Sam and Abigail aren't feeling very well at the moment...this morning they watched The Wizard of Oz and relaxed. This afternoon they did a little of their Where the Wild Things Are project and then they settled to some crafts - Sam did some Halloween crafts and then they both started to work on the candle making kits I picked up at Dollarama!! They come with moldable wax and two wicks - so you can make shapes out of the wax like playdough and mold it around the wick. They've had some creative fun :)
Abigail continues to work through her unit on Where the Wild Things Are.....we won't go to see the movie for another week or so...we are enjoying the art and craft ideas we have found online too.....they link well with the workbook we have....this includes art techniques such as 'crosshatching'....
We've been doing a lot of Halloween crafts this week including making some recipes. I also printed off some writing books, colouring sheets, mazes and worksheets with a Halloween theme from Enchanted Learning. They had some great pages for Sam especially.
Today Lloyd took Abigail to her art and gymnastics classes, and I stayed home with Sam. He kept busy doing some of his print outs - including cutting out this skeleton and gluing it onto card stock. His cutting skills are really good for a 4 year old I think :) He did it all by himself!!!
We will be focusing on the following in the next few days - as well as the literature guide that I bought to go with our book - then we will follow up with a trip to the movies!!!
We also plan to do numerous crafts to go along with the project - including making crowns, boats, masks and planting seeds. I will post updates and pictures as we go along!!!
Lloyd has started baking bread. He now bakes two loaves of wholewheat every two days. Abigail and Sam help him do this. They really enjoy the whole process and have learned a lot from it. Now that they have perfected the wholewheat loaves they plan to try other types - with grains and flavours...
Today we finished our 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs' project by making a 'tornado in a bottle'!
We used a simple plastic water bottle which we filled 3/4 full with water. We added 1 teaspoon of liquid soap, and one teaspoon of vinegar. We replaced the lid TIGHT!!!! We shook the bottle hard so that everything mixed together and created lots of bubbles and foaminess.
Then we rotated the bottle in a circular motion which created a tornado inside the bottle :) The more you rotate the bottle and the harder you rotate it, the clearer it is to see the tornado - and you can make the funnel touch the 'ground'!!
Tomorrow we are starting our next book project which is 'Where the Wild Things Are'. We have read this book many times before, but this time I have a 'literature kit' to use with it...and after we finish the work, we will go and see the movie which is now in theatres.
I take it all back! Abigail has really surprised me and all the practice has been paying off! She has taught herself to play about six or seven songs on the recorder REALLY well! And to read music!!!! In just a few weeks!!! At just seven years old :) We weren't going to do any music at all this year as I am really not musical at all, but she has taken it upon herself to learn the recorder!
Her Sister taught her one song - Hot Cross Buns...and that was enough for her to learn a few notes. Now she has taught herself the rest!! This morning she performed them all for me beautifully and I am very impressed :)
Abigail has always been such a determined little thing - and will always keep trying something until she 'gets it' - like skipping, or swinging on the swing....so I shouldn't be too surprised I guess that after a few weeks of constant playing on the recorder she is now a great player!!!
Yesterday I ran the homeschooling club at the library. I did a session on bees for 1 1/2 hours. My friend Jennifer helped and brought along her microscope set.
The session went well I think and there were 28 of us. We had various tables set up. I took several bees and a wasp (all dead and the children got to look at these through the microscope and through magnifying glasses. We had another table set up with two frames of honeycomb and honey as well as a jar of shop bought pasteurized honey. There were sticks and the children could poke at the comb and taste the honey and taste the difference between natural honey and treated honey from the store. They loved poking about in the frames :)
We had a bee themed board game/ spelling game. A table with coloring sheets and story books and plenty of quizzes, and information sheets/ booklets etc etc. It was a very 'hands on' session. Oh and I also had a table with beekeeping equipment on it for the children to try on, touch etc etc.
After the soap carving, I sprayed some shaving foam on the kitchen island. Sam smoothed it out and set to work drawing and writing in it! Shaving foam makes a wonderful palette for practicing writing letters and numbers!! It isn't sticky at all!! It smells LOVELY! It is surprisingly easy to clean up! It just dries and vanishes on clothes. It wipes up easily from the kitchen counter/ table!! You could put it on a tray if you preferred.
In the past we have used a corn starch/ cornflour mix but that is VERY messy to use - but shaving foam is really easy to clean up :)
Another thing to try - add some white glue to shaving foam and use it to make puffy 3d pictures of snowmen etc for Christmas cards/ Christmas/ wintery pictures!!! They stay puffy!!! :)
We have been continuing our project on China, and today we learned about Ancient Jade statues. We looked at many of them online as well and also talked about the more modern Jade Canoe at Vancouver airport - which we have actually seen and had our picture taken with.
As our craft today we carved our own statues out of soap to give us an idea of what it would have been like to carve the Jade statues. Abigail carved a snail and then she carved a face. We watched videos on youtube of soap carving, to see how it is done, and then they went to work!!!
Sam was carving an animal and then his soap broke and he started carving a teepee and then he just decided to carve the soap away totally! He really enjoyed the technique of carving though!!!
At first Abigail found it quite difficult, and her first bar broke in two - but then she got the knack and her second one went really well! Her third one - the face - was REALLY good!!! :)
This was such a great craft and a fun way to pass some time - so cheap too :) The soap crumbs swept up very easily!!
Sam using his number leaves this morning. These are leaf shapes cut out of coloured card stock with numbers written on them. I laminated them. Sam uses them for basic math like number order (forwards and backwards), basic additon. We also play games such as 'hunt the number'. Sam also has a number tree to put the leaves on.
You could do sets of the leaves and play 'snap' or matching games too.
Yesterday we attended the first birthday party for the Meetup Edmonton Homeschoolers group. It was held at Kidz Quarterz. 37 registered attendees were there plus a few non-registered....and a friend of mine was there with her two little girls too - so we had a wonderful time!!!
The people who run the group had brought along a huge birthday cake for us all to share - there was colouring for all the children as well as plenty of play for the kids and chat for us oldies ;)
They also took a huge group picture of us all :) I will try and add that if and when I get one!! I didn't take any pictures yesterday (I know - shock huh???)
It was great to catch up with friends I hadn't seen in a long time, see friends I see regularly and meet new people!!! We had a great time - the children didn't want to leave!!!!
If you are homeschooling in this area I definitely recommend joining this great group:
..although if you google the book title "+ lesson plans" or "+ activities" or "+ printables".....you will have endless results!!!
We saw the movie on Sunday and loved it :) Great fun!!! We had spaghetti and meatballs tonight for supper to go with our theme!!! And we also have been doing some work on tornadoes and weather. Kind of good timing as we are having a storm this afternoon!
We have a few loose ends to tie up this week with our project on this book and then next Monday we will start our next project which is based on the book 'Where the Wild Things Are' :)
Typical day at our house...this is what our table looks like during the day ;) books, pens..usually some kind of math manipulative will be out - something to count with - either the Math-u-see pieces or buttons or little pompoms...something the kids can use to count with!!! The floor will often be covered with bits of paper from cutting out....the table will end up covered in glue or paint from a craft - we normally do school work in the mornings and crafts in the afternoon and we spend time outside at several points in the day - almost always being outside around the time the older kids are due home on the school bus.
I make dinner in the morning while the 'schoolwork' is being done.....
I feel weird calling it 'schoolwork'...but I guess thats the easiest thing to call it.......
Before we go and see the movie we have read the book and worked through some lesson plans on the book 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs'. Because it is such an easy reader, I let Abigail read it to Sam on the bed this morning. Abigail is a wonderful reader and reads with wonderful expression - Sam loves to listen to her read to him, and so it was enjoyable for all of us!!
The last photograph shows Sams picture of 'Chewandswallow' and he has started to write a sentence underneath. I asked him if he wanted help with any words and he asked me to write a sentence for him to copy :)
We have a few projects still to work through on this book but will probably make it to the movie in the next few days :) We are all going to go and see it :)
Abigail and Sam are practicing for roles on Greys Anatomy.....or future jobs as surgeons at least ;) We bought this game of Operation this week - it was one of my favourites as a child and so we snapped it up when we saw it - but BOY has it changed since I owned it!!! You no longer get the cards with it - it talks instead and tells you what to fish out next!!! So weird!!! Why do they change things????
