Educational and Fun Events in February

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! 

Dash the Snail

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

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!

Weekly Wrap Up ~ Week 4: Camping and Nature Study

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.

Nature Study :: At the Beach

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!

Summer Nature Study :: At the Pond

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