Art work and a story

Justin's story behind this painting.

two bunnies are running and they are going over the speed limit.
and the police are going over the speed limit too.
Do you know why?

Because there are bad space aliens coming after them from Mars and Jupiter. From Every planet except from earth.

The rock is in front of the sun turning it black.

There are guns shooting through the air at the bunnies.
The bus is trying to get past the bunnies and their car.
The bullets are going in every direction..even after the car!

THEN>>>> do you know how many bullets the alien has in his space gun? A trillion million of them. And he is going to keep shooting them.

the thing that shoots the bullets controls itself. And the space alien can't stop it until it runs all out of bullets.

There is just one space alien but he has different coloured bullets because sometimes he visits planets and takes stuff off their planets to make his bullets. So some are red and yellow and blue ones.. and they all control themselves. One side shoots yellow and red, and the other side shoots ALL blue. AND he's even now shooting some bullets toward the sun!!!!

and the driver of the bus is one of the angry birds and he's talking "oh oh...the sun's going to burn out one of these days". And he's going over the speed limit because he doesn't want to shot by the bad alien.

Off the picture are some bunnies who have landed their rocket and their rocket is on a meteorite and they forgot their coordinates back to earth. The astronaut(who is the space alien) wants the meteorite to go boom because he wants the bunnies to fall back to earth and fall on a building with a flame thingey on it so that he can take over the world.

--- can you catch glimpses of things that have been studied or watched lately? :) We've studied the solar system, watched cats and dogs the movie, played angry birds, Been studying traffic signs and learning about speed limits, ... isn't it fascinating to listen to how it all plays out in a little boys head? :)

____________-
we did some work out of backyard discoveries.

we spent some time at Head of the Class.

and we did some finger painting.... see the story and picture above, the rest of the pictures we did are below.

justin's sea.

my butterfly

More fun and learning was done with the pizza program. he makes pizzas that he thinks bunnies will like, mice will like and that just maybe cats will like. He thinks and tries hard and then has a pizza party with everyone (all his stuffies). he's learned now how to make pictures using pizza toppings. He's doing some really good work. I should scan one in for you all to see. :)

We did some learning here as well. :)

At supper we had a hoot learning some artistic stuff. We went through a couple library books and got out his new art set and had some fun drawing pictures and making stories. It was a good way to spend time together over food. :)

F.O.O.D

Israel and having fun tracing shapes

Today for breakfast we read through two books we got out on Israel.

A is for Abraham by Richard Michelson.

In this book we learned about the Sh'ma that Jewish children learn. We decided that learning it would not be a bad thing. So I made a copywork sheet of it for the lad to copy and we'll be learning it over the next week.

We also read "Count your way through Israel" by Jim Haskins.

the lad asked lots of questions with this book and did some counting.
he was quite intrigued by the fact that the people of Israel have made the desert productive
AND they brought the leopard/jaguar back!

The basis of our study will be the DownloadNGo unit study created by Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett. It is called Expedition Israel.

While I prepared the study my son had fun tracing out shapes from some templates that I recently picked up from the dollar store. Just another way to increase his awareness of different ways that people can be artists. :) Fun and learning.

we enjoyed this site when studying Israel.

We had fun trying to see if we could lift up a Canaan dog. The result : yes...but it would be really really hard if you are a five year old boy weighing in a 52 lbs (and only a small dog at that). :)

We read a couple more books during lunch about Israel.

Israel by Kristin Thoennes

This was a very informative book.
Lots of pictures and text that fit well with it.

Cooking the Israeli Way

This book just intrigues us as to what to make for our Israeli dinner next week.
Though when shown a picture of a felafal the lad went "ew". :)
So perhaps we won't make that. :)

After lunch it was time to clean house, play the keyboard (working on learning 'rejoice rejoice'), and play computer games. Today it was doing a memory game, a cat discovery game and building a pizza. When that was done we went for a walk on this lovely sunny day.

Appreciated this post

I'm not going to waste my time...

This blogger has a good response or two, to those who would question our ability to homeschool our children. :) Thought others might appreciate it as well.

Curriculum ideas

the question at heart of the home is this

After hours and hours of research, consultation, lists and that big ol’ investment… what did you finally decide for your curriculum? Please share your choices – by age (or grade) if possible.

Well, being in our first year of homeschooling, my methodology at this point is really varied.

I use books that I've picked up here and there along the way... copywork, math, etc. We go to the library, we do unit studies as I'm on a review team, go on field trips, play a lot :) .. what can I say...he's five. We use a variety of resources on-line, with one of our current favourite places being teachers pay teachers.

and I suppose that's all I've got to say right now. :)

Library books

Jeffrey and Sloth by Kari-Lynn Winters and Ben Hodson

Oh my, this is just a fun book to read.. for mother and child. :)
Spurs all kinds of questions. Great to use to help a child think and imagine.
What could Jeffrey ask next of the sloth? :)

Tale of a Tadpole by barbara ann porte

A nice read of a little girl watching a tadpole grow up.

Dory Story by Jerry Pallota

This book has a surprise ending that made us both laugh! Good story as well of the web of life.

Swim the silver sea, joshie Otter by Nancy White Carlstrom

"why's he called Joshie Mommy?"
"Why didn't his mommy want to play?"
"why didn't he listen to his mommy?"
These were questions I was asked while reading this book. It was a great cause of wonderment.

The Blizzard by Betty Ren Wright

a good story of a boy with a birthday in the winter and his disappointment at his cousins not being able to help celebrate...because of "The Blizzard". My lad asked tons of questions, and was happy for the boy at the end of the story.

Rabbit by Alison Catley

the value of this book to me was in helping my son understand that more than one person can have a stuffy named Rabbit...and they don't all have to look the same. He was quite amazed by this fact. :)

Rabbit's Good News by Ruth Lercher Bornstein

We've had this book about before. it's just a delightful spring time book. :)

Bicycle Race by Donald Crews

DID NOT like this book. It earned a very hearty frown from a five year old lad.

Five Little Monkeys go Shoppings by Eileen Christelow

What a fun read and a smile inducer. "mommy, those monkeys don't listen!"

Waters by Edith Newlin Chase

This book inspires me to want to do a unit study on it, and perhaps I might. Filled with Canadiana trivia/artwork.

How Groundhog's Garden Grew by Lynne Cherry

This book was okay, not great, but a decent read. Groundhog learned to not only grow a garden, but how to share. Always a good thing that. NOT an oft requested book.

I'll be Home soon, snoopy by Charles Schultz

My enjoyment of Charlie brown is NOT shared by a five year old lad. :(

Lucy Comes to Stay by Rosemary Wells

Wells has again written a book to be enjoyed and read well. Reads well outloud, causes questions to be asked. A good book.

Bob the builder, snowed under. by somebody I'm sure..

It's a typical bob the builder book. Something to be built, something to be learned. The lad was very ho-hum with this book.

WAIT!! I want to tell you a story by Tom Williams.

He liked it but... the ending was somewhat less than what the boy wanted it to be. You'll have to read why a cat-loving boy wouldn't appreciate the ending. It even made my hubby chuckle. :)

The Three Swinging Pigs by Vicky Rubin.

If you KNOW the story of the three little pigs you might appreciate this book. We've read a couple books that twist the tale a bit, or at least tell it from a different perspective. This one was an OFT repeated tale.

Shaun the Sheep - Shaun the Farmer and Can't stand the heat.

It's the shaun the sheep videos in book form. Still enjoyed immensely by one five year old boy. He asked lots of questions which he didn't ask in the videos.

Click, clack, moo...and more. by Doreen Cronin et al

Oh..you have to just go get the book and read it. Laugh about what happens. See the farmer's frustration and just enjoy a children's book. really...go get it and just have fun with it. :)

Jack the bear by Christina Leist.

i have to admit, when I first read this book I thought 'eh.. don't need to read this again'. BUT... it grew on me. The lad liked it as well. Probably because the fox was so perplexed by Jack the Bear.

The Great Pig Escape and The Great Pig Search both books by Eileen Christelow.

Boy oh boy were these books read over and over and over again. Those silly pigs. Both were fun reads, both made a boy ask questions, both had decent illustrations, and were just fun to read. They could be made educational should one so desire...but sometimes fun books just need to be read. :)

Up in the air...with the greatest of ease..I saw a Kite

Kite Capers was our main unit study of the past two weeks, day one and Days 2 and 4. Kite Capers has been developed by Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett. Kite Capers captured my son's imagination. To learn more about Kite Capers click here to view more details. It is an excellent study.


One of the fun moments I have as a homeschooling mom is seeing how my son puts to use the information that he learns. Part of the history aspect of kite capers was learning what one of the first uses of kites was. A man name Han Hsing (or something like that..just going from memory here) was attacking a city and he wanted to know how far to dig a tunnel. So we drew pictures of him flying his kite over the city. We acted out the digging of the tunnel and just had a blast learning about this part of kite history. Then he went to my mom and dad's for a couple of days. When we got there the VERY FIRST thing he did was set up a city and then had an enemy attack that city using a kite.

"How big a tunnel does he have to dig buddy?" I asked
The very excited response was "10 miles mommy! He has to dig 10 miles!"

I LOVE seeing him excited. I LOVE knowing what he remembers.

It's winter where we live so flying a kite isn't on our immediate agenda but we stopped at a store to see what treat/toy the lad could buy with his rabbit money and we spotted a couple kits (packed together, inexpensive) and I heard "MOMMY!!! Diamond kites!" So well...of COURSE we had to get them. So now Daddy has a big kite to fly (from last year) and I have a delta and the lad has a diamond kite. I think we'll have fun this year. :)

Each DownloadN'Go unit is a complete unit study designed for grades K-4, not saying you can't revamp a bit if you have older children. There are 5 days of lessons - which can be done as separate days, or combined two into one, or extending a day as you take small rabbit trails. In Kite Capers you will find the following plan of action:

Day 1: What Is a Kite?
Day 2: The History of Kites
Day 3: Kite People and Places
Day 4: Science Secrets of Kites
Day 5: Goodies and Gadgets of Kites

We didn't do the entire study, after all...it's March Break up this way and little boys need to play and get to know their grandparents. :)

I particularly enjoyed going through the section on Wind. Learning what my boy knew, helping him to expand his knowledge and use new words. It always interesting to learn just what your child knows. :)

If you want to know more Click here to visit Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett. You can read more blog reviews by going here.

As part of the the Download N Go review team, I have been provided with a copy of this unit to use, review, and post about on my blog.

Kites Again :)

worked on Day Two and Day Four of Kite Capers from DNG. Made a sheet to go with it from here. The actual page is made is here.
Published by Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett.



cool to learn fact

Andre Cassagne designed a series of ring kites to celebrate the Olympics. He is the best known kitemaker in France and the original inventor of the Etch-a-Sketch.

The lad drew and coloured and learned some geography and science and history. It was a good lesson for him today...even though both of us a dog-tired and highly distractable as a result.

Library of Congress

NGA Classroom

Women's History Month

Women's Suffrage

Cat Unit Study

Kitten's first full moon.

Cat's Lapbook.

interesting blog

St. Patrick's Day

Different things I'm considering preparing for the Lad for St. Patrick's Day. ONLY because it can be a fun holiday for a boy child. :

A colouring page of the Irish flag. Not sure if I"ll do this as we did one for our study on Ireland.

According to legend, Saint Patrick used a shamrock to explain about God. The shamrock, which looks like clover, has three leaves on each stem. Saint Patrick told the people that the shamrock was like the idea of the Trinity – that in the one God there are three divine beings: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The shamrock was sacred to the Druids, so Saint Patrick’s use of it in explaining the trinity was very wise.

In light of this I'm considering having him do this activity.

If I can figure out how to print this maze off I would use it. :)

and here's a nice little unit study that I might pull ideas from.

DLTK has an anagram. one is easy, one is more difficult. Same site has an easier to access maze.
:)

there's this neat green on green craft that I think the lad will enjoy. :)

Fairly certain I'm going to be doing this one. it's a file folder game.

and there are lots of ideas on this page. Not sure what I'll use at this point, if anything. Though I do like this 3 in 1 craft/song.

TOS information

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TOS would love to have you join them on Monday, May 16—Friday, May 20 for The Schoolhouse Expo. They only have 300 tickets left and once they are gone, that’s it! Don’t miss out on this encouraging event!

Today's Activities

Signed up for a trial period of Reading Kingdom. It's a whole word based reading program. So far, the lad is bored silly with it. He doesn't like that he has to find letters on the keyboard and it doesn't give him enough time to do so. I'll encourage him to keep at it, the sessions are really short so it shouldn't be too onerous for him. I do have to admit that part of it he likes (where he has to find pictures or click on things on the computer screen), but mommy isn't allowed to help him at all so he finds that a challenge - particularly when it comes to using the keyboard.

The program takes a multi approach to learning how to read. not only knowing how to see the word and read it, but also learning how to spell it at the same time.

I like learning to read phonetically as I think it will serve a person well in the long run, but I don't see the harm is blending methodologies of learning to read either. Some words just don't sound out well... and for those words you need to recognize the pattern of them in order to read them. So we'll work with this for a month and see what we think at the end of it.

The lad also played some thinking and logic games on the computer today. One was a math game where he had to accumulate points in order to progress in the game, and the rest were thinking games. I found it interesting that sometimes he was able to figure things out sooner than I was. :)

Playing with Lego was a big thing today as well. It was a snow day, and a Friday so we take things easy. It was a good day and he learned a thing or two so it's all good. :)

Carnival of homeschooling is up

The Carnival of Homeschooling - Mardi Gras!!

Links to All Things Free for Homeschoolers

this Site looks very interesting to me. I think this link leads to the main page.

I believe it’s possible to fill out your whole curriculum online–for free. This site is basically the curriculum our family uses. all sorts of freebies on it. :)

the person who puts it together even teaches you how to use freebies to build a curriculum. How cool is that? :)

so that site led me to this site called skedtrack which led me to their best sites which listed some good sites I'd like to explore more...mostly with my boy. :)

Kites

the twisting box kit was just fascinating.


the lad thought this was rather cool to see. "it looks like a dragon mommy!"


justin likes the cat one

Can you tell what the theme was for this afternoons study?

yes indeed, we undertook the study of Kites. We did Day One from Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett on Kites. Click here to view more details

We had fun. We got a bit hung up watching various videos with kites in them. Just kept following the links from one to the next. There are some quite neat kites out there. :)

We looked at Charlie Brown's mistake with kites, What makes a kite, and talked about wind and how it makes a kite work. The lad surprised me with just how much he knew about wind and lift. (good for a mom to be surprised). :)

Looking forward to doing more of this study on Friday.

What we Learned today - March 8, 2011

Today we practiced opposites. First I had to teach the lad what opposite meant.

And we read a poem on cats, and did some work about Tabby Cats. We're feeling VERY disorganized and muddle headed this morning so I'm pulling together things that I think will work for us today as book work ain't where it's at today. :) So we did some lap book work on cats. Poem, parts of a cat, practicing the letter C, Spelling the words Tabby Cat,

Pulled a poem from a cat study from reading-tutors.com. We read through it a couple of times.

We did this page from Enchanted Learning. And we read books looking for the letter C (easy to do when you have LOTS of cat books). :) We did this maze as well.

Then upstairs to read books for a half hour.

Time for a late lunch. and the cleaning up the house and playing. We done good on a day when we just want to veg so it's all good. :)

Programs to look at

this place makes blank board games. :) it's called Bare Books

then there's a reading program called FUNNIX. I need to do some research on it. But it looks interesting.

What we Learned today - March 4, 2011

Today the lad and I worked on telling time and writing out the long I, long U and short o sounds as well as figuring out first letters in words from a choice of three.

We also did colouring and designing of some of our own art work.

Then we made a Canada puzzle. I tried to find a pic of it for you but was unable to do so. I do know that I bought it at "the bargain shop" though. It's a really good puzzle as it has all the provincial flags on it. and has basic coordinates on the outside edge of the map. It's a really good one to do with a five year old as it helps him practice his numbers and alphabet, and the flags are easy for them to figure out so they are able to help well making a bigger then normal for them puzzle. We practiced finding coordinates (map reading), learning the province names (geography) and team work.

The rest of the day was spent watching a movie (stuart little 3) and doing laundry. :)

Nyiragongo Crater

This was interesting to learn about.

Hubby found that tidbit of information about the Nyiragongo Crater. The lad and I sat and looked at the pictures and talked about it. It's very hard to convey to a five year old lad how dangerous all that melted rock would be, and how the gases are dangerous.

He found it quite interesting how they had to protect the cameras too. :)

Hopping Popcorn Review

I've been a bit lax this week in keeping up with the blog.

We've been busy doing popcorn! :) And just so you know...with this review I'm allowed to give away a copy of it! You have until the 7th to leave me a message saying why you'd be interested in getting a copy of it. Numbers will be assigned and my son will pick it out of a hat.

Have you ever wondered just what makes popcorn special? Why does it pop? Why doesn't it pop? How many kinds of popcorn are there? What makes popcorn different than other corn?

ALL these questions and more are laid out for you in an easy to use format of Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett. called Hopping Popcorn. Click here to view more details

Day One was done with dad as I was called into work. You can find how that went here. :)
On Tuesday this week we did day 2-3 and today we did day 4-5. Like always, we picked and chose what we wanted to do, and we never did an entire day.

We drew pictures, we ate popcorn, we thought about making necklaces for the trees but one five year old thought that wouldn't be very nice for the trees...to be all pretty and then have the birds come and make them all unpretty...it would make the trees sad apparently. (go figure). :) We had fun learning about the different types of popcorn and learned there's a company that makes.... COTTON CANDY popcorn!!!! That was a real shocker to a five year old.

"Though mommy... I like ordinary popcorn". This was an oft repeated phrase ... particularly when I mentioned trying out some of the different recipes we encountered.

Today we had fun going around to our neighbours homes and asking them what type of popcorn was there favourite. We also asked on my facebook account what variety was the best. The lad was VERY pleased that his favourite ended up being the favourite overall.

Each day as a theme, and throughout the week a similar layout is done on a day to day basis. There are LOTS of videos to watch which is always a highlight. Check it out. See all the child friendly graphics? :)

One thing I would have changed about this study is not make it so US focused. Corn is grown ALL over the world. So why did we only learn about how it is grown here in the US? I just didn't understand that aspect of this study. Wish that basis had been broadened a bit. HEY... I got an answer to the focus on US cornbelt. Here it is below:

the reason the focus was on the US is because almost all of the popcorn grown in the world is grown in the US. The US exports much of the popcorn to over 90 other countries. The 2 countries that receive the greatest amount of the exported popcorn is Canada and Mexico. Popcorn is also native to North America, though it likely originated in Mexico.

HA! We learned something new! :)

You can read what other folks have to say here.

The folks over at Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett. are having a $5 Friday sale tomorrow. So go check it out. :)

Don't forget to let me know why you want a copy and once I have a winner you'll get your copy from the publisher. Make sure I have your email address please. :) March 7th is the deadline! :)

I received a copy of this unit study in return for my fair and honest review.

Sight, Sound, Taste, Hear, Touch

Today the lad and I learned about the five senses.

We cut out pictures of mouths, ears, noses, eyes, and hands.

We talked abit about how fish hear (vibrations in the water), and how people can hear better by cupping their hands over their ears (we had fun with this one whispering up and down the stairs).

We then played with a bunny and a cat for a while and used our five senses to learn different things about them. How bunnies smell like bunnies and cats smell like cats and people smell like people. :) Bunny fur is different than cat fur. Bunnies ears are shaped differently than a cat and so are their eyes. it was VERY interesting to a cat and bunny crazy lad of five.

We then traced out the words for the five senses. Then mommy wrote down different words for each sense that the lad could come up with.

Sight: looking, seeing, pretty, ugly, nice, colour, differences
Taste: tasting a chip, sweet, sour, salty, hot, spicy, yummy, "sometimes good, sometimes not good"
Hear: hear, listening, sounds "too much noise", "milo comes when he hears you calling Milo come here".
Smell: Chip eating, yuck, nose, "ew" "mmm" "cats - can smell like cats"
Touch: hands, fingers, somethings don't mind if you touch them, "helps blind people pay money".

All in all, a good time learning by a five year old. :)