Book Sharing Monday :: Robot Drawing Book

Ralph Masiello has a great series of drawing books. We have enjoyed the Bug Drawing Book, the Dragon Drawing Book, and the Ancient Egypt Drawing Book.

This time, we checked out the Robot Drawing Book from our local library. Andre and I tried our hand at some robots while we were watching a movie Friday night.

We particularly liked that each page gave us a  basic robot to draw and that we could add details "spare parts" to make each robot unique.

Extra resources can be found at the back of the book, books and websites for younger and older robot fans.

"If you can draw a square, a circle, and a rectangle, you can draw a ROBOT!"

If you would like to participate in Book Sharing Monday, you can add your link to your book sharing post below. Your post can include photos of the book, a quote from the book and what you liked about it. Thanks for sharing!

Wordless Wednesday :: Sketch Tuesday: In the Science Lab

Sketch Tuesday hosted by Harmony Art Mom

Wordless Wednesday :: Body Art

{body art with washable markers}

Wordless Wednesday :: Oil Painting by Adrienne

Wordless Wednesday :: Little Green Man

Who are your Top 10 Classical Composers?

Afternoon Practice by Laurie Pace.

The New York Times is asking you to vote on your favourite classical composers. There is more than just an article though, there is a series of videos where Anthony Tommasini, the chief musical critic, talks about these great classical composers, mixing some of the history of each composer and also playing the piano, explaining more about certain pieces so we can really appreciate the music.

I learned about this from Christina at Rockhound Place. When I visited the links she posted, I thought this would be great for our music appreciation! I was planning on getting back to our art & music appreciation this Friday, and this will be perfect. We will watch together the videos and can talk about which ones are our favourites, and then vote.

You can visit the main article which explains the story behind the idea of the vote: The Greatest. I especially like this quote: "So if you were to try to compile a list of the 10 greatest composers in history, how would you go about it? For me the resulting list would not be the point. But the process of coming up with such a list might be clarifying and instructive, as well as exasperating and fun."

You can also go straight to the video series and the voting page: Top 10 Composers .

Wordless Wednesday :: Dragon Art by Andre

Year 5 :: Week 9 Home Learning Report

In world geography, we are now learning about South America. We read books on Columbia, Brazil, and Argentina. While searching for interesting books for our geography at the library, I cam across this series by Bobbie Kalman. I have used her history books before, but these were new to us. There are full of photos from the countries and are perfect for our studies. I don't always read the entire book, but we always look at all the photos and talk about those.

In Canadian History, we read about Montcalm and Wolfe in the Plains of Abraham battle. We  watched the related episode from Canada: A People's History. We learned more about the colonists, the people who came from Europe to this new world. Andre and Adrienne researched what kind of food the Habitants ate and what the Voyageurs would have eaten as well.








In Science, we covered motion this week. Every week, while I am reading the Usborne Science Encyclopedia, I have encouraged Andre and Adrienne to take notes. We have done narration for years but note taking was new to them. They are both getting better every week.

In Art/Music Appreciation, we started a new artist, Vermeer. I thought it would be fun to read aloud Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett.
We have really enjoyed this book so far, with the puzzles to solve. There are some free resources at Scholastic for this book, including printable pentominoes. While completing our biography notebook page and looking at various paintings by Vermeer, we found out that The Concert (see below) was stolen in 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. You can watch the account from the Director of Security on Youtube here.

We had another nice week of homeschooling, getting our main subjects (LA and Math) done and having fun as well. We even did some French!

With Halloween coming soon, Celeste and I have been decorating a bit and doing some simple crafts. We like the dancing skeleton and paper banners in particular, from the Toy Maker site. They remind us of our Mexico study! 

Book Sharing Monday :: Author Focus: David Wiesner

Thanks to Fiddler from Rockhound Place, my children and I discovered David Wiesner amazing picture books! We had read The Loathsome Dragon a couple of years ago,

but we hadn't looked for more of his books back then.

Last Monday, when I read Fiddler's Book Sharing Monday, I wanted to find that book "Art and Max", but our library doesn't have it yet. I did request some of his other titles and we have received so far "Flotsam", "Tuesday", and "Sector 7".

These magical books do not have words, just pictures, 

and I think they are perfect just the way they are.

Flotsam is about a young boy that finds an underwater camera washed up on the beach. He gets the film inside processed and buys a new one to replace it.

The photographs that he sees are from the underwater world of the ocean and more.

Truly magical!

Another title we "read" was Sector 7.

This time the story is about a field trip to the Empire State Building.

A young boy makes friends with a cloud who brings him to the cloud dispatch centre.

The two of them try to change the designs of the clouds...

My family has really enjoyed looking at these award-winning titles

and making up the story in our heads. We will be requesting more

of David Wiesner's books!

Thank you again Fiddler!

Year 5 :: Week 7 :: Changing Things a Bit

I am not changing our curriculum choices but how I do this report. I am already bored writing these every week, so I can imagine how it might be for you, the reader! 
I will share our week's work by highlighting the interesting parts. If for example, we studied something unusual in Canadian history or science, I will write about it here.
Every school day, we work on math and language arts (grammar, spelling, phonics for Celeste, handwriting, reading aloud) , these are the basics. The rest of the subjects get done over the week, sometimes once, others 3 to 4 days a week.

This past week, we focused on world geography and in particular learned more about Mexico. After completing the trivia questions and the map work, we read two books from the library. The first one was P is for Pinata: A Mexico Alphabet written by Tony Johnston. I love this series of alphabet books (if you check the link, there are teacher's guides to go with most book titles). P is for Pinata showed us more of the Mexican culture and history. As we read along, we paused to google some extra things, like this video of the Danza de los viejitos from reading the page on Mexican dancing.

The second title was Cinco de Mayo: Celebrating the Traditions of Mexico by Dian Hoyt-Goldsmith. This story follows a young Mexican American girl from California as she learns about her heritage and prepares for Cinco de Mayo celebrations. There is a lot of information in this book about food, history, music and dancing with many colourful photographs.

Through My Wonderful World Newsletter from National Geographic, I found out that from September 15 to October 15 is Hispanic Heritage Month and many links were included for extra information and activities in the e-mail newsletter. We went to the Smithsonian Latino Center's Theater of the Dead and learned about the costums and beliefs around Dia de los Muertos. We also took turns building a virtual altar.

We will be baking some Pan de Muertos tomorrow and eat some more Mexican foods this coming week too.

Tuesday was International Day of Peace and we made a point of having a very peaceful and quiet day. We painted some rocks with the word Peace on it. You can see them here.

In science this week, we learned all about gravity and did some basic experiments (dropping our pencils from various heights!). We also had a lot of fun with this activity, finding out how much we would each weigh on different planets. Celeste weighs 48.5 lbs on Earth, 8 lbs on the moon, and 114.6 lbs on Jupiter!

We also managed to start our Art and Music Appreciation study this week! We are following this Harmony Fine Arts program  . I wasn't able to purchase all the music and art books, but I have been able to find enough music CDs and related art books at the library. We have been listening to Felix Mendelssohn during our lunches and I even put it on while I was cleaning today!

The artist this week is Rembrandt van Rijn and I read aloud Rembrandt and the Boy Who Drew Dogs by Molly Blaisdell, which was a lovely story about Rembrandt and his own son Titus. The story included some of the artist's paintings. 

We looked at more of Rembrandt van Rijn's art online. I chose  Night Watch as our current wallpaper on our computer.

Adrienne, Andre and I are all keeping a notebook for this subject. This week, we started with the two artists biographies and the beginning of our time line. The time period is from 1600 to about 1850, we made ours go until 1900.

I hope you enjoy reading our weekly report in this way better. I know I enjoyed writing it much more than the list I had been doing the previous weeks!

Peace Rocks

After typing my title, I smiled to see it could have a double meaning!

Today is International Peace Day, and the kids and I had a day full of peace.

We completed almost all our school work this morning and this afternoon we spent it reading books on our current world geography country study Mexico (more on that soon) and painting peace rocks.

Here are all our peace rocks:

This is Adrienne's, the reverse side is the one with the tree in the picture above:

Celeste did this one below, writing out peace and making little circles all around:

Andre's peace rock "Live in Peace" :

and finally mine, peace, plain and simple:

I wish you peace today and everyday !

Planning for 2010-11 :: Writing, Art & Music Appreciation

I haven't received everything for our writing curriculum yet, but here is my plan.
This past year, Adrienne and I have been using the Write Source 2000 as a reference for her writing assignments.
The history curriculum that we use, History Odyssey, has many writing assignments and Andre and Adrienne do a few of these per month. Most of these are biographies, research papers, narration, or even some opinion papers (one was which middle ages time period occupation would you like?).  We will continue with the same format this year.
I did add one more writing curriculum for Adrienne, the Jensen's Format Writing. We will probably take two years to complete this. Once I receive it, I will be able to plan out her year. She is starting grade 8 this coming year, and I want her to be completely confortable with writing essays. You can read a quick review of this program here .

For Andre, along with the history assignments, I will start using Story Starters this year. I have used this in the past with Adrienne, and I think it is a much more interesting way to get our writing done than a regular curriculum or textbook. You can read a review for this book here . Celeste will be starting oral narration with this too, using the black and white illustrations as a starting point. I will write them down for her or type them.

I try to keep writing assignments fun and interesting. I know that my children write better and more without even thinking about it if they are inspired by the assignment.
I see the Writing Source 2000 and the Jensen's Format Writing as tools to help us with writing, not as curriculum.

We will be using Sequential Spelling for the first time this year.
Celeste will continue with the Explode the Code workbooks. Since those include handwriting practice, I didn't order any extra for now. 

Art and music appreciation. It is always something I want to include in our homeschooling, but we haven't been consistent. We do get around to do some, but it has only been once in a while in the past.
This year, I decided to purchase a plan from Harmony Fine Art. I chose the Grade Seven plan, even though none of my children are in that grade, because it mirrors the time period that we are studying in history.
I have looked at this plan and already I am so pleased with it. It is simple and has 3 different options on how to use it. I can adjust it so that it can be used with all 3 of my children. I am really looking forward to this!



Once I am finished sharing all my plans for 2010-11, I might do a post where I talk about our schedule and how we fit it all in.

Summer Art Appreciation :: Vincent Van Gogh

I purchased from Harmony Fine Arts the Summer Art & Music Appreciation plan and we started this past week. The artist we are studying is Vincent Van Gogh, who happens to be one of our favourites. Adrienne loves his Starry Night painting and I really like the bright colours he uses in most of his work.
We started off by looking at the Bedroom in Arles and listing everything we could see in the painting. Adrienne coloured the colouring page that was included in the study plan.

We looked at the painting online and also in a library book. The one in the top of the photo is called Vincent Van Gogh by Rizzoli Quadrifolio. This book was neat, as you can see in the following two photos, the pages opened up to show a larger picture of the painting. The Bedroom in Arles was showcased in this book. Adrienne and I noticed the differences in the colours when we looked at the painting in the book and online. The original painting is at the Art Institute of Chicago and we hope to one day be able to see it and look at its true colours!

I also read aloud 2 picture books related to Van Gogh, Camille and the Sunflowers by Laurence Anholt and Vincent's Colors with words and pictures by Vincent Van Gogh (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

We also talked about the colour wheel and how Van Gogh used complementary colours to create paintings that were more intense. We will be continuing our art appreciation through the summer with Van Gogh, along with music appreciation too.

Art and Afternoons at the Park

For the last 3 weeks, Adrienne has been attending an art class for homeschool girls. Today was the last one, and she finished painting the jewelery box. The flowers in the vase and the cat were done during the first 2 weeks. I love the cat, it looks like Clara.

While Adrienne was at her art class, we went to a nearby park. This park was beautiful and had many squirrels and frogs. There are not many tall trees near our home, so we don't see squirrels often anymore. Celeste was so excited to see how close they would come to us! Andre had a great time catching frogs to show Celeste and then letting them go in the woods.