Victooooorious!

We have completed our Medieval Castle!! This was such a fun project to do with the kiddos! We took our time doing it but it was one of those requested things to do!

Our focus was to have the main structures within the castle: main wall, main building, towers, portcullis and draw bridge. We also wanted to cover, much to Mr. Monkey's delight, the different machines used for attack and defense during that time period: embrasures, battering rams, siege tower, catapults and a trebuchet.

Awesome project, everyone felt successful :)

Finishing the siege tower

Trebuchet during construction phase. This thing works well and became the new toy!

Firing the trebuchet

Our Medieval Castle completed with all machines present and castle pieces accounted for :) Lots of smiles all around!

Mystery Class - We have it all figured out...I think :)

We did the longitude calculations this week!! That was an exercise for the noodle LOL After some checking... and rechecking... labeling... and relabeling (not my fault, I blame the kids, yeah that's it...the kids), we have our graphs in the right locations (we think).

Here they are :)

Calculating... Carol Photoshop'd the smoke that had formed around my head :)

The results! Okay Alex how did we do?!?!?!


Fun, fun, fun!

The construction continues...

We've been galloping along at a steady pace, having almost completed math for the year!
Our other subjects are coming along nicely as well. We are back to 'hopefully' completing our Medieval Castle this week, we made some good progress today. We will be finishing the siege tower tomorrow and I would like to build a small trebuchet to add to our castle. We had a blast with the catapults so that should be fun too!

Making their Battering Rams

Tooth picks for the details :)

Dried and painted, maybe not totally authentic but done none the less :)

Painting the battle arena's walls

More to come!!

Mystery Class - Update

We are a good chunk of the way through our mystery class! You can find the information about this here: http://www.learner.org/jnorth/mclass/:

An extra activity in which we were discussing the orbit of Earth and Pluto around the sun. It lead to a discussion about common misconceptions of earths path around the sun and how the seasons are created therein.

Colouring, colouring, colouring

These graphs will look interesting next week when we chart the time change for all locations (these are all a week behind). We can determine the northern and southern hemispheres looking at the graphs.

This project touches so many different learning areas, I'm thankful we are doing it with other homeschoolers :)

Pow Wow

On Saturday we went and enjoyed a Pow Wow at our local college. We were there for the Grand Entry but we were asked not to take pictures during that time. So here are some others we took while we were there:



The drumming was pretty awesome, I think that is my favourite part when we go :) As you can see though the outfits were outstanding too!

Homemade Bird Feeder Success!

The boy and I noticed a real increase in birds around our back yard tree and decided to make bird feeders from recycling. Not much to it to say the least, but it worked!!! Totally excited! My glue gun died so we will be adding a cap to keep water out later today.

We weren't sure if it would work because the birds disappeared for a while. After about an hour though they came back and have been enjoying the seeds ever since!! Woo hoo, we are pretty excited over here LOL



We made bird seed cakes that didn't work out well, they stuck to the muffin tin :( But if I can get those going better I think the birds will enjoy those too!

End of Activity Round-up

Both children have wrapped up some winter activities recently! Here are a few pictures :)

Curriculum Time

Well for me it's that time of year for me to start deciding what we will be doing for the next year. To purchase what books, labs, unit study type stuff we'll be doing.

Last year I found this to be quite easy :) We had taken it easy in our first year and I got to know where the boy's strengths were and areas I needed to help him further develop. This year shouldn't be too bad either as I have our path for history, math and language all charted out. I just need to ponder where I would like to go with Science and Geography... I too find it difficult to find purely Secular material, so I tend to follow an outline and then adapt as I need.

We will also have Little Miss joining us at home as well. She will be finishing out her SK year and then she will be at home and having fun with us. I am a little nervous to have them both at home but like any change we'll all settle in I suppose. I have been 'homeschooling' her on her off days just to find a good feel for us all and it seems to be going pretty well.

Off to research I go :)

Arming the Castle :)

We have been continuing on with our castle and have armed it with a few different types of defenses/weapons. Embrasures are located in the round towers on the corners of our castle wall.


We have a portcullis and a draw bridge to lock down our castle and keep all would be invaders at bay.


And then the CATAPULTS! We had a blast with these. The boy is insisting on having them on top of the castle to hammer the bad guys who approach LOL It will be as realistic as I can manage :) Here are some pictures of our fun! 2 pictures have the 'boulder' aka pom pom flying in the picture.


More to come!

Is homeschooling just about academics?

I know it's kind of a personal question and everyone's answer will vary depending on beliefs and perception...

Up to this point it has been about academics...education as I perceive that to be. Today though we ventured into new territory for us.

I talk a lot to the children during off hours about feelings, thoughts and the choices we have in dealing with all of that. Today though we took the time to explore and brainstorm those ideas within our homeschooling atmosphere. We drew concepts in a visual form to allow the children to add their perspective. They were engaged and really took the time to share their experience.

I know this will be a work in progress but I am very encouraged to add this kind of dimension to our learning.