NaNoWriMo...coming soon!

NaNoWriMo, the month-long novel writing project starts November 1st!
I will be participating this year for the third time. My children have decided not to this year, but did it last year.

The experience of trying to write many words every day for a month is challenging and fun at the same time.

For the kids, there is a Young Writers Program that includes a ton of cool resources. I like to visit that site for their dare machine when I am stuck! There are also teacher's guides and cool workbooks. The young writers set their own word limits, not like the adult's mandatory 50,000 words. 

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to get your creative juices flowing and to get writing freely. Before this challenge, my children didn't like to write at all. They still rather do something else now, but when required, I find that it is easier for them to get words on paper, and they also write a lot more. I like to think that NaNoWriMo helped them along a little bit!

You can still register for either the NaNoWriMo or the Young Writers Program.

Up in the Sky!

Adrienne spend last Sunday at a local airport and went gliding for the first time with her Air Cadets squadron. This was also her very first time in any kind of plane.  She said she loved it and is looking forward to flying again!

The Royal Canadian Air Cadets Glider:

The plane that pulled the glider up in the air:

Same plane, different view:

Up in the sky:



All photos taken by Adrienne.

Book Sharing Monday :: Troll's-Eye View

Troll's-Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales is a collection of stories written by fifteen different authors. You will find short stories about the villains in fairy tales like the Giant's Wife from "Jack and the Beanstalk" and Rumpelstiltskin. The editors explain in that they love the "old fairy tales, which were dark, scary, magical, suspensful, and thrilling, full of cruel stepmothers, malicious fairies, and flesh-eating orgres and giants."

We love that type at our house !

Each short story is followed by a page which gives you a tiny bit of information on the author, and also about the story you just read, why the author chose it and where the fairy tale came from originaly.

Some of the authors found in this collection are Jane Yolen, Garth Nix, Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, and Peter S. Beagle.

"There's an Evil Wizard living in Dahoe, Main. It says so, on the sign hanging outside his shop:

Evil Wizard Books, Z. Smallbone, Prop.

His shop is also his house, which looks just like an Evil Wizard's house ought to look."

With Halloween next Sunday, I found this book to have perfect timing! I also wanted to share a link that has lot of great information on Halloween, sorted by categories: peoples and groups (Druids, Celts), Themes (History of the Jack O' Lantern, Ghost Stories, Pumpkin Facts), Events (Halloween Around the World), all from History.com: Halloween.  

If you are participating in Book Sharing Monday, please add your link to Mr. Linky below. Thank you and Happy Reading!
 

Year 5 :: Week 11 Home Learning Report

This week was a lot of fun! We had my mother-in-law "Nana" stay with us for a couple of days.

Nana did a Christmas theme craft with the kids (see further down this post) and we also went bowling on another day.

We did manage to do our main subjects of Math and Language every day this past week, but not much else, so this post will be a bit short!

We finished reading aloud Chasing Vermeer this week. It was a great story and we all enjoyed it, even my youngest (6). Next week, we will finish our notebook pages on Vermeer and Chopin. I have been playing a few CDs over the last couple of weeks.

In Canadian History, we read about the War of 1812. I asked Andre and Adrienne to write a summary of the Battle of Detroit, since Detroit is not very far from where we live.





As I mentioned above, Nana did a craft with the kids. I think these turned out beautiful. They are string ball ornmanents. The instructions were in a book that she brought along, but you can find similar instructions here. 



Next week, I am hoping to get back to our regular routine and cover all our subjects!

Loop Scoops

Annie Leonard from The Story of Stuff along with PBS and WGBH created a new online series called Loop Scoops. Through fun little cartoons, kids will be asked to think about important questions about recycling, using and buying less, where you food comes from and much more. My kids and I have watched a few of these and we are sharing our favourites with you so far. You can see more on youtube by searching Loop Scoops or by visiting the PBS site.