Book Sharing Monday :: Countries of the World Series by National Geographic

We have been using a series from National Geographic called Countries of the World this year for our High School World Geography course from Harmony Art Mom(which all 3 of my kids participate in). She recommends using Enchantment of the World series, but our library didn't have many of the titles so I chose this series as a replacement. This National Geographic series turned out to be a great choice for our family.

Each book covers one country and follows the same format. You can see the contents in the photo below. Geography, nature, history, people & culture, government & economy are covered.

There is also a section with extra informative facts at the end of the book, along with a glossary, bibliography, and a section called further information that contains more web sites suggestions. Each section is filled with interesting texts, photos, and maps. These books are colourful, captivating and perfect for reading aloud in my opinion.

If you would like to participate in Book Sharing Monday, you can add a link to your book sharing post below. Happy reading!

Weekly Wrap Up :: Week 18

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.

African Dinner by Adrienne

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! 

Weekly Wrap-Up :: Week 6

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.

Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Three Weeks Worth!

We have been busy! I will try to condense three weeks worth of wrap-ups in one post, without putting hundreds of photos!

Starting with our regular subjects, we are finished with some and took an inventory of what still needed to be done with a count of lessons for each subject. Here are some highlights:

Andre is now finished his Math Teaching Textbooks 6 and after a two week break, he started Teaching Textbooks 7. Celeste also started Saxon Math 2! I thought I would never go back to Saxon but I decided to give it a try with her. Miquon Math and its discovery-based style worked out nicely, but I felt that she now needs a bit more in this subject. We'll see how it goes, we are giving it a try since we already had it (from Andre). Adrienne has about 50 lessons left in her Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra.

Andre is also finished with his Growing with Grammar 6 and is now taking a break, since I don't have the next one yet. He has been working on his writing for the last couple of months with the help of Write Source 2000. Adrienne is also well on her way with Growing with Grammar 8 and with her writing. She has been using Format Writing and I can see a big improvement since last year in her essays.

One subject that we are definitely behind in is spelling! We are using Sequential Spelling but have missed many days. We will work through the summer on it. It only takes a few minutes a day.

Now, for what happened in the last three weeks...

We finished our study of Canadian History too! This took us all the way to our current time and we wrapped it up with a brief study of our government and politics, since Voting Day was on May 2. We also learned about the Census which is happening this month in Canada. I had requested teachers materials from the government (free), which are also available for download here.  These materials are for various ages and we were able to all work together. My kids enjoyed the activity where they were acting as town planner and had to study the census data given to decide the best locations for a playground, a seniors centre, and a health care centre. They also liked the colouring pages!

In World Geography, we finished our study of Asia and are now learning about Australia. Adrienne has always been interested in Australia, so we'll make sure to spend a little extra time studying it! We are adding some library books, more are coming, especially on Dreamtime! The next unit in our geography study is the last one, Antarctica.

We also did some Art and Music Appreciation over the last three weeks. We listened to Richard Wagner and admired John James Audubon's work.

In Science, we are wrapping up our study of Physics. We now have 3 topics left to cover (lights, optics, and electronics). We covered sound and electricity over these last two weeks. I had picked up a documentary at the library to add to our study. We really enjoyed it, it was a nice change from reading. I will be looking for more from this series at our library. The series is from Disney, called the Science of Disney Imagineering. It is geared to grades 5 to 8, but Celeste enjoyed watching it too. We watched the Electricity one. You can see a little video about the series below:






We also had a lot of fun these last couple of weeks, the weather has been better..even hot! We enjoyed our time outside, going for walks, playing in the driveway, having popsicles and much more!

We attended the Science Rendezvous at the local University (see previous post). We celebrated my birthday by visiting Point Pelee National Park and so, I will leave you with a few of my favourite photos from that day:

This post is part of the Weekly Wrap-Up hosted by Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Visit her blog to read more posts by other homeschool families!

Book Sharing Monday :: African Tales

We are studying Africa in our World Geography and I have been reading aloud stories from this beautiful book: African Tales: A Barefoot Collection by Gcina Mhlophe and Rachel Griffin.

I don't think I have come across one Barefoot Book that I didn't like! In this book, there are eight tales from eight different African countries. Each page is filled with gorgeous artwork. The art is a mixture of fabric, beads, stamps and more. Each story has an introduction which tells you a bit more about the particular country it came from and its people. There are also quick facts included. The photo below shows part of the introduction for a story from Namibia called "Nowandle, Girl of the Waves".  I added another photo to show the detail of the artwork from that same page. You can click on each photos to see a larger version too.

The stories are tales that have been passed down from generation to generation. We were fascinated by these. Each story also ends with "Cosi cosi iyaphela", which means "Here I rest my story". On the back of the title page, the author explains that this is the traditional way that Zulu storytellers finish their tales.

Here are two facts from the beginning of the book on a page that includes the map of Africa along with some interesting information about this continent.

"Africa has the most varied wildlife in the world. It is also home to some of the largest populations of wild animals, including lemurs, wildebeest, antelopes, and hyenas."

"Typical African musical instruments include drums, xylophones, rattles, clappers, bamboo flutes and ivory trumpets. While European musicians were developing ideas about harmony, Africans were developing rhythm, creating the most sophisticated percussive arrangements in the world."



If you would like to participate in Book Sharing Monday, leave your link to your book sharing post below. Happy Reading!

Year 5 :: Week 12 :: Home Learning Report



This week was more productive than the last couple of weeks!

We continued working on all our Math and Language Arts.

In World Geography, we are now in Europe. We completed maps on Scandinavia and the trivia questions.

In Canadian History, we learned more about the settlers of Canada, and read several stories in The Spirit of Canada. We really enjoyed the excerpts from Canadian Crusoes and from Roughing it in the Bush. We learned and talked about the Rebellions of 1837.

We talked very briefly about Napoleon and looked at this painting from Jacques-Louis David, a painter that we will study in a few weeks as part of our Art Appreciation course.

In Music Appreciation, we continued and completed our study of Frederic Chopin. We listened to Classics for Kids to learn about his life and listen to some of his music. We completed a notebook page.

In Art, we worked on some splatter painting using this workbook. This Klutz book has been a lot of fun so far. We will be using these paintings to create something else next week. We splattered the paint on the paper and also used straws to push the paint around.

I love this little guy. Adrienne drew this one using the previous lessons of free brush strokes!

This week, we also attended a fun birthday party, took a family portrait, and survived the "Great Lakes Cyclone", which really didn't turn out to be much of a storm. It did give us an opportunity to practice our storm/tornado/cyclone safety plan...

My kids love storms and were very fast at packing up their stuff, bringing food, radio, and flashlights to the basement!