Sunday 29 May 2011

Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Gardening, Sad Nature Study, and Mind Maps

Another week with a day off! Monday was Victoria Day in Canada. We took the day off and planned our vegetable and flower garden. On Tuesday morning, we went to the garden centre. We were only able to find tomatoes and basil this time, but we will add more to our vegetable garden soon. In our flower garden, I chose mostly perennials this year.



We completed our regular school work during the rest of the week. We all can't wait to be finished! We will be taking one month off during the summer, but June will be a much lighter month.

In Science, we studied colour: the visible light spectrum, dispersion, prism and more. We followed many of the internet links from the Usborne Encyclopedia of Science. One of Adrienne's favourite this time was an activity where you were the light designer for a concert.

We started working with the Mind Maps for Kids book this week. I chose this book to do together, including Celeste. We really enjoyed this introduction and first activity. Mind mapping will be hopefully be a helpful option for the writing process. I read aloud from the book and we each completed a mind map about our likes. You can see Adrienne's at the bottom of the photo.



A little nature study happened right in our driveway. On Wednesday morning, Celeste was looking outside and told me that one black bird (maybe a Common Grackle, not as big as a crow)attacked a smaller bird on its head (you can see on the first photo where it was hurt). The smaller bird, a House Sparrow we think, was hurt and not moving. I went to check it out and it was still breathing. We decided to move it to a safer spot and monitor it. Adrienne gave it some bird seeds and water. There was a big rain storm that day and we gave the bird a little shelter. Sadly, the bird didn't make it.






Another bit of nature study that happens right around our house is the rabbit that lives nearby. We always need to protect our vegetable garden and our strawberry plant from it! Our dog loves to watch it from our windows and when he goes outside, he is always looking for it. We think it lives in our neigbour's yard. Here are some recent photos:


If you would like to read more wrap-up posts, you can visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

2 comments:

  1. Garden looks great! Poor bird! We buried a baby robin this week along with our chick that didn't make it. It's the hard part of nature and life. Mind Map for Kids looks neat! I might have to check that out...not that we need more curriculum! LOL Stopping by from Weekly Wrap-up!

    Jessy

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  2. Hi!I would love to see more reviews about the Mind Mapping book from you,amazon's reviews didn't look so good,so I'm not sure if it really is as great as it sounds,so I don't want to spend money on another book we won't use. :) So sad to hear about the bird.It's so sad to see little creatures hurt.Last year we had a cute possum like animal visit our yard and I knew something was wrong and sure enough one day he started walking in circles and the next day he died.We had gotten pretty close to him,even though it was just by looking out our window...the girls even gave him a name.It was so sad to have to bury him but I told my girls we were fortunate to see such a cute creature want to spend his last days in our yard.


    http://2011letters.blogspot.com

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