millipede fun and much more

today we studied millipedes.

the lad has been in to catching them lately so today I decided we could run with that.

We learned that they lay between 10-300 eggs at one time and they take a few weeks to hatch.

Having learned how to tell the boys from the girls we are pretty sure we have three boys and three girls.   Which would give us anywhere from 30 to 900 babies in one shot.   The lad was kept busy trying to imagine what 900 millipedes would look like.   Rather hard to imagine...and then if they each lived 10 years, we end up with 9000 and then if each of them had babies... WOW!!!  we'd have a million before you could even think about it...and since one of the books we are currently reading is "one Million Dots" the boy was simply amazed.

So by taking the time to pursue a lad's interests we covered math, English, geography, science...graphing and spelling and using a magnifying glass and what not.

Very fun.  Very captivating for a six year old. :)

we let the guinea pigs out today after selling three of the adults we no longer wanted.   Nice to have them out on the grass and not crowded in their winter cages any longer. :)

Then we had a HOOT building cardboard equipment for knights and having battles.   Duct tape, cardboard, sharp knives and regular tape... all made for excellent fun and research and remembering all that we had learned in studying knights.   We learned about adding some aluminum foil to make knives look real.

The lad came up with the armour design himself.

I helped him figure out a holder for his quiver of arrow.  See the bow that he made himself?

Mommy?   What weapon can you make?   What will you be?  you can't be a knight cause I'm a knight.

Okay.. I'll be an assassin.  

What does an assassin do?

Oh.. they kill people in all kinds of different ways.

With potions mommy?   

yep.. and knives too.  

OH.. you should make a knife.  

So above you see my knife.

we made cardboard potions to.

The lad made this halberd all by himself.

He needed idea help to make the mace.

I made one too, just to even the score a little. :)

Showing me how he's going to get me with the spear and halberd.

but he's going to be a walking knight, not one with a horse.

 

and then before supper we had a rousing game of Knights after the assassins!!!!

 Where I unleashed my secret weapon.....a hand spear!

Complete with dad saying "isn't this a better game to play outside?"  :)

Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra

 

image taken from here.

The lad: "Mommy!   Can I play the instrument game again?" 

the lad: "MOM!!!"  Immediately after if I didn't say yes? right away.  Which would lead to me saying

"Yes, Lad, you can play the instruments again"

So then I"d go to the computer and load up "young persons guide to the orchestra".  

Most of this game he is able to play independently.   He enjoys it.   And last night he was inspired to make his own instrument which I thought was rather neat.

"Do you see mommy?  Do you see how I can change the pitch and tone of it?"

This from a lad who didn't understand pitch and tone two days ago.

He thinks it funny that a musical instrument has the same name as a character on the TV show Seaquest.    But he now knows a good part of the instruments that you find in an orchestra, as of course do I.  :)   

This introduction to the orchestra has a variety of games to teach children the groups of instruments, the names of instruments, pitch and tone, and a variety of other things.

It will entertain one six year old boy for about 5 hours from start to finish with a wee bit of help from his mom.   Older children should be able to play it independently.

Today homeschooling

well..our day started off with the lad waking me up.
We had breakfast, cared for the bunnies and the chicken.  .. yes we have a chicken!   It's a hen that eats her eggs and she's going to be lunch for us when I'm feeling up to making her lunch for us.   But that might take a good week yet.

My brain was VERY sluggish today so we didn't do a whole lot for a fair bit.
I had a treasure hunt at the lad's instigation.
Then we read some fascinating information out of this book called "tell me about the world".

just love this book.  It's starts off with a question... for instance "is it true that a cow has four stomachs".   So I give the lad a chance to tell me what he knows.  I tell him what I think.  And then we read a blub that tells us if we are right or not.   We were both wrong on this one.  One stomach, four sections.  (go figure).

We then read a story out of "50 magical stories".  This book is made the same folks who did the 10 minute stories.

Today's story was about the crab that played with the sea.   the boy said "i liked some of it but not all of it mommy".

 He read a book over at Starfall.   he had a lot of fun with the one book he read.

We took a walk over at Morrison Dam.  Just a short walk as I didn't have the energy for a long one.  We talked about beaver dams and moss.   He did some of the exercise trail stuff with his dad.   We took some moss home to grow under the tree in the backyard.  

Oh.. I almost forgot.  We watched a video from Aurora on lights and such like.  We did some experiments with making a microscope using two magnifying glasses.  we used these to discover that Canadian money has stories/poems/etc written on them.. and  carefully examined a $20 American bill as well.  If we can find an American Penny we want to see if we can find the man in the building.

Oh.. the lad is taking an interest in learning about the rabbits.  This morning he wanted to know how I knew if a rabbit was ready to breed or not.  So I showed him a rabbit ready to breed and one who wasn't.  I also talked with him about other signs that a rabbit uses.   Being growly, digging in her food dish, and such like.  he was quite interested.  He also wanted to know how I knew if a boy bunny wanted to make babies... and so I said okay buddy.. watch and see what happens.   "HE FELLED OFF HER MOMMY!"   yes buddy, did he make a noise?  "YES!"  good.. he wants to be a daddy then.  

He's been learning what to watch for in the baby bunnies.. for full tummies, activity when touched, and such like.   So it's good.  Nice to see him learning and asking questions.   The weather's been so nice so we've been taking time outside to play and be archaelogists and alien hunters.  He has infinitely more energy than his mommy but we're working at it. :)  In time health will be better!

we may end up making bunny bait for Easter/Hope days.

Legal issues on the homeschool front

two similar events happening in homeschooling lately here in Canada.

1. in Alberta they want to pass a law saying that every child educated whether in public, private or homeschool needs to be educated in the same way regardless of religious convictions.   

ERGO: if the government says that it's okay to be gay/lesbian.. then you MUST teach your children that it's okay as well.  

In spite of the well articulated concerns of homeschooling families, the Alberta Government is continuing to drive toward the swift passage of their intrusive legislation.  Bill 2 is the new Education Act that will mandate compliance with the Alberta Human Rights legislation for all students in Alberta, including homeschooled students in their own homes.  The government’s spokesperson, Donna McColl, has stated, “Whatever the nature of schooling – homeschool, private school, Catholic school – we do not tolerate disrespect for differences.” Although these statements were later repudiated, they clearly show that even within the government, there are those who would use this legislation to limit the freedom of parents to pass their beliefs on to their children

 My concern with this law is two-fold
1. how can they prove if a person educated (as part of their schooling) that we must love each other but we can disapprove of sin being actively lived out or if one is merely educating their children in one's faith stance?
2. it's putting an extra requirement on homeschooling families that they aren't putting on same faith, non-homeschooled families.
Since I don't live in Alberta I'm not sure if there is much I can do.   But I'll be looking into it.


More information can be found here at the HSLDA blog.   understanding what to do politically can be found here.

2. in Ontario they want to pass a law saying kinda the same thing but they don't specifically mention homeschoolers.   This is a bill that is anti-bullying.  Sounds good eh?  BUT when one group or groups  is/are elevated over other groups it just becomes government mandated bullying over the non-protected groups.  The legislation will only address bullying on a selective basis, and will discriminate against children with traditional faith values.

here is where you can learn about bill 13. 

based on the statistics given, out of 1000 students, 330 report feeling unsafe in school but only 13 of those students on this special interest group.  So I have to ask why is the legislation focusing so much attention and resources on a special interest group – favouring the 13 LGBT students who “feel unsafe” when 330 other students actually report being bullied?

The school director has stated the human rights come before faith issues and the human rights commission does not take a pro-faith stand.    So where does this leave children of faith?   How are they protected?

write your MPP, become acquainted with this law, and let's see what we can do to help our fellow brothers and sisters in the faith.   Seriously.  If we do nothing... the social engineering of the government wins out and our children lose.

Reading, Comprehension, and Science

We did a great deal of reading today.

We read a new book, called "bad kitty gets a bath".  This is just a fun book.  I got it to encourage the boy child in his interest for reading. he can read the simple words of kitty, bath, cat, hate etc.  Today we finished it, and then later in they day I spotted him looking through it very carefully.

It's just a fun read for a child.  It also has a remarkable number of good scientific facts in it as well.  Always a bonus.

We continued reading The ultimate guide to wildlife in North America.  We'll read a page most every day.  Today we learned about the star-nosed mole.  The picture in the book didn't show eyes on it so we looked up whether they had eyes and they do indeed! 

In the fall when we went to the creation seminar in Kitchener we had picked up this book called "the lamb" by John R. Cross. It's the story of the bible for children - with comprehension questions. 10 easy lessons. We are up to Lesson Three in the book.  It's a good read.

Today we went to kids Art where we did the The Craziest Art Lesson Ever! This is what we came up with:

Start your crazy art project by drawing a picture of a giant lizard with a shirt on its head. Make your drawing with three crayons and a black feltpen. Then crumple your drawing paper into a ball the size of a camera lense and stomp on it with your feet for one hundred minutes. Now your drawing is well crushed, so unfold it quickly and spread it out on the worktable. Tape down the edges with melted chocolate . Mix up a big batch of paint in a ziploc using two cups of water and a spoonful of sandwich . Spread lots of this yellow paint onto your drawing with a wrench and let it dry for a hour . Hang your beautiful work of art in the living room until it is discovered by Children's Museum . Suddenly you will be a famous artist, become a regular guest on Knight Rider and make lots of money painting portraits of Captain Pichard surrounded by lemmings . 

This was a hoot and immediately the lad wanted to do it again. :)  so here we go....

 Start your crazy art project by drawing a picture of a giant Alligator with a pants on its head. Make your drawing with 144 crayons and a green feltpen. Then crumple your drawing paper into a ball the size of a cd and stomp on it with your feet for 100 minutes. Now your drawing is well crushed, so unfold it quickly and spread it out on the worktable. Tape down the edges with mactac . Mix up a big batch of paint in a jar using two cups of vinegar and a spoonful of aero bar . Spread lots of this yellow paint onto your drawing with a screwdriver and let it dry for a a million years . Hang your beautiful work of art in the green room until it is discovered by Toronto Children's Museum . Suddenly you will be a famous artist, become a regular guest on Monk and make lots of money painting portraits of Adrian Monk surrounded by lizards .

we had fun discovering new books over at We Give Books. 

Since we've been reading in our world history book about knights and castles I picked up a book at mastermind toys the other day about knights!  it's a sticker book and the lad is having fun reviewing what he's learning while dressing the knights and telling me what is happening in the book.  today we learned abit about the crusades, I find this a sad time in history so I didn't get into a lot of detail with this six year old.  But he did learn the basics...the British went to fight against the Arab Muslims over the city of Jerusalem.

And then we headed off to look again at the junior science kit we started yesterday at Gramma's.  Yesterday we dug up fool's gold and then did some tests on a variety of rocks to test hardness, and other stuff that I can't recall at this exact moment.   Today we'll see about making some crystals and digging a geome (I think).

Reading, knots, and more

This day being one of continued pain, and foggy-headedness due to pain meds, and being a typical Tuesday of "I WANT TO PLAY MOMMY!" (late Monday nite returns do this to a boy child), we did computer work, reading, some play, and art.  If I get myself mentally together we will do some science/practical math later on.

Today we started off our homeschooling day with Suessville.  My lad isn't really into some of Dr. Suess books (strongly dislikes the cat in the hat), but he likes some of it.   Some of the activity pages are definitely below where he is at, but he enjoyed problem solving with the games and going through some of the worksheets with me.

We then got inspired by these in my son's words "remote control alien ships". :)

you can read more about it here. 

That video led us to this one, were being Canadian. ... watching robots play hockey is just a given.:)

Caused lots of questions to be asked which is always a good thing in our household. :)

on to some reading.

We continued reading about Knights and Castles in our world history book.

We read a new book, called "bad kitty gets a bath".  This is just a fun book.  I got it to encourage the boy child in his interest for reading.  he can read the simple words of kitty, bath, cat, hate etc.  

It's just a fun read for a child.  It also has a remarkable number of good scientific facts in it as well.  Always a bonus.

We started a new book called The ultimate guide to wildlife in North America.  We'll read a page most every day.  Today we learned about the virginia opossum and I told the lad how one day I found one.  Thought it was dead, poked it, picked it up and what not and decided that yes indeed it was dead, came back five minutes later and it was gone, and how another time my dog trapped one under an old stump and it hissed and growled at us.   Fun to share those stories.

In the fall when we went to the creation seminar in Kitchener we had picked up this book called "the lamb" by John R. Cross. It's the story of the bible for children. 10 easy lessons. We started that book this morning.  It's a good read.

I had the lad learn how to do a simple overhand knot, and I showed him how to make a slip knot and then tied him up.   This helped him learn the importance of tying knots.  He will need to continue to practice though. :)

Carnivals

some homeschooling blog carnivals

Carnival of homeschooling.

A homeschooling carnival.

I can't ask for anything more

  I always have this feeling on contentment when we have a good day homeschooling.

Today was a book work day.

We did a page in our listening skills book.   I asked a number of questions and the lad had to figure out what animal I might be talking about and then needed to locate said animal on a page.   He did really well on this though one picture had him stumped for a while.

We then worked on The complete book of numbers and counting.  We are continuing to figure out skip counting by 2's and 5's.   Good to make his brain think a bit.

We did some work in Connect with words.    we did work on nouns, and looked at words for North America. This involved getting out the globe so we could see for ourselves if what they were telling us was accurate.

First Grade Fundamentals was out next book to tackle. beginning sounds and ending sounds.  I found it interesting that he sometimes forgets what ending sounds are and listens for the middle sound.  Not quite sure what to do about that.  Will need to think and ponder on it some.

Our next book was daily smart.  here we worked on various math equations.   Learning that horizontal and vertical math is the same thing.  Starting to understand word problems and how to write them down.

and finished off our book work with a couple lessons from First Language Lessons by Jessie Wise.  I have to admit, I find this book incredibly slow moving.  It's like how many times do we have to review what a noun is?  how many times do we have to go back to the same simple poem?  Mind we have the first edition and perhaps they changed it in the second.  But at this point I'm finding it a bit of a waste of time.  THOUGH it is a good reminder to practice skills I just don't always do it the way I'm told to.  :)

Then we looked a science book we had and I said "HEY.. why don't we make a collage?"   At the start up we decided i would do one on mammals and the lad would do one on reptiles.. so I pulled out my picture file and this led to a TOTAL meltdown.  With cries of "but mommy I can't decide what to do?  There are too many interesting animals that God created!   I don't know what to do!!!!"   I tried to convince him he could do a page of reptiles and one of arachnids and such like...but no.. that would take too long.  So then it's like Son.. this isn't worth a big fuss.. it's supposed to be fun!   So why don't we do this because we homeschool which means we can change things around.. so why doesn't mommy sort things the way she likes.. into animal groups.  And YOU sort they way you like?  It's all sorting right?   .. a tearful yes... and then smiles and happiness when mommy found a cool spider picture...and OH MOMMY  I like this cat!  Can he have his own page?  Of course he can.. such a nice cat deserves his own page.

 

  one of mommy's

one of the lad's

And then on and on and on went the chatter.  Mommy.. God made a funny hamster.. see.. he's sneaking up on the spider..he's an arachnid you know.   I would interject comments of .. hey son.. what is a walrus?  are they fish or are they mammals or just what are they?  so we'd take a moment and find out.   And we figured out that fish are the class Chordata and Birds are Aves.. or Avian (depending on which source you look at).   We had a HOOT and we learned and we talked and God was praised, and a little boy rejoiced in it all. 

Most of what we did. :)

 

A homeschooling momma can't ask for anything more you know.

Homeschooling technically done for the day we went downstairs for lunch and to watch Seaquest.   The lad's been working hard earning stickers and today as I was washing up the dishes I asked him....so.. how many groups of five do you have there?    He counted.. FOUR!  so how many big stickers does that get you.. FIVE!  ah...So how many little ones do you have left.... only five little ones mommy.. I need two more! (he always has to have some spare as they get taken away for being unkind, not listening etc)

 So.. since he hasn't chewed his finger nails OR toe nails.. he got his two more which set him up with enough stickers that he could 'purchase' something he's been wanting desperately for two weeks.... a science kit.   So for the rest of the afternoon he did science.  Learning to work a pipette, playing with test tubes, learning about colour cubes, making snow, making gooey crystals and such like.  So much fun had by one small lad.  It is so lovely to watch him learn and be excited.

 Pipette's are fun!

 Doing various free experiments with snow

 working with a desiccant.

 Illustrating the importance of protecting the floor

A varied day

Today we started off our day by checking out a site that homeschool freebie of the day directed us to.  It's called Make Belief Comix.   This site has a variety of pages done up with clip art and make believe statements.  We had fun going through about 10 of them.  :)

This led to the lad's question of the day "how much water is in the oceean".   The answer was found here.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there are over 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers (332,519,000 cubic miles) of water on the planet. A cubic kilometer is the volume of a cube measuring one kilometer on each side. Almost all of this vast volume of water is in the ocean.
That's 36,614,237,300,000,000,000,000 gallons of milk!

World History

  

We continued reading about Knights and Castles. Learning today about how they practiced.

I asked the lad on Tuesday what animal he would like to study today and he said "spiders".  My response was okay..we can continue in our study and then he said "NO!   Can we study FLIES instead?"     I said "what?  you don't like your spider study"?   his response..."no mommy, I like it but I want to draw the flies too"!   So... my little template that I did up on studying an animal of the day with it's drawing aspect really appeals to him...That's cool!  :)   I'll need to figure out how to take a pic of it so I can link it for you.

So here I am sitting down trying to figure out flies to study and did you know there are TONS of different flies in the world?

We learned that

Flies, insects in the order Diptera, from your basic house fly to mosquitoes and gnats, are defined by having two wings.

and

 Here are some other things you should know about flies and fly control:

• Depending on the species, the life expectancy of a fly is eight days to two months, or in some cases, up to a year.

• Flies belong to the Order Diptera, meaning two wings. There are 16,000 species of flies in North America.

• Flies plague every part of the world except the polar ice caps.

• One pair of flies can produce more than 1 million offspring in as little as six to eight weeks.

• As many as 33 million microorganisms may flourish in a single fly’s gut, while a half-billion more swarm over its body and legs.

• Flies spread diseases readily because they move quickly from rotting, disease-laden garbage to exposed human foods and utensils.

• Because they only have two wings, flies land often and therefore can deposit thousands of bacteria each time they land.

• U.S. Department of Agriculture sources reveal that flies contaminate or destroy $10 billion worth of agricultural products.

• For every fly seen, there are an estimated 19 more hidden from view. This means humans don’t even see most of the flies present at an infestation.

types of flies

• bee fly
• black fly
• blow fly
• bot fly
• cheese skipper
• crane fly
• flesh fly
• fruit fly
• gadfly
• gall midge
• gnat
• hessian fly
• horse fly
• house fly
• maggot
• mediterranean fruit fly
• midge
• mosquito
• robber fly
• sand fly
• screwworm
• tsetse

so we learned a few things about flies, and then moved on to learning about fire safety...we've finished that unit now.

Then played a game of mousetrap which involved setting up the board, following instructions, learning how to be a good sport and of course, having fun.  :)

this day worked out well for us.

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. :)