Spiders and Lego

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 cannot escape.

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

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

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!

A slow day, yet study accomplished

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Housing a Forest linky page.

K5 Learning.

that worked well

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....

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

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

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

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

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

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.