Canadian Home Learning

Educational and Fun Events in February

2012-02-01T09:03:00.000-05:00

February is full of fun and educational activities that you can do with your children at home!

{photo from Mystery Class site}

Journey North Mystery Class started this past Monday, but it's not too late to register and take part. "Mystery Class is a global game of hide-and-seek. Follow photoperiod clues to search for ten secret sites around the world. Track sunlight to solve a mystery! Discover the reasons for seasons along the way".

(photo from World Education Games)

World Maths Day, World Spelling Day, and World Science Day will held again this year in March. "The World Education Games is the exciting event for ALL schools and students around the world. It runs from 6-8 March, involving 5.5million students from over 200 countries and territories. Practice opens on 1 February. This is the global challenge to get ALL students (4-18 years of age) excited about learning, and to give the top students in each school an opportunity to see how they measure up against the best". Homeschoolers are welcomed! We have participated for the last two years and enjoyed these free events. Practice starts today!

(photo from GBBC)

The Great Backyard Bird Count is held February 17 to 20 this year. "The Great Backyard Bird Count is an annual four-day event that engages bird watchers of all ages in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are across the continent. Anyone can participate, from beginning bird watchers to experts. It takes as little as 15 minutes on one day, or you can count for as long as you like each day of the event. It’s free, fun, and easy—and it helps the birds".

Tower of Freedom statue in Windsor

Black History Month is in February as well. Black History Canada has an interesting website with teacher resources. Family Education also has excellent resources with many links: Celebrate Black History Month. I have a few reading suggestions from my past Book Sharing Monday posts here including related links.

Homemade Valentines 2011

Valentine's Day is February 14 and so many sweet ideas are floating around, especially on Pinterest! We liked making these valentines in 2010.

Groundhog Day is tomorrow, February 2nd! Kaboose has a nice page of the history, activities, and crafts to do.,

So much to do this month! I hope you have a wonderful time with your children learning and discovering together!

Weekly Wrap Up :: Weeks 19 & 20

2012-01-28T07:00:00.000-05:00

We have had two full weeks of homeschooling and also have been busy with showing our house. We are hoping it won't take too long!

We have been very consistent with completing our school work, all the math and language arts lessons were completed every day. Andre switched in the new year his spelling, grammar, and writing curriculum and so far we are both very pleased with the change. He is now back to using Growing with Grammar, which we feel is a better and complete curriculum than the Gage Language Power. When I was ordering his grammar, he noticed that they also offered spelling "Soaring with Spelling and Vocabulary" and writing "Winning with Writing" at his level now and after checking it out further, we decided to try those as well. He has done well with the spelling so far and the writing is interesting for him and gives him more practice than the assignments from Lightning Literature (which he still doing too).

In other subjects, we have learned about animal classification, cnidarians, worms, and echinoderms. Celeste and Andre are working with the same curriculum and we are all enjoying this one. R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey has been a winner in our family this year! I add library books and internet links to our lessons and we complete the labs suggested. I have found that this curriculum has been helpful in helping Celeste discover the field of life science and for Andre, it has been a great review.

A couple of notable links we visited related to what we studied were (we were very interested in jelly fish and in starfish!):

Monterey Bay Aquarium Jelly Fish Animal Guide

National Geographic Kids - Jellyfish (check out the video)

Jellyfish colouring page

Source: mesa.edu.au via Alexandra on Pinterest

For starfish, we enjoyed watching a few videos on youtube, especially this one:

Starfish eating

We will be doing the lab part of our worm study in the spring, when we can find them. We did read a couple of library books about them, and enjoyed Yucky Worms by Vivian French especially. You can see inside the book here.

In ancient history, we studied Greece, Crete and the Minoans, and we are now listening to the Tales from the Odyssey by Mary Pope Osborne. We found this seven disc set at our local library and we have all enjoyed this.

In world geography and cultures, we were also in Greece last week! We tasted Moussaka, an entree made with eggplants and ground lamb or beef (I used turkey).

Moussaka straight out of the oven!

This week, in geography, we studied Italy. We used the Enchantment of the World book and I found a great book of old Italian tales retold by Domenico Vittorini called The Thread of Life. We also used google maps to "visit" Venice and another area of Italy where I had spent some time vacationing with a friend and her family many many years ago!

Last Monday (23) marked the start of the Chinese New Year. We found this page interesting Chinese New Year for Kids and a friend on facebook shared a page with gorgeous photos of the celebrations.

Canadian Home Learning is now on Google+ ! You can find the link on the left side of the blog. I am keeping the facebook page as well. I have been on Google+ for a while now, but haven't used it a lot yet! I have been quite busy over at Pinterest (that's quite addicting!!), you can also find the link on the left. I have pinned many links related to homeschooling, I have tried to organize them efficiently. All of them start with "learn" then the subject. Let me know if you use either Google+ or Pinterest by leaving a comment!

Some of my Pinterest boards

You can follow other weekly wrap-up posts at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Wordless Wednesday :: In the Kitchen Lately (a great helper and lots inspired by Pinterest!)

2012-01-25T21:09:00.000-05:00

Blueberry Muffins and Whole Wheat Banana Honey Muffins

Cheese crackers

Cranberry-Apple Crumble Pie

Wordless Wednesday :: Snow (a little)

2012-01-18T07:13:00.002-05:00

Say Something Nice

2012-01-15T12:37:00.001-05:00

Weekly Wrap Up :: Week 18

2012-01-14T12:38:00.001-05:00

We are fully back to our regular school routine now, even Adrienne. Her unschooling experiment is done and we both learned a lot from it.
In case you haven't read my last post, we will be moving in the near future from South Western Ontario to Prince Edward Island for my husband's work. This will be the biggest move we have done as a family (I don't count my move from France to Canada!). We are all looking forward to it and somedays feel like Celeste who said "can we go NOW?"!! We do have a house to sell first, but my husband will be there as of the end of February and we will be following not too long after hopefully.

Back to our routine, with two days completed last week and this week a full week.

Smurfette helped Celeste with her schoolwork ;)

We completed all the main subjects, language arts and math and also managed to include science, world geography and cultures, history, and a new small literature study.

Here are some highlights:

In Geography, we studied India this week. We learned about their culture and religion with the help of the books in the photo above. Adrienne and Andre completed notebook pages about the country, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism. We also listened to some traditional Hindu music on youtube. We will be trying some food next week before moving on to Greece. The video below is one that we listened to:

Adrienne is back to her regular schedule, which includes high school biology. This week, she learned about DNA. We used a simple kit from Home Science Tools to help us visualize what we learned.

Andre and Celeste finished their study of the human body with a fun study of fingerprints!

We also had a lot of fun, even though we spent some time decluttering and cleaning our house! We went to see The Adventures of Tintin, which we loved! We have enjoyed the books over the years, I used to read them when I was little, both Andre and Adrienne like them too. We saw it in 3D, which we don't normally like, but it was fine this time.

The girls have been having fun with their AG dolls. We gave this book to Celeste at Christmas and it has been a great inspiration. They made most of the food you see with foam sheets. You can get big packs inexpensively at most craft stores.

There's our week back in a short post! How was your start of the new year?
If you would like to read more weekly wrap up posts by other homeschoolers, visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

2012 Update!

2012-01-10T16:51:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year!

Blogging always takes a back seat when life gets really busy, doesn't it? It certainly has for our family, but it is time for an update! I was going to wait until the end of the week but the regular wrap-up post would have been so long, that I decided to do an update post first.

Christmas was wonderful, shared with Nana and Papa at home. We enjoyed a relaxed Christmas day, filled with yummy food, laughter and time together. I managed to make a few Christmas presents and received a beautiful homemade apron from my oldest daughter! She sewed it all in secret and did amazing!

We took time off before Christmas and only a few days after. Right before Christmas, my husband was given an offer of transfer with his work. We had only a couple of days to decide (we said yes), then Christmas came, then we had to get the house ready for sale. It was a very busy time after Christmas for us! We will be relocating from South Western Ontario to Prince Edward Island and we are all looking forward to this new adventure! We will be moving to PEI as soon as we can (my husband will be there at the end of February).

Reading some travel books at the local bookstore!

We started back to our school routine again last week, with only a couple of days of work, but this week is full schedule. Extra curricular activities have resumed and we are focused again, with some interruptions for house showings of course...

Our current read aloud!

My Favourite Time of Year

2011-12-18T22:45:00.001-05:00

Weekly Wrap Up :: Week 17 and H.S. Unschool Week 5

2011-12-10T11:47:00.001-05:00

This past week was filled with goodness! If you read our blog regularly, you might have read all about Andre's dinner and Adrienne's African dinner. They both cooked delicious meals for us. You can read more about them by clicking on the following links:
Dinner by Andre
African Dinner by Adrienne.

The rest of the week was quite productive for Andre and Celeste. They completed all their Math and Language Arts lessons.

We completed our Mysteries of the Great Lakes study by visiting the teacher site , completed a couple of their worksheets, and reading several of the suggested books.

I found a series of books at the library by Anne Ylviskaker. They are geared to elementary students, but we enjoyed them anyway as a brief introduction to all five Great Lakes.

The girls visited the Island of Blue Dolphins site and completed the online activity and the quizz that followed.

Adrienne's experiment is coming to a close. We talked about her unschooling experiment and both agreed that it was a good experience but that we couldn't go on in the same way. Adrienne decided to get back to her regular schedule right away, adding a few subjects at a time instead of all at once. I thought she might ask to take the rest of December off, but no, she started back this week by adding Literature Study again to her schedule. Next week, she will add more.

This week, she completed her Math every day besides Wednesday and Spanish on Monday only. She exercised every day, and worked on my Christmas present a few days too. She read a lot, watched a few movies, spent time painting and drawing. She wrote Christmas cards for Canadian soldiers overseas (Air Cadets were sending them). She also participated with us in the Great Lakes study and our history lessons.

Celeste started doing some embroidery while she watched My Fair Lady, her new favourite musical!

I will be taking some time off from the online world until the new year. At this time of the year, I enjoy spending even more time with my little family and feel the need to unplug. I wish you a Merry Christmas and will see you very soon!

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

Merry Christmas!

African Dinner by Adrienne

2011-12-08T16:09:00.001-05:00

One of Adrienne's projects for her unschooling experiment was to research and learn more about Africa and Australia. She also wanted to try some food from these two continents. She chose a couple of books from the library and selected three different recipes. Last night, she cooked everything for us for dinner. I helped her only a tiny bit, she did amazing!

She made a Moroccan Carrot Salad as an appetizer. She found this recipe in "Cool African Cooking" by Lisa Wagner. I really don't like coriander, but I could handle it in this recipe. She boiled the sliced carrots for about 10 minutes until just tender and then let them cool. The dressing was made with 3 tablespoons of lemon juice, 3 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tsp of paprika, 2 cloves of garlic minced, 1 tsp ground cumin. The dressing was whisked then mixed with the cooled carrots. Then she added the chopped cilantro, mixed everything and put in the fridge to chill for about 1 hour.

The main dish was Palaver Chicken. The cookbook she used, The Complete Illustrated Food and Cooking of Africa and the Middle East, explained that there are many variations of this dish existing in Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Adrienne made hers with chicken, tomatoes, and spinach. She served it over brown rice. This stew had peanut butter in it, but we couldn't really taste it, it was delicious though and Celeste (my picky eater!) ate it and even said it was good!

Adrienne made a dessert too! I told my kids last night that if they wanted to be competitive with dinner, that was fine with me! Andre was already talking about what dessert he will be making next Tuesday to go with his dinner....

For dessert Adrienne made a Tropical Fruit Salad. The recipe is super simple and came from the little Cool African Cookbook. It was very refreshing and tasty. She mixed 3 sliced bananas, 2 cubed mangoes, and 2 cups of cubed pineapple (she used canned pineapple tidbits) with the juice from 1 lime. She made this salad first and put it in the fridge to cool. It was in there for a little over 1 hour. She took it out when we were eating the chicken and just before serving added unsweetened shredded coconut on top. Delicious!

Wordless Wednesday :: Sketch Tuesday: In the Science Lab

2011-12-07T16:51:00.001-05:00

Sketch Tuesday hosted by Harmony Art Mom

Dinner by Andre

2011-12-06T21:45:00.001-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, Andre received a book he had been asking for a long time: The Usborne Cookbook for Boys. {That title seems to be out of stock/out of print through Usborne but I noticed it in a Scholastic Book Club flyer}. I think it's funny and so fitting that on the Usborne site, the review from Bookfest for that cookbook says "An excellent book for budding Jamie Olivers. We're big fans of his cooking!

He spent a long time reading through the cookbook then announced that he would like to have one evening a week to cook dinner for all of us! I quickly agreed to this arrangement! We agreed that Tuesdays would work for us, then he planned out the two meals he would start with and I made sure he had the ingredients.

Tonight was his first night cooking. He made pizza, including the pizza sauce and dough. He also made a green salad with a delicious French jam jar dressing from Jamie Oliver. There was a lot of chopping involved, mixing, measuring, etc...

Dinner was delicious and he was very pleased that everyone loved it. All my kids enjoy cooking, but it has been mostly baking in the past. In my opinion, cooking dinner is an important life skill! I think it's wonderful that he took the initiative and is learning about planning meals as well as cooking them. We are looking forward to more dinners by Andre!

Weekly Wrap Up :: Week 16 and H.S. Unschool Week 4

2011-12-03T10:03:00.001-05:00

December is here! Celeste has been waiting for this time to come! We wait until December 1st to decorate our house for Christmas and she was counting down the days since Thanksgiving (our Canadian Thanksgiving!). We spent most of Thursday decorating our house and tree. This year, I had three very helpful elves! I think they did a great job on our tree. Clara agrees and is really happy to have the tree skirt as her personal blanket again!

The rest of our week was quite productive. We completed our Math and Language Arts lessons.

We also did Ancient History, learning about Ancient India and reading Buddha stories. We are continuing with the Classical House Learning Literature curriculum (free here) . It uses Story of the World as a spine and since I still have the Activity Book from SOTW, I also use it.

Celeste and I finished the dolphin lapbook we had been working on for the last few weeks. We used homeschool share for the mini books. We read many books about dolphins! We all enjoyed the Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell. There is a great resource page for that novel here. Be sure to visit the Teacher's Page (link at the bottom of that page) for further instructions and resources. We haven't used this one yet, but we will on Monday.

On Wednesday evening, the kids and I attended a free presentation of the Mysteries of the Great Lakes documentary. This was an interesting documentary and even Celeste enjoyed it. We learned a lot about the Great Lakes, the lake sturgeon fish, and bald eagles. We were also shown how pollution and men affected the lakes. There are educational resources available at the Mysteries of the Great Lakes Educator Guide site. The guides are divided into primary, junior, and intermediate. They are available in English and French. All have printable worksheets, power point style presentations and suggested book lists. Next week, we will be doing a mini unit study on this subject with those guides. Our local library had most of the books suggested, what they didn't have I was able to find similar titles. I chose titles from all 3 levels since we will be doing this together. You can see a few of the books we will be reading in the photo below the video.

Adrienne's fourth week of her unschooling experiment went well. She is continuing to record her daily activities which really helps show her (and me!) what she spends her time doing. She completed three math and spanish lessons again this week, and continued with her makeup study. She started reading "Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry" by Stacy Malkan. She also found out about making her own makeup, in particular lip balm. We'll need to find the ingredients so she can try making some.

We worked together on her career counselling course with "What Colour is Your Parachute for Teens". This week, we worked on identifying her transferable skills. She had to make an inventory, with the help of three charts as well as thinking back on five projects she has done, of her skills with things, with information, and with people.

She exerciced every day and also read every day. She spent time drawing for Sketch Tuesday. She also researched recipes for her Africa and Australia culture and food project.

I think she is doing well with her unschooling experiment, but I am not sure if we could do this all the time. I would be concerned about what she is not doing. I do love how she is taking initiative about what she does want to learn though, and she is very independent learner so I don't need to remind her or encourage to do things. My hope is to come to a nice balance for her when the experiment is done.

How was your week? Did you start decorating for Christmas as well? Are you taking a long break in December?

You can visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers to read more weekly wrap-up posts.

Wordless Wednesday :: Math with Celeste and Orion

2011-11-30T06:30:00.000-05:00

Weekly Wrap Up :: Week 15 and High School Unschooling Week 3

2011-11-27T20:59:00.001-05:00

I am a little late with our wrap up! Last week was another good week, a bit mellow, but we still managed to get a lot of school work done...even when our pets have other plans! This happens regularly, Celeste is used to it!

Adrienne is continuing with her unschooling experiment. Week three was a little lighter for her on the reading and writing, but she still completed three math and spanish lessons, spent time drawing, sewing Christmas presents, and exercising.

Late for Sketch Tuesday, but Adrienne still wanted to sketch something with a logo.

Wednesday was a busy day for us. Nana and Papa came by in the morning on their way to Ohio. We also had a total of 19 kids (and their moms)over at our house for some homeschool board game fun!

Adrienne also babysat for our cousin for a couple of hours and she tutored math too. She spent some time on Friday afternoon watching cooking shows on the Food Network website.

Andre and Celeste completed all their math and language arts for the week. Andre is back to using Growing with Grammar and is very happy about it! We are also trying the Winning with Writing and the Soaring with Spelling and Vocabulary. You can read more about these at the main Growing with Grammar website.

We continued with our dolphin lapbook and unit study, working on the mini books this week. We watched the video at National Geographic Kids about Bottlenose Dolphin youngs and how they copy and learn from their mothers.

We spent a lot of time reading again this week. I love our reading time together! We finished reading all the Gilgamesh stories for Ancient History.

I also read Wonderstruck. Andre and I loved The Invention of Hugo Cabret a few years ago. I think we still prefer that one, but we did enjoy Wonderstruck very much. Scholastic has a nice website for this book, which could lead to more exploring into sign language and the stars. Just like the Invention of Hugo Cabret, I think Wonderstruck could lead to an interesting unit study on sign language, museums, "cabinets of wonders", New York City, wolves, and more (I don't want to give too much away from the story!).

Celeste and I have been checking out many Christmas picture books from the public libary and we got our Christmas movies, music cds, and books from storage as well! We have been collecting these over the years. What are your favourite Christmas movies? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American Friends!

2011-11-24T14:07:00.001-05:00

Weekly Wrap Up :: Week 14 :: and High School "Unschool" Experiment Week 2

2011-11-19T10:29:00.001-05:00

Last week was another nice week for us. It wasn't a "full" week again. Usually we tend to slow down in the winter, around February or March, but we are finding ourselves not as motivated right now. I think this is odd! Some of our curriculum is definitely not working as well as we hoped so I think that has a big part. More of that later on.

This week was week two of Adrienne's unschool experiment. I had asked her to keep better track of her activities in her agenda and she did just that. She wrote down pretty much every thing she did during the course of the day. This gave her a really good picture of where her time goes and for me too.

She spent many hours writing her NaNoWriMo novel last week. She also completed three math lessons and spanish lessons. She did a lot more reseach for her History of Makeup project. She researched main makeup companies and continued filling her notebook with her findings.
She spent an hour on Monday looking at makeup through our microscope! We hadn't used our microscope yet since we got last spring. She figured out how to control the settings and dials and then taught me how to use it. I love when my children teach me things!

She also spent time playing video games. I am not a big fan of video games, but the ones she plays I am ok with. She exercices with the Just Dance game for Wii. She loves Little Big Planet and planned out a whole level, designed it on paper, then created it on the game. She also likes to play Professor Layton and Ace Attorney. Both games include a lot of critical thinking. I wrote about these games before here.

From her notes, we also saw that she spent time playing outside with friends in the afternoon, read, took care of her cat, ironed her uniform for Cadets, joined in when I read aloud for geography, etc... It was interesting to see everything on paper! She also went out Wednesday morning with her dad!

Andre and Celeste completed all their Maths and Language Arts from Monday to Thursday. On Friday morning, Andre went out with his dad to do his Christmas shopping.

We continued our regular science this week with the digestive system and our senses.

I found at our local library Jamie Oliver's Food Escapes dvds. This came in a set of 6 dvds and we watched the Adalucia episode and the French Pyrenees one. We really enjoy watching Jamie Oliver's recipes and seeing the culture and the beautiful sights of Spain and France this way was wonderful, "brilliant" as he would say!

I found them on youtube for you, these have greek subtitles but better video quality than others without the subtitles. Both of these are part 1, the rest are available too:

Celeste and I had a playdate at one of our homeschool friends on Wednesday afternoon which was lovely! We both also have been working on some Christmas sewing, in particular adding sparkles and beads to an old Christmas tree skirt.

Celeste wrote her letter to Santa! Dad helped her with the spelling and I helped with the address, but she wrote it all herself and decorated the envelope too.

The rest of the week was filled with a lot of reading, especially reading aloud. We have several books on the go and also finished a few. We finished Free the Children by Craig Kielburger for world geography, Marie Curie by Kathleen Krull (another great book in the Giants of Science series) for science, and Gilgamesh the King for history. Ongoing is Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell, Dolphins at Daybreak, and Pippi Longstocking with Celeste. Andre and I also started Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick. We both loved the Invention of Hugo Cabret!

How was your week? Come and read other weekly wrap up posts at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

Lego Quest :: Surrealism

2011-11-15T20:30:00.001-05:00

Adrienne's Modern Art Gallery for Lego Quest
See more: Lego Quest

Weekly Wrap Up :: Week 13 :: The High School "Unschool" Experiment Week 1

2011-11-12T16:23:00.001-05:00

We started the week with a Remembrance Day Parade on Sunday (6th). Both Adrienne and Andre are part of the Royal Canadian Air Cadets. This is the entire parade coming up the main street.
Below is a photo of some of the Air Cadets marching back to the squadron building. There are about 170 cadets in their squadron, not all attended this event, but most!

Monday was back to our regular school routine for all of us, with a bit of a modified schedule for Adrienne. She has been asking me for the last few years to unschool, but I have been resistant. I have seen over the last couple of years that she is independent and recognizes what is important as well as what she is interested in. We talked about it over the weekend and decided to give this a try. She will continue working on certain subjects that I find are a must. The funny thing is that she told me she was planning on doing those anyway!

I also asked her to log in her agenda what she accomplished every day as well as think about some projects that she would like to work on. We decided we would meet at the end of the week and discuss what she had done.

She did well and completed every day her Math (one of my "must") and did two lessons of Spanish. She worked on her NaNoWriMo novel every day besides Friday. She worked on her homework for Air Cadets. She read a lot, for her own pleasure and also for research for her project. She is researching and writing about the history of makeup. We also started reading together What Colour is Your Parachute for Teens.

For this week, I asked her to continue what she is doing and log in a bit more of the "extra-curricular" activities that she is doing, like drawing, exercising, cooking, etc.

Andre, Celeste and I had a productive week too. Math and Language Arts were completed every day, even with a little bit of help from Clara, our cat!

We didn't do our regular science this week, instead we read about Marie Curie with Kathleen Krull. We love this Giants of Science series. I have talked about it here and here before!

Celeste and I also started our Dolphin Lapbook. We read several books and started with the mini books. She really loves working on lapbooks. I need to plan more of these in her studies! I am using this dolphin lapbook resource from homeschool share. I also found this Island of the Blue Dolphins lapbook resource, which we will use when we are done with reading the novel.

In World Geography, we finished studying Spain and watched a little bit of a bull fight as well as explored (virtually!) the Alhambra. We then moved on to France. We made a French Apple Tart. It was delicious bien sur!

Andre started learning about computer programming with Alice, actually Storytelling Alice. Both are free to download. I thought it might be better to start with the storytelling version since the full Alice is recommended for high school and college students. Here is a description: "Storytelling Alice is a programming environment designed to motivate a broad spectrum of middle school students (particularly girls) to learn to program computers through creating short 3D animated movies".

He really enjoyed this. Every time I looked his way, he was smiling!

We had a good week back. It was interesting to try something new with Adrienne. I am happy that she still joined us for World Geography and Science. Andre and Celeste didn't do their full schedule, but it was still good and we did manage to include Music Appreciation! We learned about the woodwinds instruments.

How was your week?

If you would like to read other wrap up posts, please visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Wordless Wednesday :: Fun at the Playground

2011-11-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

Nominated!

2011-11-08T07:44:00.000-05:00

Wow! I am so grateful and happy to be part of this again this year!

Canadian Home Learning was nominated in two categories this year:

"Favourite Homeschool Mom Blog"

and "Best Homeschooling Nature/Field Trip Blog".

If you have a moment, please go vote. If you have a little more than a moment, I advise you to check out all the other awesome homeschooling blogs that were nominated too!

Here is the post to visit to find all the nominees by category and to cast your vote:Let Your Vote Be Counted!

Thank you!!!

Memory Monday :: Homeschooling Year One

2011-11-07T06:40:00.000-05:00

We started homeschooling in the summer of 2005. We had a few different reasons why we started and it would be a long post if I explained all of them here. The main one was that we were not satisfied with the education and the attitude in the public school system. The system didn't work for my reserved quiet daughter and it didn't work for my very curious boy either.

After I spent months researching, reading books and also meeting other homeschool families, we decided to take the summer and try out homeschooling. After a month, we were confident that this would be the best for our family. We notified the school board and started our adventure.

For this Memory Monday, I wanted to share with you a few photos from that first year of homeschooling 2005-2006. The first year, we followed pretty closely the Well Trained Mind philosophy and also added many hands-on experiences.

When we started homeschooling, Adrienne was 8 years old, Andre was 6, and Celeste was 1!

Adrienne working on language arts

Adrienne reading aloud

Andre working on his Math with Saxon 2 (which I am using this year with Celeste!).

Both Adrienne and Andre learned how to sew that year, by hand and with the machine.

Andre was fascinated with dinosaurs at the time and had an excavation kit.
He is holding the tiny head of the dinosaur in this photo.

Shelling green peas together. I always tried to include my kids in everything!

Adrienne and Celeste making a lemon cake. Their interest in baking and cooking came early!

More workbooks! Celeste always wanted to do what her big sister was doing (she still does now!).
They are both in their PJs. We discovered how nice it was that we could "do school" in our PJs!

Homeschooling was always fun with a silly toddler around!
She wanted to be part of everything we did.

I really enjoyed looking at these photos again. We all learned a lot during the first year of homeschooling! I think the biggest lesson I learned that year was to enjoy every moment and pay attention to what works and continue doing that!

Feeding my family :: homemade brown sugar

2011-11-06T10:23:00.001-05:00

Look at that beautiful brown sugar! I have been wanting to make our own homemade brown sugar for a few weeks now and finally tried this morning. This turned out to me more of a golden sugar, but it is so delicious! The texture is perfect and it tastes fresh, so much more fresh than the brown sugar in the bags available in stores.

Homemade brown sugar is very simple to make. You need molasses and white sugar. I used my KitchenAid mixer with the whisk attachment. You could do this by hand, but it would take longer.

Even with the mixer, it took a few minutes to get the right consistency and get the molasses mixed well with the sugar.

Still need a bit more...

Now it looks like brown sugar!

The final product! I got my family to taste test this with a little spoon and everyone agreed it was delicious! We use brown sugar when we bake and so often run out of it. We won't anymore and I am sure this will make our baked goods even more tasty.

Homemade Brown Sugar:
1 cup white sugar + 1 to 2 tablespoons of molasses (depending on how strong you want it to be).

I found several recipes online for brown sugar, all were the same. I particularly liked Bakergirl's post about this: How to Make Homemade Brown Sugar.

Weekly Wrap Up :: Week 12

2011-11-04T16:37:00.001-04:00

This week was very quiet. We took a break! Lots of relaxation, reading, watching movies, playing outside, cooking... A great week off.

The week started off with Halloween. Only Celeste was interested in Halloween this year. Andre and Adrienne had planned on attending a fun night with the Air Cadets, but it was cancelled. Halloween was so different for us this year, no candy, no pumpkins, no decorations..so unlike us!

We met our homeschool friends on Wednesday and Thursday at two different parks. The rest of the days were filled with lots of playing and reading. I did a lot of that too!

This week was also the start of NaNoWriMo. I decided not to participate this year. At first, Adrienne and Andre didn't want to either but on Wednesday, they both decided to do NaNoWriMo's Young Writers Program again! Celeste didn't want to be left out, so she is doing copywork. I found her like this on the couch this morning (she got up when my husband was getting ready for work):

A nice quiet week off for us. How was your week? If you would like to read more weekly wrap-up posts, visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Wordless Wednesday :: Fall Nature Walk

2011-11-02T10:58:00.000-04:00

Memory Monday :: Halloween

2011-10-31T11:27:00.000-04:00

I am revisiting past Halloweens for the first Memory Monday. I hope you will enjoy these few photos.

2005: We had some kind of lizard (or was it a dragon?), and two unicorns!

Sick Pumpkin 2008

Cannibal Pumpkin 2008

2009: We had a corpse bride, a witch, and Harry Potter!
Orion had a black halloween shirt on, but he wasn't too impressed.
He did enjoy all the walking though!

Happy Halloween!

Feeding my family :: being sneaky

2011-10-29T15:54:00.000-04:00

I tend to stay focus on homeschooling here at Canadian Home Learning, but lately I have felt the desire to share a bit more of our lives. I keep a personal blog where I share my adventures in quilting, photography, reading, and other "stuff" (you can visit my corner here).

I am not sure how often I will post in this new category of posts that I am starting called "feeding my family". I think a lot of us moms have an interest in what we feed our families. I like to make meals that nutritious. I also make a conscious effort to keep artificial ingredients out of our house, or as I usually call them "fake stuff". We are not vegetarians, but we don't eat meat often, and when we do it's usually chicken, turkey, or fish.

I am always trying new recipes. I have always been that way and my family is used to looking at something new to them at dinner time. My kids know that they need to try the food I make for them and that I won't make them something else.

Anyway, what I would like this new series of posts to be about is food. Recipes I have found that pleased my family or a particular cookbook that has become a favourite.

This past week, I have tried several recipes from the Sneaky Chef cookbooks. I took three books out of our local library. The titles are "The Sneaky Chef", "The Sneaky Chef: How to Cheat on Your Man (in the Kitchen)", and "The Sneaky Chef to the Rescue", all by Missy Chase Lapine. My oldest daughter helped me make our meal planning for the two weeks and chose many recipes from two of the books (the man one and the kids one). We both narrowed it down to a few to try and so far, we have been very pleased with the results.

The Sneaky Chef's recipes all include a little boost of nutrition. The boost comes from purees (best made in advance) full of healthy vegetables and fruits, or extra grains. I made these purees last Sunday afternoon. It didn't take very long and I froze a batch of green and orange purees for the week ahead. The rest of the purees I used I made right before starting on the recipe.

Our favourite recipes so far are the Enlightened Enchiladas (kids), the Doctor's Choice Chili (men), the Blockbuster Blueberry Muffins (men), and the Roasted Squash Soup (kids). [kids or men refers to which cookbook the recipe came from].

The Enchiladas were my husband's favourite. The kids loved them too. At that point, only Adrienne and I knew what was in them! I didn't tell them until yesterday that the delicious meals they had been eating contained extra veggies! These had ground turkey and extra veggies were sweet potatoes, carrots, baby spinach, broccoli, and green peas. All those were blended with the meat so you couldn't see anything! I didn't use whole wheat tortillas this time, but will next time. We'll be making this one again.

Another favourite was the Doctor's Choice Chili. I forgot to take a photo of that one, but we all liked it. Made with ground turkey again, it contained extra veggies too: baby spinach, broccoli, green peas, cauliflower, and zucchini. It also had red kidney beans and tomatoes.

Another recipe that I missed taking a photo was the Brainy Brownies. They didn't last long! Very moist and tasty, they had purple puree (blueberries and baby spinach)!

Today I made some soup, the Roasted Squash Soup from the kids cookbook. It has extra veggies from the orange puree (sweet potato and carrots). I love butternut squash soup and this one is delicious.

We will be trying a few more recipes, some drinks and breakfast recipes from the Sneaky Chef.

Sneaky Chef has a great website with lots of information, free recipes and videos. You can visit here, and also find her on facebook and twitter. I always recommend checking your public library before buying books. I think it's a good idea with cookbooks to try a few recipes first, then decide if the book is for you or not. So far, this is a winner in our house!

Weekly Wrap Up :: Week 11

2011-10-28T21:54:00.000-04:00

While I was getting organized for this wrap-up post, I noticed I didn't have many photos this week, so this post will only have the one photo.

It was a busy week with school work and watching our mail box!

Adrienne and Celeste both spent some of their savings and got American Girl dolls for themselves. Celeste has been wanting one of these for the last 4 years! I finally agreed that she was old enough and now she has her very own. She is so happy. I think these dolls are extra special to my girls because they saved their money for them too. I love giving my children gifts, but I think it's important for them to have the satisfaction of getting their own things too.

Receiving their big box was the highlight of their week, I am pretty sure!

Homeschooling wise, we had a great week. Last week seemed a bit relaxed and almost unfocused, but this week was the opposite. We had five full days of school work and accomplished lots. Here is a run down.

I usually don't share what we do in Math and Language Arts but this week, I thought I would.

In Math this week:

Adrienne's chapter is called "Freeing the Trapped X" with problems like "solve 2[4(x+6)+1]+3x=17. I am so glad she is using Teaching Textbooks!

Andre has been learning about fractions in the real world (clearance sales, ratios and recipes, advertising, carpentry). He also uses Teaching Textbooks. I can't say enough good things about this curriculum. Math isn't my favourite subject, so I am very very pleased to have found it!

Celeste and I started subtraction this week in Saxon Math 2. She is picking up Math really fast, it's amazing to see!

In Language Arts this week:

Adrienne and Andre completed several lessons in their grammar workbooks and both had one test this week as well. Adrienne finished her unit on sentences (run-on, comma splice errors, and sentence fragments) and Andre also finished his sentences unit and started on grammar and usage with nouns.

Both also worked on their Lightning Literature. Even though they are at different levels, they are both working on analyzing poetry at this time from a variety of poems found in Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages.

We haven't been working on spelling lately or in our vocabulary workbooks. We will get back to it soon. We did pick up our poetry memorization book though this week and started on level 2 with How Doth the Little Crocodile by Lewis Carroll.

Andre continues on practicing his handwriting with the Italics workbooks. Celeste also uses the same series and she has improved a lot since August with her handwriting.

Celeste worked in her Explode the Code workbook #2. The words she worked with this week were melt, lift, hunt, raft, belt, tent, ant, and bent. She really likes these workbooks.

We have been working along with Writing with Ease. It's mostly copywork and narration so far, but we both enjoy it. Caddie Woodlawn was the story we worked with this week.

Celeste practiced her reading aloud every day with her old reader too.

Adrienne and Andre read their own choices of books throughout the week and I read from Pippi Longstocking to Celeste.

In other subjects, in Science we moved on to the respiratory system and digestive system. Adrienne does her biology independently but I still correct her work. She has been learning about mitosis and meiosis. I went over to the Khan Academy to refresh my memory! I then shared the video with her. She said it was helpful and explained it well. I thought so too!

In Ancient History, we studied Hammurabi and the Babylonians, and Shamshi-Adad and the Assyrians. We also read several Aesop Fables.

We finished our study of Switzerland this week in World Geography and started Spain. We also continued reading Free the Children.

Adrienne is progressing with her Spanish lessons too!

Quite a busy week! I think next week should be similar as we don't have any field trips planned yet.

How was your week? If you would like to read other weekly wrap-up posts, visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

We love library book sales!

2011-10-25T17:45:00.001-04:00

Before grocery shopping Saturday morning, Adrienne and I stopped at the library book sale. It was really busy, but we managed to find some nice books!

Prices were 10 cents for soft cover and 25 cents for hard cover.

I especially like the DK travel guides we bought for 10 cents a piece. We'll be using these this year as we study our world geography. I thought we could read them and then use some of the beautiful photos for our notebook pages.

Not in the photo is one of Shane Peacock's Boy Sherlock Holmes books that Adrienne was so pleased to find.

We ran into a few other local homeschoolers at the book sale. Homeschoolers love books and great prices!

Weekly Wrap-Up :: Week 10

2011-10-24T15:56:00.000-04:00

Another week flew by! This past week, we had the opportunity to go see a production of Alice. It was a great experience and I briefly talked about it here.

The rest of the week went well, we completed all our main subjects and continued with some of our science, history, and geography as well.

In science, we watched a Magic School Bus dvd about the human body. Celeste hasn't watched many of their videos and she really liked it. I will have to remember to check our library for other titles that relate to our studies. Here is one episode we watched:

In Geography, we spent some time learning about Switzerland. I couldn't get our usual Enchantment of the World book on that particular country from the library, but we enjoyed reading Cultures of the World: Switzerland. We also made some Swiss dishes, Muesli for breakfast and Alplermagronen for dinner, which is similar to macaroni and cheese, and is served with apple sauce. It was delicious!

Alplermagronen

Celeste was not feeling well this past week, so part of Tuesday was spent at the local walk-in clinic to get her checked out. She is much better now, just a little bit of coughing left.

Field Trip :: To the Theatre: Annie

2011-10-20T11:47:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, we went with other homeschoolers to see a production of Annie at the Migration Hall . It was amazing! The sets were very well done, the acting and singing perfect, even the costumes were right on! We didn't take photos or videos during the musical, but here are two favourite songs:

Cooking with Celeste

2011-10-16T19:11:00.001-04:00

Celeste loves to cook with me. Today, she wasn't feel well. She has a cold and is coughing.

She still wanted to help me bake. Sunday for me usually means cooking and baking, I like to make snacks and soups for the week ahead.

As I was getting all the ingredients out for making muffins, she told me she wished she had a little mask to cover her face so she could still bake with me. She then left the room and told me to wait. She came back with a bandana around her face! She wore it the whole time we were cooking this afternoon :)

Weekly Wrap-Up :: Week 9

2011-10-15T09:29:00.001-04:00

This week, we focused a lot more on our schoolwork. We didn't have any homeschool events to attend and the weather was often rainy.

Monday was Thanksgiving in Canada. Adrienne and Andre spent the day flying in a glider with their fellow Air Cadets. Celeste and I enjoyed our day and I started on some Christmas gifts. She also worked on her felt garland.

The rest of the week was uneventful. We worked on all our subjects. I took photos of the kids working on their math. My oldest works on a laptop in my bedroom (and doesn't like having her photo taken!). She does like Math though and has been helping our neighbour, tutoring her once a week.

This week, we continued our study of the human body. We learned about the skeleton, the heart, and the blood in our body. We even had a volunteer who donated a little blood for us to see through our microscope!

I used the Complete Book of the Human Body from Usborne as a base to read aloud and we all visited some interesting links suggested in it:

Skeleton game
How Does Your Body Move : The Haunted House
Brain Pop Heart Movie and Quizz
Heart Animations

We also did the labs from our science curriculum, checking our pulse after doing several different exercices was a lot of fun!

In Geography, we studied Holland. We made one of the recipes from the Usborne Children's World Cookbook "Cauliflower in Cheese Sauce". I have made this dish before and everyone in our family loves it. We used Gouda cheese.

You can see a short video of a traditional Dutch cheese market: Alkmaar Cheese Market.

We managed to include our Art Appreciation in our studies this week! When we are busy, that is usually one of the subjects that gets left out unfortunately. This week we learned about Ancient Egypt Art. We used Ralph Masiello's Ancient Egypt Drawing Book, his books are great. Our library has a few of his titles and we have enjoyed them in the past. This time, Andre chose to do a pyramid and Celeste the Eye of Horus. As a read aloud, I used Ancient Egypt Art by Susie Hodge, a great introduction filled with photos.

There's our week! How was yours? You can see many other homeschoolers wrap-up posts at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers blog.

Your Science Experiment in Space: YouTube Space Lab!

2011-10-11T11:56:00.000-04:00

"YouTube Space Lab is about space. We believe that space is more exciting and accessible than ever. On this channel, you can discover space by watching the amazing videos we find from across YouTube. If you're 14-18 years old, we're also challenging you to come up with a science experiment which could be streamed live on YouTube from the International Space Station, along with other great prizes. Some incredible partners and a distinguished panel of expert judges from around the world are helping to make this happen." from the YouTube Space Lab.

Check it out!

Weekly Wrap-Up :: Week 8

2011-10-08T13:27:00.004-04:00

We had a busy week! We enjoyed the beautiful weather and went out with our homeschool friends a lot! The school work suffered a little bit because of that, but I know we will make it up when the weather turns cold and grey again. I truly believe that this is one of the great benefits of homeschooling: being able to take advantage of the weather and participating in fun homeschooling events, being flexible with our schedule.

We did manage to complete several lessons. Mondays are usually our most productive days and this week was no different. We had a full day of school last Monday. Tuesday was equally good, Wednesday and Thursday together made up another day.

Even when we are busy outside the house, I try to get our Math and some Language Arts completed with the kids. Adrienne and Andre work on these subjects independently and I check their work after they are done. Celeste and I completed 3 Math lessons this week and 3 days worth of her phonics, writing, handwriting, and reading practice.

In science, we started our unit on the human body by making our folder and reading the introduction to the unit. A very light day for science, but it was fun for Celeste to prepare her folder. Andre, Celeste, and I are looking forward to this unit!

Adrienne has been working on her high school science regularly every week and she is getting more confortable with the curriculum (Oak Meadow high school biology).

We also continued with history, learning about Sargon and Sumer. We are also reading some bible stories. Celeste has never heard these, so this was interesting. This week we read the story of the flood and of Samson. We read these stories in a beautifully illustrated book from the library called "Everlasting Stories" by Lois Rock. We also watched an episode of Veggie Tales on Youtube "Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Samson's Hairbrush"! Celeste liked that! On the photo below, you can see the book I mentioned and Celeste's drawing of Noah's Ark.

In geography, we finished our study of Ireland. Adrienne and Andre finished their notebook page. We have been reading from the Enchantment of the World series. This series of geography books are wonderful for reading aloud, our local library has several titles. We also made some Irish food on Monday: Irish Soda Bread and Colcannon Potatoes. We also listened to U2 and watched some Irish dancing!

We went to the homeschool park day on Wednesday morning.

On Thursday, we met two other homeschool families for a nature hike in a Carolinian forest. We had a lot of fun together and saw so many different types of mushrooms and fungus. I requested a guide book at the library and will do a seperate post with more photos once we identify the mushrooms.

Earthstar Puffballs

On Friday, we participated in a homeschool track and field day. The weather was again perfect and it was a good turnout. The kids competed in races, long jumps, discus, javelin, and more. It was all in fun and the kids had a blast! We finished the day at the beach, playing in the water and the sand.

We also watched two beautiful family-friendly movies this week, both portraying homeschoolers in a good way! Dolphin Tale which is still playing at the theatre, and the other we watched on dvd: Soul Surfer. Both were beautiful movies based on true stories. I highly recommend them!

There's our week! How was yours? If you would like to read more weekly wrap-up posts, you can visit Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and see all the links to other homeschool families blogs.

Khan Academy :: Learn Almost Anything for Free.

2011-10-04T18:03:00.003-04:00

If you haven't checked out Khan Academy, take a few minutes to watch this video and then head over to Khan Academy and see the long list of videos available. Math, Science, History, Medicine, and more. This is an amazing resource for homeschoolers and all students!

"With a library of over 2,400 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 180 practice exercises, we're on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace."

Weekly Wrap Up :: Week 7

2011-10-01T14:35:00.000-04:00

The month is almost over! This week was very much like last. We completed all the main subjects every day, and also fit in some history, science, and geography. We will be doing our Art and Music Appreciation this weekend because we missed it again this week. I don't want to be too far behind and I find that if we miss a couple of weeks, then we tend to forget about this altogether, so we did catch up on Music Appreciation today (Saturday).

In Science, we continued studying our snail. We even found another snail on Thursday on our way to the library again! It has been interesting to watch them interact with each other. Both snails will be released this weekend. We learned that some snails hibernate through the winter. We also learned about how they lay eggs and reproduce. I had requested a few books from the library, we read several but we were really happy with only one, Snails Up Close by Greg Pyers ,(if you have one to suggest, I would love to hear about it, please leave a comment on this post!).

In Ancient History, we continued learning about Egypt, mummies and pyramids. We are using Story of the World 1 and a few library books. Celeste's attention isn't always all that great, so I have been using the comprehension questions from SOTW Activity Guide. She has been slowly doing better. She was quite interested in how the mummies were made and she played a game online that Andre and Adrienne played when we used SOTW during our first year of homeschooling! It's a fun one: Mummy Maker from BBC History.

We finished our unit on the United Kingdom and started Ireland. We are also still reading Free the Children by Craig Kielburger, an amazing and inspiring book but definitely for teenagers and up.

We spent Wednesday morning at the park with other homeschoolers. We had missed it the week before because of the weather, so it was nice to connect again!

Another nice week for us, but a little bit on the light side. There were a few subjects that didn't get completed as often as they should, so we'll be working on that next week.

On a positive note, Celeste and I enjoyed baking together. She always wants to help me cook dinner or lunch too! She is a big helper and loves to cook.

Another positive thing, and I am not trying to brag. As I told my homeschool friends, I just want to encourage moms with younger children, let them know that they will grow up and in turn help you! Over the years, I haven't been a big fan of assigning chores. My kids always know what is expected of them (picking up after themselves, making their beds, clearing the table..) but I often ask them to help with the laundry or cleaning in general. Over the years, this method has worked for us. This week I was pleasantly surprised when Andre decided to vacuum after tidying up our shoes in the front entrance! He just thought it needed it. The next day, he asked me if he could take over the vacuuming because he really likes it (he also likes to clean bathrooms)!!!

How was your week? If you would like to read more weekly wrap-ups, you can visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers for links to other families posts.

Wordless Wednesday :: Chocolate Marble Muffins!

2011-09-28T19:20:00.002-04:00

Celeste made these Chocolate Marble Muffins (with a tiny bit of help from me!)

Dash the Snail

2011-09-27T18:15:00.000-04:00

We have been having a lot of fun studying this little snail. We found him last week near the library. Celeste wanted to bring it home and I agreed because I remembered that our science curriculum included a snail study.

After bringing him home, we made him his own little habitat. We used a peach container at first, then he moved up to a small pet habitat.

We take the snail out of the habitat every day while we do our science and observe it. We learned all about the different body parts and that a snail is both male and female. We saw its mouth. We haven't been able to observe it eating yet, but it does eat the cucumber slices we put in its habitat. We measured it too, it's 4 cm in length.

Andre named it "Dash" because of the marks it leaves on the paper:

It's been a lot of fun to be able to observe Dash! We will release it very soon in the same spot where we found it last week. For now, it is enjoying daily exercice on paper. Andre wishes we could find a second snail so that maybe they would race!

I have a few books coming from the library and will share the ones that we really enjoyed soon with you.

Weekly Wrap-Up :: Week 6

2011-09-25T09:34:00.000-04:00

The routine has set in now and most days go pretty smoothly. Life is never perfect, but we do enjoy our days together!

After the Battle of Britain parade with the Air Cadets, on Sunday, we spent time at a local nature area. It was a beautiful day and even if we didn't stay very long, it was nice to spend time together looking for birds, flowers, fungus and enjoying the walk.

In our homeschool, this week, we continued on our Math and Language Arts subjects. Adrienne and Andre had a light week with their Lightning Literature again, it was only reading assignments.
Math is going very well for all 3 kids. Celeste is much quicker at understanding Math than with her reading! Adrienne started last week to tutor our neighbour in Math.

In Science, Celeste learned about cells. We used an egg in an experiment. She is really liking the hands-on experiments of this curriculum (R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey) . Andre joins us for Science, and also does his own.

Next week, we will jump to the mollusk section since we found a snail this week while we were walking to the library. We are keeping it for a little while so we can observe it, it's our new "school pet"!

In Geography, we studied United Kingdom. We made mini scones with jam and tea one afternoon. We also completed some map work and created flashcards with the names of countries and capitals of some European countries. We continued to learn about different religions, ancient ones this week: Celts and Norse.

I used this site for the worksheet that Celeste is working on in the above photo: homeschool creations. It's a wonderful site with lots of great printables!
I also printed colouring pages from education.com, they have a lot of different landmarks to print and colour. We did the Big Ben with double decker bus and Stonehenge:

It was another good week, we took Wednesday off so not quite a full week. We had plans to go to our homeschool park day, but the weather had other plans, so instead we went shopping for boy clothes. It's not his favourite thing to do, but was needed, all last year's fall clothes are too short. I think that he will soon be as tall as Adrienne! Here is a photo from last Sunday, at the parade in their Air Cadets uniform.

How was your week?

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

Wordless Wednesday :: Science at Home: Snail!

2011-09-21T19:10:00.001-04:00

Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Back to it!

2011-09-16T17:06:00.003-04:00

After a nice relaxing week of camping, we are now back to our routine!

Monday was a little slow, the mountain of laundry had to be taken care of first, but we still managed to catch up on history, literature, and geography.

The rest of the week was very productive. We completed all the lessons in Math and Language Arts that needed to be done this week.

We learned about cells in Biology and finished reading Mummies in the Morning for Celeste's Ancient History. Andre is almost finished reading the Tales of Ancient Egypt. He has enjoyed this book a lot.

For literature, Adrienne has been reading Treasure Island and Andre is reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Their assignments this week is only reading, so it has been a week filled with reading!

We did a little bit of art during our Art Appreciation time on Thursday. We wrapped up our study of Prehistoric Art with some aboriginal art, and our version of it. I don't think our hearts were in it this time, but we still had fun.

We started our Music Appreciation today with reading and listening to the Story of the Orchestra. We have used this book before to learn about the orchestra and we love it. It is well written, informative, and we all enjoy listening to little pieces of music that illustrate what we just read. Today we read about string instruments.

We visited the local library a couple of times this week. They already have Halloween books! Celeste loves Halloween stories!

How was your week? You can read other homeschoolers wrap up posts at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Wordless Wednesday :: Body Art

2011-09-14T16:21:00.004-04:00

{body art with washable markers}

Weekly Wrap Up ~ Week 4: Camping and Nature Study

2011-09-13T17:22:00.002-04:00

I am a little late with my weekly wrap-up post! We were on vacation last week, camping in a provincial park near Lake Huron.

We took several walks, two on nature trails. We climbed to the highest point of the park, on the oldest and largest dune ridge. The view from the top was spectacular! We could see endless farm lands on one side and Lake Huron on the other. We did a lot of "nature study", nothing planned but as we walked and saw interesting things in nature, we talked about it. Here is a quick family photo we took at that highest point with the camera self-timer:

We observed different types of pine (red and white) trees and oaks. We saw invading wild grape vines and lots of wild flowers. I love moss and found a lot. We also saw various types of mushrooms and fungus, especially turkey tail fungus (last photo).

We also noticed many butterflies and moths. We found several dead ones and took them home to identify. I found a dead bat in the bathroom near the dog beach. I used two sticks to move it outside so we could see it better. I took several photos and we left it there (I am ok with moths or butterflies, but that's about it!), talking about how some scavenger would surely find it later. Today, at home, we looked at the photos more closely and researched what type it was. We think it is a little brown bat .

The kids and my husband took a little paddleboat ride down the small river in the park. They spotted a Belted Kingfisher bird, Canadian Geese and a turtle too!

We also spent a lot of time on the beach, even if it was a little cool. We watched two sunsets and played in the waves and the sand. It was a wonderful vacation!

It was a wonderful trip for our family, lots of fresh air, nature, and time together.

If you would like to read more weekly wrap-up posts from other homeschooling families, you can visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Week Three

2011-09-03T19:12:00.001-04:00

This week was a bit on the light side, but we still accomplished a lot.

We completed two full days of Math and Language Arts. Celeste seems to still be struggling with some of her reading, but I do see a little progress. I think we just need to keep practicing and finding books that interest her.

In Science, we took a nature walk. In the lab we were doing, we had to choose a spot and note all the living and non-living things we could see in that spot.
Adrienne also continued with her high school science. She completed her second lab and finished all her assignment questions for the first two chapters. Even though she is following a completely different curriculum, we are learning about the same things!

In History, we started our study of Ancient Egypt. We are using Story of the World, the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History, and a selection of novels and picture books. This week, we read several versions of Cinderella by Shirley Climo including The Egyptian Cinderella. We are also reading Mummies in the Morning, which Celeste really likes. Andre is reading Tales of Ancient Egypt.

Our Art Appreciation was really interesting, we continued reading about and viewing prehistoric art. We also made some red clay sculptures of our own!

In World Geography and Cultures, we started reading Free The Children by Craig Kielburger. This is a very interesting book so far. We knew about the organization Free The Children, but it's great to read how it all started in more details. We also continued reading about world religions.

Adrienne finished the Medieval Castle that we started two years ago! Her cat Clara loves it. She has been sleeping in it every day.

We spent most of Friday at the park and splashpad with our homeschool group. It was a great day. On the way home, we stopped at the skateboard park. It was super hot and humid that day so we didn't stay long, but the kids loved it!

We had another great week, enjoying the gorgeous weather while still getting some school work done.

If you would like to read more wrap up posts from other homeschoolers, visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Week Two

2011-08-28T15:35:00.000-04:00

This past week was our second week back and it went really well. We continued working on Math and Language Arts and we added history, science, world geography, and art to our schedule. We ended up completing four days of school work. We took Friday off and met our homeschool group at the local splash pad/park. The weather was awesome and we took advantage of that this week. We went to the beach twice!

In history, we are studying the ancient civilizations. Celeste and Andre are using Classical House of Learning History Literature Guides and Story of the World 1. Andre is doing the logical level and Celeste the grammar stage.
We started by reading about different creation myths. Celeste and Andre made a representation of what I read in Crayola Model Magic . We have never worked with it We liked it but I think we still prefer playdough or plasticine.

This week, Andre read "Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos" and really enjoyed it.

Adrienne is reading The History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer for her history and narrating it.

On Tuesday, we added Science to our routine. Adrienne started her high school biology course from Oak Meadow. She read through the first chapter, answered all the related questions and completed a lab. Celeste came along for the lab halfway through it. Who knew pH strips could be so much fun! I don't think the dog and the cats enjoyed getting their saliva tested, but they were patient with the kids!

Celeste and Andre are also studying biology this year. Celeste is using REAL Science Odyssey . She learned how to tell if something is a living thing or not. We had fun with her first lab! She had to guess if a rock, a bike, a plant and people were alive and then check. She was laughing hard when I was holding the rock and asked her if I should be careful because it might relieve itself in my hand! Science is fun for her and I am so happy to see that. Andre tagged along and had fun too, he also read the first chapter from the Story of Science and narrated it.

On Wednesday, we added World Geography. I am really looking forward to this subject. Geography is always one of my favourites, and this year we are using Barb's (Harmony Art Mom) plans. This is a high school plan, but I am using it with all 3 of my kids, adjusting it as needed. We started by reading from the What The World Eats book and on Thursday, we read the introduction from Usborne World Religions. Adrienne and Andre narrated what I read in the religions book, explaining what religion is and what all the world religions have in common.

On Thursday, we added art appreciation. I am using Barb's plans for that too. We used her plans last year and it really helped. I found in previous years that art and music appreciation were easily forgotten. Not any more! Andre and Celeste are doing the same level together which matches with our history period. Adrienne is also following her history rotation. We all started by reading and viewing cave art. Andre, Celeste and I then did a simple art project suggested in the plans: take a brown paper bag, crumple it and then smooth it out. Using oil pastels or crayons, draw some cave art. Celeste, who is not into crafts, really loved doing this! I did too. I always enjoy taking the time to do art projects with my kids. It's relaxing and fun (my cave art is the last one).

This was another great week for us! How was yours?

If you would like to read more wrap up posts, visit Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Nature Study :: At the Beach

2011-08-25T09:01:00.000-04:00

We spent an afternoon at the beach on Monday. It was a gorgeous day and we had a great time. We were also able to enjoy a little nature study!

We first noticed the beautiful Eastern Black Swallowtail butterflies. We first saw one flying around on the sand, then a second one came along. These appear to be both male, since the females have more blue than yellow. They look like they were playing around, but maybe they were fighting? Either way, they were very interesting to observe.

Shortly after we arrived, the female Mallard ducks came. These ducks are obviously used to people and know that people = food. They were not scared of us and came very close, especially while we are having snacks! We noticed that they were making their rounds on the beach, walking around everyone's beach blankets looking for food! We had brought a plain bread bun and some plain low-salt tortilla chips, so we shared a little of those with them. They were more and more friendly after that! They even walked right up on our beach blanket and ate our of our hands. I kept on thinking that we shouldn't feed them this people food, but they were probably picking up worse things on the beach.

It was really interesting to see how each duck had her own personality. Adrienne gave them some names. Some didn't hesitate to come right up to us. One even tried to take a bite out of Andre's apple while he was holding it! Others didn't come as close but still stayed around to get food. They continued walking around the beach, checking out everyone else, but kept coming back to our spot. They also went to the lake to drink and swim. We watched them duck under water. Some children chased them off the beach, so we also saw them flying and landing in the water.

An afternoon at the beach is always fun, playing in the lake and making sand castles. Being able to observe nature made our day even better!

A Morning in Our Life

2011-08-24T14:51:00.000-04:00

A Morning in Our Life. There isn't a typical day for us, something new happens every day, but there are similarities and a routine. Here is a breakdown of our day, yesterday, with a few photos.

I woke up at 7:15. I usually relax for a few minutes and often reflect on the fact that I don't have to rush in the morning and I love that! No kids to rush off to school, no job to rush to. By 7:25 I am up and taking Orion outside.

The girls are still sleeping, Andre (12) already had his breakfast. Since all of us eat breakfast at different times, I usually have breakfast by myself while reading a book or checking my e-mails/facebook/blog.

At 8am, I wake up the girls. Adrienne (14) likes to have 1 hour to get ready for school. This gives her and Celeste (7) plenty of time to have breakfast, and to get ready. Once they are up and awake, I am ready to take Orion for a walk. He is too. We usually walk for about 20 to 30 minutes (around 2km). I love the fresh air in the morning and the little bit of exercice this walk gives us both. I realize how fortunate I am to have children old enough so I can do this.

When I get back, Celeste is ready for me to do her school work. Adrienne has started her math and Andre is almost done his. Celeste and I sit at our table and start with Math. We then work through all her Language Arts: handwriting, phonics, grammar, reading aloud, and writing.

We take little tiny breaks and I check to make sure Adrienne and Andre are still working on their independent work. Adrienne works on her math in our bedroom. She likes the quiet there.

Celeste and Andre are now both at the table, it's around 10:40. On average, it takes all of us 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete Math and Language Arts.

Around 11am, Andre reads his history and science. He completes his notes from his reading. Before doing that, he sat with Celeste and I while I read aloud her history and science. We also did a little science lab work together.

11:50, almost lunch time! Andre and Celeste go outside to play. I check e-mails and facebook again. Adrienne is finishing her science reading assignment.

Around 12:30, the kids have their lunch and I have a Usborne Books web meeting.

That's the end of our school day for that day. We started back-to-school last week and are adding subjects on throughout this week and next.

The kids spend most of the afternoon outside playing with their friends. After my web meeting, I took care of the usual, laundry, kitchen, clean-up, etc...and prepared our lessons for tomorrow.

Every day is truly different, I picked a pretty boring day to document. The day before, we had spent the afternoon at the beach after our school work was done!

Some days go very smoothly, others not so much! There wasn't any major drama from any of the children that morning. Besides the earthquake in the afternoon, it was a truly uneventful day. Sometimes, those types of days are the best, don't you think?

Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Our First Week Back!

2011-08-20T18:00:00.000-04:00

Our first week went great!

Our back-to-school actually started last week with a little "orientation". We spent time on Thursday (11th) organizing ourselves and getting ready for the new school year. I reviewed with each child their plans for the year. We looked over each subject, checking the textbooks, workbooks, novels, and making sure we had all the binders and notebooks we needed. We talked about scheduling. I explained how often we needed to do each subject in order to be done by June. You can see our curriculum choices (with links) here.

My requirement is that everyone is ready to do school work at 9am. If someone is ready before, which is usually the case with Andre (he's my early riser), then he can start on his independent work if he has had his breakfast, is washed and dressed. This might sound a little strict, but if I don't put that in place, we would very often be in pjs all day long! I don't mind pajama days, but not all the time.

On Monday, Tuesday, and Friday we completed our Math and Language Arts lessons. Adrienne and Andre are continuing with Teaching Textbooks, Algebra 1 for her and TT 7 for him. Celeste is working with Saxon grade 2.

We started using Vocabulary from Classical Roots this week. We have never done this type of vocabulary work, so this is new for Adrienne, Andre and I. This first week went well, and I am pleased with how much information the teacher's guides have.

Another new curriculum for us is the Gage Language Power grammar workbooks. Not as much of a lesson in the workbooks as Growing with Grammar, but Adrienen and Andre have done grammar for several years now, so I think this will work out fine.

Celeste and I started Writing with Ease. She had to do copywork and a narration. It seemed a bit easy for her, but it is only the beginning.

We also started Lightning Literature. Adrienne has the grade 8 and Andre grade 7. This seems to be a great choice too. There was a lot of information on how to use this curriculum which I thought was wonderful.

As you can see, this was a great start for us. A bit of a slow start, but I think it was perfect. We were finished in about 2 hours on all 3 days, which reassured me that we will still have lots of time left for our other subjects as we start adding them in our schedule. The kids were all happy to get back to work too, there was minimum whinning or complaining!

As for the rest of our week, we took two days off because my in-laws came to visit us! We all had a great time. We went mini golfing, watched movies, played games, and more.

We also had a great time with our homeschool group at the local splash pad! It was perfect summer weather.

Finally, I will leave you with two photos of the latest creation at our house.

We had a big box lid from a garden bench we bought (got to love end of summer sales!). We have used box lids in the past as backgrounds for playing. This time, Adrienne decided to make a zoo out of it. She painted all the different zoo areas, the parking lot, the exhibits, different habitats...It's perfect for their hot wheels cars and their figurines!

How was your week? Are you back to the books too or taking a little more time off? Leave a comment and let me know!

Thank you for all your comments for my last post "What I have learned". It was so nice to read your positive feedback!

If you would like to read more wrap-up posts, you can visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers to see more links to other homeschooling families.

What I Have Learned

2011-08-13T10:19:00.004-04:00

We will start our sixth year of homeschooling on Monday. I truly have enjoyed every single year. I have enjoyed them, but it doesn't mean that every day has been picture perfect! I thought it might be useful to share with you what I have learned so far about homeschooling.

I find myself repeating the same kind of "advice" to moms that are considering or are just starting homeschooling, so here is my little list (with explanations!):

Homeschooling is a lifestyle: think hard about it and do your research.

I think this is a decision that shouldn't be taken lightly. Check out books on the topic at your local library, try to find families in your community that are already homeschooling and talk to them, try to imagine being with your kids ALL the time (if they are currently in public school).
The reason I write that first point is because I feel strongly that it is necessary to do this. I spent almost a year reading about homeschooling before starting. I also met with a local homeschool group at a bowling alley which gave my children and myself a chance to talk with families that were "doing it" already. We then took the summer to try homeschooling. We did small unit studies and workbooks before making our final decision.

Once you start, give yourself time to adjust to this new life!

If you are starting with young children, you are probably already used to spending a lot of time together, but maybe not with a routine that might involve structure or focused learning activities. If your children are school-aged and have been in public school, spending a much larger amount of time together is new to you and your children, and that might take some adjustment. Also, your school aged children need some time to "deschool", which means some time to adjust to this different learning environment. Depending on the homeschool style you are choosing, you will now be a "teacher" as well as Mom. My oldest daughter, who was in public school from kindergarden to grade 2, took some time to adjust to that. She often would tell me how I was doing it wrong, that this wasn't how Mrs. X did it in school!

Take it one year at a time, but keep in mind a long-time goal too.

I know, this is contradictory, but let me explain. I feel that it is good to revisit your decision about homeschooling at the end of every school year. An assessment to see if it's still working for your family. Maybe it isn't, maybe not for every child, maybe your family situation has changed and homeschooling isn't an option or maybe it is just perfect! I usually also assess our curriculum choices at the end of each year. I do think that it is important to keep a long-time goal in mind. Do you want to homeschool until high school? Or until your children are ready to enter college or university or the workforce? This might affect your curriculum decisions and how you homeschool.

Bad days happen and it's ok to take a day off sometimes.

Yes! Bad days. Everyone has them. Give yourself permission to take a day off if you and/or your children really need it. If someone is sick or particularly off, it's ok to take a day off and "catch-up" if needed on a different day. Spend the day playing games, reading aloud, or just relaxing, or get out of the house for a walk or something special. You will very likely feel better the next day because of that little break. The beauty of homeschooling, in my opinion, is the flexibility with your time. My husband works in retail, so his schedule is not your typical Monday to Friday 9 to 5. We have often switched our schedule to accomodate his, so we could spend time together as a family on his days off from work.

Homeschooling is as expensive as you want it to be.

Curriculum, if you choose to use it, can be costly, but if you divide the cost over the months you will be using it and for every child that will use it, then the cost is still less than the tuition to a private school. There are more and more curriculums available every year in various price range. Request several catalogues from homeschool suppliers and shop around (check amazon as well!). Use google or sign up with a homeschool chat board to help you find the many options available for free or very little cost. Depending on where you live, the province or state might have support for this too. We have used the public library extensively over the years, it's free and saves us a lot of money. One last point, if you are currently working and considering homeschooling, you might choose to leave your work which would mean loss of that income. That is something to keep in mind, but there are many families who homeschool while working. I worked part-time at the beginning of our homeschooling adventure.

Every homeschooling family is unique.

As I said at the end of the last paragraph, some families work while homeschooling, some don't. Every family has a different take on many aspects: method, curriculum, schedule, beliefs, etc... I think it is important to keep that in mind, especially as you connect with other homeschoolers and respect our differences. Support groups are great for just that, support and shouldn't become a competitive or judging ground. A good homeschool goup should be a safe place to meet other families, develop friendships for kids and moms, maybe even have field trips or activities. With homeschooling becoming more common, more groups are available, so if one doesn't give you what you need, go look for another one, start your own, or just choose to "hang out" with the homeschool families that you have connected with. The important point, I think, is to have your own group (however small or large) that you feel confortable with and enjoy spending time with, for your children and yourself.

Learning is fun!

As I "teach" my children, I am learning myself. I never knew learning could be so much fun and so interesting. I certainly didn't know that when I went to school as a child. School was just something I had to get through, not something I enjoyed. Learning with my children has given me a new attitude towards learning.

Don't forget about yourself!

Homeschooling requires a lot from the person "doing it". It is a lifestyle and if one really enjoys it, then one doesn't mind spending a lot of time researching, reading, preparing, etc... It is like a full-time job! Homeschooling is very important to me, but I have learned that I need to have some other interests just for myself. I learned this lesson during the year that my children attended public school. It was a great experiment for them and for myself. I had dedicated my life to homeschooling before that year and when they left, I felt lost. I really did! All of a sudden, I had nothing to do. It soon became really boring! I decided to re-visit hobbies that I had enjoyed in the past and rediscovered quilting in that process. I took up running again. I read books for pleasure! When my children finished their year at the public school and we all decided to go back to homeschooling, I knew I couldn't let go of my interests. It can be a challenge to include some of these in our daily homeschooling life, but I have found that if I do take some time regularly, even if it is only once every week or so, it is enough for me. Some activities, like reading for pleasure, I can squeeze in daily, others every other day (like running or walking). All these activities recharge me. It also has a "side effect": my children see me pursuing my passions and it rubs off on them. They see and hear how enthousiastic I am when I complete a quilt or when I finish a long run or a good book. So, whatever your interests are, don't forget about them.

My little list turned into a long post, but I wanted to explain each one of my points. I hope you enjoyed reading this post, drop me a line and let me know your thoughts!

"Not-So-Wordless" Wednesday

2011-08-10T07:39:00.003-04:00

I first posted this as a true Wordless Wednesday, but I wanted to tell you more...Here is the story behind this photo:

My oldest daughter loves these Pillsbury Ready to Bake sugar cookies...and I had promised her last Easter that I would buy her a pack of the next holiday ones we see. We both laughed when we saw these school bus ones at the store on Monday, but I kept my promise and took some home.

After baking them, I thought it would be perfect to use some icing to add a line across each of these! I didn't have icing, so I just played around at picnik and voila!

This would be perfect for a not-back-to-school homeschooling get-together, don't you think?

Our Home Learning Space

2011-08-08T12:13:00.000-04:00

We will be starting our 6th year of homeschooling very soon and I thought I would share with you photos of our learning space. I have noticed a few posts on other homeschool blogs that showcased their space and I really enjoy seeing these.

We don't have a seperate school room, instead we use mostly our family room. Our house has an open concept design, with the kitchen, eating area, dining room and family room making up one big room. We use all this space plus a little bit of our basement for messy painting and craft projects.

I hope you enjoy your tour. Welcome to our home learning space!

First a wide view, our husky is often laying down in that spot when we are working at our school table. We are using the dining area for our school work table. One of my aunts passed this table down to us and it has been perfect, especially with the glass top. I switch around the things I put under the glass. Last year I had a big calendar and some study aids. This year I put a world map. We love maps.

The kitchen is on the other side of that table. We don't often use for homeschooling, sometimes for science experiments, but I really like the convenience of having it close. I can prepare food or clean up while my kids do their independent work and still keep an eye on them!

Here is a close up of our table. This table is perfect when we are all working together, it has enough room so we can spread our books around.

After the table, the family room starts which is our reading area. We also use the floor space for playing games or looking things up on bigger maps.
We use our couch a lot, like many homeschool families, to read aloud or the kids even do some of their school work there at times.

See that big basket on the left side of the coffee table? That's our library basket. I have used this one for years. It is always filled with books. My kids were taught at a very young age to always bring back the library books they look at or read back to this basket. Now it's second nature for them! I often leave our library book bags in the basket too, if there is a space. We visit regularly two different libraries, not just branches, but actual library systems (the county we live in and the city nearby). It takes a little bit more attention to keep all those books sorted out, but it's worth it for us.

On the coffee table, I try to rotate the books or magazines regularly. I include some for the kids and some for me. We also have other interesting things like the small globe and a bowl full of the sea glass, rocks, and shells we collected. I opened the drawers so you could see how they hold card games and other small games we play like Bananagrams and Yikerz.

We have one armchair. It's the perfect reading spot. The little square stool on the left side of it is Celeste's box. It holds a lot of the toys that she likes to have around all the time, and she can also sit on it. Actually any of us can, but it's not super sturdy!

We have three bookshelves and they are somewhat organized. I try to keep them sorted by subjects.

The one that sits by itself has a lot of my resources: teaching manuals, answer keys, some spine books for the subjects we do together. I keep most of those on the three bottom shelves. The top shelf has my homeschooling "how-to" books. The other two shelves have our art and music books.

The other two bookshelves are organized somewhat by subjects. History and Geography related books are together on a shelf. Science has a couple of shelves, including one for nature guides. Celeste also has her own shelf! I tried to put on one shelf all the books that she can read herself and also her favourites that I read aloud to her.

Keeping these books organized by subjects help us find them quickly when we do need them.

Last year, I added a small bookshelf to help us keep our curriculum better organized. The large bookshelves didn't hold the kids' workbooks very well, so I wanted something more like cubbyholes. I finally found one that could hold the binders upright and brought it home. It has three shelves which is perfect since we have three kids! Each shelf holds all the workbooks, textbooks and binders needed. Adrienne has the top shelf, Andre middle, and Celeste the bottom one. You can see part of it in the photo above, on the right side and here is a closer picture:

Above that small shelf, we have our wood box. I had found this at the thrift store a couple of years ago. I am not quite sure what the true use for it is, but we use it to hold our pencils, erasers, glue, scissors, and pencil sharpener.

Next to that small black shelf, there is one more side table that we use. It holds more supplies. Our new microscope is there, a few more games/flashcards, more pencil cases are on the top. This particular shelf has 2 baskets which hold markers. On the bottom are stamps and crayons.

We also have our computer in this learning space. We use it often for homeschooling. Two of my children use Teaching Textbooks for Math which is on the computer, and we all use the internet for different subjects. As a parent, I also prefer to have it set up in a main area like this one. I also use it a lot myself!

There you go..our learning space! It's not always this tidy. We do usually have books, papers, and some toys sitting around everywhere! We just replaced our carpeting so we had to get everything out and then back in again. This was the perfect time to take photos!! Anyway, this was a long post, but I hope you enjoyed your tour. I would love to see your space, so take this post as an invitation to share yours..leave a comment with a link to your homeschool room post and I will make sure to visit.

Book Review : Charles Darwin :: Giants of Science Series

2011-07-31T21:07:00.003-04:00

Charles Darwin by Kathleen Krull is part of her series called "Giants of Science". I have mentioned this books before here (bottom of the post) and here. My kids love them, especially my son (he's 12).

Today, I finished reading aloud Charles Darwin to Andre and we both really enjoyed this one, even though we have read quite a few books on Darwin already. Kathleen Krull writes in a way that entertains us but at the same time we still learn a lot. Her scientist biographies include many of the details we usually encounter in other books, but they also include interesting and "quirky" facts. In this one about Darwin for example, she mentons often his health issues. I am sharing with a short paragraph to give you a taste. My son loved this particular one:

"Darwin claimed he lost two of his barnacle years to illness - boils, insomonia, a "swimming head", what we today might call panic attacks. Stomach problems were common, even fashionable, among Victorian intellectuals. But Darwin's stomach took the prize - throbbing worse than ever, with spells of vomiting and extreme flatulence that lasted for weeks."

Here is another one that, as homeschoolers, we really appreciated. This quote was found closer to the beginning of the book, where the author writes about Darwin's childhood:

"Charles was not a good student. Once the headmaster even yelled at him and humilated him in front of the whole school for wasting his time. But for almost seven years, he was stuck at Shrewsbury School. "Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind"."

The book often includes quotes from Darwin and other scientists or family members. It also refers to many of the books he wrote. We also found a list of sources at the back of the book with other book titles (some for young readers) and web sites.

The books in the Giants of Science are not long and would be great for ages 10 and up. I read these aloud because I enjoy them. I think they would be a great addition to a homeschool science curriculum.

Kathleen Krull has also written many other biographies and other books for children. You can see a list of her books here.

Summer Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Week 5

2011-07-26T16:19:00.002-04:00

A quick wrap-up for last week. We had another great week, with a lot of fun and a bit of studying. We continued our Prehistory study and watched the BBC Walking with Dinosaurs documentary. We enjoyed the Walking with Monsters more than this one, but it was still interesting.

We spent more time at the park, the beach, with family and friends. We also did something completely new to us: we were extras in a music video! It was for a local singer and we were "acting" at a restaurant. This was such a great experience for my kids and I! Andre dreams of becoming a movie director one day and so this was very exciting for him!

Adrienne left very early on Sunday morning for her two-week Air Cadets camp. I am so happy for her, she applied for this camp and was thrilled when she found out she could go. We all miss her already, but we do know she will love this experience.

I am taking a break from blogging for the next three weeks. I am planning on starting our new school year on August 15. Over the next three weeks, I will be busy finishing up this past year's report cards and organizing our upcoming school year. If anything of interest pops up, I will write about it, but for the most part I will be off, including the wrap-up posts.

Hope you are all having a wonderful summer, enjoy your time and your family!

Hugo Cabret Movie!!

2011-07-23T08:43:00.002-04:00

Thanks to my good friend Carol, I found out that a movie has been made based on the Invention of Hugo Cabret. Andre and I read that story in 2008 and loved it. I even wrote a post about it, you can read it here: The Invention of Hugo Cabret. It was a very interesting historical fiction novel which had set us off on a few different bunny trails, movie making, automatons. We had also both enjoyed the mix of black and white illustrations and text. The illustrations told part of the story just as much as the text. I would recommend the story for ages eight and up. The movie comes out in November this year, we are looking forward to it, I think we will check out the book again from the library before going to see the movie!

Wordless Wednesday :: Robin

2011-07-20T14:20:00.000-04:00

Summer Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Week 3 & 4

2011-07-18T09:25:00.001-04:00

Two weeks have gone by so fast! Summer is here and we love it. Here is a quick review of our last two weeks.

The first week we visited my aunt's pool, twice! The kids and I had a lot of fun there and we are so grateful to be able to go there. The weather is really hot and can be humid here too, so an afternoon spent in a swimming pool is perfect.

We continued with our Prehistory study. We learned about the first swamps and forests, the first reptiles and watched the BBC Walking with Monsters documentary. That documentary is part of a series of three and is amazing to watch. I would recommend it, we found this particular title at our local library. I also found it on youtube (the picture quality isn't as great as on DVD):

Adrienne finished her Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra lessons during that first week. She wanted to be finished before her birthday, so she decided to double up her lessons!

Celeste completed one lesson in the Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading and practiced reading in her Elson Reader, two pages.

On Saturday, Adrienne and I attended a free outdoor concert given by the Windsor Symphony Orchestra. It was a quintet made up of an oboe, a clarinet, a flute, a bassoon, and a horn. I took a short video of it:

The second week, we basically took the whole week off. On Tuesday, it was Adrienne's birthday. She turned 14!

We could call that week the movie week. We went to the show twice! First was on Adrienne's birthday. She chose to go see Mr. Popper's Penguins. We had listened to the audio book a while ago and were all curious to see this movie version with Jim Carrey. We thought it was quite different from the book, but we loved it anyway. Jim Carrey is very funny! The trailers never show his office assistant, Pippi, but she is a great part of the movie too!

Adrienne and I went out again to the movies to the midnight showing of the new and last Harry Potter movie.

We met our cousins at the local festival on Saturday and watched parts of the parade and a fun magic show. It was so hot!! We biked there and it was so hot!

The rest of the week we spent at home mostly, trying to keep cool. Another nice relaxing week!

If you would like to read more weekly wrap-up posts by other homeschoolers, please visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Summer Nature Study :: At the Pond

2011-07-11T15:22:00.002-04:00

We have been fortunate to be able to see wildlife at the man-made pond close to our home. I often notice birds while I am walking our dog in the morning and always run back home to grab my camera. Whenever I do bring my camera along on my walks, I rarely spot any birds!

I take photographs, sometimes accompanied by one of my children, then we all look at the photos I took on our computer screen. We research more information in the Handbook of Nature Study, in our field guides, or online. Sometimes we just talk about what I saw and captured on film. That is how we have been enjoying nature study at our house this summer. Simple but very enjoyable!

I wanted to share with you a few photographs from our nature study at the pond.

Widow Skimmer Dragonfly

I first noticed this dragonfly while I was trying to get a good photo of the Great Egret. I believe that this particular dragonfly is a female Widow Skimmer. Their larvae live in the stillwaters of ponds, lakes and marshes of the US, Southern Ontario and Quebec in Canada. I noticed a lot of these flying around. The one in the photo above is an adult female. The male has a blue body and more defined black spots on their wings, along with the white markings. A few days later, I was able to photograph a male:

Widow Skimmer Dragonfly

I love watching the Great Egret at the pond. This bird is so majestic and moves very slowly at the edges of the pond. It seems to be watching me and if I get too close, just flies a little bit away from me. After I circled the pond twice in this way, always trying to get a little closer but still at a distance, this particular Great Egret seemed to be used to me because it stopped flying away!
I wonder if it is the same Great Egret that keeps coming to our little pond. Every year we have lived here, I have been able to photograph this beautiful bird in the summer. I read that they have a life span of 23 years.

I see you!

I got too close again.

The Great Blue Heron is a bit more rare for us to see. This bird is also much more quicker at sensing my presence! I was able to only take one photo this morning before it flew away.

Great Blue Heron

Summer Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Week 2

2011-07-02T09:17:00.005-04:00

What a week! We had a great time this past week and spent a lot of time outside. We love summer, being able to stay outside all day and late into the evening, eating fresh fruits and veggies from the farm stands, visiting parks and beaches, going for bike rides and more! We didn't do as much "school stuff" because we were having so much fun outside, which is just fine since we are on our summer break anyway!

Here is the breakdown for the week:

- Adrienne completed 11 lessons in her Teaching Textbooks Math Pre-Algebra! She started doubling up her lessons on Tuesday and is completing another 2 today.
- Andre did 1 lesson in Math
- Celeste did one lesson in Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading, and read two pages in her Elson Reader. She also read a few picture books herself!
- Together, we completed one day of study in Prehistory, which included two lessons about the creatures of the sea from 510 to 408 millions years ago and the first fish.

We started a new read aloud, Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. We all decided to work our way through these lists. I might add a tab at the top of the blog to keep track of what we all read.

This past week, we visited a favourite park in Kingsville and had a family picnic there. We brought Orion along and he loved digging in the sand at the beach and swimming in the lake. It was a beautiful day!

I had planned a fun day at our local splashpad for our homeschool group. We didn't have a great turnout because the "fishflies" are here, but we still had a great time.

We had a few days when my husband was home this week, so we took advantage of it. We decided to explore a bit and visited a new-to-us provincial park. This one was on Lake Erie and about an hour drive from us. The area was beautiful and we had brought a picnic along. Unfortunately, we weren't able to stay because of the biting flies there. We think they may be black flies, but we are not sure. They swarmed us as soon as we stood still, so we kept moving around. We even ate our lunch while walking. We were able to still have some fun and found a lot of "lake" glass, but we didn't stay as long as we had planned. We will try again in a couple of weeks!

We had an awesome and fun week! How was yours?

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

Summer Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Week 1

2011-06-25T22:31:00.003-04:00

We started our summer break this week! We are now only doing a minimum amount of school work. Here is the breakdown from this week:

- Adrienne completed 5 lessons of her TT Math Pre-Algebra
- Andre completed 2 lessons of his TT Math 7
- Celeste and I completed 3 lessons in the Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading, 3 lessons in First Language Lessons, and she read 3 pages in her Elson Reader. She also read a few other books this week, including Goodnight Moon and The Little Engine That Could.

- Together, we completed five days of our Prehistory Study. We are really enjoying this so far!

The rest of the days were filled with lots of relaxing and playing! Puzzles came out and paints again. Adrienne is trying out some body painting, on herself and her siblings. We spent time at the park too. A nice and relaxing week for us!

You can read more weekly wrap-up post by other homeschoolers at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Wordless Wednesday :: Garden Faeries

2011-06-22T20:23:00.000-04:00

Tennis...Our Way

2011-06-20T21:27:00.000-04:00

There is a tennis court at the local park near us and since it's all fenced in, we let Orion loose and he plays along with us! This is how we like to play tennis!

Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Two Weeks Worth and our Summer Plans!

2011-06-19T12:27:00.001-04:00

Over the last two weeks, we finished more of our subjects. Celeste and I also worked a lot on her phonics, reading practice, and grammar. Andre did a few lessons in his Teaching Textbooks 7 and Adrienne is working hard at finishing her Math. She had started her Pre-Algebra Teaching Textbooks in January. She gave herself her birthday as a deadline, this means she is doing Math six days a week in order to finish.

We finished our World Geography study last week with Antarctica and a World Review. This curriculum worked really well for us this year and I am looking forward to using it again in combination with Barb's Geography Plans next year.

We also finished our Science study. I can't say we loved learning about physics this year, but we did it!

We spent more time outside over the last two weeks, even did some unplanned nature study (see the "ducks and (dead) mudpuppy" post).

Adrienne and Andre spent last weekend with their Air Cadets Squadron for a Field Training Exercice weekend. They did a lot of different outdoor activities, canoeing, hiking, absailing, and more. They were not allowed to bring any electronics or cameras, so I don't have any photos to share.

Andre finished his short season of floorball. This was his first time and he enjoyed it, even if his particular team lost. He wants to participate again and practice more.

Tomorrow, we start our Summer break! We will continue to do some "school work", mostly Math and reading/phonics because I have learned over the years that my children need this, even if it is just two or three times a week. When we take a long break without any math practice, it is difficult for them to get back to it! We are also going to study a little history through our break.

Here are our plans:

Adrienne: Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra: Monday-Saturday until finished (she has about 25 lessons left).

Andre: Teaching Textbooks 7: Mondays & Thursdays

Celeste: Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading, First Language Lessons, and Elson Readers: Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays.

Together: Prehistoric Times. I started writing our plans to share with you. You can find them below the main blog title in the tabs. I will keep adding to that post as we go along.

We are planning on starting our new school year August 15. This may change, we will see! I am also working on adding links to our 2011-2011 curriculum list found in the tabs below the main blog title. I hope to be finished by Friday.

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

Wordless Wednesday ~ On Our Front Step

2011-06-15T21:32:00.000-04:00

Ducks and a (dead) Mudpuppy :: (Unplanned) Nature Study!

2011-06-13T21:57:00.002-04:00

It was so nice outside today that we decided to go on a picnic at our local park. Another homeschool family joined us and we had a wonderful time playing and chatting.

Without planning it, we ended up doing quite a bit of nature study.

First, we went to the little pond near the park and observed a family of Mallard ducks. The kids really enjoyed watching the ducklings swim around and listening to them. I thought it was interesting to see the mom duck round up and direct her little ones. We counted 15 ducklings!

We then went over to the beach area and found some other interesting creatures to look at...even if they were dead!

There were quite a few dead fish washed up on the shore, which we didn't think was a good sign, but it made for interesting nature study. The beach is on Lake St. Clair.

We saw one that we couldn't identify while we were there. Andre thought it was a salamander, and after some research tonight, I think he was right. I am pretty sure it was a Mudpuppy.

They are from the salamander family but spend their lives underwater, which is why they never loose their red gills. You can see them in the photo that shows the underside of it. They are also nocturnal. The one we found was about 12 inches long, including the tail. You can see the four toes on each leg. It looks like this particular was injured on the top. I read somewhere that because of their size, mudpuppies make good canditates for dissection. My kids are really wanting to do this type of science activity, but we didn't think of bringing it home (or if that was even ok to do!).

Passing Through Our Yard ...

2011-06-09T22:06:00.000-04:00

Wordless Wednesday :: Hot and Humid in Canada!

2011-06-08T19:13:00.000-04:00

Plans!

2011-06-07T18:08:00.003-04:00

Every year, I start looking ahead to our next "school year" around March. I do enjoy this planning but sometimes it gets to be a little overwhelming. There are more and more choices every year for homeschoolers out there and it's also a time to review what has worked for us and what hasn't, for curriculum and styles too.

When asked what style of homeschooling we follow, I answer "eclectic". We are truly eclectic.

We use some classical education ideas. The Well Trained Mind was the first homeschool book I read and could relate to.

We also add some Charlotte Mason ideas to the mix, especially for art and music appreciation, shorter lessons and time spent in nature.

We have also done unit studies and lapbooking.

As much as I mention these philosophies, I have always listened to my heart when it comes to homeschooling my three children. I have learned a lot through the years! I think this comes through in various ways:

I choose to follow my children's interests and give them freedom to explore them.
We don't follow a specific schedule because it never really worked for us. I prefer to have goals in place and so do my children. They like to know what is expected of them and then follow their own schedule. That can change from day to day.
I follow their pace. If it takes Celeste a little longer to learn how to read, then that is just fine. We take the time, as much as it is needed. If Andre is able to "fly" through his math lessons and still retain what he is learning, then fine. He knows how he learns. I respect that.

About my plans, I chose a mixture of curriculum again this year. I have a wide age and abilities range in just three children, their ages are almost 14, 12, and 7. I try to combine them as much as possible for certain subjects. Adrienne, my oldest, has asked me to let her do more independent work this coming year, and not just for her regular subjects. She wanted to do science, history, and a foreign language on her own. I agreed with her but we are all still doing the same rotation, which means that we are all studying Biology this year and Ancient History. Keeping on the same rotation will be helpful when doing read alouds, movies or even fieldtrips for the whole family.

I will be adding all our choices with links to the 2011-12 tab at the top of this blog shortly. For now, here is a quick list for you:

Adrienne ~ "Grade 9":

Math: Teaching Textbooks Algebra 1

Grammar: Gage Language Power Gr. 9
Writing & Literature: Lightning Lit 8
Vocabulary: Vocabulary from Classical Roots B
Spelling: Sequential Spelling
Poetry: IEW Poetry Memorization

Science: Oak Meadow High School Biology
Health & Fitness: Various websites + library books + notebooking + logging her fitness goals and achievements

World History: History of the Ancient World + notebooking

Art & Music Appreciation and Practice: Harmony Art Mom Grade 9 plans + keyboard practice (learn 5 new pieces)

Foreign Language: Oxford Take Off in Spanish

Civics (Canadian Government, Politics and Current Events): Canadians and Their Government Resource Guide + Parliament of Canada Teacher Kit + News on Internet and Newspapers.

Career Planning: What Colour is Your Parachute for Teens

Andre ~ "Grade 7":

Math: Teaching Textbooks 7

Grammar: Gage Language Power Gr. 7
Writing Literature: Lightning Lit 7
Vocabulary: Vocabulary from Classical Roots A
Spelling: Sequential Spelling
Handwriting: Italics F
Poetry: IEW Poetry Memorization

Science: "Aristotle Leads the Way" Story of Science + notebooking - he will also tag along with Celeste's science for experiments and readings

World History: Ancient Times, Logic Stage from Classical House of Learning Literature

Art & Music Appreciation: Harmony Art Mom plans "Ancient Art and the Orchestra - Middle School Level" + recorder practice (learn 5 new pieces)

Foreign Language: ?

Celeste ~ "Grade 2":

Math: Saxon Math Grade 2

Grammar: First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind (continuing from previous year)
Writing: Writing with Ease Level 1
Phonics: Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading + Explode the Code 2 (continuing from previous year)
Spelling: Natural Speller
Handwriting: Italics C + Draw Write Now 8
Poetry: IEW Poetry Memorization

Science: REAL Science Odyssey Life Level 1

World History: Ancient Times, Grammar Stage from Classical House of Learning Literature

Art Music Appreciation: Harmony Art Mom's plans with Andre

Together:

Nature Study: Barb's Nature Challenges + Natural Science Through the Seasons (Canadian)

World Geography and Cultures: Harmony Art Mom's Geography Plans + Mapping the World by Heart

Art Practice: my own plans using Usborne Introduction to Art + Discovering Great Artists.

We are all looking forward to these choices. Adrienne was very involved in the choices this year and I appreciated her help and feedback. We also decided to invest in a microscope for our homeschool and we are all looking forward to it arriving and exploring with it!

As I mentioned at the begining of this post, I will add links and all our choices to the tab "2011-12" at the top of the blog shortly.

The Great Canadian Beaverfest ~ Their First Concert!

2011-06-06T14:56:00.002-04:00

The girls and I went to Beaverfest yesterday. Beaverfest was an outdoor three-day concert featuring Canadian talent. You can read more about it here. Sunday was for all ages and we decided to give it a try. There were three artists performing over the course of the afternoon. We saw Keshia Shante, Shawn Desman, and Fefe Dobson.

This was Celeste's and Adrienne's first experience at a modern music concert (we have been to the orchestra before) and they both really enjoyed it. Even though the artists weren't top hits, I think it was perfect for introducing them to live concerts of this kind. The crowd wasn't crazy, there was a lot of space to move around and we were outside. Celeste was able to dance around and even play with the free beach balls they were handing out. We all enjoyed watching the mascot (a beaver of course!) interact with everyone too!

The next concert on our wish list... WE Day!

Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Finishing Up!

2011-06-04T15:52:00.000-04:00

This time of year is all about finishing up. Even if we enjoy the curriculum or plans we use, we still really enjoying seeing the end of it! It always feels nice to say we have completed this subject or that subject for this "school year".

This week, Adrienne finished her Growing with Grammar 8 workbook. Next year, she will be using a different curriculum for grammar practice since this particular one finishes with grade 8. It is unfortunate because we have really enjoyed it.

In World Geography, we only have one week left! We will study Antarctica next week and then that will be done. I will be writing soon about our plans for next year's geography. We are all looking forward to it!

We also completed our Music and Art Appreciation this week with our study of Antonin Dvorak. Did you know that one of his symphonies, Symphony No. 9, travelled with the space shuttle Appollo 11 in 1969 to the moon? It is a beautiful piece of music. The kids and I enjoyed listening to many parts of his Symphony No. 9 (also called New World Symphony) while we finished work on our artists timeline. You can listen to a part of it in the video below.

We continued with the Mind Maps for Kids book, completing the second chapter which explained what to do with the mind maps. The assignment involved making up a fictional story about a lost jug. My kids complained as usual at first, but then their creativity came through and they had a good time working on their mind maps and all their ideas about the lost jug.

The homeschool swimming lessons are almost finished and Celeste has done great! She really enjoys these lessons and can now almost swim by herself!

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

Wordless Wednesday :: Sunsets

2011-06-01T16:56:00.002-04:00

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

2011-05-29T09:45:00.000-04:00

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!

Wordless Wednesday

2011-05-25T15:39:00.000-04:00

Weekly Wrap-Up ~ A Short Week with a Birthday and a Musical!

2011-05-22T22:52:00.000-04:00

We had a light week with Celeste's 7th birthday and a morning at the theatre on Friday to see Peter Pan the Musical. We weren't allowed to take photos during the play, but I took this quick one before it started. We went with our homeschool group and were all seated in the balcony, which was a great spot! The musical was really well done and we all enjoyed it. Celeste (in the pigtails on the photo) loves the story of Peter Pan, especially this version.

We managed to complete our regular lessons over the 3 days left in the week. Celeste's mind was more on her birthday for the whole week, but she did practice her reading and we are now on lesson 5 in Saxon Math 2.

Andre and Adrienne also completed their work in Math, Spelling, and Writing.

We learned about light in Science this week and are continuing our study of Australia in World Geography.

Next week should be a bit more quiet and a bit more productive for school work!

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