Sketch Tuesday - something that floats

I was going to do a feather.
What are you going to draw mommy?
I think I'll do a feather.
no, a boat.
I think I'll do a feather
NO, a boat mommy, you should draw a boat.

So.. you think I should do a boat huh?
YES!
So.. well...I drew a boat.



There's a story to this boat. It is a bunnytown boat. and the bunnies are fishing for cats. Can you see all the cats in the water? they are being fished for. This is a ladder going up to what.. I'm sorry.. I can't remember. But there is a guard rail so the bunnies can't fall off the boat.

Catching up....

Justin and I submitted sketches for this weeks Sketch Tuesday. We were to draw something with whiskers. I initially did a picture of "daddy with whiskers", but on query from my lad, did a face of Milo the cat instead. yes, I am a horrid artist, but hey... at least I submitted something :) Next week...something that floats. Justin was very excited about this one and immediately drew something. :) I am still thinking about what I want to draw for this assignment.



Today we did the first day of the Terrific Tigers Unit study/lapbook from Download N Go. I have a cat crazy lad so spending the $8.00 for this item was a no brainer. He had fun doing the first section. We didn't do it ALL (as in what day one called for), he's five and this is a multi-age study. So you have a child who can do some, do what he can, dictate what he can, and leave the rest.

As to the study itself I found that it's well done. I have to say, I would have no problem getting some of their other products. :) I enjoyed doing the day one of this five day study with him.

I have a fairly electic approach to homeschooling, I see value in doing a variety of things, and having a five year old lad gives me some sway in how I do things. I am hoping to start doing some latin with him at some point....But I think I might leave that in his dad's purview, his dad is more the language person in this household, though I'll probably get roped into it.....

What else...today we went to the library to get tiger books...they had ONE (a bit of a bummer that), we had plans to stop in and see one of the seniors in the old folks home, but forgot after playing with trains to do that... went to the dollar store to get a drink instead. but you know what? ...tomorrow is another day, always lots to do in the course of a single day.

Mr. Rogers Videos

How do they do that type videos.

Door's Open London

As a family we took in four of the sites to doors open London.

We went to the agricultural center, the train club, the HMCS Provost and the Secrets of Radar Museum.

It was good. We ALL learned lots. Justin had fun.

He had to answer three questions at each site.
1. What you remember,
2. what you learned,
3. what was the best.

In order
Agriculture center
- plants they were telling us about.
- plants can get diseases
- best thing was making smoke (dry ice, detergent and hot water).

Train Club
- (couldn't remember anything) :) ---it was ALL trains so it's not like you could pick anything out to really recall
- It was SO BIG!!!!
- "I wanted to see the whole thing"

HMCS Provost
- me and daddy were running around
- I could ring a bell REALLY loud
- Running around upstairs

Secrets of Radar
- Matching planes
- names of all the equipment
- Mommy telling me the names of all the equipment.

For those wanting a fuller picture of our day, go here.

Mommy!!!! Did you know?!??!!

that if you look at your hand through a magnifying glass it looks differenter?

Look at your hand mommy!!!

Whoa!!!

Mommy, look at this car? It looks differenter too!

What we Learned today : Paper Airplanes

Today we experimented with different paper airplane designs.
We talked about wind currents and lift, but mostly had fun trying out four different designs of paper airplanes.

1. was easy and fun to do. It kept wanting to hit Milo. It did like to crash land though...particularly after we added stickers to it. :)

2. we didn't like. It was too wobbly and didn't fly straight. "it's not a good plane mommy."

3. was HARD to make. It's supposed fly outside and it went far inside, but it was VERY difficult to make and I'm not convinced we made it properly.

4. was easy to make and fun to do with a boy child. It flew like the first one... long and far and kept wanting to scare Milo (the lad's cat).

will add pics later. :)

The lad also did
on some book work. Copying letters and doing some early math. :)

BLue Spruce

I asked our town librarian the other day if she could recommend books for our lad to read.

She said she couldn't recommend a particular book as there are so many good ones out there, but that we should read some of the Blue Spruce books. Here are some titles to some Blue Spruce books.

From what I understand, Blue Spruce books are some of the best of Canadian authors in Children's literature.
I do know that of the few we brought home today from the library our lad has enjoyed them immensely. They are a good read

Progressive Phonics

Thanks to whomever did this spreadsheet. I found Progressive Phonics.

I know what the lad and I will be doing tomorrow. :)

Should prove interesting.....

What We Learned Today - Magnets

Today I set the lad up with Magnets, iron filings, nails and what not. He took it from there.

Things the lad learned or that we talked about, not necessarily in the order learned/taught

1. water doesn't change how a magnet acts
2. water doesn't wash off iron filings
3. iron filings are fun to watch on paper - you can make them dance
4. iron filings will cling to a magnet and they are very sticky.
5. magnets can break easily if they are the stick type
6. magnets sometimes stick end to end and sometimes they don't...sometimes they stick in the middle and sometimes to the side. (when I ask Justin if that is because of polarity he says yes)
7. nails sometimes jump up the side of a magnet while others just cling loosely and others stick very hard to the bottom of it and we don't know why that is.
8. iron filings will rust.
9. magnets have a north and a south (but Justin doesn't really get this at this point)
10. iron filings are very small...but they stick in long lines when they dance...it's fun to make them move around in clumps. :)

Review: The Middle School Student Schoolhouse Planner

Middle School Student Schoolhouse Planner.

I was sent this e-book to review and I have to admit, they managed to impress me. They did. And quite frankly...most planners don't really thrill me. It's like I have this mental thing of "what can they give me that I can't figure out on my own"? But this planner, indeed, it amazed me. Wow...they packed a WHOLE whack of things into this planner. Loads of calendar pages, planning pages, goal pages, conversion charts, and more. Basically...you name it...it will have it. It is packed with tidbits of information that every middle schooler needs to know. Very well done. I was quite pleased with this planner by the time I finished looking through it.

I have to admit that as a Canadian I was displeased with the amount of focus there was in the United States (as much as I expected it), but also as a Canadian I was very pleased that an American company had some focus on Canadians (three pages of info indeed!). :)

I would happily recommend this planner to anyone who wants to help their middle school scholar get their year organized.

Gymnastics

Today was the lad's first day at Gymnastics. He was VERY uncertain about going. He was alarmed that I wouldn't be in the same room as he was in, but he had fun! Hubby dear and I had fun watching him.

He tumbled and balanced and listened, and very occasionally acted like a complete goofball.
He does NOT know how to somersault yet. :) We just grinned watching him try and how much absolute fun he had while doing so. :)

Gymnastics was held at the Forest City Gymnastics Club. He takes part in their kindergym program. It's for 3-5 year olds. Most of his classmates were 3 years old, with a couple four year olds and then the lad at 5. :) It was a good morning of learning and fun.

University of Kentucky College of Agriculture

now THIS is a cool site. University of Kentucky College of Agriculture.

Unit studies, teacher outlines, all types of project for 4H children to work on...and they provide it seems like everything except the physical stuff (aka...if doing a study on insects.. YOU have to catch the insects). :)

they made a little bike!!!

that you don't have to pedal on

What We Learned Today: fanhawe pioneer village

On Thursday, Sept 9, we went to the pioneer village in London. One of the ladies from Kids Learning Connection booked a group visit to Fanshawe Pioneer Village. There were about 50 of us all told.

They split us into two groups for a tour. We saw different buildings.
The group that the lad and I were in saw an artists birth home, the brewery, the print shop and oh...some other building that I can't remember. What can I say...short term memory problems. I do have pics so that will help with the memory. :)

At the artists birth home the lad enjoyed seeing of the old toys that children played with (an old wooden noahs ark), at the brewery going up and down those narrow stairs evoked comments of "I'm a bit scared here mommy", and the print shop was fun because he could print off something by himself. He enjoyed that.

Anyways, afterward the tour they had a time to play 19th century games: bean bag toss, 'laces', lawn bowling and tug of war. I helped win the tug of war for the small kids team. :) Justin had a hoot playing bean bag toss. And then we did the pillory. The children had lots of fun pretending they were being punished for various things like stealing a loaf of bread, or breaking something.

When the main game time was over, the lad and I wandered around seeing the rest of the buildings. It was a fun day out for us.

An unexpected lesson for us: don't carry loose batteries in your purse. IF they connect your purse will get very hot and you can melt a corner of one's camera. NOT a fun experience.

What we Learned today : Density

It was actually two days ago, but life got busy that night.

We took
Corn syrup
Vegetable oil
and coloured water.

Put them in a wide mouth mason jar.
about an inch of each.

We discovered.. corn syrup sits on the bottom, oil goes to the top, and water is sandwiched in-between

Then we had the fun of finding things to put the jar.

Thumbtacks, lego, unpopped popcorn, raisins, chocolate chips (that led to an impromptu snack), grape, screw, bolt, nut, white thing that acts as a foot to something or other, millet seed, tomato, plastic from a bag, and such like.

We learned that lego and millet seed and plastic floats on top of everything!
Screws and metal things sink all the way to the bottom!
and most everything else sits between water and corn syrup. but the fish food sits JUST ABOVE where the oil and water line meet. We found that rather intriguing.

We learned that a pencil put pointy end in sinks farther than a pencil put on it's side (it was a small pencil).

it was lots of fun learning about the weight of things and how fluids are different thicknesses.

Cornstarch Experiments

This video is just odd....



this just fun


mythbusters (even explains it)

Science on the brain

They put together a variety of science based videos on you-tube.

rather interesting to watch them.

Measuring Yourself.


How strong a strand of hair?


How to keep an egg from breaking


go check them out. If you go straight to you-tube it will connect you with more of them. Science is fun and interesting. :)

What We Learned Today - Jet Engine

This come from the book "101 great science experiments by Neil Ardley".

Justin saw this one in the book and just wanted to do it. In fact he insisted for the next two hours that we go home right now so that he can do it. We of course insisted that we had our things to do first, so we ran our errands and eventually headed home.

One blue balloon attached to a straw on a string. He's ready to let go.

and so he did...the end result.. and boy...did it ever zip fast. Just like a jet engine!

Once we ran through that a couple of times it was time for the boy to just experiment with a balloon and tape and other such stuff. And Experiment he did....First he asked for a tied up balloon... and then he whacked it back and forth a couple of times. The he changed the tape. We went from packing tape to masking tape. and instead of two pieces, he used three. That held the way he wanted it too.

So then he went to the kitchen where he retrieved a straw and a q-tip. I wondered "HUH? what is he up to now?"He proceeded to stick the straw in his mouth and blow the Q-tip at the balloon. He did this about 5 times with an unhappy "AW" being the result. I finally asked him what he was doing. He demonstrated with spinning the balloon all the way around the string. So I asked "why don't you think it's working". His response "It's not heavy enough."

So he decided next time to blow the q-tip into dad's ear and just chortled. :)

Next change in plan.

He built a bumper

and then he built a glider.

and now all the bunnies in bunny town are happy because they can safely hang on and zip down the string. The bumper will give them a nice soft landing so they don't get bumped off. :) All is well. :)

His final chortle of this experiment time was to jam the q-tip into the straw and then say "mommy, blow in this". When I couldn't get it out, he laughed. :) He's a fun, silly lad.

Stick Bombs

have to admit...I think stick bomb videos are very cool.

check out this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiWxU3jXOFc&feature=feedrecmore

and then to learn more of what they are here at wiki is really neat. :)

Makes me inspired to try it out.

the audio is horrid on this one, but you can see how to make them.

Sketch Tuesday - something that grows on trees

This is our boy's first sketch that we've submitted to Sketch Tuesdays. :)

We were to sketch something that grew on trees.
The Buggy chose to do crabapples. The top one is very mouldy.

We have a crabapple tree out front that my hubby grew from a wee seed. It gets nice crabapples, it also gets a lot of not nice (as the buggy would say, mouldy) crabapples. :)

In case you wonder what the black circles are... those are the branches that the Crabapples grow on.