Math, Science, Leap Year and more

we started the day with playing some computer games.
The tooth brushing game.
Slice Geome.
We tried this one.. it was too fast.
the lad enjoyed the count the cubes game.

 Then 22 words had linked to a video on youtube about the leapyear.  I never knew the calculating the leap year was so complicated.


 Leap year every four years, except you skip a century, BUT if the century is divisible by 400 you don't skip it.

World History

We continued reading about Knights and Castles.

Checked the Triops.  Overnight the temperature dropped so... We have no triops hatching.  We'll continue to problem solve and see if we can't figure out how to get them to hatch.

then off to london to go to goodwill for their 50% off sale .. I think. :)   Will need to check the roads to make sure they are safe for driving.  Will update the post as the day goes on.

It was fun.. on the way there the lad and I told a progressive story.  Which actually did three...but one of them didn't work very well.   But two of them were great!   I would tell a line, the lad would tell a line and then I would.. and so on and so forth.  The lad's reaction "Mommy... that was the best story we ever told together!".  :)   We'll be doing this again.

We hit three goodwill stores.  We bought a variety of games, books and a few clothes.   We met another homeschool mom at one of the stores which was nice.

Two links

Don't want to forget these links.

Bricklink

Free curriculum.

Science

Today was a typical Tuesday....a boy who wanted to play and spend time with mom and dad instead of do school so... we did a science day.  Often we do art/science/reading... but today we focused on Science.

We started off the day watching a video about Bugs of the rainforest.

It was quite fascinating following the lives of a praying mantis and a butterfly.   Neat to see how it all works together.

We took a break and set up on Triops tank.  We had started this on Saturday by bringing in some ice from the backyard to melt, we sifted it on Sunday, were stymied by it on Monday as the tank wasn't getting warm enough, but today it finally got warm enough so.. we laid out triops eggs.

This page here has some rearing suggestions.   Hopefully it will work out.  The kit we bought has enough eggs to try this three times so hopefully we'll get it right eventually.   They hatch apparently in 20 hours so hopefully tomorrow morning we'll have some baby triops.

Then we watched a Life video.  We didn't watch the whole thing

Always interesting to watch these animal videos.

The lad did get in some math work using reflexmath.   I still think we got a good deal on this math program.   He likes it, he learns from it so life is good.

In the afternoon we went skating at the local arena.   A good time was had by all.  :)

Today we learned

Started off our day before breakfast watching Donald in Mathemagic Land.



My voice was finally back enough that I felt confident in reading from World History

We continue to learn about Knights and Castles.  Today the focus was on feast and how the great hall was used in castles.   Tomorrow we'll learn about dragons so we had a discussion on whether dragons truly existed or not.    One would think with so many stories about them in regards to knights ... and we KNOW that knights existed, that there must have been some type of large lizard/dragon as well.

There was fun to be had watching this:


we then played a lego game....it involved cops and robbers and was complicated...

This afternoon we're off to London to go to Eldon House with K.I.C.K.  :)

things to add to website in time

Some interesting sites I need to look at more and then will probably add to my homeschool website.

Universe Today. Yes, I know.. I shouldn't be surprised that they have space/astronomy blogs...but I was surprised.   Pleased too.  :)   I got to this blog because someone sent me a link to earth layer's for kids.  Rather neat eh?  :)

Pollinator Partnership.  works to protect the health of managed and native pollinating animals vital to our North American ecosystems and agriculture.   it's an interesting site.  Well worth looking around.

Untamed Science.   An intriguing science site.  Looking forward to checking it out more.   This lesson plan caught my eye.  Plants and Fruits lesson. 

Danielle has her own site at A to Z Teacher's.  Danielle creates original learning materials for A to Z Teacher Stuff using of her own illustrations and designs. She also owns CrayonboxLearning.com.   Most of her stuff is for the younger set (up to about age 6 or so), but some of it is adaptable.   nice lady to deal with.

Today's Homeschooling

 The lad and I have been working through various safety issues.

We've done fire safety, chemical safety, kitchen safety, and something else.  Today we're doing animal safety.  We talked about safety around dogs, cats, wild animals.   The lad asked about "poisonous spiders and Poisonous snakes".   So we talked about the rattlesnake which is the only poisonous snake in Ontario and how to be safe around them.  We did a variety of puzzles, learned the words yes/no, and counted.

I'm also starting to go through our bible materials box and today we have "the golden rule".
I printed out this copywork sheet.    And went through a variety of pictures and we talked about what you should do in a given situation.  Sharing, caring, helping, and such like.   We'll pick a package at least once a week and work on it.  :)

We did a language lesson from First language lessons.   We learned about fables, and took the opportunity to do some art at the same time. :)   Drawing pictures of lions and mice and answering questions about how the story went.   It was interesting how this story tied in with learning about the golden rule.

we took the time to look up in 123 Draw how to draw a lion.  It was decided that mommy would learn to draw a lion and the lad would draw out the story (see above) complete with a few embellishments. :)  The hunters of course had to figure out HOW to net the lion and it was fairly complicated but they managed it.

 

Time for fun with smarties. :)  these are a favourite chocolate confection.

 

This was followed by playing chess with smarties.

 

We did a number of things with smarties first though.  We learned about consumer packaging.  How they can't put less in the box than they say.. we learned that our smartie box calls for 50 g but we had 55 g.  So we practiced doing less than and greater than signs, we counted out how many of each colour there was and did less than/greater than signs.  Then played checkers.  it was a good thing that we have enough of two colours to play it well.  The lad beat me.

count by 2's, 5's and 10's. that was the theme of the day in our numbers and counting book.

I did something different for our animal of the day.  I pulled out my temperate zone books and gave the lad a choice.  He chose deserts.  And of the animal pages in the book he was intrigued by the fringe-toed sand lizard.  We looked it up and found them to be quite an interesting little animal.  They can swim in sand like a fish does in water!  Complete with nostrils that seal and jaws that can clamp shut to keep the sand out.   Quite fascinating the creatures that God creates.

Well.. I was going to show you a foot, but apparently it's a copyright violation to show it to you.  So I'd suggest you go check out this site and check it out for yourself.  :)  They have these are special scales that help the lizard move in the sand.

We had a hoot playing checkers using goldfish crackers.

We play modified checkers in that we have no forced jump and we only jump once, even if we can jump two or three times.  This makes it easier for the lad to grasp for some reason.  Over time we'll start playing by the rules, but for now this is easier, and yet harder.  :)  I was the smiling goldfish, he was the no smile ones.

When we finished with our bookwork the lad asked if I could hook him up with some thinking computer games, and I said most certainly. Not sure yet where I'll put him but I'll find something for him to play online. Cheers! :)

We had fun getting trounced at Playing History.   We played  a battle in England between the Vikings and the English and well.. as is true to life, we got trounced. :)   and then he did some logic games over at CoolMath4Kids.

plans change

Our plans for the day changed

We had planned to go to Dairy days with the homeschool group.  But it was cancelled due to weather issues

So this morning we went skating.
Then played lego.  We built, we discussed, we had fun.

Then we set off to work with our Spiders Unit Study.

The lad's question of the day was Where do spiders go in the winter?  the answer from here.

Did you ever wonder where all the spiders go in the winter?  (Excluding those little rascals you still find occasionally in your house!)  Do they die?  Do they hibernate? Do they just hide somewhere where you don’t see all of them?
Different types of spiders handle the winter months differently.  There are those spiders that like to come on in and dwell with us in our nice warm homes.  Others, however, will die in the winter but leave their egg sacs well protected to hatch out the next spring.  Some actually do prepare for winter by weaving a web under loose bark or building overhangs where they are insulated from the cold

This of course inspired a game in a young lad's mind.  Let's pretend to be spiders trying to get to winter safety without being caught by an enemy.  so we played a few rounds of this.

today we learned about the lifecycle of a spider.

We talked about how spiders are both prey and predator and the lad made the observation that this happens alot with animals..but it doesn't happen with robots (because nothing eats robots).

we read the story by Eileen Snyder called   The Little Old Lady Who Liked Spiders

So then the above game became can you avoid the lizards who just might eat spiders?   So we played that was well.

I expect that soon my voice will be back to normal and we can get back to our regular reading times.

Today we played and well... survived. :)

So I had a set back with the whole flu thing today.   I think I pushed myself too hard yesterday.   Hubby was very quiet today, and by night fall the lad was running a fever.  HOPING that no one else gets as sick as I've been, time will tell.

anyways, we did manage to do some homeschooling today.

First off we made some cheese.  The finished product was NOT appreciated by one boy child, hubby said. ... eh.. it's okay, and I thought it was perfectly edible, but needed to be squeezed more.

We did this math thing that we got.  Valentines Subtraction Minus One. i found out about it through this site from Fern Smith who is also on Pinterest.    She has other freebies as well so go check them out if you want.

And then I let the boy do some learning on the computer...of all the games he played on this site called cool math 4 kids., snail bob 2 was his favourite.  He really needed to do some problem solving to figure it out.  Good to see a lad think.  He often was tempted to give up, and sometimes I'd help him, but other times I'd just offer some verbal encouragement.  He played a few others as well. 

so that basically was our day.  Not great, but not horrid...and something is better than nothing right?  :)

Crayon Rocks

Still recovering from illness we took our time homeschooling today.

We did some work on counting with 5's and 10's.   The lad is slowly figuring out the pattering though he doesn't really remember yet from one day to the next, but he remembers more quickly each time we approach it.  :)

Then we did some home safety work.   We talked about how to be safe outside when you are on your own.  And that led to how to get out of the house should something bad happen in the house.   Aka a fire.  He drew a detailed map of the upstairs and downstairs of the house with where to go when in trouble.   (we'd meet at the mailbox).  We walked through the house and said okay...how do you get out of this room?  where would you go if trapped here?   what happens if you get caught on fire (stop drop and roll).  What happens if you are in a room with fire?  (get down and crawl)   What happens if you can't leave your room?   put something in front of the door, open the window and call LOUDLY for help.    We had fun doing this, and the lad learned a lot.  It was interesting listening to him come up with various ideas, and then figuring out if they would work or not.   And him figuring out that a broken leg was better than a dead boy.

Then we took a break.. I was tired.  The lad was sweet and made a simple lunch for us.  Crackers, cheese and pudding.  Worked for me!  :)

Then on to do some science.  A while ago I had pinned a crayon rock idea from Momma Owl's Lab.   By the way, if you need an invite to Pinterest let me know I'll happily send you and invite.  :)

I figured this would be a good idea for a recovery day.   :)   This was a carry over from when we dug for gems and rocks a while back.

We had fun, we learned a lot.  

We grabbed our bag of old icky crayons.  It took a while to figure out the best way to shave them.  A knife wasn't a good idea so then we pulled out the vegetable peelers.  That worked better for the soft crayons, the hard crayons I just basically chipped into small pieces.

The first step was to make  Sedimentary rocks.  Layer shaved crayon, wrap in aluminum foil, put in clamp. :)

Then we moved on to Metamorphic rocks.    Knowing that these can be made through pressure or through heat we decided to see what would happen if we made sedimentary rock first and then heated it.  We also did one without putting pressure on it.  We had planned to do a third one and put pressure on it afterwards but after it melted we didn't see much point in doing that.  :)   But it was interesting since we did two of the three with double thickness aluminum foil and one with four times thickness.   The four times thickness melted much slower, the pressured one melted even more slowly.

just in the pot.

safety an important consideration

no pressured, double thickness 3 minutes

after six minutes, four times thickness and pressured.   

First one is - no pressure, double thickness almost solidified

When we finished these we moved on to making igneous rocks.   Igneous rocks are formed when magma (molten rock) cools and solidifies   The lad had a difficult time remembering what magma rock was  so I showed him this video.

 

Then he said "MELTED ROCK MOMMY!" 

We melted some rock.  

 melting the "rock"

i forgot about plastic and heated and melted my spoon :(

rather cool eh?

Our end result had me wanting to crush a bunch of ice and do it all over again, but I ran out of energy and decided it could wait until another day.  :)

Illness prevents talking so...

homeschooling was put on hold for a bit.

I've been ill for the past 3-4 days with a sore throat, fever, coughing, and more.   NOT complaining, just explaining why homeschooling has been back burned a bit.  The lad was "off" yesterday morning as well but went out of the house to play at gramma's for a bit.  Came back a cheerful lad.   Good for him to get out of the house for a bit I think.

Anyways, was thinking I feel somewhat less muddle-headed this morning so that I should do something schooling related so we played lego and listened to Adventures in Odyssey.   Later we will do some exploring of different websites - Clickschooling sends me almost daily emails so we'll go through them and see what we can learn and explore from those.  :)    I'll link here what we go and look at and hopefully say what we thought about them.  :)

we went to the national art gallery and the lad made this

It took some trial and error, but he learned abit about making a still life.   In this pic the monarchs flew in the window (behind the candle holder) and they are eating all the fruit that's hidden behind them.    Rather a neat idea I think for a six year old.    We then had fun playing around with the 3D twirler.   Then we went to the jungle art page where he created this masterpiece.  I tried hard to save the image but couldn't for the life of me figure that one out.  So.. anyways, then I totally petered out of energy and had a nice lay down.     I do dislike being ill.

I was awoken from a lovely nap by an apologizing boy child and found him making some physical art.  I'll need to upload a picture for your enjoyment. :)

Skating, Spiders and Open Houses

We did our normal reading
10 minute stories

Today's story was about sea babies and was somewhat ... odd.  that would be a good word.  :)

World History

We continue to learn about Knights and Castles.

Then off to go skating with a friend.  We had fun, this was followed by lunch and a sword fight interspersed with lego and playing with baby guinea pigs. :)

 after our company left we learned a bit more about spiders!

Brown recluse spider and black widow in hand.

we also learned a surprising fact about tarantulas. We also took some time to play with a robotic bug and learned that it can break out of popsicle houses and that given sufficient time can get out of any maze we were able to build for it.

Later this afternoon we have an open house to go to.   So all in all a busy day.

Bible Study and homeschooling

Hubby is away taking time for a personal retreat which meant that the lad needed to accompany me to bible study this morning.

He did some math work and then played a game or two on my cell phone during the study.   He was very good about being there.  He worked in his numbers and counting book.  He's learning to count by twos and fives.

After bible study we hit the dollar stores for items to put in his treasure box.


After lunch he worked on reflex math.

This was followed by a study on Bullying.  I have a whole bunch of materials that I've picked up from a variety of sources, much of it on safety issues around the home.   I let the lad pick out what he wanted to learn about and he chose bullying.

We used Proverbs 11:17 for copywork "A man who is kind benefits himself but a man who is cruel hurts himself".  We talked about what that meant.   We then talked about reasons why someone might not be kind and what our response should be.  In Matthew 4:24 it says "be kind to your enemies, pray for those who persecute you".   We'll expand this study to include safety around people and what to do if lost in a crowd and such like.

In our World History book we are learning about knights.  .

So after we did our bullying unit we went outside and had a rousing sword fight. We talked about honour and duels and how to protect themselves.   One of the new things we learned about today was Halberds.  Which is a weapon the swiss men used against calvary.  We each drew pictures of how we would design a halberd if we could but I couldn't transfer that image to the computer successfully.  I showed the lad on the world map were Switzerland was in relation to Canada.    And I also showed him were France and England were since they fought the 100 year war and much of that had to deal with knights in battle.


We still plan to make cheese today but we came in hungry and tired from our sword work.  

All in all a good day.  :)