see it is being inflammatory. but done within a teaching unit...I would have no issues.

What do you think? Am I missing something?

Sometimes things don't go as planned

2012-01-05T10:29:00.006-08:00

So I had planned to do a study on Policemen today with the lad.
But.. I slept in, sleeping in sets everything way back.

By the time the bunny lady left (sold a bunny this morning) it was late.

SO.. we revised our plans and we did an interactive study on Avalanches produced by Simple Schooling. This was part of a freebie she gave out over the Christmas holidays. This avalanche tutorial was included. I can't give you a direct link to the study as I couldn't locate it and the subscriber exclusive I want to honour that. So if you want to get freebies next year, get on the list and you can get them next year, or rather this year as it's now the new year. :)

Time now to have lunch!

After lunch we'll do the experiments mentioned in this video. :)

We did the surface cohesion one (first one) in the video. Tried it three different ways.
one - the way they said to do it.
two - with oil...that was a bust...the oil stuck to the bread tag.
three - with laundry detergent (powdered) - worked but not as quickly.

Was quite interesting to the lad. :)

And then hopefully sell a chalkboard and then get out of the house for a walk about and potentially a visit with a church member. UPDATE: Sold the chalkboard (a little one) for $10 which is good since I got it for free. And then watched some slow motion videos. Some things are quite interesting when you slow them down...and other things are just downright boring!

Out for a walk with the lad. Stopped into visit with a lady from church, just a short spontaneous visit. :) The lad, on his own choice, played reflex math today.

Back to Homeschooling

2012-01-04T07:13:00.005-08:00

"but mommy! I want to play in the snow first! Do we have to homeschool first???"
Me: Yes.
"BUT I DON"T WANT TO!"

So.. we talked and worked things out. I told him how we're doing things different this year. That mommy is writing out a schedule of what we are doing and we'll work from the list. When the list is done.. homeschool is done for the day.

We read from our world history book and story book over breakfast

10 minute stories

He liked the story at breakfast and thought it funny how the dad didn't get what he wanted because the fish helped the girl.

World History

Over the holidays we got into the history of vikings. He's really enjoying learning about them.

and then I fascinated him with this.

Always good to intrigue a child. :) Found using homeschool freebie of the day.

Then off to do reflex math. I like how they emphasize speed in proficiency and they have excellent customer service. The lad is finding it difficult to maintain the required focus though and there are times when I want to make it easier for him, but that's just the mommy rescuer part of me. He got up to 8620 feet today...not a bad score. he quit because bathroom breaks were required. :) He got back into it and did better this time round. He did a variety of games and its good to see how he is improving in his math skills. :) He likes ninja stars, balloon race and the egyptian conniption.

We were going to do some exercises from the super science book but we reworked those plans. One lad was PROFOUNDLY disappointed at the thought of doing science and art together. he wanted to do some hands on science. So I wracked my brain trying to figure something out that we've studied recently and came up on gems digging kit I got a while back. So we dug up gems. There were supposed to be 8 in the kit.. we got about 13 stones/gems all told. We talked about gems and how they are made, but mostly we dug stones up and had a good time talking and working together.

Sight words: yes, you, are, please. it was quite pleasing to me to see him sounding out the word please. He studied it and worked it out. he did the same for "are". Very neat!

We did lesson seven out of First Language Lessons, Levels 1&2

We learned about common nouns and proper nouns. :)

Word of the day "abandon". Sentence he came up with "the jail in fable was abandoned once the guards are beaten."

We did listening skills Pg 3. he had to pay close attention to where each of the drivers had to go to get the answers correct.

The Complete book of Numbers and Counting, pp 164-165.

A dot to dot 1-50 and learning the place values of 50-59. Once he figured out the code for doing place values he said "mommy, this is easy!".

Our animal of the day was the ermine.
in case you want to know about the picture. Ermines eat insects in some areas of the world. The lad "This brown ermine is hunting in the summer time. He is sneaking up on a centipede who is going home to his family. Then the ermine will gobble all of them up."

I asked him if he liked working from a list.
the answer was a resounding YES! So a list we'll continue to do. :)

homeschooling over the holildays

2011-12-30T20:11:00.003-08:00

yeah, right...like that happened. :)

Well..it did a little bit but mostly we cleaned, we relaxed, we spent time with friends and family.

We read the books we normally do.
We talked and played and did some Christmas oriented work, but mostly we just lived life.

We start back soon.

Today we got together with a friend and did some skating. We had a lot of fun.

Found some sites I want to look at further.

Poetic devices.

Parts of speech.

Clip art resources.

all about reading.

Heart of Dakota.

Nativity/Bethleham buildings.

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Hopefully we can remember these for next year.

A blog that listed all parts for making a paper craft of Bethlehem the town.

Christmas Bureau

2011-12-07T11:42:00.002-08:00

This morning the lad and I helped at the Christmas Bureau.

We had a good time and did some good work.

It was interesting how accepting this group of people are about a six year old volunteering. Some folks aren't. They just say.. a child...he can't help, he'll just be a hindrance. But this group of folks, to a tee, were quite helpful and accepting of him helping.

Today we helped stuff the goodie bags...this meant putting in a wood toy, socks, mittens, hat, scarf, stuffie, and small toy. We stapled and organized the bags.

When the lad needed a break he ran up and down the hallway.

He was polite and talkative. He made some good decisions about what stuffies would make good toys for boys.

After lunch we helped with sorting out the toys from the local schools.

They made a GREAT lunch, and even had a boston cream donut for one six year old...how much better could it get? :)

our plans this week

2011-12-06T10:24:00.003-08:00

homeschooling this week will be focusing on cleaning our house, bookwork, and stuff planned.

For instance, gymnastics and swimming are planned events.
We also will be volunteering at the Christmas bureau two days.
and hopefully on Friday visiting friends.

We are doing daily advent readings. We are using this guide.

If interested in getting, click the picture.

We'll be doing our normal reading.

10 minute stories

He really liked today's story. It was well written and inspired thought and brought a smile to his face. Giant birds flying! :)

World History

We are into Roman history now. We continue to learn about gladiators. Today he learned how gladiators usually fought to the death. his response.. "IF I were there mommy I throw down giant cages down that could catch them so they couldn't get out and hurt each other mommy."

Friends and homeschool

2011-12-02T08:39:00.005-08:00

Today we plan to go visit a friend and just have some play time/learning time and what not. :)

But the youngest needs to see the doctor so we are waiting for them to return.

In the meantime we went over to simple schooling which is doing 12 days of giveaways right now. WOOT WOOT! they have a study on Penguins! We didn't get all the way through it, but what we got through was quite interesting. hopefully we'll return to it early next week. :)

We did our normal reading.

10 minute stories

He really liked today's story. It was well written and inspired thought and brought a smile to his face.

World History

We are into Roman history now. We continue to learn about gladiators.

he played fable with dad for a while as a reward for doing good work. :)

Then some playtime for a bit while I set up studyladder for him. I had planned that we would do some science, english and math. But we ended up doing a craft instead and learned where quality in what you get makes a difference. NOT all crayons are created equal. I need to post pics yet.

then off to his friends house. :) helped his mom out with a couple things, sat and chatted. It was a good visit. :) The lad had a whole lot of fun playing games and just being a lad with a friend. Good stuff.

Today a good day

2011-11-30T20:13:00.005-08:00

Today was a good day.

Didn't exactly go homeschooling wise as I thought it might.

On Wednesday mornings I have bible study so hubby dear usually gets the lad busy with book work. but this morning hubby's brain was fried so that didn't go over.

Over lunch therefore, we did our normal reading.

10 minute stories

He liked today's story. I shortened it here and there as it was quite wordy and that NEVER goes over well with the lad. But it was a good story about a firebird, a grey wolf and a boy who had to learn how to listen well.

World History

We are into Roman history now. We are learning about gladiators.

I had gotten the lad onto reflexmath before I headed out to bible study. The lad enjoys this program.

So after I got back from my stuff I got the lad busy with Studyladder. We did math, music, and something else that right now I can't remember.

This afternoon we played a game with dad. Catopoly
We had a lot of fun playing it. So much nicer playing games with a lad who is willing to follow the rules of the game.

oh..I'm trying to work home-making skills into our week... today it was cleaning the upstairs bathroom. I set the boy at the task of cleaning the bathtub. He did a decent job for a six year old doing a job for the first time. he did an EXCELLENT job of having a bath so he could clean his toys up really really well. :)

Then peter rabbit videos were the thing to watch, followed by supper and children's club at the baptist church. They are learning the fruits of the spirit there. What I know most is how much the lad enjoys attending. :)

Sites I want to explore more

2011-11-30T05:54:00.002-08:00

Housing a Fores t linky page.

K5 Learning.

that worked well

2011-11-29T21:05:00.004-08:00

went to the Stratford library to do our schooling before heading off to swimming.

I think I shall do that more often. Getting out work done at the library means less distractions.

means I have to be better organized, but better organized, and having better schooling done over a shorter period of time sounds like an excellent idea to me. :)

We did art and science today at the library. A good thing that! We first did some book work though, then played art and language skills on a computer, and some science as well on the computer. Then we started doing our Christmas cards... excellent way to practice our spelling!

He has watched the rescuers a fair bit lately so the golden eagle and the boy riding the figure prominently. :)

building Christmas cards... stickers, drawing and writing. It's all good.

Then off to lunch at boston pizza, and then over to the YMCA for swimming lessons.

the lad in the blue head band. :)

Then home again.

Played a game before bed (connect four) and played a construction game as well.

Today we....

2011-11-22T08:44:00.002-08:00

We started off with our normal daily readings out of

10 minute stories

The lad didn't appear to be impressed... was off playing and chatting while he listened. Some stories keep him glued to the chair.

World History

We are into Roman history now. It's just fascinating reading tidbits about ancient history. Today we learned what good builders and architects they were.

Then we went with reflexmath. The lad enjoys this program.

Then upstairs to do a snowman search and find. This gives us a chance to talk and read a page in a large floor puzzle book. We talk about different ways to hold a pencil crayon to get different effects, and the lad has fun searching out the hidden objects.

A fellow homeschooler over at Learning To Homeschool gave me this idea. To have a daily word to learn. I asked her how she came up with them and she said just words they come across as they read or talk. Since that's too "iffy" for me I decided to use this

Children's Illustrated Dictionary.

Today's word was Abacus: a frame with beads that slide along wires, used for counting.

I read another chapter out of First Language Lessons, Levels 1&2

We read a few poems out of a book until we found one that made us both think of a picture in our heads, so we drew. This also gave us an opportunity to talk about the different ways one can hold a drawing implement in order to achieve different effects.

I'll try to post pics of what we did later today.

now off to swimming lessons, and then the library afterwards if it's still open upon our return. :)

Hands of a Child black friday sale

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I used to have a super membership with these fine folks. Funds prevented that this year. Must say their sale is looking tempting.

anyways, go here. :)

HOAC is having a huge sale of up to 45% off their own products.

On cyber Monday they are offering up to 30% off products made by other folks that they happen to carry.

And this year they are participating in Small Business Saturday. Saturday, November 26th is the 2nd annual Small Business Saturday. Small Business Saturday is a day that is dedicated to supporting small businesses. Please take time out of the busiest shopping weekend of the year to support small businesses! And on that day you can save on Super memberships. They are offering 1-year Super Memberships for $50.00 (retail $75.00). Purchase a Super Membership on Small Business Saturday and not only do you save $25.00, but you make a HUGE impact on their business.

Tangents and more

2011-11-18T10:50:00.007-08:00

One of the things I enjoy about homeschooling is some of the interesting tangents one can take.

For instance this morning we added studying at least one or two animals every week. We don't go indepth, we just read a bit, find a location of where the animal lives, it's animal track if we can get and draw a picture of it and one fact that is interesting.

today we did caribou. We read about them in this book.

Then I searched for a nature study page we could use a base, and found this one I got as part of the teacher's toolbox from the old schoolhouse.

I asked the lad to draw a picture of a caribou while I found a picture of where the caribou lives (up north) and caribou tracks.

He did that. and then it evolved as pictures in this house are apt to do. To "J is capturing the caribou" (he was tranquilizing them which he's learned about from watching nature shows on TV.

From that evolved this story.
"The caribou are escaping from the zoo and a tree root grew really fast and there were eagles who escaped from the zoo. The angry birds came to help the bunny town Justin recapture all the animals that got out of the zoo. They are tranquilizing the eagle and the caribou." I read what I recalled to the lad and he added the following "The zoo man ran after the guinea pigs and ben said don't attack them, they are trying to help".

This was a just a fun way to learn and think and talk out what is happening.

We also did some work out of this book.

Listening Skills for grades 2-3. This book was interesting because it had a dot-to-dot with all mixed up numbers and letters and I told the lad where to draw and what type of line to draw. At the end of it we were surprised to find a bunny on a swing. The book below is similar to the one we have but ours is an older version of it. :)

A fellow homeschooler over at Learning To Homeschool gave me this idea. To have a daily word to learn. I asked her how she came up with them and she said just words they come across as they read or talk. Since that's too "iffy" for me I decided to use this

Children's Illustrated Dictionary.

Today's word was Aardvark.

I read another chapter out of First Language Lessons, Levels 1&2

We did our normal daily readings out of

10 minute stories

some of the stories in this book are quite good, others leave something to be desired. Today's story left the lad confused.

World History

We are into Roman history now. It's just fascinating reading tidbits about ancient history. Gives us a good framework for study in the future. :)

We repotted a couple of plants, the lad learned what it means that a plant is rootbound and that we have to help the plant by loosening up the roots.

We played a couple of games "pirates" - this is a board game we got at the local dollar store, it is a HUGE favourite of the lad and 9 times out of 10 he beats me handily. And bingo link which is a fun game that we win 50% of the time.

And then he worked on building a spider web on our stair way and helped dad play a computer game. Problem solving skills at work!

Today a busy day

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Shopping with extended family in the morning.

Rabbit deliveries and Playing at the london's Children's museum in the afternoon. We played, we laughed, we hid, we crawled, we rolled.

Rabbit delivery went well.. sold a harlequin doe.
Rabbit "medical" went well. A young flemmish buck stomped hard and broke a foot. He'll recover just fine, but just needs to have limited room to just settle and heal. Good to help out a rescue, good to offer advice, good to teach a boy what a broken bone feels like.
Rabbit hay run done. Good also to help a young owner stuck between a rock and a hard place to keep her rabbit longer. Unexpected bills sometimes play havoc with people.

We got frustrated with traffic and snafus in life.

We got food, we felt better.

We enjoyed each other, we talked, we got tired, and we went home.

This week

2011-11-03T20:39:00.002-07:00

Has gone somewhat differently than expected BUT... we've done some good homeschooling.

Each day we read from

10 minute stories

World History

And we've added some new routines.

Scripture memory. This week John 14:6

And we read from First Language Lessons, Levels 1&2

though this cover looks different than mine. :) It's been good to add a bit more routine.

We continue to work on phonics by going through the alphabet.

We also do Studyladder at least twice a week...Did I tell you that I won a year's subscription to it courtesy of The Old Schoolhouse.. they were doing giveaways during their birthday bash and I lucked out! :) Pretty cool eh? Today the lad did some art, math, English, and some French. (he was totally unimpressed doing the French).

And the lad continues to thoroughly enjoy doing ReflexMath.

Otherwise what have we filled our time with?

Monday is Gymnastics.

Tuesdays the lad goes swimming with our HOPE group. It's a lot of fun. We do stuff in the morning at home, mostly just our standard fair, plus reflexmath and chores.

On Wednesday he does book work with his dad since I attend bible study Wednesday mornings. This week he did Three pages in each book.

My heavenly Helper

The Complete book of Numbers and Counting

Complete Canadian Curriculum 1

My Book of Numbers 1-120.

When I got home I said Come on buddy, let's get out of the house (it was such a lovely day) so we headed off to the dam to collect leaves and do some tree rubbings. We used chalk and hair spray to stabilize the chalk. Collected samples and once we did five trees we went bug hunting. When you are six.. bug hunting is important. We brought home one spider, one black bug, and one leaf with a nest on it. We talked about birch trees and how the wood was once used for writing on.

Then off to the dentist where we received the news that due to some odd fluke one of the lad's teeth had no roots to it, which led to a lad going back to the dentist today to get that tooth removed and infection out. The lad was super scared but the dentist was marvellous with him and talked him through everything. So today we mostly played lego this afternoon and watched a video on rehabilitating orangutangs. It was quite interesting.

Anyways, we needed to do some problem solving for Wednesday night as I needed to be out of town, hubby had a meeting and the lad had kid's club which he definitively did NOT want to miss. We managed to find an acquaintance that he would accept picking him up and taking him to his dad's meeting and then I picked him up at the meeting when I got back. Meant a late night for one six year old but everything worked out well for all concerned.

We've read books, listened to books, talked and laughed and kept busy. Thus far a good week.

Tomorrow is Friday and we are shopping in the a.m. with family, having lunch out, and then heading to the London Children's Museum for the afternoon.

magic painting

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I do wish I had seen this science and art experiment before I finished my science class. This would have been fun to do.

Magic painting. From the blog called child central station.

reading, listening, experimenting, and learning

2011-10-20T07:15:00.006-07:00

10 minute stories

The story today was about Pinnochio finding his father inside the dogfish. It was a fun story to read and caused the lad to ask questions. And just so you know, YES a dogfish is a real fish! :)

not quite as fearsome looking in real-life
as it was in the story.

World History

Today we finished off looking at mummies, we covered the Canary Islands, Siberia, Japan and Papua New Guinea. We learned about Buddhist monks and animal mummies as well.

Our overall plan for the day is to make a rocket car, cookies, do some computer work, listen to books on CD "the treasury of Storybook classics", play reflex math, and pack what we need for our weekend away. I'll update as we go along. :)

we engaged in an impromptu science experiment. We put took an egg that we emptied of its internals. Sealed up the holes with tape and mac-tack. We thought it would explode but... all it did was crack. Much to the disappointment of a boy child.

we did some work on Studyladder. We learned about animal classifaction, gas/solid/liquid, ecosystems and more. and then of course played some games. We also tried out a new program called mathletics. We got this as part of the TOS birthday bash for being members. Not the most inspiring program but the lad was indeed willing to try it out. Comes from Australia.

nomination are now open

2011-10-19T21:09:00.002-07:00

for the 7th annual homeschool blogger awards.

Go here.

There are 20 categories, and surely you know someone who might fit in those categories.

1. Best Homeschool Mom Blog
Everyone is the best homeschool mom for their own children. With thousands of homeschool bloggers out there, please know that there will only be one winner online – but EACH OF US are winners in our own homes. If there’s a blogging mom out there that has been a particularly good example to you and you want to let her know… consider her for this nomination! [Her blog does not have to be exclusively about motherhood or homeschooling.]

2. Best Homeschool Dad Blog
We love to hear what dad has to say. Especially if he includes homeschool posts off and on. [Blog doesn’t have to be exclusively about homeschooling.]

3. Best Blog Design
Here’s your chance to nominate a gorgeous blog design and give a code-and-design savvy blogger a pat on the back for her talent (or give her hired web designer some credit!).

4. Best Photos
This blogger has photographic talent and makes her posts pop with eye-candy. We want to thank those of you who post pictures and graphics that inspire us! The winner of this category will be one that takes her own photos – not someone who only uses stock images.

5. Best Crafts, Plans & Projects Blog
Do you turn to the blogosphere for a steady supply of great craft ideas, lesson plans or projects that you can do with your homeschoolers? Why not share your favorite how-to blogs that provide us with things to be inspired by and ideas to use with our kids and in our homes.

6. Best Family or Group Blog
Nominate your favorite Homeschool Family blog or your favorite group blog that is either run by Homeschoolers or discusses homeschool issues. [Blog doesn’t have to be exclusively about homeschooling. Remember that if more than one of our authors are part of the group blog, it is not qualified to win. THIS BLOG MUST HAVE MULTIPLE AUTHORS.]

7. Best Encourager
It is time to say thanks to those bloggers out there who lift you up out of the homeschool “blahs” and help you get back on track. The winner of this category doesn’t have to be perfect or always in a good mood… just someone who makes you feel as if someone else cares and has a positive attitude overall.

8. Best Current Events, Opinions or Politics Blog
We don’t want a strictly political blog that is run by a homeschooler unless quite a few posts have relevant information pertaining to homeschooling. News clips that affect our freedoms as homeschoolers and how homeschooling is portrayed in the media are ideal. We love to hear what other homeschool teachers are thinking and reading and their views on things that affect us all. [This blog does not have to be exclusively about homeschooling, current events, or politics… just a blog that often shares opinions on matters that you enjoy learning from.]

9. Best Homemaking or Recipes Blog
This blog should have content regarding homemaking, housekeeping, tips, ideas for making your life easier, information about raising multiple kids, or recipes that you enjoy trying. [This person should be a homeschooler but the blog doesn’t have to be exclusively about homeschooling, homemaking or recipes.]

10. Best Teen Blog
Let’s encourage those young bloggers to speak up and be a good example for their peers. I have seen so many wonderful teen blogs out there that deserve recognition. Let us know what some of your favorites are! Teen blogs can be any blogs run by teens who are at least 12 years of age. The winners will have to submit permission slips signed by their parents – see legal page at HSBA for more details. [This blog does not have to be exclusively about homeschooling, but homeschooling should be mentioned often or it should be obvious from the template that the teen/s are homeschoolers.]

11. Funniest Homeschool Blog
We all need a laugh in-between laundry, lesson plans and losing our cool. It is nice to get your smile back so you can share it with your students (who can only take “so much gloom” as Ma Walton said so eloquently on The Waltons television series). Nominate your favorite crack-pot or crack-up homeschool blog here.

12. Best Special Needs Blogger
These are the moms that have the extra challenges – they go above and beyond to help their children succeed. We hope to help connect all sorts of bloggers – special needs included. We also have an author who is a special-needs advocate: Miss Tammy! Say Hello to her by stopping by her bio/blog link in our sidebar!

13. Best Homeschool Vlogger
It’s a rare treat to get to be the “fly on the wall” in someone’s homeschool. Don’t you always love seeing what’s on other people’s book shelves and watching them demonstrate things on video, though? Vlogging is a wonderful way to spread the homeschool encouragement around on the net.

14. Best Variety
This blogger is one that could fit in any of these categories … but they just can’t be pinned down in ONE. This type of blogger is the ADD hyper-focused type… always moving on from one thing to the next… and always keeping you interested in coming back for more!

15. Best Thrifty Homeschooler
Most of us are homeschooling on a shoe-string. Nominate your favorite money-saving blogger so you can share her tips with the blogosphere and bless a bunch of homeschool children in the process! [Blog doesn't have to be exclusively about frugality.]

16. Best SUPER-HOMESCHOOLER
Ever feel like a loser after reading someone else’s lesson plans, seeing their field trip photos, listening to them talk about what they got done today, or seeing pictures of their children’s accomplishments? You were probably feeling the effects of visiting a SUPER-HOMESCHOOLER’s blog. These are the A-list homeschool parents that just BLOW YOU AWAY with their enthusiasm. We all have our good days, but this blogger has us all beat.

17. Best Nitty-Gritty Homeschool Blog
Since we included a category for the Super-Homeschooler… I figured we would add one in for the homeschooler who is brutally honest and open about her mistakes and failures. These are the moms that make you feel better and let you know that it is OK that we aren’t perfect. What would we do without them???

18. Best NEW Homeschool Blog
It is hard making a name for yourself in the blogosphere. A lot of times, you feel as if you are writing and no one is out there. If you have stumbled upon a great new blogger who has a lot of potential and you want to share them with the rest of us… please consider nominating them for this category! [A new blog is one that appeared on the scene during or after last awards season.] If you don’t know many new homeschool blogs, check out the linky on our Welcome Wagon post from this year. We’re introducing them to you ahead of time!

19. Best Homeschooling Methods Blog
There are a lot of methods used to homeschool. Are you a boxed curriculum gal? A Classical homeschooler? An unschooler? Do you thrill on Unit Studies or spend time outdoors doing Charlotte Mason-type nature walks? Are you a mixture of everything (eclectic)? Make sure you tell us what TYPE of method this blog showcases so we can list it on the voting page!

20. Best Homeschooling Nature/Field Trip Blog
Have cabin fever? Looking to get OUT and see the world – sketch it, research it, photograph it? Who inspires you to take the kids out and enjoy Creation? Who makes you scratch your head in wonder while showing you all the fascinating things they have discovered outdoors?

GO NOMINATE! :)

Places I want to spend more time at

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Homeschool Share has a variety of Lapbooks I'd like to take a good look at.

Practical Pages has a History Page with various downloads I'd like to save and use.

And I also like the mom the narration Scribe. I think it has a lot of useful information in it.

Scripture Memorization

2011-10-19T20:32:00.002-07:00

Memorizing the bible is something I've been wanting to add to our personal (and homeschool) lives for a while. I've asked hubby to put something together but distraction and busyness is proving an issue so I've been meandering around trying to figure out what to do.

Was over at Practical Pages today and the blog owner pointed me to Simply Charlotte Mason. And I'm thinking to myself...this looks doable. So I'll be seeing what I can do about setting it up. And then tonight when I took the lad over to Kids Class at the Baptist Church (mommy I don't want to do...was changed to mommy! I had FUN! Can I go again?) I learned that they want the lad to learn 1 John 4:9 and Galatians 5:22-23. So guess which two verses will be the first we'll be learning? :) And then I heard about Ann Voskamp doing a thing with memorizing Colossians and I pretty much think we'll be set. :)

So what do you do for Scripture memory if you do any at all?

Bible study, stay at home study and play dates

2011-10-19T20:05:00.004-07:00

This morning I had bible study at the local Christian Reformed Church. We are going to study Colossians using the Infuse bible study. it's available from Faith Alive resources.

Before I left I set the lad up with his bookwork with his dad.

he did Four pages in each of these books.
My heavenly Helper

The Complete book of Numbers and Counting

Complete Canadian Curriculum 1

and two pages in My Book of Numbers 1-120. It was supposed to be four pages but dad says "this book is highly repetitive and boring". :)

they also went through the alphabet and did some word and number matching with some flashcards.

When I came home the lad was quite happily playing with Reflex Math. Hubby said the highest he got was 8,000 feet in the game that he particularly enjoys doing which is a good achievement for a lad just gaining confidence with his addition and subtraction abilities. Thus far I am impressed with this on-line game. Time will tell if I choose to purchase it. Checking out the pricing, for me it would be $35/year. Affordable I think. But I have one more week to play with it yet. :)

So we had a quick lunch and then scampered off to London for a playdate with his friend Adella from HOPE. We went to Adventures in Wonderland. They had a hoot. I got discounted tickets through WagJag.

Swimming and more

2011-10-18T09:54:00.003-07:00

10 minute stories

I cannot say I much liked the story we read today. It was WAY too wordy.

World History

Did you know that mummies aren't just found in Egypt and England? I didn't either! They are found in England, Greenland, Peru, Egypt, China, Germany, Russia and so on. It is fascinating to read how different methods were used to preserve bodies. It was very sad to read how some people, in their false belief of their god, choose to kill their children in a way to please those gods. Oh that more of the world might know the true and living God. Many folks were preserved because they thought it would help them in the afterlife. Some were preserved naturally by the effects of ice and sand and salt. Quite interesting to be reading through this book with the lad.

This afternoon we go swimming with the HOPE group from Stratford.

We'll be doing some science later this afternoon I hope.

Reflex Math - a brief review

2011-10-18T09:44:00.003-07:00

New to us, trial period Reflex Math. We have tried this program for two days now. Yesterday it caused some issues because each new program (so each time you open it up) you have to go through a speed trial. And the lad DISLIKES intensely being wrong and being asked to do something he simply not sure about. So he simply didn't want to, I told him he had a choice, do the speed trial and play the games or simply don't do it and you cannot play the games.

For a while he chose not to play, and then changed his mind because the games were simply too alluring.

Today he played quite willingly, about 1 hours worth of math. It was neat to see him getting better and better with math skills that he struggles with to do on paper...even though he knows how to do them in his head.

This program is all about mastery of facts. If you know the facts you can do them quickly.

From the site:

Reflex is a revolutionary, game-based system that helps students of all ability levels to develop instant recall of their basic math facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division).

I have two weeks to see if I like this program enough to bother keeping up with it. For two days though, he has mastered well the math I want him to, and now it's a matter of time to see how he can continue to do with it, or if it will become boring to him.

One thing I do like about the site is it is customizable to a variety of students, which makes it ideal for public/private or home-school use.

article link

2011-10-17T19:56:00.001-07:00

history/reasons to homeschool.

Today we learned...

2011-10-13T07:32:00.003-07:00

10 minute stories

World History

Today we learned about the Egyptian mummies. It was quite fascinating to both of us to learn how they made them. Taking their brains out through the nose just fascinated the lad.

We sat down and did some organization for winter of our gloves/hat/scarves chest. Gave us a good time to talk about winter and how we need to dress differently for it. We practiced our math and organization skills. Matched colours, compared sizes, and talked about the different ways manufacturers all try to do the same thing...keep us warm, but doing it all differently, ergo the extreme creativity that God has given us.

Once that was done we did some work online with literactive and MightybookJr. we played around with both sites. then I got the lad set up with Tuxedo Math while I did the dishes. :)

This afternoon we'll be going to the library and making cookies.

Facts vs Ideas

2011-10-13T06:25:00.002-07:00

I get alot of email from a variety of sources and sometimes I actually read them.

This morning I read an email from Simply Charlotte Mason. Which if you want to sign up for you can go here. I am not a Charlotte Mason teacher, but I think there is value in a variety of approaches to teaching.

Anyways, in this newsletter they were talking about Facts vs Ideas.

The author mentioned

how a living book should give our children ideas, not just facts.

The author went on to explain

Let's take a Bible character most of us already know about in order to illustrate the difference. Let's look at Joseph.

A typical factual summary of Joseph's life might read something like this:

Joseph, the eleventh and favored son of Jacob, was sold into slavery by his brothers and carried to Egypt. Because he accurately interpreted Pharaoh's dreams, he was appointed second in command over all the land. His good management of resources resulted in Egypt's survival during a seven-year famine and eventually the salvation of his whole family from starvation.

But if we read Joseph's story, told as a narrative in Genesis 37-50, we will get the facts, yes; but we can also pull from it all kinds of ideas like this:
Inter-family relations and sibling rivalry; how it can be enflamed by words and actions,
Diligence and trustworthiness in assigned responsibilities,
Sometimes good choices result in painful circumstances,
God is in control,
Circumstances can change in a moment,
People will disappoint you,
Forgiveness,
Managing resources in feast and in famine,
Giving glory to God before authorities; courage.

There are probably several other ideas you can think of that I didn't list here.

Do you see the difference? The facts are just something that happened to someone else. The factual account takes all the emotional and human experience aspects out of the equation. But the ideas are common human experiences and emotions that we can relate to and learn from.

I enjoy reading books to the lad that cause him to ask questions, OR that I can ask questions of him. If he asks questions I know that he is listening and that the information will come out later in play or in connections that he gets from other things that he is learning.

Ideas I find often spark further learning.

THIS is what I want to inspire in my lad... that desire to learn more.

AppleLand and more.

2011-10-12T15:52:00.000-07:00

10 minute stories

World History

In world history we learned about bog men. It's amazing, most folks they have found in bogs have been murdered.

this is the tollund man (found in Denmark).
then we went upstairs and did some workbooks.

Pages 92-96 out of the complete book of numbers and counting

He also did three dot to dots out of the My Heavenly Helper book.

Finished off another workbook completely. :) Then practiced matching numbers with their words. This was hard for the lad, but it's a work in progress. :)

We finished them at 1125 and then packed ourselves into the car to go to AppleLand with some other homeschoolers.

We had an enjoyable time. :)

Currently working on...ecosystems

2011-10-12T04:36:00.003-07:00

Building a study on ecosystems.

NOT a particularly easy thing to do as ecosystems can be as generic as "oceans" or as specific to "this puddle of water". Since the lad is six, I won't be doing EVERYTHING that there is to learn. But I will give him a good overview and hopefully start it as a small binder so that over the years we can add to it.

I think I'll concentrate on Forests, Water (salt and fresh), Tundra and icecaps, Deserts, and Grasslands.

I'll be pulling in information from a variety of sources.
Pronto Lessons on the ecosystem will be a starting point.

Then I'll pull in information from national geographic, Canadian forest services, Geography4Kids, KidsGeo.com, KidsCorner, neoK12, and ecosystems.

time to homeschool.
will do more planning later. :)

Land Forms and more

2011-10-11T07:03:00.007-07:00

We started our day as normal reading from
10 minute stories

World History

in the world history book we have started learning about mummies. Today we learned about Otzi the Iceman from Italy.

The lad and I have been working on learning what some land forms are.

I made up this copywork sheet for him, which comes from this site. We reviewed what we did yesterday what what the different land forms are. Did some matching. We looked on the world map we had to see if we could find real examples of things like a bay, cape, and so forth.

We also did some math. Not a whole lot, just a wee bit since it is Tuesday. :)

Then out for a walk to do some art. The plan for the walk was to go to the benches by the nursing home and find something we could draw for 5 minutes tops. We talked about line and shading today.

this is what we came up with
the lad
me

Did some work with head of the class as well. And the lad played adventure world on facebook. He has to problem solve his way through a variety of puzzles and complete tasks.

Speed

2011-10-10T19:41:00.000-07:00

Speed, this game looks interesting. Here's a review of it.

7th Annual Homeschool Blog Awards!!!

2011-10-08T19:08:00.000-07:00

go to the homeschool post to learn more. :)

books on transportation

2011-10-08T08:14:00.005-07:00

Here are some of the books we read on transportation which was our over-arching theme for September. We have another three or four that we haven't read yet.

transportation on land and sea by nigel hawkes.
The one car in this book that can fold up inspired lots of thinking by one boy child. That alone made this a book worth getting out of the library. :)

C-Growl the daring little airplane
The Chipmunk. Good to read about this Canadian plane. The book got a bit wordy and repetitive after a while. It would be a good book to use for a geography study someday as the Chipmunk ends up visiting a vast array of countries.

Speed Machines by miranda smith
Interesting book to look through. I can't say we read it all, but we read about the pictures that intrigued us the most and occasionally used the computer to learn more.

It's True Pigs Do Fly
A good read. Written in a humourous style, with funny illustrations.
And yes.. pigs do fly (just not always very well).

I want to be a pilot
This is a simple overview of what a pilot does. It gave us good practice counting and learning about place value. It gives a decent overview.

Cars - by heather miller
A basic overview to what a car is. Meant for beginning readers.

Bicycles
From the same series as the Cars book above. This is a simple overview of what bicycles are. Meant for beginning readers.

The McGurk Effect

2011-10-07T15:38:00.001-07:00

The query is of course... how does this affect different age groups.
I ask, because the lad didn't get it at all.

Today... a good learning day

2011-10-07T10:08:00.009-07:00

Despite the "I can't do this mommy" .. he did. :) Just needed some encouragement.

Despite the "the letters are all mixed up mommy!"... he managed to sort them out. And yes, the letters are all mixed up as I have "garage sale" numbers so don't have full sets of lower and upper cases letters so we make do with what we have. :)

here I asked him to match the numbers with the words and then spell them out.

He even made up a game afterwards with them where he had to practice his memory. It was interesting watching him work through it.

We finished our timeline of transportation.

I don't recall where I found the pictures or the timeline.
We added kites, dugout canoes, and walking.
He was even able to tell his dad about the timeline abit too!

We did math. Pages 89-91 out of the complete book of numbers and counting

We did the alphabet. He knew ALL of them today! woot woot!

I will note that he stumbled on d, g, e, f today, but when he saw the picture on the
back of the card he knew them immediately.
This is a HUGE improvement over two weeks ago. :)

He also did a lower case alphabet dot to dot out of the My Heavenly Helper book.

We finished "It's True, Pigs do Fly" book. It was fun. He learned a ton and asked TONS of questions. This book was written in a humourous style with fun captions of pigs doing the various things that inventors were doing throughout the history of aircraft. An enjoyable book. It did not cover every facet of airplane history, but it gave an excellent overview.

He asked if people ever made a car that can fly and we learned the answer to that is YES! It's called the Skycar.

We did have to take a break at one point to catch these two that escaped from their lawn pen. Silly little boogers. :) Just the two black ones, the broken black was good and stayed put!

Passport UK SCOUT - review

2011-10-05T07:58:00.008-07:00

Today we worked on our review for Passport UK - we did the Scout version which is for children in K-6. This study is produced by unit studies by amanda bennett.

We chose to do Scotland today as we've studied some of the other countries in this series before. The other days include: An Overview of the United Kingdom, and then individual days England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

when I told the lad we were going to learn about puffins I got a huge YEAH!!!!

We did some copywork of Psalm 147:8. We used this site to generate a copywork sheet.

He covers the heavens with clouds, provides rain for the earth, and makes the grass grow in mountain pastures. (new living translation)

We learned about puffins, the loch ness monster, geographic points of interest and much much more. It was a very interesting study, just not as hands on as six year old prefer.

We thoroughly enjoyed watching the videos. There is such an abundance of links that it is fascinating to see all these different things.

Each day is jammed packed with scripture, maps, interesting points of interest, very important people, culture, science, a creature feature, and family fun projects. I really wish I could have copy and pasted from the study to my word program. It makes things easier for being able to minimize paper printing and to be able to formulate writing and drawing papers for my lad.

I have to admit, I've never done one of the passport studies before. I was expecting something along the lines of the DownloadN'Go Studies as that's what I've come to expect from Amanda Bennett unit studies. And I was initially disappointed to not have the similarity, but as I got into it we saw that it was quite indepth and varied, and it spawned conversation and interest. I do wish it was a bit more user friendly. I was expecting graphics and things to cut and paste and circle and more of a unit study approach, so I was disappointed by that. I did like the lapbooking materials that can be found at the end of the e-book. My lad enjoyed putting together the small booklet on the puffin. :) BUT he NEVER likes colouring in maps. he just doesn't so we normally just look for it on the large map and then just outline it. :) We then add points of interest to it.

I was impressed with the amount of information provided. You can take a peak inside of it by going here. :)

It's a good study, just wasn't quite what I was expecting. :) I would encourage you to go out and get one. Seriously... it contains a good deal of solid information that is varied enough to promote conversation between teacher and student. It has a few lapbooking elements in it which makes it a bit more hands on for a younger child.

It was overall an excellent study. :) we had some fun figuring out how much 17.5 oz is (the weight of a puffin). 14 hot wheels, three bananas, and so on. good study.

Having done Scotland today we decided to do a scottish meal for supper. We'll have scottish oatcakes, fish, and I choosing to doing something not particularly scottish because I have a six year old somewhat skeptical lad.. PEAS! (he'll eat those for sure). :)

Guess what! I got this message from Amanda Bennett Unit Studies!

We are happy to offer ALL your readers a gift – a unique code just from your blog, for 50% off this study for 7 days after we activate the code. We really want to reward ALL your readers, and not just one lucky winner.

The code is this: GetUK12. So here or go directly here and give them the code and you'll get 50% off just for reading my review! Pretty cool eh? :) At least that's what I think!

disclaimer: i got a copy of this study for my free and honest evaluation of it. it did not influence my opinion of the study in any way. :)

AdaptedMinds

2011-10-04T21:05:00.003-07:00

Going to try out a new math program for a little while.

it's called adaptedMind.

AdaptedMind creates a custom learning experience for your child. A learning experience that identifies your child's strengths and weaknesses, and delivers a curriculum and exercises that adapts to these needs. That's adaptive learning.

Great books week

2011-10-04T20:58:00.001-07:00

is currently being celebrated.

Should you like to know more about this go check it out over here.

Great Books Week 2011 is honoring Great Expectations in its 150th anniversary year. It’s a haunting classic, with a host of funny, memorable characters and a thought-provoking plot.

A day in the life of homeschooling

2011-10-04T20:36:00.009-07:00

Carnival of Homeschooling is posted.

Today was an excellent day overall.

The lad came out to talk with me while I cared for my rabbits. And then we talked over breakfast, we read

World History

10 minute Stories

We prepared for Renee to come over with her children. We planned to do some science and then go off of a nature walk. When the children arrived they really really wanted to play with some baby bunnies so we headed outside to do that. We had a spot of lunch to eat and then did some art science.

We experimented with wetting down paper and then seeing what happen when we dropped thinned paint on it. And that taught us about diffusion. :)

We then sprinkled dry paint over a pan of water and then put dry paper over the powder paint. it was fascinating to watch what adding the paint did to the surface tension of the water.

We varied the length that we let the paper sit in the water to see what that would with how the paper reacted. It was VERY interesting to see what happened. I did neglect to take pictures of some the results from the children but i did get this one.

Looks rather cool eh?

The lad decided that mixing paint was VERY interesting so he had fun doing that, and then decided to paint a picture with the resultant mixed paint.

After the children left we watched a thing on Sound that Aurora was doing through Supercharged science. We made a hornet and a harmonica. I was unable to capture of pic of J using the hornet, but here's the harmonica we made. :)

Earlier during the day we made some yellow jacket traps since we got inundated with yellow jackets today. Take a pop bottle, cut off the top. Mix up some basic lemonade, invert the top (normally I'd secure it but this one seemed to sit on really well) set it somewhere near the hornets and just wait. If you see a hornet crawling around inside speed up the process by CAREFULLY squirling the liquid around.

as you can see.....highly effective (after 1 hour).

Prey vs Predator

2011-09-30T19:47:00.001-07:00

i found this article interesting.

I'll need to reexplain things to the lad.

question of the day: praying mantis

2011-09-29T13:54:00.004-07:00

this is not the one we caught, just a pic off the internet.

Due to a caught praying mantis, and wondering if we could keep it, this question was raised: What do praying mantis eat?

We found an answer here.

The diet of a praying mantis most often includes various species of insects - including mosquitoes, flies, grasshoppers, beetles, butterflies, moths, spiders, roaches, bees, dragonflies, etc. Other than these insects, some praying mantis species also feed on lizards, frogs, rodents and birds. Almost all the species of mantis feed on insects, but those which can grow up to a length of 10-12 cm are generally the ones who take on birds, rodents and other creatures of their own size.

So, no, we can't keep it as it will eat our crickets. We released it to our rose of sharon bush.

How can you tell a girl from a boy?

The difference between a male and female praying mantis is that the female is larger and the abdominal is larger than a males abdomanal.
Adult female Mantises are larger than adult males. That's one way to tell them apart.

Living Bridge

2011-09-29T05:47:00.001-07:00

I need to show this to the lad. I thought it was very cool.

Living Bridge.

Homeschooling Carnivals

2011-09-27T09:09:00.002-07:00

Carnival of Homeschooling - 300th Edition!!!

Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival

Homeschooling on the Cheap

homeschooling carnival

Harvest Edition of The Carnival of Homeschooling

Never Felt Better

2011-09-26T20:26:00.004-07:00

Felting....today my lad learned to felt at the Art Museum of London. They have a homeschool art program there.

the program he attended was called

Never Felt Better
Children will learn the sculptural technique of wet felting, in which crisscrossed layers of wool are dampened with warm soapy water and agitated by rubbing and rolling, and will experiment with felting around a form to make three dimensional pieces.

about 20 children all told. Some of us parents chose to help. Good thing we did or the singleton teacher would not have coped particularly well with that many students.

The lad had a hoot.

He at first didn't much like his snake, but later he was quite intrigued by it.
He does DISLIKE intensely the mat that he made. "it doesn't look like anything mommy". So we may end up throwing it out.

It was a good experience for us. Next time we'll try to get there a bit earlier so parking isn't so expensive.

the next one we'll go to will be on book binding.

TOS birthday bash

2011-09-26T04:04:00.002-07:00

Right now TOS is in the middle of their birthday bash. You really should go check it out. :)

And did you know that TOS is going to be going to an all digital format. they will be having one annual magazine that will be HUGE (like 300 pages), but they will be switching to a monthly digital magazine. If you want to see what their magazine is like, go check out the summer one for free. :)

overwhelmed? perhaps not any more

2011-09-25T19:44:00.005-07:00

So I've been feeling panicky and overwhelmed at the thought of teaching my lad this year. I'm not feeling very organized or planned out or anything.

Hubby dear gave me the idea of planning our next day for 15-20 minutes the night before and I think I'll be doing that. I've been a bit concerned about doing TOO Much planning as I know what I'm like what I get a list I just feel "argh" if I don't complete everything on it and I can get snippy and snappy and I do not wish to be like that.

Therefore I went to the ministry of education (Ontario) tonight to see just what they expect children to learn in grade one. And though a few things leave me wondering HOW will I teach that? Overall it was like okay....he knows that already, this we already do and he'll get better at, and OH>>> I can teach that! It overall left me with a feeling of relief. Overtime I will be able to plan out better what we do. EVEN IF at times it is haphazard it will work out in the long run I think.

I am feeling a bit more settled again...knowing that I can teach my son, but I do need to be a bit more organized about how I go about doing it. AS LONG AS.... I remember that we are FIRST a family, and second a homeschooling one. Homeschooling will continue to fit around our need to be a family first, and one that honours God while doing so.

What We Learned Today: Head of the Class

2011-09-22T09:28:00.003-07:00

today we did a couple of things.

We continued reading through

We did a fair amount of work on the letter 'a' through head of the class. Filling in the missing A, sounding out words, picture matching and what not. I really like that they use a variety of methods to teach the same concept.

We did a bit more research on the house centipede. :)

We talked about the difference between living and non-living things using as a basic talking guide the simple schooling e-book Living & Non-Living.

We continued our transportation theme by learning about air pressure and resistance, using a craft from Transportation Thematic Units (Enhanced eBook). We experimented a bit with adding a paper clip to see if that would make a difference in how the helicopter worked.

Both the simple schooling and transportation unit are available from Currclick. One of them currently is free.

question of the day: house centipedes

2011-09-22T09:13:00.003-07:00

Mommy... how do house centipedes grow up? How do they make babies?
This was a continuing query over a couple of days.

So we looked up house centipedes and learned they moult and get more legs with each moult. They live up to six years and takes about 2 years to mature.

Girl centipedes are bigger. Boy centipedes have a thicker tail.
The boy centipede puts sperm on the ground which the girl centipede uses to fertilize her eggs but they don't do this until after they touch antennae with each other.

They are GOOD bugs to have around (as much as they freak me out) because they kill spiders, bedbugs, termites, cockroaches, silverfish and other household pests.

Souces:
ehow and wiki and animal corner.

Tuesday... hard days

2011-09-20T20:22:00.003-07:00

So today I had a, what seemed to me, harsh reminder of why Tuesdays should NOT be book work days... the lad is too unfocused and too easily upset as is his mommy. SO no more book work on Tuesdays except maybe a tiny bit.

Instead we will read.
We will draw.
We will do science.
We will simply relax, play a bit, and work a bit, and just let Tuesdays be the quiet relaxing days that we need them to be.

Today we had a mental break-down over the alphabet and doing numbers up to 30. Quite frankly alphabets and counting should NOT be reasons to have harsh words between parent and child on either side. it simply isn't, ergo my change of focus for Tuesday.

On a positive note... he did really well figuring out the sounds of letters of the alphabet and I started introducing the concept of hard/soft sounds. AND of the 26 alphabet letters....he recognized all but one of them (the dreaded letter K). I was simply thrilled by this and the lad smiled as well. :)

We had fun lying back on my bed and reading a poem. It was actually quite funny. We read one poem, and then read another and we looked at each other at the exact same time and smiled... That would make a fun picture we said. So we drew a picture of it. It was interesting how different they turned out from each other. The poem comes of the old Childcraft series. The link is for the 1995 series, but ours is the older one yet.. 1977 I think?

We started reading through a world history book (we will do two pages most every day) and another book with 10 minute stories.

We finished the first book of the people of christian history book tonight at bed time. The lad has enjoyed learning about these people who really lived. It's been interesting learning some of the Christian history behind us.

Carnival of homeschooling is posted

2011-09-17T20:26:00.001-07:00

Focus on this issue is math, but other stuff is included as well.

I enjoyed this post.

Warehouse wipe out

2011-09-17T04:25:00.001-07:00

Clearing out the Warehouse Special!
$104.75
NOW $35

While supplies last, help us clean out the TOS warehouse and purchase $104.75 worth of products for only $35! Here's what you'll receive:
• SEVEN TOS back issues ($69.30 value)
• Homeschooling with Heart tote bag ($24.95 value)
• Surprise bonus gift
• Free Shipping ($10.50 value)

Enjoy hundreds of pages of practical content . . . designed by your fellow homeschoolers—for you! Grab some encouragement and fill your shelves with a box of seven inspirational TOS back issues (publishers' choice)!

PLUS you'll receive our versatile TOS Homeschooling with Heart tote bag perfect for a trip to the beach, library, or support group meeting. AND receive a surprise bonus gift!

Want an even better deal?

Spread the word about this promotion on Facebook, Twitter, down your list of friends or on your blog and receive up to four additional bonus surprise gifts. You'll receive one additional item for each mention you make. Share on Facebook and receive ONE additional surprise item. Tell your Facebook friends and tweet about the clearance sale, and you'll receive TWO additional surprise items.

Talk about the sale on Facebook or blast it down your email list (support group or large list of homeschooling friends), tweet it and write about it on your blog and you will receive FOUR additional surprise items. To receive your bonus gifts, you MUST note in the comments section of your store order (or you can use the dropdown box provided there) to share how you told your friends and spread the word about TOS Warehouse Wipeout. We will then toss in your goodies to really round out your mystery box!

We have some great surprise products to stuff in your box . . . books, puzzles, coloring books, rulers, wiki sticks, toys, and MUCH MORE! Imagine opening your mail box and finding a box filled with seven back issues of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, a Homeschooling with Heart tote bag, AND up to four surprise gifts!

Save money and help us clear out our warehouse to make room for new items. Don't wait . . . supplies are limited. Tell all your friends,* then . . .

Order your box today!

*Don't forget-receive up to four additional bonus gifts by telling everyone you know about this special. To receive your bonus gifts, mention in the comments section (or dropdown) in your store order whether you shared this crazy offer on Facebook, Twitter, your blog and/or your email list. We'll then get busy selecting your extras to go in your tote!

Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery.

Canadian customers only.

HOPE days returns

2011-09-17T04:14:00.002-07:00

Yesterday HOPE days started again.

It was fun. The lad learned about dinosaurs, had gym time (played a game called lemonade that made a big impression on him) and did some science. I enjoyed teaching the children science. NOW.. I have learned that even with two helpers that 14 children ages 6-8 in one classroom is a HUGE number of children to try to teach science to so I need to try to arrange that a bit better. smaller groups doing different things.

Then afterwards we went to the Western Fair. We had an enjoyable day. Hubby's knee has been bugging him a bit so that slowed us down a bit.

It was rather cool... they have this free children's play area. Tractors to drive, straw to jump into, a duck race, sunflower seed planting, tractor pull and a variety of other events. So the lad had a great deal of fun. We partially watched a cow calving, petted some pigs, ate cotton candy and caramel corn and corn dogs. Typical fair food. :)

We did miss the horse show, and the extreme canine show this year. We watched reptile ray. Man NOT a good show if you don't believe in evolution, but the information just about the reptiles he showed was quite interesting. I would rather he just talk about the reptiles and leave the evolutionary stuff at home.. cause what's the point? Is it to give a history (in his eyes) lesson or to talk about creatures he really enjoys being around?

Monarchs and Time lines

2011-09-15T17:38:00.004-07:00

Today the lad and I started to work on a timeline for the history of transportation. We got up to 1620. he was quite surprised at what is considered part of transportation.

We got bogged down looking for pics so decided to do a short cut and just look for pics online, which led to me being reminded about the Butterfly Conservancy homeschool thing this afternoon.... SO....RUSH RUSH RUSH but we got there 3 minutes early. The lad had a hoot. :)

He fell asleep on the way home.

Jenn who ran the program suggested Journey North for more information on the Monarch. Here's the link to the Cambridge Butterfly Conservatory. The lad was quite intrigued by the birds that ran around the butterfly house. He even helped to tag a butterfly. Our Butterfly is NAW 325. We'll be able to look in the spring at Monarch Watch to see if he (yes it's a male) made it all the way to Mexico for the winter. Mind...that all depends if anyone finds him and his tag. :)

Doing more with Transportation

2011-09-14T04:49:00.005-07:00

Car Spelling Song

On the road to Spelling

When teaching it is important to use as many senses as possible. Here is a way to use music to practice spelling words.

"Car, Bus, Van" song (Tune: Jingle Bells)

C-A-R, C-A-R that's how you spell car

B-U-S, B-U-S that's how you spell bus

V-A-N, V-A-N that's how you spell van

Transportation helps us, I hope you understand!

Sing the song several times so they feel successful and can spell the words.

Car Play with Ramps
Help your child set up a ramp and watch the cars go.

1. Which cars go faster?
2. Which cars go further?
3. What happens when you change the angle of the ramp?
4. What happens when you change the surface of the ramp?

I asked questions such as.. if you were going to divide your cars into teams, what teams would they be on? Why? How many do you have that are cars? trucks? how many of blue or orange or ??? We weighed them to see if that would help determine who went the fastest. We guessed how would go the fastest. we experimented with ways to "protect" the boulders.

suggestion by the author: If you take digital pictures you can turn this experience into a book. Have your child help to label the pictures and soon he will be able to read his own book.

Forms of Transportation

we started to make a time line of transportation. I'll use this link as a idea place. :)
We started with walking, and progressed to swimming. :) (yes I know that's not an official mode of transportation, but YOU try convincing a six year old that it's not a valid form of getting around?). :)

We did a thing with links... figuring out solutions to problems using links and clues given. It was interesting how it all turned out.

others in this series
day one airplanes
planning to do airplanes

Blog roll call

2011-09-13T19:52:00.002-07:00

A couple of posts in the realm of homeschooling that I liked.

1. because it is so true of a variety of things in life. This one pertains to homeschooling, but as with anything, the wrong expectations can net you an outcome you didn't anticipate.

Homeschool blindspots.

2. 1+1+1=1 this post just made me smile today.

back to homeschool 2011/2012

Monarchs and drawing

2011-09-13T06:50:00.002-07:00

We have a monarch actively hatching right now! It's just TOO cool. :) Both hatched and have since been released! :) It was very exciting to watch. It's amazing how quickly they go from wrinkled to full wings.

The chrysalis when first made.

they got dark..pretty cool eh?

the wrinkled just out stage

both Monarchs.
This was just fun.
We put them outside so when they were ready to leave they could.
The last one was gone by 6 p.m.

Worked on some work books.

we finished "Thinking Skills"

We did a few pages in Complete Canadian Curriculum 1

we practiced our alphabet again using blue clues flap cards

Read some poems and then got inspired to draw a picture of what one of the poems was about. It was rather fun to talk and draw and think.

Went for a walk. Brought a sock back to a friend, and then stayed for tea. On the walk there we gained a male mosquito and a caterpillar of some sort. :)

Dug some potatoes.

And made decisions about supper. We had roast pork, carrots and pasta.

I can tell the lad is quite a bit better from his earache but he's not all the way back yet. I am looking forward to the day when he is all better.

Starting to school properly this week :)

2011-09-12T08:39:00.005-07:00

This morning we played an alphabet game and we went through, do you recognize this letter? He got all but 5 of the 26 letters of the alphabet. Not sure why he struggles with G, K, W, D, and N. but he does. He struggled with them last year as well.

For the alphabet we used the flashcards we had on had (though he's a bit beyond blue's clues we had them so we used them).

I just took random cards and asked him what they were and if he didn't get them just put them in a separate pile. then I took those eight cards and lay them out and got "OH.. that's "E" and we were left with these five that "I just don't have a clue mommy, I can't remember that one, My brain is all confused mommy." I said "that's okay buddy, just means we get to practice more.". :)

Then I had him put the cards in alphabetic order and he did pretty good with that with having to use our alphabet chart on the back of the door a bit. In time he won't be able to use the "cheat sheet". :) but for now, with a boy still recovering from an ear ache, I'll go with what I got.

We also did three pages in one workbook, and two pages in another one. Mostly we worked on math type sheets.
The complete book of numbers and counting

My heavenly Helper

Kumon, my Book of numbers 1-120

We played battle for 15 minutes. Then the lad gathered up random dishes so they could be washed, I planted some things out in the garden (parsley and radish) and then folded a load of laundry.

Then off to town for the afternoon/evening. The lad enjoyed spending time with gramma and going to gymnastics.

Today's Efforts

2011-09-08T07:42:00.003-07:00

Started reading magic tree house the rain forest. the lad is enjoying this book though he thought we'd start reading a hardy boy book.

Played Farm Sounds. I have a cd with bingo type cards produced by myactivemind, which is a company that seems to no longer be in service. We got it at the dollar store. The lad had fun playing it though we had to have the sound turned up as his ears aren't working the best right now.

did some work in books as well.
kumon counting - so nice to see him better than where we left off in the fall. :)

Jesus heavenly friend - needed a bit of help with the alphabet dot to dot, could say it, but couldn't remember what some of the letters looked like

and a math skills book - did an excellent job on this.

then we played battle until my body said.. GET UP OFF THIS FLOOR! :) But by then it was time for the lad to chill out for a while again. Earaches are NOT fun things to deal with.

the afternoon was taken up with canning applesauce and watching mammoths and the ice age, we also watched Astro Boy - which provoked all sorts of questions about what the future world could possibly look like. :)

We Choose Virtues

2011-09-05T06:18:00.003-07:00

We Choose Virtues is a company that makes a quality product. They focus on providing materials that help parents/teachers teach their children virtues.

The Crafty Classroom is hosting a giveway of their products, and give an extra entry for blogging about it, so here I am. :)

I have to admit to having mixed feelings about a curriculum that teaches virtues.

On one hand I see it as a helpful tool for people to use to teach character to their children.
BUT on the other hand... with good biblical training doesn't one teach these character traits as one lives life?

So it's a mixed bag for me. The helpfulness on the one hand in promoting vs the taking away from the parental responsibility to simply train as one lives life. It seems schoolish to me. As in the public school actually have built curriculums to teach character in the school system because so many parents are working and abdicating some of their responsibilities in this regard.

I don't tend to see homeschooling parents doing this. We're with our children mostly all the time so it's hard for us to let that sort of thing slip.

But on the other hand... it is an aid. And should aids be shunned? or merely carefully examined?

A mixed bag. I haven't made up my mind.

What do you all think?

Concert in GLASS - amazing !

2011-09-05T05:09:00.000-07:00

you have GOT to go listen to this.

It is VERY cool.

TOS has things to help with homeschooling

2011-09-05T04:35:00.004-07:00

From September 1 to September 5, they're offering resources that will help you save time cooking, cleaning, organizing your home, running your home, and teaching your children. Some products are discounted up to 50%! You'll even find labor savers that will get your kids working too!

Relief is at your fingertips. Don't put it off. Order today. These great deals only last until September 5 at 11 p.m. EDT.

They have a variety of planners.
Have you had the chance to look at their newly released 2011-12 Schoolhouse Planners yet? Plan for another great year with The 2011-2012 Schoolhouse Planner, the brand-new 2011-12 Special Needs Schoolhouse Planner, and our 2011-12 Student Schoolhouse Planners for students in kindergarten to high school. Planners are now available on CD or in E-Book format!

Erase the frazzled feel of disorganization with the 2011-12 Schoolhouse Planners and bring order and efficiency to your school year. Packed with relevant articles, clever calendars, useful forms, handy lists and so much more, this planner is the key to meeting your many goals for the 2011-12 school year.

Children from kindergarten to high school are learning the ropes of organizing their own schedules. Choose the Primary, Intermediate or High School Schoolhouse Planner and watch them build their educational adventures with ease.

Don't forget a Mom's best friend, The 2011-12 Schoolhouse Planner, packed full of forms, lists, and resources to organize every aspect of your school and home!

Learn more about the NEW planners by The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine here.

did you know that if you subscribe to the magazine that you get free access to the teachers toolbox? that's means every month you get access to new menu plans, printable activities, daily activity ideas and more?

Currently TOS is having a warehouse wipeout sale

While supplies last You can snag a box filled with these goodies from their overflowing shelves . . .

SEVEN different TOS back issues ($69.30 value)
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They even have a cheapy section! :) Everybody loves a good deal! They have almost 300 of them waiting for your readers to explore and possibly purchase.

if you click on the banner below you will be linked to an interactive catalogue.

Monarch into Chrysallis

2011-09-01T10:38:00.002-07:00

Check out this youtube video.

Both monarchs that we have are going exploring. The one is currently hanging, the other is looking for a place to be safe. We're having to keep a close eye on that one.

Hopefully in seven to 10 days we'll have a couple of butterflies to watch! :)

our previous attempts at Monarchs failed, so we're thrilled that this one appears to be working.

actually doing day one airplanes

2011-09-01T07:00:00.007-07:00

Working from our plans this is how our day went.

NOTE: I had a lad with bad tonsils, who can't hold down food today.

We started out watching the five part series of the wright brothers on YouTube. I chose the animated version as it had short snippets that we could stop and talk about what we learned before watching the next in the series.
here is part two

We learned about their main rival in Alberto Santos-Dumont.

Santos-Dumont he was a rival to the wright brothers to see who would be the first to build an airplane. :) The lad was quite fascinated by him and asked tons of questions so we researched him for a while. (a bit of a rabbit trail that). :)

we read through the beginning of flight.
the lad liked this one:
and this one caused lots of questions to be asked as it looks quite different than the others we saw
we spent a great deal of time on the Canadian Wings site. Rather fascinating to watch the changes in how aircraft developed. and the wright brothers museum was quite interesting as well. I read through the encyclopedia on the wright brothers but the lad was getting wiggly at this point. So we closed our computer time by learning all the different TYPES of aircraft and doing our copy work. I am hoping later to find some pictures of different aircraft and making a small lapbook book with the lad.

Question: is there such a thing as a helicopter that is amphibian?
Does anyone know the answer to this question?

Thanks to the gals on facebook I have an answer to that question! YES! they make amphibous helicopters. Here's the wiki link.

We did our airplane sorting into
Fast planes, medium planes, helicopters and mommy's planes.
the fast planes are JET engines, the medium planes use propellors, and the helicopters are medium planes too but they are different because they are helicopters. :)

he also observed other ways that they are the same and different, good to see him learning and thinking.

and then we made a couple of planes and had a LOT of fun playing battle. :)

Carnival of homeschooling is posted

2011-08-31T20:27:00.000-07:00

it's over at No fighting, no biting this week.

Transportation - Airplanes

2011-08-31T18:06:00.004-07:00

The lad and I will be starting to learn about transportation tomorrow. It will be our "September theme". We won't be looking only at transportation as we will take side trips into things that interest us. But tomorrow.. PLANES!

1. we'll be building a sleath bomber and a camouflage airplane that we got at The Basics Shop.

2. We'll be watching the "wright brothers on youtube".

3. We'll be learning about the different types of modern aircraft.
see this site Soaring the Skies and Types of Airplanes and how many types are there? DIY. and probably to me the most helpful site.Types of Airplanes.

Airplanes vary greatly in the size, structure, engines, and purpose.
Airship/Balloon, Glider/Sailplane, Powered airplanes, Helicopter/Rotorcraft, Autogyro/Gyroplane, Fixed Wing Bi-planes, Fixed Wing Monoplanes

I used this site to make a copywork sheet. I used these words: Land planes, Seaplanes, Amphibians, Vertical Takeoff and Landing, Short Takeoff and Landing and Space Shuttle. I wasn't sure if I should do a trace and write, or a copy and write...so I printed off one of each and it's all good. :)

What else will we do?
4. I hope to have him do some counting.
How many planes can you find in your hot wheels collection?
5. Then have him do some sorting of them and explain why he sorted them the way he did.

6. We'll play battle because one can't build planes that can be used for battle without actually having a battle! :)

and that will be it for a first day of homeschool. Oh... we'll also do our normal.. we're back in school so let's go for a walk about. And if I can figure out how to build a rocket into the mix we'll do that do, Supercharged Science has one that looks to be fun to do.

Toads

2011-08-29T20:07:00.009-07:00

Toads are the subject of fascination for a boy child lately.

We went to the Pinery yesterday for lunch and a bit of a walk about. At lunch we sat near a pit in the ground. It had several young toads in it. the lad caught six in total. one escaped due to my ineptitude. Two were released for being too big.

The remaining three were put into a larger bottle and carried with us on our walk.

Somehow on out trip home the bottle got on a tilt or lay flat and two of the three escaped. We recaptured one of them.

Those two discovered the "joys" of a new home. :)

hard at work setting things up

The end result.

One relatively content toad.

Tonight they were joined by one much bigger toad captured on a "toad" walk with gramma. Tomorrow morning the lad will totally reorganize the aquarium, but as long the toads are healthy it's all good. Boys are meant to play with small critters aren't they?

These tears I hate: Tears when a boy learns something in a very hard way.

Since these toads are tiny I put a little apple cider vinegar in a container to attract fruit flies. The flies came, the little toads were happy. The lad thought GREAT! I'll dip the toad in the vinegar to help bring flies right to the toad. We then all learned that toads plus apple cider vinegar equals a very quickly dead toad (so dead his tongue came out). Many tears from my soft-hearted son. Much sadness from his mommy at this hard lesson to learn...hard for all. We don't want to kill the toads...we want to learn from them and see what works to keep them healthy and happy.

Organization of my school year

2011-08-28T04:29:00.006-07:00

the carnival of homeschooling has a theme for this week of

all about logistics: the organizing of your day, week, and year in terms of homeschooling, extracurricular activities, and everything else that you fit into your life.

The basic plan that I use with homeschooling is to so as much of it for free as I can. So we do a much on the computer as we can, or using books that I've picked up from here and there, as well as quite a bit of oral work. I assume that over time I'll to do more paperwork, but for now he's six and if I can ask him in his head what 1 + 6 is and get seven for a verbal answer it's all good. We'll be going to the library more often this year I hope, like every other week or so. I plan to use extensively a variety of links that I've listed over here as well as utilizing the work of this site.

So for the past two weeks I've been working on organizing my schooling. I only have one student so that makes it easier for me.

Monday is hubby's day off so we don't do a whole lot that day. In the mornings before we leave we'll be doing some math and then in the evening he has gymnastics.

For the rest of the week there will be some things that we do daily.
like Read for 1/2 hour, do chores, and go out for at least 1/2 hour of exercise.

Tuesday will be our science day also with some book work.

Wednesday we'll do some more math but our focus will be on Art.

Thursday we'll work on unit studies that we get from Amanda Bennett (we do reviewing for them). And it will also be our Field Trip day.

Friday we'll work on whatever we want to do as well as look at geography, history of the various topics we'll be using as a base for study.

I LOVE doing things around a base of study.
September: Transportation
October: Continents of the World
November: Canada
December: Christmas, extra Science
January: Snow, winter
February: Character Studies
March: Pioneers
April: Construction
May: Insects
June: Rocks, Archaelogy etc

Within all of this we'll do history, English, spelling, memory work, Geography and what not.

Now like anything the best laid plans can be lead astray or changed, but.. we'll work on things and see how it goes.

question of the day: how long do yellow jacket's live?

2011-08-25T10:27:00.003-07:00

We have a yellow jacket living in our house. He buzzed us while doing the dishes.
He got away.

My lad who is somewhat concerned about getting stung asked "how long do yellow jacket's live?" I said.. I have no clue, shall we look it up?

We learned that MOST of them only live for the summer BUT the queen hibernates over the winter and she is the one who chooses where the next years colony will live.

Source: backyard Brigade and other internet sources that confirmed what Backyard said. :)

Finally... we know what it is :)

2011-08-25T06:02:00.002-07:00

My thanks to homeschool freebie of the day for linking to this site! we were finally able to identify the caterpillars that keep dying on us!

unlike the sycamore and hickory tussock moths, this one is the pale tussock moth. and these guys eat oak, birch, lime and hop leaves.

Other sites they linked to today were BugGuide and What's that Bug.

Carnival of homeschooling is posted

2011-08-24T18:00:00.001-07:00

you can find it here.

there are some good reads over there. :)

Catapult and Paper Airplanes

2011-08-23T14:36:00.004-07:00

Today on Supercharged Science we learned about catapults. Learning about making a fulcrum. We had fun putting a ping pong ball into the air. :)

We wanted to experiment with making different types of catapults and changing the basic style, but we found that pretty much a no go since we ran out of elastics.

We also made paper airplanes.

We've made paper airplanes before...but this time they actually WORKED! It was a hoot. We had fun seeing if we could crash them into our van and into each other. We enjoyed watching the wind lift them. We had fun when they would crash into our flowers and get stuck.

We also spent a great deal of time playing with Lego. Overall a good day.

question of the day: how many birds can't fly?

2011-08-20T10:15:00.003-07:00

Why do you ask?
http://www2.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Blu, in the video Rio, says that there are 40 birds that can't fly.

I looked it up and found the there are NINE birds that can't fly.
Being challenged by my son, I looked into this further and discovered the Blu is sorta correct. :) Answers.com gives us this.

Answer: NOTE: 6 are extinct. removing those ones, I counted 35 but two of them are NEARLY flightless. So there you have the question of the day answered.

Ratites

Ostrich
Emu
Cassowaries
Kiwis
Rheas

Podicipediformes (Grebes)
Junin Flightless Grebe
Titicaca Flightless Grebe

Pelicaniformes (Pelicans, Cormorants, et al)
Flightless Cormorant

Sphenisciformes (Penguins)
Penguins

Anseriformes (Waterfowl)
Magellanic Flightless Steamer Duck
Falkland Flightless Steamer Duck
White-headed Flightless Steamer Duck
Auckland Island Teal
Campbell Island Teal

Gruiformes (Cranes, Rails)
Woodford's Rail (probably flightless)
Weka
New Caledonian Rail
Lord Howe Woodhen
Calayan Rail
New Britain Rail
Guam Rail
Roviana Rail ("flightless, or nearly so" [Taylor 1998])
Snoring Rail
Inaccessible Island Rail
Henderson Island Crake
Invisible Rail
New Guinea Flightless Rail
Takahe
Samoan Wood Rail
Makira Wood Rail
Gough Island Moorhen
Kagu
Tasmanian Native-hen

Psittaciformes (Parrots)
Kakapo
Broad-billed Parrot (extinct)

Columbiformes (Pigeons, Doves)
Dodo (extinct)
Rodrigues Solitaire (extinct)
Viti Levu Giant Pigeon (extinct)

Caprimulgiformes (Nightjars)
New Zealand Owlet-nightjar (extinct)

Passeriformes (Perching Birds)
Stephens Island Wren (extinct)

Galliformes (Wildfowl)
Silkie
Domestic turkey

Woot Woot! he was independent!

2011-08-17T16:51:00.002-07:00

My six year was DYING to do an experiment.

I had no protracted time to help him.

I found the site the experiment was on and said here it is.

He did it!

He was VERY happy to have learned how to turn a motor on. And then he went on to learn how to make a dimmer switch. :)

Pretty cool huh? :)

Electricity

2011-08-16T19:33:00.004-07:00

We joined the E-science camp from Supercharged Science for the summer.

We haven't done a whole lot with it since it takes a bit of time. BUT this week and next we plan to do some things with it. make it worth our while.

We've gotten good ideas for a number of experiments though and I need to find the time to jot down the information for the ones we want to do before our time runs out!

anyways, today we did Electricity. We did a number of experiments using two batteries, alligator clips, a buzzer, led lights and what not. I tried to make a propellor for the small motor we have but that didn't work out so well.

The lad had a HOOT.
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to him teach his dad some of the things he learned today. They both seemed to enjoy their time together. I really wish I had the foresight to get my camera out. But it was fun listening to him teach, and watching his excitement.

Aurora does these videos that go step by step what the children are to do in each experiment. She encourages them to be safe. And she encourages them to have fun while learning what they need to learn. and it's OKAY to experiment and not have it all work out. :)

He learned to complete a circuit, to test for conductivity (one test was very complicated with a transformer), to make a buzzer work, to learn about open switches and what not. Lots of to learn, very sequential learning.

Is he ready 'mentally' for some of what he does? ah...no. but is he experimenting? yes. Is he learning the language? Yes. Is he learning to be safe and to follow instructions? definitely. He is learning the science and experimentation is a good thing? for sure! :)

Octopus camouflage

2011-08-16T07:55:00.001-07:00

this is simply too cool.

The lad's end comment "so camoflage is just fooling what's looking at you?"

caterpillars

2011-08-15T09:52:00.003-07:00

The lad has a thing for caterpillars lately. :)

we've found three SYCAMORE TUSSOCK MOTH. They died on us. We need to figure out what they eat so they don't die next time.

they apparently eat the leaves of sycamore trees. interesting. But we put leaves in with them from where we found them. I guess I need to learn how to identify a sycamore tree. :)

we've also had these for a short time. HICKORY TUSSOCK MOTH. They escaped though. :)

Found the caterpillars at this site.

Monarch butterflies

2011-08-11T04:04:00.003-07:00

this is Chris.

he is a monarch butterfly.

we found his egg while camping.

He seems like a nice 'lad' (not that I know if he is a lad or not, but the lad we have is enjoying watching him grow).

We've successfully hatched out into adult stage a white Moth in the past, so we're hoping to be successful with Chris the monarch as well.

This site is helpful in teaching more about monarchs.

We're finding it an interesting experience. We lost one monarch egg to ants, we lost another when we changed out the leaves (they didn't transition well), so we're hopeful that this time will be more successful. Time will indeed tell.

That lad is VERY much into capturing caterpillars lately and seeing if we can get them to change into moths and butterflies lately.

His latest capture was a fuzzy red caterpillar that poops/pees and runs VERY fast when you attempt to catch him. It's was quite the achievement for the lad to catch him. We've never had another caterpillar do that so it was quite the learning experience.

Some caterpillars we've learned don't handle capture well so we don't catch them. Some will just up and die. Others within a day or two will pupate. Others just wander and seem to do well in captivity. It's been educational to say the least.

Free Magazine

2011-07-29T03:41:00.002-07:00

I have great news! You are invited to take a sneak peek at the FULL LENGTH VERSION of our Summer digital issue. This is our most recent edition valued at $5.95–this is The Old Schoolhouse's FREE gift to you. This issue has just been mailed hot off the press to our print subscribers. They haven’t even seen this fresh and exciting issue yet!

If you’ve never seen The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, this is your chance to read it for free.

Totally free, go check it out. :)

While you are there, don't forget to check out their schoolhouse planners. Get your year off to a good start! :) The 2011-12 Schoolhouse Planner and our 2011-12 Student Schoolhouse Planners are for students in kindergarten to high school. Planners are available on CD or in E-Book format!

There is also a brand new 2011-12 Special Needs Schoolhouse Planner. So if it suits your needs, look into it, see if it can be an aid your homeschool organization. :)

Library books - july 2011

2011-07-03T17:40:00.002-07:00

our library books are due back tomorrow so I thought I'd comment on what we took out.

non-fiction
Your body's heroes and Villains by Norbert Landa

this book was MUCH too complicated for a five year old lad. The pictures inspired some good questions, and led to me reading and summarizing for him. But not quite what I had hoped for. :(

The Best book of bikes - amy pinchuk

Excellent overview of biking. Good illustrations, easily summarized or read text. worked well for the lad.

Norwegian Forest Cats - nancy furstinger

CATS! what more could a boy child want! lots of pictures, lots of "nice cat mommy, I like that one!"

Near Myths Dug Up and Dusted off - robert kraus

I have to admit.. I wasn't sure what to think of this book. Was it fiction? Was it fact? I don't know my mythology well enough. the lad was ambivalent was about the kindest thing I could say. It was done poetry style which would appeal to some, but didn't strike a cord with us.

Questions and Answers about Seashore Animals - michael chinery

the lad thoroughly enjoyed this book. Looked through it quite a few times. learned lots, asked questions, pointed out what he knew and volunteered information to his dad. :) nice to have that with a book.

Hummingbirds - peter murray

I liked this book, and it had some facts that intrigued the boy. Granted it didn't really have a fair shake as we read it when the lad was unwell and very very tired.

Fiction

Winston the book wolf - marni mcgee and ian beck

this book quickly became a favourite despite not having a cat in it. I liked the play on a fairy tale, the lad just liked the story about the wolf learning to read and fooling the librarians. :)

Kindergarten Kids - Stephanie Calmerson

This book was fun and interactive. The lad often picked it out as a book of choice. It was just a pleasure to read and have the give and take with a boy child and book.

Gracie Goat's Big Bike Race - Erin mirabella

Good book. Graphics worked well with the story line. just a nice book to read. the only quarrel I have with it is that in the fact section of the book it referred to something in the story line that just wasn't there. But overall an excellent book. the lad enjoyed this book and asked tons of questions while reading it.

The Song of Francis and the Animals - Pat mora woodcuts

I did NOT like this book, but the lad did. Unusual in that. Usually we dislike the same books, but this one he liked. So not sure what to say about it. He liked it and learned abit about Francis of Assissi.

Tacky and the Winter Games - Helen lester

The lad enjoyed this book, I loved reading it. It was fun to follow the antics of Tacky. He even inspired stories by the lad in Bunny Town. It was fun to listen to what he came up with. Just a nice, solid story for a lad. Full of foolishness, and yet coming through in the end. :)

Oww! michael rosen and jonathan langley

A fun read. It was made more difficult for me in that the lad (who loves the game angry birds) has this thing about saying the word PIG. it has to spelled out P I G otherwise the birds set off bombs. So I often would change how the story was written a bit just to avoid spelling P I G or much worse...saying PIG. But a good story, an enjoyable story with animals working together and an unexpected help in the end of it all. This also got added into the bunny town stories of the lad.

Norma Snows - paula metcalf

this story grew on me and the boy. First time we read it we though.. eh... nothing special. But then we read it again, and then again, and then again...until "NORMA SNOWS mommy! Let's read NORMA"! and so we read Norma.

Puddles - jonathan London

Just a fun read for a boy who TOTALLY understood this book and the fun of puddles after a rain fall. :) Excellent graphics which inspired conversation.

Whatever you do, Don't go near that Canoe! = julie lawson

for whatever reason it took us a little bit of time to figure out this book and the characters in it. but once we did so, it became a good read. It made us wonder about what would or could happen next.......

The Foxwood Regatta - cynthia and Brian paterson

and so we entered the boat building phase of our lives. Boats, boats and more boats. We built them, we sunk them (just one), we want to have a play date of boat building. This book thoroughly captured the boat building imagination of one five year old boy.

No Room for Napoleon - Adria Meserve

not a bad book at all to read. Why was he so bossy? Why wouldn't he let them play? environmental themes, sharing, caring, learning are all themes in this book. It was a good read. ...but what about that cat?

Oh Tucker! - steven kroll

Oh I hated this book. Let me rephrase that.. I DISLIKED STRONGLY the dog and the family in this book and I made a point of saying this is NOT how a dog should behave! this is a BAD dog and a family that doesn't know how to train a dog. Dogs should NOT behave this badly. That said.. the lad certainly enjoyed reading a certain word over and over and over again in this book. So.. the reading part I liked. The rest well... I hated Tucker. he was a BAD dog.

Put me in a Book - Robert munsch

good read, good questions, good book. Just a fun robert munsch book.

today... air pressure...

2011-07-02T18:33:00.005-07:00

Today we learned a bit about air pressure.

taken from this book:
hands on earth science activities for k-6 by marvin tolman

we took some straws.

we took a potato.
one straw, one potato

we learned what happens when you combine the two and various ways of holding them.

IF you put your thumb over the end of the straw... it works like a spear!

this of course led to further experimentation with jack o lantern making supplies and the leftover potato......

we also watched a rocket video from Supercharged Science. We are part of their summer e-camp. It was "really cool mommy". Supercharged science does a really good job at even helping kindergarten/grade 1 students understand higher science as well. All that fire made a super impression on the lad. These things helped a lad keep occupied on a day he needed quieter things to amuse himself due a headachy mommy and a sick tummy on a lad.

4th of July Montessori Unit Study

2011-06-27T20:18:00.001-07:00

4th of July
Montessori Unit Studyhttp://www2.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

I don't have time to look through this all today. So saving here to check it out later.

Tomarus Relictus

2011-06-20T05:55:00.001-07:00

a while back we picked up a garden bugs of Ontario book.

I've learned over time it's not exhaustive as we find LOTS Of bugs in the garden that aren't in the book.

The lad caught this bug this morning and through searching the computer we were able to identify it. :)

he's gotten curious about bugs since Renee's children are into bugs and he's discovering they are rather cool. :)

coin soccer

2011-06-07T07:10:00.002-07:00

coin soccer

i think making this with the lad next year might be a good idea. :)

Week update

2011-06-02T20:08:00.004-07:00

Tuesday we tried to pick up our new car. That didn't work so we spent some time with oma and papa, building with a new to the lad toy, having lunch and just spending family time. It was a good time all-round. :)

Wednesday and Thursday this week we've spent a good portion of our days outside. did some gardening, went for a nature walk at Wildwood conservation area. I have tons of pics but its late so I can add those another day. The lad had a hoot and even learned a thing or two. :) We did this walk as part of our time with HOPE. Took about two hours and was just a good learning and spending time with each other time. Played at the park for 10 minutes afterwards.

Thursday (that was today!) we um... what did we do.. the lad played out his time at Mad Science last week. Had a hoot with some bunnies...taught one that screaming when caught was just silliness... Dusty is a very easily started bunny and certainly likes to tell the world about it. played soccer this afternoon...mommy was the coach this week so that was different. and then when we got home to pulled rhubarb, played for a while, put bunnies back in cages. Came inside had snack and went to bed. (at least the lad did). Mommy was tired so just kept herself busy tonight.

Anyways, goodnight all!

Sunny Seashells - Review

2011-05-30T03:37:00.004-07:00

I have to admit, life got busy over these past two weeks so working on this unit study was a bit problematic for us. So... what we did was look it over and talk about it. The lad was curious so we'll be actually studying it over the next two weeks much better. Sunny Seashells is a downloadNGo unit from Amanda Bennett Unit Studies.

At our local beach we cannot find a variety of seashells, what we find are clam shells and zebra mussels. Granted, finding zebra mussels gives us a chance to tell the lad about how introducing animals to environments where they don't belong is actually quite dangerous.

I actually have a fair number of shells to show him, and count with him, with because not only did I go to Haiti on a mission trip when I was a teen (and therefore bought some and brought them home with me), I also had someone give me a whole variety of them. They've been an excellent resource for counting, sorting, tactile exploration and what not. Shells are indeed interesting.

Amanda Bennett sets up her unit studies in such a way that they are incredibly easy to use. We often copy and paste into a word processing program to cut down on paper use, but they can simply be printed off as is. They come as a ready to use PDF file. Loaded with links to various on-line resources and if you contact them about a link not working they fix it very quickly.
Here's what you learn with this unit study.

Day 1: Seashells--What Are They?
Day 2: Seashells and History
Day 3: Types of Seashells
Day 4: The Science of Seashells
Day 5: Seashell Party!

History, geography, science and more, all packed into one study.

(I was sent a complimentary copy in exchange for my honest opinion as part of the review team).

Science and the library

2011-05-24T08:20:00.004-07:00

in preparation for a science class on Thursday we did some sensory experiments this morning.

first I hid a bunch of things in socks. The lad had to feel and guess through the sock at first. he got about half of them correct. And the remainder he had to feel without looking in the sock to see the object might be. He got two more correct..by listening and thinking in his head about what they might be. The rest he guessed and was surprised by.

Then we moved into the kitchen where he had to look, smell, feel and then taste to determine what was what. I paired items such as salt and sugar, sprinkles and cane sugar, protein powder and flour, cinnamon sugar and cocoa...and something brand new to him...chia seeds. He found it difficult to wear a blind fold as he just wanted to know NOW what he was getting into, but he learned how sometimes you have to use more than one sense to figure out what something is. :)

we then did some experiments with air out of a new science book we have. The lad had a hoot. :) That lad loves to build and experiment. We did experiments 1-3. water, balloons and air...what more could a five year old ask for?

our new science book:
hands on earth science activities for k-6 by marvin tolman

Going to the library this afternoon as my rabbit person hasn't called yet. Will forward the phone in case she does. We should be able to walk home in the time it takes for her to call coming from London. (that's if she calls of course).

Oh... discovered a cousin of mine is an "unschooler". She writes a blog called Jazzy Mama. have to admit, I don't quite get being an unschooler, but I sorta do. We think a bit differently but that's okay. I can't quite wrap my head around COMPLETELY being an unschooler ...but some of the concepts such as following your children's passions in learning makes sense to me. But to not deliberately teach your children something... just doesn't seem quite right somehow.. but I may be misconstruing what' unschooling' is really all about. :)

oh, as some folks know... I do review for Amanda Bennett Unit Studies...their download N Go units. They are having a summer fun promotion right now.

books we are returning to the library today are:

The lad enjoyed going through each of these non-fiction books.

Castles by RJ Unstead.

From Sand to Glass by Shannon Zemlicka

Animals in Dangerous Places by Clare Oliver

Sphynx Cats by Nancy Furstinger

Let's look at Flying Machines published by Lorenz Books

Then we have these fiction books

The boy who loved bananas by george elliot
this was just sheer fun to read and inspired lots of bunny town stories.

Stella Louella's Runaway Book by Lisa Campbell Ernst
A busy book with lots of pictures, with the query...will she catch up to it??

Bagels from Benny by Aubrey Davis
The lad's response "There's pretzel's in this book! They are yummy!"
My response: I enjoyed this book, taught a few things, caused questions to be asked.

My Think-a-ma-Jink by Dave Whamond
LOVED LOVED this book the lad did. it's a blue spruce book. Well written and fun.

And here's to you by david elliot
Surprisingly, the boy liked this book. He'd growl at the odd page here and there that he didn't like, but overall he liked it and started "reading" it with me.

The Imaginary Garden by Andrew larsen
Enjoyed by both mom and son. Inspires our desire to do it ourselves.

Second Best by jane eagland
Enjoyed this book enough that he wants to have his own show and tell animal day.

The magic toolbox by Mie Araki
A good read, with frustration turning to satisfaction.

The Old Red Tractor by Andreas Dierssen
the lad says "I liked it".
It's a good book, well worth reading.

One more acorn by Don Freeman
The earl book mommy! the earl book! I want to read it!

Today... a good day

2011-05-18T18:00:00.003-07:00

My mom needed a day away so I went up with the lad to watch over my dad. He's not good left alone for long periods of time since his walking isn't very good, neither is his memory. So.. we did our homeschooling there today.

First we played Skipbo. Dad played too. He won. The lad got a good chance to count his numbers and to remember what they looked like. And even got to finish a hand or two. :)

Then we had fun playing dominos. Not so much playing the game, but constructing buildings to keep the "angry birds" safe from the not nice birds who would knock on the door and pretend to be good birds. :)

We had a hot meal for lunch. Dad peeled the potatoes. :)

After lunch we did some book work. I'll have to add the books we did later. :)
and the lad made up a game for his stuffie rabbit to do involving memory work from Gilligan's island, his newly favouritiest show. :) The lad had lots of opportunities to exercise a servant's heart today and he did so willingly which pleased this mother's heart. :)

Stopped at a gardening centre on the way home and picked up some flowers. The lad really wanted to plant them and was disappointed to learn that we need to wait a couple days before planting them as they need to harden off a bit first. So we planted some other plants instead. He helped cut up potatoes and plant some tomatoes. He even ran over the potato bed to tampen them down for good growing. He'd helped me last week with planting some pea seeds and is disappointed they aren't coming up yet.

He had a great deal of fun playing with Blossom (a young rabbit who lives with a guinea pig in an outdoor cage). Sam (the guinea pig) can be a bit of a spaz so the lad never succeeded in catching him. BUT the other guinea pigs are in a much bigger cage and he had a hoot rounding them up and making them sit in their hidey-holes. Since no harm was done, I called it good exercise for all concerned...plus the lad is gentle in his handling of them. But encouraging critters to run and play hide and seek is a favourite pass-time.

then in for supper and some Gilligan's Island watching and off to bed. Tonight our bed-time reader took us into the world of Heidi which intrigued the lad NOT AT ALL. He was much more interested in the one-room schoolhouse story than in anything else...though Jesus feeding 5000 people using only five bread and two fish... that elicted a "wow mommy, that's a lot of people with just my supper, how did he do it?"

All in all a good homeschool day. :)

Home School Enrichment Magazine

2011-05-17T20:20:00.001-07:00

home school enrichment magazine.

didn't have a chance to read it today. :)