Blog Archives

Starting Reviews for TOS

1/18/2013

As some of you know I managed to get on the TOS review crew. :) It's rather fun trying out new to me programs. The lad likes it too...he gets to try things, help mom out and earn treasure stickers for digs in his treasure box.

We are currently trying out two programs.

One is Handwriting Without Tears.

Wet-Dry App

I got the wet-dry app with two ideas in mind.
1. encourage the writing of letters in a more practical manner.
2. encourage the following and listening to instruction EVEN IF you want to do it differently.

So far what I see
1. the lad emotionally fights the "doing it this way because I have to" aspect, but is starting to understand that sometimes that's just the way it is and arguing with a tablet is wasted words.
2. he is FRUSTRATED that if the tablet moves the program considers it an error and makes him redo the work.
3. I enjoy that he is doing the work and seeing his smiles when he gets a letter card.

I was somewhat concerned when I signed up for the program that it would become a battle ground, but it hasn't been...he's currently happily working away on the tablet and looking forward to getting ALL the letter cards.

We do talk about how mommy would form the letters differently, and some of the regional differences in how letters can be formed, so he's aware that this ONE way of doing letters and he can make changes in his own style as he learns to write better.

A+tutorsoft Math

I am trying out the homeschool addition of this math program.

All I can say is I like it! And the lad says "I LIKE IT!"

I like that if he knows a concept he can do the Interactive Q & A and "prove it to me".

I like that if he gets an answer wrong it teaches him the answer. The lad DOES NOT like this feature. "I want to figure out myself why I was wrong mom". So I thought I'd see what their customer service was like and I called them! woot woot actual customer service! I mentioned the lad's frustration with the program and Vinod was immediately able to provide a solution. That makes me VERY happy.

A long walk

1/16/2013

We started off our homeschool day today with a walk. I had intended it to only be about 20 minutes well... an hour later we got home. It was such a nice day. The lad learned about ice and how it hides water (yes, I rescued him from cold water in the nick of time).

He explored the differences between thin and thick layers of ice and how they are formed. We appreciated the beauty of Jack Frost at work.

When we returned home he did some work with A+tutorsoft math. This is a new math program that we are testing out. So far the lad is saying "but I know this mom". So we are skipping lessons and going to test areas to see what he knows and what needs to be fine tuned a bit. Generally though the lad has an appreciation for the format so I think it will work for him.

What else....OH.. our homeschool group has a lego competition in about a month and so the lad's busy making an entry for it. He's quite enthused. He's really hoping that the judges will like it. Personally I think he's done an excellent job coming up with the idea and building it without any assistance.

WOOT WOOT! energy today!

1/15/2013

So today I'm mostly feeling back to normal. It's been a very long four months, but WOOT WOOT!

I was feeling so normal today that we made bird feeders. I had energy to spare and a talkative happy boy at my side. :)

The making of a bird feeder

More feeders made

We did other things as well today

Math. So nice to know he has his place values down well. BUT when I add the factor of money he loses it. SO we'll be practicing with money a bit more.

Reading. He read a bob book from start to finish.

Spelling. I've added the challenge of "the words he didn't know" he has to spell them out. I read about a gal who started doing that with her struggling reader. Giving her spelling words to words that her child "SHOULD" know but didn't, and the act of thinking and having to spell out the words helped that child tremendously and I thought it made for a good way to help the lad out as well.

Reading Comprehension. I read a story and then asked questions about it from our 50 magical stories book. He did well. He liked the story today, it made sense to him and made him ask TONS of questions about it all.

OH>>> and we made waffles this morning. he helped. So we did did home ec and math and listening to directions and all that stuff in the middle of having good food. :)

Phys Ed. We started our day off with a walk around the big block (down to main street and then up a block and back home). We told a game/story as we went and used that story to learn tracking terms. (how to lay a false trail, how to double back, using water to avoid leaving a scent trail and such like).

Good Conversation Starter

1/15/2013

This is the Children's Book Of Nature Myths. I spent a good deal of time tonight looking for it on-line as I'd love to have others read this book as well.

it's all myths about a variety of things in nature. They make you sometimes snort at the imaginations of folks. BUT the real love for me with this book is the fact that it makes people think. Especially my son. Why do you think they came up with that story? is there anything in this story that might be true? Why do you think they made that animal act like that? What do you think they are trying to teach in this story?

There are 18 stories in this little book and we've thoroughly enjoyed going through them as part of our nightly reading time.

Crayon Rocks

1/14/2013

Originally I put this up here.

Then on to do some science. A while ago I had pinned a crayon rock idea from Momma Owl's Lab.   By the way, if you need an invite to Pinterest let me know I'll happily send you and invite. :)

I figured this would be a good idea for a recovery day.   :)   This was a carry over from when we dug for gems and rocks a while back.
We had fun, we learned a lot.

We grabbed our bag of old icky crayons. It took a while to figure out the best way to shave them. A knife wasn't a good idea so then we pulled out the vegetable peelers. That worked better for the soft crayons, the hard crayons I just basically chipped into small pieces.

The first step was to make Sedimentary rocks. Layer shaved crayon, wrap in aluminum foil, put in clamp. :)

Then we moved on to Metamorphic rocks. Knowing that these can be made through pressure or through heat we decided to see what would happen if we made sedimentary rock first and then heated it. We also did one without putting pressure on it. We had planned to do a third one and put pressure on it afterwards but after it melted we didn't see much point in doing that. :) But it was interesting since we did two of the three with double thickness aluminum foil and one with four times thickness. The four times thickness melted much slower, the pressured one melted even more slowly.

When we finished these we moved on to making igneous rocks. Igneous rocks are formed when magma (molten rock) cools and solidifies The lad had a difficult time remembering what magma rock was so I showed him this video.

Then he said "MELTED ROCK MOMMY!"
We melted some rock.

Our end result had me wanting to crush a bunch of ice and do it all over again, but I ran out of energy and decided it could wait until another day. :)

World's Smartest Mouse

1/13/2013

Just so I can inspire further creative abilities and engineering skills in my seven year old.....

World's Smartest Mouse - watch more funny videos

Brunel's Eastern

1/11/2013

Officially called the SS Great Eastern.
built by Brunel.

What a marvellous ship. Fraught with all sorts of difficulties.

But wow. What an feat of engineering for those days. We watched the documentary on NetFlix today. The boy was quite intrigued.

Meet Nickie and Skitter

1/11/2013

Nickie is a mouse we found while on a walk (the bicolour red eyed).
Skitter is a mouse we bought yesterday. Spontaneous purchase. Afterwards I thought WHY did I do this? what if they don't get along? Mice can be ...difficult at times.

BUT God is so gracious to us.

After a time of being together but separated we put them together this morning and they are long lost friends. Go figure. :) No even a squeak of discontentment.

Anyways, Nick and Skitter (both girls). Skitter MAY BE pregnant. Which is fine.
They inspired a lad to do some crafting.

MOM! How do I make a safe box for them?

Well.. hmmm.. let's think on this.
Do you know son of my heart how to make Christmas card boxes???
No mom! HOW???

So we looked it up. And mini christmas card box..had a video and everything. It's quite simple. To make it mouse safe we used a staple instead of tape.

Mom? Can Mice see Colour???

This question made us search the web for answers.
We learned that mice can see blues fairly well, they can't see reds, and they like many animals tend to see in shades of gray.

This led to the lad for his vending machine toy for the mice to colour the dispenser blue to help the mice see where it is. :) Pretty good thinking for one seven year old boy eh? :)

The desire for a mouse ziptie

Led to the need to do some math.
Measuring length, taking mouse weights, finding a similar weight, guesstimation of equipment size,shape etc.

All good thinking, all good education. :) can't beat hands on, child-led interest learning. :)

Ever Wonder what Two feet of snow looks like?

1/11/2013

My son pictured this in his head when I asked him that question

What a friend sent us a picture of....

We laughed. :)

Word Blog Hop Challenge

1/8/2013

Each week two words will be given that we're to use to show that we know the meaning of them.   I thought cool...give me story ideas. :)

Granted...before I told my son a story out of my head tonight about Zephyr and Arboretum...I wasn't exactly sure what zephyr meant so my story wasn't quite accurate, but anyways, here goes... perhaps YOU can see where I went wrong. :)

Once upon a time there was a lovely arboretum. it was filled with plants of all sorts, big, small, flowering, fruiting, mostly trees with supporting other fauna. This arboretum was located in a large green area behind the University of Socks.   LOTS of people worked and studied there, the trees and plants had all sorts of visitors.

One night the arboretum had another visitor. A zephyr decided to stop by for a while. The zephyr was a fairly normal zephyr. Gentle with a quiet attitude. The zephyr did NOT want to cause trouble, he just wanted to check things out. Find a lovely meal, settle down for a nice nap, and just chill out for a while.

The zephyr did that, made a lovely bed of trees and leaves. Had a quiet nap and was RUDELY awakened by an ear piercing scream!

Oh heavens the zephyr muttered... What in the world is going on?

i must say... zephyrs...even when rudely awakened remain fairly calm for the most part.   They don't like to make a fuss...but someone screaming in their ear is enough to make any zephyr sit up and roar.

That action of course caused MORE screaming and even some fainting.
The zephyr was quite puzzled by all this and wondered what to do.

So he got up, stretched long and hard.. joints popping and cracking as they are apt to do when a Zephyr gets up for the day.   Hungry the zephyr helped himself to some fruit on the tree, pulling down fruit, leaves, branches and all.
Then with a satisfying burp ambled away.   Leaving the noisiness behind, and going to the silence he craved.

I did add more to the story, fitting in details that seven year old boys love, but figured this was enough for the blog. :)