New Years

Skating, fireworks, music and best of all family :) A most fantastical evening!

Getting Ready For the Big Guy

We've had a busy day here, preparing for the Big Guy :) Mr. Monkey is home now and we are now complete :) So below are just a couple things we did today!

Tracking Santa - Norad is great!!

Helping mom make a yummy treat for some extended family for Christmas!

Putting out the Reindeer Food!!

Looking forward to the morning!! Merry Christmas to you all :)

Christmas Gifts

This year I've tried to make a good portion of the gifts we'll be giving to family :) I've done pretty well all in all. Using the directions from Carol's blog, You're Not Lost You're Here we did these pretty ornaments for Jacobs brothers and sisters. Each has a cartoon character they like and their name:


I also do up these little wash clothe and soap sets for family as well :)


I will post the best thing I made this year after Christmas as I don't want any family seeing just yet :) It turned out sooooo well, can't wait to share!

Mom can you homeschool my friend...

Yup the Mr. Monkey asked me that today when our little neighbour came over. Not because Jacob is bored or anything (I think LOL) but because his friend hates school. He said he's not doing well and hates all the tests. He said he's bored a lot and would rather be out with us and learning like Jacob does.

I wish I could...grab up all the ones that don't do well in that environment. Not everyone has a hard time in school, many enjoy it... But for those who need things a little differently and don't have the choice, those are the ones I want to take home with me :)

Holidays....ahhhhh

We are now off for the Christmas break and have been having fun together indoors and out! We decided we would brave the cold on Monday and take advantage of the snow outdoors. It was FREEZING!! Coming back in we did some popcorn stringing, much of it never got on the string though LOL And we also did a bunch of baking and have got our things all set for the Cookie Swap for the Christmas Party :) We are all looking forward to it!

On Vacation!!

I decided this week would be the start to our Christmas vacation :) We've had a very focused for half, we need a BREAK!

So hoping to take lots of pictures of the fun and activities we are doing over the next few weeks :)


YAHOOOOO!

Snow Globe and Santa's Furry Helper

Little Miss will miss the snow globes at the potluck on Friday so we made hers today :) Turned out well, but the jar is leaking a wee bit :( I'll have to get something else for Mr. Monkey LOL Our home school friends have the details on how to put this all together at You're Not Lost, You're Here!

Santa's Furry Helper is not liking his costume LOL The hat especially!

My foot must appear in all dog photos, too big to get out of the way ;-P

Fun Days of Winter!

We've been enjoying the huge dumping of snow we got over the last few days! We met up with some homeschooling friends to do some tobogganing.


We also decorated our ginger bread house as well. They eat more than they decorate but they look forward to it each year LOL We took the below picture rather quickly as the roof was sliding off!! We read the directions afterwards that mentioned how to avoid that LOL Maybe next year :)


More to come this week as we have a Christmas Party and a Potluck :)

Baking with the Girl

We bake A LOT here! We especially love banana chocolate chip muffins! Little Miss and I decided we needed to whip up a batch yesterday!

Counting out her chocolate chips to eat LOL

Why??? They always seem to do a least one goofy picture LOL

Hockey Tournament

Just a few pictures from the All-Star hockey tournament this weekend. The boys played very well and were the 'B' Champions, losing only one game. Mr Monkey is in the white helmet :)

About to tackle to goalie after the win :)

Borax Crystals

We had some fun last week making very cool crystals, here is how it was done. It was soooo easy and the results were outstanding. We boiled borax in a pot, shaped the pipe cleaners however they wanted, dangled them in a mason jar, poured the liquid in and let them sit. Within hours we could see the crystals forming and they got BIG. Not brittle at all, a very cool experiment!

Making some crazy designs

Dangling and ready for the mixture

The soak

Drying off

Last Day of Tutoring!!

Yup that's right, Mr. Monkey has gone gang busters over the past year and is now up to grade level for his spelling (or language comprehension in my opinion). He has been seeing an Orton-Gillingham tutor.

When we brought him home from public school last year it was quite the shock to see his spelling or lack there of. I could barely make out what he was writing. The report cards I got from school though said he was a 'B' speller. Unfortunately the way they have things setup he was able to memorize what was needed until the test and then the retention was gone. I too was fooled LOL

So we went in search of a tutor that worked with children with dyslexia. Although Jacob has no formal diagnosis I think he has a form of dyslexia called, dysgraphia. He can read like no ones business but he has a disconnect in writing the words. So this tutoring is built around a multi-sensory approach, touching all senses to retain the information.

He learns language rules, rather than rote spelling and in that can have better success remembering the spelling of things. We have seen a big improvement in his spelling. Is it perfect, ahhh no, but he has a MUCH better foundation and I can see he feels more confident in his spelling :)

We are pretty proud of all that he's done over the year :)

en francés

In January I think we are going to try some French on for size :) Nothing too serious just labelling things, numbers, letters, small stories...

I've had a love/hate relationship with French. As a student I hated trying to remember all the labels to memorize, the various vous/nous, la, le, etc etc... and proper pronunciation of things. As an adult I kick myself for not being open to giving it an honest try!

So I'm going to take December and prep for some fun with French! Little Miss is totally going to love it, Mr. Monkey....hmmm...we'll have to see LOL

Geography

So we've been studying Canadian Geography, specifically learning the provinces and territories. Having mastered that we have moved on to the different terrain throughout our wonderful country. We decided a hands on activity was best suited for the task...

Once he had the map covered with our dough he painted the different areas (lowlands, Mountians, hills etc etc) Which sparked a discussion about why we get certain natural resources from specific areas! Pretty fun :)

And Little Miss also had the same stuff but took things in her own little direction LOL Fun was had though!

Sharkfest

Little Miss started hockey this year and had her first game at a well known arena in town! She was so thrilled and so were we to watch her! She had some time chasing the puck and being in net (her favourite). I have a video below of her big save :)

Click here for the Big Save: She does the big save around the 1:05 mark in the video. Sorry it's shaking I was cheering (as you'll hear LOL) and well it's shaky!!

Click here for Getting the puck!

Waiting for her metal

Wooo Hooo one of her own, she was so pleased to compare hers with Mr. Monkey LOL

Mexico!

We had a potluck with some great friends this past Friday. We select a country, make some traditional food (or try really hard) and do some activities that may be found in that particular country. Here are a few pictures of the fun and of course FOOD!

Thanks to Carol for all the work on the sugar skulls and getting things ready for us and to all the moms for the YUMMY food, my most favourite month yet!!

Sugar Skulls