Golfing fun at Hackers....

Yesterday Abigail and I went to Hackers to play glow golf :)  It was great fun and a lesson in math for her as she added up our scores :)

We also had breakfast at McD's together and lunch at Subway - with some shopping thrown in too - had a lovely chat with a guy in Save On Foods who was explaining about the working of the store AND about homeschooling :)  Such a nice guy!!  :)

We stocked up on a LOT of craft supplies and a fabby new craft book and there has been endless cutting, sticking and creating ever since!

I bought Susannah a cross stitch kit too and she has started working on that and seems to be really enjoying it!

Oh and yes, Abigail is picking Neptunes nose ;)  and eating his boogers!!!  Hahaha ;)

Festival of Trees...

We had a great time at our local Festival of Trees yesterday.  Cookie decorating, card making, bracelet making, face painting, decoration making....and plenty of beautiful trees and decorations to admire :)

We then headed down tot he library for a while and chose some more books to add to the millions we already have at home that we haven't taken back yet!!  Abigail was feeling festive and picked up a lot of Christmas craft and music books to enjoy.

Am I doing enough????

 I think this is one of the fears many homeschoolers have at one time or other.  Today I read this article:       'Am I doing Enough'??? and it is full of useful questions to ask yourself about your homeschooled child.  It is for parents who want to evaluate whether they are teaching their child enough, if they are heading in the right direction....if they have the balance right ;)

After reading through the questions, I'd say we are doing just right.  Our facilitator will call in January to ask how our year is going - just a phonecall appointment, as the only times we actually see her are once in the Fall to discuss our plans for the year, and once in May to show our progress.  I think we are doing good though as Abigail has a balance of activities she takes part in, and is quite independent regarding life skills - as well as loving to read, craft, write, draw etc etc....

You will find endless links to other useful pages at this fantastic website too :)

Hiking the trails...

We took a walk at a local National Park today - we saw a lot of signs of animal activity - bushes gnawed at by moose, trees chewed up by beaver, droppings form coyotes and skunks...

We even had an inquisitive squirrel come right up to us to say hello until Sam moved and scared the little fella away :)

We had ventured there to try geocaching again, but we couldn't find the cache.  It was starting to get dark so we gave up looking and headed back to the car.  We will go back there and hunt for the geocache again!!!  We refuse to give up :)

Remembrance Day....2009

A few pictures of some of the activities we have done this week to commemorate Remembrance Day.  The children also wore their poppies and we talked a lot about the reason for Remembrance Day.  We watched the ceremonies on television this morning.  Some of the crosswords and wordsearch words lead to interesting discussions too about courage and bravery, soldiers and peace.

I continue to read 'The Book Thief'  as my chosen book for the month.  I am really enjoying it and very much recommend this book for Young Adults and adults alike!

Fairies, fairies everywhere!!!

Abigail is just loving the fairy craft book we got at the library on Saturday!!  She has made a fairy house,  complete with furniture and an upstairs!!  She has made the flower fairies as seen below, and this morning she attacked a pair of tights and the plastic food wrap and created this fairy head band and belt.....she seems to have helped herself to a lot of my scrapbooking supplies...sigh.....but she is enjoying herself so much and is so inspired that I'm not going to stop her ;)

Flower fairy :)

After a library trip this morning, Abigail set to work this afternoon making things form the 'Fairy Crafts' book - I just love this fairy she made this afternoon :)

Remembrance Day activities!!

www.dltk-holidays.com/remembrance/printables.htm

www.dltk-holidays.com/remembrance/index.html

www.vac-acc.gc.ca/youth/sub.cfm?source=activities/kidszone

I am preparing work and craft ideas to help us focus on Remembrance Day this week. Sam and Abigail have shown a lot of interest in everyones Poppies, and I want to take this opportunity to look at the Poppy and the reason behind them in more detail....

We will be reading stories, making crafts, and learning about War, peace and Remembrance. I will post pictures and links to anything we use this week. If you have any great links or ideas please do share them!!

Candle making....

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 :)

Where the Wild Things are....continued...

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'....

Halloween crafts.....

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!!!

'Where the Wild Things Are' activities.....

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!!!

www.cdm.org/i/Resources/Articles/Wild-Things-activity1.pdf

www.cdm.org/i/Resources/Articles/Wild-Things-activity2.pdf

www.cdm.org/i/Resources/Articles/Wild-Things-activity3.pdf

www.cdm.org/i/Resources/Articles/Wild-Things-activity4.pdf

including a short script for a play for 6 children:

www.timelessteacherstuff.com/readerstheater/WhereWildThings.pdf

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!!!

Breadmaking...

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...

Tornado!!!

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.

Music to my ears :)

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!!!

:)

Homeschool club!!

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.

I think it was a success :)

Shaving foam fun!!!

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!!! :)

Soap carving....

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!!

number leaves...

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.

Happy First Birthday MeetUp Edmonton Homeschoolers!!!

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:

www.meetup.com/HomeschoolEdmonton/?a=wm1_gn

'Cloudy with a chance of meatballs' lesson plans...

You can see a trailer for this movie at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP9wtdwgeok

And we used some of the printable worksheets you can find at:

www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3751823

..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 homeschool day.....

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.......

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs....

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 :)

Next stop - Greys Anatomy!!!!

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????

Learning the recorder....

Susannah has been teaching Abigail to play the recorder. Abigail can now play 'Ode To Joy', 'Hot Cross Buns' and a couple of other tunes ......

I love that Abigail is enjoying this new skill - I just wish it wasn't quite so OFTEN!!!!! I know they say practice makes perfect but STILL!!!! ;)