Tomarus Relictus

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

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

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

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

coin soccer

coin soccer

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

Week update

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

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

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

Anyways, goodnight all!

Sunny Seashells - Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Science and the library

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

books we are returning to the library today are:

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

Castles by RJ Unstead.

From Sand to Glass by Shannon Zemlicka


Animals in Dangerous Places by Clare Oliver


Sphynx Cats by Nancy Furstinger


Let's look at Flying Machines published by Lorenz Books


Then we have these fiction books

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

Today... a good day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All in all a good homeschool day. :)

Home School Enrichment Magazine

home school enrichment magazine.

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

Review: Chocolate Challenge

Chocolate Challenge

Today am doing our official review of the downloadngo unit study/lapbook. on CHOCOLATE! The lad's reaction when I told him what we were going to study was "YEAH!!" This study is done by Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett.

The outline of this study is as follows.
Day 1: Chocolate – What Is It?
Day 2: The Story of Chocolate
Day 3: The Types of Chocolate
Day 4: The Science of Chocolate
Day 5: Let’s Have a Chocolate Party!

We did day 1-2 here, and days 3-5 here. Our jobs and chocolatier continued for a few days. After soccer on Thursday we went to the local bulk barn store and purchased just a wee little bit of the varieties of chocolate they had available, and then stopped at the dollarama to check out what unique chocolate bars they might have. it's been fun.

For the chocolatier part of things we've been smelling, examining, cutting in half, checking out textures, and first tastes and last tastes of all sorts of chocolate. Because I like a five year old to sleep at night I'm only letting him do 5-7 samples at a time.

This has been a fun study to do. We've gone country hunting, learned about the rainforest and why ... for the sake of chocolate.. that cutting down the big trees in the rainforest is NOT a good idea. Chocolate trees need the right type of shade and sun and humidity to grow. If they don't have it, then they don't grow the pods, and no pods = no chocolate. This would be "a bad thing, Mommy. I like chocolate!" We learned some history and saw how many machines have been made to help with the art of making chocolate. The making chocolate into art was quite interesting.... that chocolate can be like playdoh! "Wow, mommy! That's playdoh I can eat right mommy?"

These units contain LOTS of on-line links. Which is great! and I love how responsive they are when things don't work well. I imagine it is difficult to find links that will consistently work. And this is one thing I would like to change about these units...that the answers to some questions could be actually put into the unit for those times when links don't work and one really doesn't know the answer to the question or problem posed. Testing to see if links work world-wide is also something that would be nice to see done (though I suppose that's the job of us reviewers right?) :) But 99% of the time, all links work and well.

The videos are interesting and embedded to help control the amount of ads that can be seen by watchful eyes. It was good to be able to experiment with chocolate.. I even got up the nerve to make chocolate pretzels...thoroughly enjoyed by all the people attending our HOPE days today. We had hoped to make fudge but I think that will need to wait for another day...perhaps this coming week sometime. :)

The lad really enjoyed this study, he had fun making a map of Brazil. using a puzzle map book that we just picked up.
We made chocolate Chip cookies, and chocolate pretzels, and eyed some chocolate cake. Chocolate milk of course had to be enjoyed...after all...it's what the Mayans and Aztecs drank.

Chocolate Continued.....

Chocolate Challenge

Today we continued our study of the DownloadNGo unit study/lapbook on CHOCOLATE! The lad's reaction when I told him what we were going to study was "YEAH!!" This study is done by Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett.

The outline of this study is as follows.
Day 1: Chocolate – What Is It?
Day 2: The Story of Chocolate
Day 3: The Types of Chocolate
Day 4: The Science of Chocolate
Day 5: Let’s Have a Chocolate Party!

Today we took large chunks from days 3-5. We can't get it all done today since we need to get Chocolate for our chocolate party. But we've got good plans.

We learned about the process for making chocolate, we had fun visiting our neighbours and calling family to fill in our Chocolate graph, found countries on our globe and world map, and learned a bit about fractions and using a ruler.

The chocolate car above inspired a "WOW!!! Mommy! I want to sit in it!"

a good study

i want to look at these sites more:

Notebooking is having an anniversary

Top 25 homeschool blogs some of them look intriguing.

Corn and oil have some science stuff here.

Track and Field

hurdles

Today was track and field day for our homeschool group.

The lad had a great deal of fun. I am hopeful that one day the lad will learn that when I say he'll enjoy something because it has lots of running around and jumping and what not that he'll believe me first before whining and complaining about it.

But once that aspect of our day was over, the lad enjoyed himself. So did I. It was nice to spend the day with like-minded people and children. :)

Obstacle Course

The lad ran hard, jumped hard, played hard. He was a strong encourager of others. "go Micah go!" He asked good questions when he learned that one of his teammates suffers from bad asthma. For the most part he listened well. And he tried to do events even if they were hard.

They tried the high jump. Humour was provided to us. :)
The highest they got was five cms beyond the height of the mat.

No day would be complete without some running.
This was the start to the 100 m dash. They also had a 50 m one.

ball free throw

The day was for the part good weather wise. The ground was rather quite wet. There was an area of water saturation that led to the lad going through a complete clothing change.

I thought it funny, every chance these five year olds got
they started to make sand castles. :)

At lunch time the children had fun with the parts to the obstacle course.

Chocolate!

Chocolate Challenge

Today we start our study of the DownloadNGo unit study/lapbook on CHOCOLATE! The lad's reaction when I told him what we were going to study was "YEAH!!" This study is done by Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett.

The outline of this study is as follows.
Day 1: Chocolate – What Is It?
Day 2: The Story of Chocolate
Day 3: The Types of Chocolate
Day 4: The Science of Chocolate
Day 5: Let’s Have a Chocolate Party!

I'm not sure if we are going to do this study by days as it is laid out of if I'll just pick and pull pieces out or what. Time will tell. Now to prepare a lesson. :)

we did day one and two, not in it's entirety.

we needed to use additional links because not all the links were working.

http://www.unctad.org/infocomm/anglais/cocoa/crop.htm

http://thechocolatereview.com/where-does-chocolate-come-from-/where-does-chocolate-come-from.html

http://www.hersheystory.org/lib/docs/lessonPlans/ChocolateMath.pdf

http://archive.fieldmuseum.org/chocolate/education.html

We practiced words like longitude, latitude and the equator. And all the parts of the rainforest.

We did some geography (made a map of the amazon rain forest), history (learned the history of chocolate), art (drawing and telling a story), social studies (studying the Mayan, aztecs, and zolatecs) and science (made tollhouse cookies).

webquests.

Title: Charting the Course: Social Studies Webquest for EED 463N

Camping

These look interesting, hope the links continue to work so I can look them up again later.
They seem quite interesting.

Today we built things, practiced real life sorting, and worked at stuff from head of the class.



we did a sequencing pictures activity, a counting exercise, addition, sequencing numbers, and a different number sequencing unit. We learned that he has the numbers NAILED from 1-10 but has some difficulty figuring out the 10-20 series. So we'll continue to work on that.

then off to help with the hospital rummage sale for an hour. The lad was an excellent helper running things to the toy table as we found them.

Once we were home again we sorted garage sale stuff in the basement, the lad played, we talked, we sorted, we enjoyed life for the most part. :)

Tuesday - book work today

Since we are going out this afternoon, we decided to do some book work this morning.
I asked the lad to pick a number between 3 and 8 and that's how many pages we would do in each book. He waffled between 4 and 5 and settled on four. :)

These are the books that we did

Capital and lowercase letters.

After this book we read two poems, one of those poems mentioned wind and weather maps which we want to look up sometime.

Letter Play

After this book we read a story.

Number Fun

We read a poem called "wagons west". It was a fairly long poem, and lad asked questions which I always like.

Then we did Fisher Price, preschool book, I can learn. This book had number and letter sound concepts in it. He had a great deal of fun teaching one of his baby(correction little child) stuffies about matching and letter sounds. On one page he made up stories about why different stuffies didn't like different shapes.

Then we read a poem about Indian children. Can't say it went over very well. :)

The complete book of numbers and counting

Once again doing this book the stuffies played an important role in helping him count and to teach. We had a lot of fun using his stuffies to reinforce learning. :)

We followed this book by reading the Little Red Hen where the lad helped read the "not I" and the "I will" parts. by the end of the story he was also filling in the animal parts.

My Heavenly Helper, k-2

This book has lots of dot to dots in it. It's interesting seeing him learning well his letters and numbers even though I don't focus on this information a lot in our schooling. But through reading and copywork he's doing good at picking it up. After this book we read a story about a tiger called "Kattor". He was a rather silly young tiger who had to learn a lot growing up.

This afternoon we need to take dad to the eye doctor so we're going to go see a movie called "African Cats".
African Cat
Documentary

An epic true story set against the backdrop of one of the wildest places on Earth, "African Cats" captures the real-life love, humor and determination of the majestic kings of the savanna. The story features Mara, an endearing lion cub who strives to grow up with her mother's strength, spirit and wisdom; Sita, a fearless cheetah and single mother of five mischievous newborns; and Fang, a proud leader of the pride who must defend his family from a once banished lion. Disneynature brings "The Lion King" to life on the big screen in this True Life Adventure directed by Keith Scholey and Alastair Fothergill ("Earth"). An awe-inspiring adventure blending family bonds with the power and cunning of the wild, "African Cats" leaps into theatres on Earth Day, April 22, 2011.

Director: Alastair Fothergill, Keith Scholey

Here's the official site.

Carnations and more

Over the past two weeks we took some time to study Mother's Day. This Mother's day unit study was done by Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett.. Here is day one/two and day three/four.

I have to admit...I was feeling somewhat reticent about studying Mother's Day but chose to do so because I'm often surprised at what details are pulled out of studies that I never expected. This study, though not a favourite of either me or my son, was no different than studies I've undertaken in the past. To my surprise, I actually learned something, and at times was able to take an unappreciated study and turn elements of it into something my son appreciated. :)

For instance I learned why on Mother's Day a carnation is given to each lady in our church. The carnation is actually the flower of Mother's day. Bet YOU didn't know that either.

My son had fun learning abit about different countries and seeing where they are on the map. He particularly seemed to enjoy figuring out what different countries looked like (aka Italy looks like a boot) and then looking for them. Scotland had us fooled for a while since it wasn't colour-coded or labelled very well on our world map.

We had fun finding countries, we found it interesting that it's not hosted on the same day all over the world, we found it boring that it's basically done the same where-ever you go.

Each day has a theme.

Day 1: What Is Mother’s Day?

Day 2: The History of Mother’s Day

Day 3: Celebrating Mother’s Day

Day 4: Preparing for Mother’s Day

Day 5: Goodies for Mother’s Day

My son had fun drawing cards for me and for his gramma. I liked that I was able to forego looking up some words in the dictionary and through questions help my lad figure out what words meant.

I had a firm appreciation for how scripture was brought into play with this lesson. Helping my son sehttp://www2.blogger.com/img/blank.gife how God used women in the lives of the men he did great works through was interesting.

All in all, this study was well-done and I would encourage anyone interested in learning more of why this Mother's Day holiday was started to check it out.

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

more reviews can be found here.

MathArt

Was looking at this Math Art class on currclick and learned a couple new terms.

Mandala and Tessellation.

Both are these are math, done in art form.
Not quite for us yet, but it was interesting learning. :)

Did our Blue Spruce Voting

Here are the books up for voting this year.

The Blue Spruce™ Award is a provincial primary reading program which brings recently published Canadian children's picture books to Ontario children ages 4 to 7 in kindergarten through to grade two. For many children, this is their first introduction to the world of books; it is a very exciting time for everyone.

The students will peruse/read 10 nominated Canadian picture books and then vote for their favourite book. They need to have at least perused/read 5 of 10 to be eligible to vote. They also can have these books read to them to be eligible to vote. Based on student voting across the province, the best picture book is then selected and the author/illustrator is honoured with the Blue Spruce™ Award.

The goals of the Blue Spruce™ Award program are:

• to promote reading for enjoyment and information among primary students
• to make students aware of quality Canadian picture books including Canadian authors and illustrators
• to develop the student's skill in evaluating a picture book based on story, text and pictures
• to provide opportunities for students to discuss the picture books in an authentic manner

This is the result of our reading and what the lad appreciated (or not).

He liked Thinkamajink the very best -- liked this one enough that it inspired stories
followed by in order of liking

C'mere boy
imaginary garden
proud as a peacock
jack the bear
perfect snow

sorta liked: willow whispers

HATED violet. this was a quite adamant "I HATE that book mommy"

Mother's Day Study continued

Today we did some work on the Mother's day unit study done by Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett.. Made this copywork sheet of 1 Samuel 1:27. Today we did day three and four.

We practiced animal husbandry by giving the cats a bath! They very much needed it.

My laugh of the day:
We were researching how the Scots do mother's day and we saw a picture of cottage pie and my son's response when I asked if we should celebrate mom's day like the Scots was "If you tried to serve me that I might accidentally throw up."

and right after saying that he learned the pencils break if you apply enough pressure. IT WAS AN ACCIDENT MOMMY! I didn't know it would happen! :)

We had fun with the languages page, where we learned to say mother's day in various languages.

and then we did some science by making some cookies. :) I threatened to leave out the chocolate chip cookies to see what might happen...and that was met with a look of horror! So we didn't do that. :) had fun none-the-less.

Home School Book Sales

So last night I went to a baptist church in London that was having a homeschool book sale.

I bought some books that were NOT school book related. Just general Christian fiction that I figured was a good price for the book box and that I could resell at more than what I bought it for at our annual yard sale. :) that way I have MORE money to buy more books right? :) and worst comes to worst...I'll have enjoyed doing some reading.

Anyways, picked up a pack of manipulatives. They kinda look like this but in lots of different colours. $4.00 I figured why not. :)

This morning the lad was quite intrigued by them and wanted to be able to add them to his play city and was sadly disappointed when I said NO... these are for homeschooling ONLY. We do math with them.

Being the lad that he is... he still managed to make a game out them. Only to occasionally be called off his play with them in order to do some math. It was interesting to see a light dawn in his eyes when he realized that.. 10 black bomb birds were still 10 black bomb birds even if they were divided into two groups of 1 + 9, or 5 + 5 and so forth. This is why I got them even though I KNOW that I can use all sorts of stuff around the house as manipulatives for math. I had him do some group division, count how many colours there and so forth as well.

I got a bunch of other books as well. A couple of readings, a three book set of bible dictionary, a small reading program, a science book, a music theory book, some learning type books and a few fiction books. All for less than $50. I was overall pleased with what I got.