Get Outdoors Challenge :: April 29 & 30

photos from our weekly homeschool park day

play with settlers toys at the Heritage Museum

This is the end of the Great Outdoor Challenge!  We will continue to have fun outside, just like we did before, with a focus on getting outside every day no matter the weather, all year long!

Get Outdoors Challenge :: April 27 and 28 :: imagination outside

Andre uses any stick or piece of wood and pretends that he is battling some evil oponent with some fancy sword play.

I am not sure what Celeste is imagining here...maybe she's a rodeo girl? Her brother's yoyo was getting spinned around over her head while she was singing away!

Spring Nature Study ~ Wildflowers ~ Dandelions

Dandelions! We sure have enough of them to be able to study them closely in our yard!

We went out and observed them at different times of the day.

First thing in the morning, about 8 am. We noticed they don't open until 9am.

We also noted that they stayed closed on rainy days and at night.

The empty field next to our house is home to many dandelions!

Here is one that hasn't bloomed yet!

Andre's sketch of the dandelion brought inside for our notebook:

Taking a dandelion out for examining the root. He wasn't able to take the whole root out, the ground was very muddy and the plant kept on breaking. We will try again in a couple of days and look at the root closely then.

I remembered reading this particular picture book last year with Celeste. We took it out of the library again. It's a great addition to our dandelion study.

"Dandelions: Stars in the Grass" is written and illustrated by Mia Posada. There is extra information about dandelions at the end of the book, along with a recipe for a dandelion salad, and a few science experiments and observations.

For more ideas and activities to do your own dandelion study, you can visit Handbook of Nature Study blog.

Sketch Tuesday ~ Castle

Future Librarian?

Celeste (5) loves to play librarian. She has for about the last 2 years now. Usually she uses her cash register to scan the bar codes on the books and puts them in bags. The other day, she discovered the elastics in a drawer and the discarded library receipts in our library basket. Now we have "books on hold" right at our house :)

Get Outdoors Challenge :: April 26 :: Canadian Geese

Next Step for Book Sharing Monday?

I have been thinking over the last few weeks about taking Book Sharing Monday to the next level. I would love to hear back some feedback from you, the participants.

The list of participants has grown so much that I am not able to visit everyone every week and I imagine I am not the only one.  Having a Mr. Linky would be able to allow us to see the posts every week and visit the blogs sharing books for that week.

The Mr. Linky would be posted here at the bottom of my book sharing monday post every monday and you would be able to add your link to your book sharing post, then visit all the others at your leisure throughout the week.

What do you think? Leave me a comment! Thank you and thank you for participating in Book Sharing Monday!

Book Sharing Monday :: A Child's Introduction to Poetry

We are just about finished with our Poetry study for this month of April. I used this book "A Child's Introduction to Poetry" as our spine. It is written by Michael Driscoll and illustrated by Meredith Hamilton. It includes an audio CD that has many poems read by professional actors.

The book is divided into two sections, the first part explains the different styles of poetry, from nursery rhymes to the sonnet. The book explains over twelve different styles of poetry, all with examples and most with audio samples as well.

The second part showcases twenty-one famous poets, in chronological order starting with Homer and finishing with Maya Angelou.

I have never been a huge fan of poetry, but discovering it with this book, along with my children has made me appreciate it a lot more!

I have added tabs to the top of this blog (right under the header picture), you can now find all information about Book Sharing Monday under its tab. I hope you will join us!

A morning at the Symphony Orchestra

What a great education concert!

We all enjoyed the beautiful music played by the Windsor Symphony Orchestra. We attended Percussion Power and the conductor was excellent at explaining the different instruments from the percussion section and the different pieces we listened to.

Photography wasn't allowed during the concert, so I took these photos before the performance. As part of the percussion performance, we also listened to instruments from different parts of the world. From the Middle East, we heard the doumbek. Two First Nations drummers came and played their big drum and sang for us. 

We will be looking forward to attending more of these concerts in the future.

The Capitol Theatre where the concert too place was also a wonderful place to see. This particular theatre was built in 1920 by Thomas W. Lamb, one of North America's premiere early 20th century theatre designers, and renovated in 1995.

Get Outdoors Challenge :: April 22

Fun at the park with homeschool friends!

Cleaning up on Earth Day

We spent part of this morning picking up garbage in the area that we often visit for our nature study. We filled up a jumbo size garbage bag, and could have done more...so sad how people take this little nature area as their personal dumping zone.

Get Outdoors Challenge :: April 21

After we finished our weather observations for our nature study, I gave the compass to Andre and the 3 of them played a game where he shouted directions, like "go 5 paces North West, go 4 giant steps South".

Orion joined us outside too, with his rawhide bone.

Outdoor Hour Challenge ~ Spring Weather

For our ongoing seasonal weather study, we didn't go far. We stepped into our backyard and looked up at the sky!

The weater has been beautiful here in South Western Ontario these past few days and today again. The temperature is 18 degrees Celsius, with a light breeze. It is very sunny with only a few high cumulus clouds.

We made a sundial but realized that there was still a bit too much wind to use this paper sundial, which led to a short talk about what materials would be best to use for a more permanent sundial.

For more ideas on weather observations, you can visit the Handbook of Nature Study Weather Observations post.