Monday Flop

This has been a really challenging homeschool day! The children are not working together well and the boy is not in the mood for anything remotely challenging. A friend who has been homeschooling a number of years said that February is a tough month for many families. It's freezing today so I can't even get the two of them for any period of time. UGH!

Little Miss seems more motivated though and had a story time with her dolls. She is really reading well, amazing how it just clicks one day :)


On a side note she lost her first tooth as well this past week! Lots happening for the little lady!

Weekend Wrap Up

We had 2 birthdays to celebrate this weekend. Randy's Poppa turned 91 and it was really nice to be able to be there with him. He was reminiscing about his life in England and brought over a picture of his neighbourhood growing up. He mentioned a huge barge that was grounded on the edge of the Thames and was wondering if it was still there. I am very thankful for technology some days as we were able to pull up the exact location using Google Maps and see the island he used to play on. He was so thrilled to see his old stomping grounds as they are today.

Randy's mom is also celebrating her birthday so we had her down to watch the children play hockey and back for lunch and cake. Randy's Nan was also there for that. It was a really nice weekend!

Potluck Moroccan Style!

We had a Moroccan Potluck this past Friday with our small but mighty homeschool group :) We enjoyed lots of beef type dishes and a cool craft called fanoos found here: http://www.americasmuslimfamily.com/hullabaloo/fanoos/fanoos.html

It was a lot of fun! This will be our last one for a little while as we are starting our Journey North Mystery Class soon, you can find that here: http://www.learner.org/jnorth/

Here are some pictures of our potluck! Big thanks to Carol for hosting these through out the year, they were lots of fun :)

Outdoor fun and a little snow sampling LOL

Practising their flying skills, nothing like a little teamwork :)

Lets Talk Science - York U Science Outreach

I follow a blog called The Canadian Homeschooler and on there they posted about a program called Lets Talk Science. This is a charitable organization that is affiliated with Universities in the area who offer outreach science days.

I contacted York University as that was the closest to us and today they came out to do some programming with our group! It was a really great day, the facilitators were very hands and interactive with the children. They were broken up into 3 age groups and each group did a fun science activity!

Here are some pictures of the afternoon:

Being Sciency

Practising being solids

The Secret Message

I should have known one secret message would be poop!

Fun with goop!

Latest Happenings

We've been busy with a lot of Geography this year! We've covered Provinces, very thankful to be Canadian a lot less to remember LOL We are looking at the bodies of water within our country and why capitals and the like were setup where they were. We looked at Continents most recently and how they break down to the cities we live in. We covered the different land forms throughout Canada and this is going to tie in nicely with our study of Biomes.

We are going to research the major biomes and then create a movie on them :) He was instantly intrigued by the idea and asked if we could put it on YouTube when we finished. So I'll post the link to that once he gets it done. This project will take us a number of sessions to complete.

His math is progressing pretty well, we have 7's and 8's to cover and then he is done with math facts and moves on to multiple digit multiplication. I could have introduced it before now but I like the idea of tackling one thing at a time :) Great math program so far, we're using Math - U - See.

History is going well, we posted our viking boat a few posts ago. I'll have to take a look at what's next but should be a lot of hands on now that we are getting into the middle Middle Ages.

Language we are doing daily and we flip between spelling/phonics (M, W, F) and formal writing (Tues, T). He's not a huge fan of these but they are as interactive as these types of things get LOL

His reading continues to progress and is eager to tell me about the latest chapter he's read. Beast Quest offers and number of books and we'll be in this series for a good long time :)

We are doing skiing this year as well in the mornings. The weather has been very cold the past while so we've not been out as often as I thought we would. Having said that we are ALL enjoying this and will continue to buy the pass next year!

It's been a productive year and we seem to be doing really well. With all the other social activities (Lego club, swimming, gym, bowling, library) it's been a great year so far :)

The kiddos decided they would venture out today and play. I thought they would be in right away but they toughed it out for quite some time. This was them when they came in though LOL

Hockey Weekend

Both children were in tournaments this weekend, lots of fun but man I still feel cold :)

Mr. Monkey's team won the championship, his first overall win so very exciting!! And Little Miss also had a great time, she's in Tyke division so no scores. They were so cute, very herd like at this age LOL In net they would lay across so the puck couldn't get in!

Here are some pictures:

Viking Boat in a few short minutes....yeaaaaaah right!

So we are doing Medieval History this year and using a variety of texts and hands on projects where they apply. Currently we are talking about Vikings and I thought what better project to do but a Viking Long Boat. So I found this cool site: http://www.looledo.com/index.php/viking-ship.html that shows how to make a very cool little Viking boat.

In the video it says you can whip one of these up in no time. Well nay I say! NAY! This boat took us ALL WEEK to do LOL We did it in 45 minute stints and it took FOREVER! So while we are happy with the end result, it was waaaay too time consuming, lesson learned!

Some pictures of the week long adventure, it really is a sturdy boat and the rudder is movable as well:

The base already water tight!

All set with terrifying dragon head LOL

The child is goofy! We layer the tape to give it a wood look.

Getting the sail all tied on

Mast, sail and rigging all set

Finished product, shield, oars, movable dragon tail rudder

Floats and everything LOL

Blowing on it to test the sail