One of the joys of homeschooling is to have incredibly flexible days.

We can start at 9 a.m., or we can start at 1130... it all works.

On-line resoures
Used the brain picture on this page with the words cut away so the lad needed to figure out what each part is called.   He used the one on this page as a sort of guide.    
We learned, using this page,  about how brains don't work the same on each side, the left being more logical, thinking, fine-tuning and the right being creative, big picture focused.   And how they relate to each other...how when we just read a book we don't worry about the grammar of a sentence (right brain big picture) or we can learn the grammar (left brain) so the right brain can be the big picture easier.   The lad compared that to thinking of a picture and then taking the time to draw things correctly.  :)

Most pictures we see of the brain show a side view of it, so I thought it pertinent to show the lad how a different view of the brain will show different things.  So this site gave us a top-down view which showed how the olfactory bulbs are hidden inside the frontal lobe.

We very briefly talked about how we can help the brain learn by using different things to help it.   This site proved be helpful in that regard.

If I have time later this week we'll be making these brain food items...but I haven't been able to download it yet.  (need to restart firefox and all that).

We used some book resources to add some lapbooking elements to our study of the brain.

From the flashkids, sightword book we practiced the word Long.   The lad's sentence was "a long party with flies to eat".     The entirety of the sentences he has been writing have all be spider themed.  "Spiders scared them"  "I like spiders"  "I would like a spider"  "come here spider"   Makes me smile. :)

For art we are using "Canadian Art Ideas"  This resource is produced by Canadian Curriculum Teaching Resource.   I have to say, I really like this book and if I could link it on Amazon I would.  It spells things out in a logical manner and I can tweak it as per the lad's interests.  I can also use the ideas, find a project that fulfills it's mandate and then teach the lesson.   The pages themselves are rather boring, but I can use the ideas and as a NON-arts minded individual having a focus is working well for me.  :)

Our lesson today was on Complementary colours.

as you all know by now, my reading encompasses four regular books at this time (at least that I document in the mornings). :)   We have others we read at night.

This morning we read from
World History.   The lad found this one to be quite interesting today, he kept asking all sorts of questions.  It was about how knights had different sorts of helmets and they protected their horses as well.  It also mentioned strategy used in battle which highly intrigued my lad.  We play a game on facebook called Social Empires and it fits in well with our history lessons, so he's slowly learning some strategy as he "kills" trolls.  :)

Classic animal stories: bellerophon and pegasus.   These odd names are a good way to teach phonics and how one uses them to pronounce unusual names. :)   This story seemed sad to the boy.   I can't say I much liked the ending of it either.

50 Magical Stories: An unexpected Opening.   This story made us want to get the rest of the book as it was just the start of larger book.   We want to know what happens next.  Anyone have a copy of "The brass bottle" by F. Anstey?

The Ultimate Guide to wildlife of North America: brought us the Great Egret and the Tiger Salamander.   The great egret was hunted by people because he was so pretty.  The Tiger Salamander has a wee tiny area that it lives around here, much to my son's chagrin as he'd like to catch one and build just the right place for it to live. :)

This was simply just fun to do.  :)   Seriously, it was just fun.  Take a FRESH bar of Ivory soap.  Chop it up a bit, doesn't need to be as fine as the lad did it.  Put it in a microwave from 75-90 seconds and just watch the magic. (yes I know, not really magic).  But fun none-the-less.  :)

Since the lad battled with me about taking some of the flakes to see if I could remake a soap bar I chose the smallest form I had (a dog bone), mixed in two drops of food colouring to about 1/2 cup flakes, added a wee bit of water,... perhaps a tsp?  and squished altogether in a ziploc bag and used a soft spatula to remove it.   Will be placed in the fridge to "set".  We'll see how it turns out.  I had the lad draw step by step pictures in our science experiment book.

Since today was Wednesday our focus was math and Canada.  I had hoped to do some art, but that simply wasn't going to happen today due to phone calls and a discussion over books read.

we read the cinder maid.  I have to admit, I love this story much more than Cinderella.  A much more enjoyable story with a bit more 'oomph" to it.   The lad liked it to, especially all the different way the prince tried to catch Cinder Maid.

Archers and Peasants.   The infantry was mostly made up of poorly trained farmers.   Many weapons were later based on farm weapons, just more finely tuned to be dangerous, and different countries preferred different types of weapons .. some the spear, others the longbow and still others the crossbow.

Two stories out of this book today due to the lad begging for just one more. :)   the first was a story about how Athens got so many olive trees .. a fanciful story called the Horse and the Olive.

The next story was the Story of Arachne.   A proud young lady who needed to learn her real place in the world and how the "god" took pity on her.  made for interesting discussion afterwards.

Today we learned about the Porcupine.  This was fun to learn about since at night we are reading a book about Prickly Porky (a porcupine).   We learned that a porcupine doesn't automatically hit out when threatened.  First, climb a tree.  Second, turn your back and chatter, third make yourself stinky, Fourth lower head and rattle your quills, and finally... hit out with your tail.

the other was the southern black widow spider.   Did you know that they mostly like to play dead when threatened?  yeah.. I didn't either. :)

Since Canada is part of the world we are learning about earth.   Last week we learned about the different parts of the earth and I thought today I'd reinforce that a bit by making a model of the world using plasticine.

he also needed to do some writing today.  We drew a semi circle of the world with it's four main pats and then labelled then.   Since his hand was tired he then dictated to me the facts we learned about those four parts. :)

the book we are using is "the Earth".  we are on lesson two.  it is written for older students, but with some fine tuning it is working out well for us. 

Since part of my determination this year is to assist the Lad in learning better how to read I made the decision is that every day we'll learn one or two new words. 

Today we did Come and Would.   We are using a small booklet I picked up at Costco. 

the lad is very much enjoying this book so I plan to make up my own sight word sheets to do throughout the year.  A much nicer way to learn sight words than doing route memorization.     It also gives me a natural way to do some phonics type work with him as on one of the pages the words were trying to fool him so I was helping him sound those ones out. :)

we did a couple more lessons out of this book today.  we learned about edges and vertices (corners) on geometric shapes.

I had a meeting this afternoon that the lad needed to come along with, so we toted along a math book and a couple of pages I had downloaded this morning. 

and yes, I know he's a grade two boy, but he's needing some backtracking right now, so this is where it's at for him.  I expect within the month he'll be feeling his normal confident math self.  :)   he did two subtraction pages out of this book.  Mind, he asked if he could change half of one of the pages into addition questions and I smiled and said sure. :)

Then he needed to a maze...this was somewhat complicated alphabet maze.  The other page was on fractions.  For someone who hadn't really looked at fractions before he was able to do this with just a couple of whispers with mommy.  :)

AH yes, I forgot to blog yesterday, so here goes.

yesterday was one of those days I wonder WHY am I homeschooling.... the lad was very tightly wound yesterday and was VERY easily upset about anything he thought he should know but didn't.

We did manage to get a couple things done though.

One of the things we worked on was math.  It quickly became apparent that he didn't understand place value worth a diddle.   So it was like hmm.....how do I help him understand this?

then I remembered a freebie someone had given me.  some old, rather beaten up math cubey things.   The ones are singles, the tens are a line, the 100's are a block and they can't be taken apart.  So I used them as a visual to help him see how place value works.  And voila!  he got it.

To help reinforce the understanding I started saying things like.. Mom is 47, can you show me how you would write that, and how can you show me in blocks.  We went through daddy, gramma, oma, his friends and even a couple of children he's still getting to know.   WOOT WOOT!  a boy gained some understanding!  :)

Ultimate guide to wildlife: the great blue heron (he's seen these birds flying) and some kind of newt that lives out in BC and can spend two years growing up in the water.

Animal Classics: We finished off the last two jobs of Hercules.  The lad found them quite intriguing.

Magical Stories: we read a funny story about a man who was quite silly about something.  the lad laughed and asked lots of questions trying to understand the silliness.  :)

World history:  Even though I can't quire recall what we read yesterday, we did read.  :)

Today we learned about the Cormorant and the Mountain Beaver.    The mountain beaver is actually NOT a beaver, it's more of a cross between a ground hog and a muskrat.  It is also not just found in the mountains.  (makes me wonder how it got the name of mountain beaver).  :)   It's a burrowing animal and eats plants many other animals won't.

The Double Crested Cormorant is a water bird the swims low in the water.   They nest in high areas near deep water.

Beautiful to the Day was the story today.  Not a bad story, made me want to get the book it came from, just to see what other whimsy the author might come up with.  :)   The lad liked it as well.

Two more of the Hercules Labours: the cattle of Geryon and the Girdle of Hippolyte.    I find it interesting how treachery is a common theme in some of the "greek god" stories.

We read about the start of the dark ages today in our history book.  How the barbarians took over areas of Roman and how the Byzantines started.

Some of the on-line resources we used;

We made a brain hat.
We made a brain box.
We learned that not very good readers have NO problems doing this exercise.
We used this brain puzzle to practice the different areas of the brain.

I will also need to find the links to various lapbooks of the human body that I looked up so that I can link to them for you as well. :)

I tried to put most of what we did up on my pinterest board.

We had looked at this brain cap to make, the lad thought it interesting, but I wasn't keen on doing it.

Math Reflex - practiced our math facts
Study ladder - learned about stars and did some math
Head of the class - did some math exercises

Walk to the creek behind the horse farm.  Looking for bugs and stretching our legs.

Today our plan is fairly basic.

Start our study on the human body and go to the Western Fair this afternoon.     We go to the fair every year simply because it's a family thing to do.  Hubby has gone for years, and so therefore do we.  :)

It's a good place to go educationally speaking as well as they have farm exhibits, various booths, and some hands on events as well.   We generally go two days, once for us, once for the boy as bounce back tickets are inexpensive.  :)

We read the paper over our waffle breakfast.  Good to do this.  I was never taught as a child to think about what I read in the paper, and even though the lad is only seven years old, I do want him to start thinking a bit. :)    We also do our devotions after breakfast.  Currently we are using Keys for Kids.    They will send you a one year subscription for free or you can use it on-line.

we read through the next two labours of Hercules.  The two labours were the man eating horses and the bull that came out of the sea.

World history taught us about what the lad calls the "indians".  I'm not sure where he gets that from, but it was about the chinese soldiers and how they protected themselves.  They wore armour made up on numerous metal plates and under that wore a silk shirt which helped to protect them from arrows.

The Three Wishes.   This story gave us a chance to talk about being careful what you wish for, and if you did have three wishes, what would they be?  

Today we learned about the southern red-back vole.  These critters are a major food source for many animals and they tend to live less than one year, but the females can have several litters of 8 in one year (should they survive) and they often live in family units.

We also read about the rough-backed newt.  This newt tends to live in the water or in damp places.   It excretes a poison from it's skin which kills most predators, except for some snakes which are immune to the poison.

We started off our exploration of the human body by doing full sized outlines of our body.  The lads' and mine.  We had hoped to get Dad to do it as well but he showed no inclination to do so.

We hung them up on bedroom doors.

Throughout the year we'll be adding body parts to them.  We'll be using this book

as our template for doing this copy, and colour aspect of learning.  :)

We also took our measurements so that we can watch how we grow and change throughout the year.  :)

Today we did the brain.  :)   we read about it, and coloured a picture, we'll look at it a bit more tomorrow I'm hoping.   Daddy sidetracked us with the movie the Adventures of TinTin so we needed to revamp our schooling life a bit.

Got off to a bit of a late start this morning with homeschooling.  This was due to getting home late last night and folks sleeping in.

But we managed to get going.

We did our normal reading

Read snippets out of the paper over breakfast plus the good comics.  Talked about them.

Today we learned about the American toad.  The lad was quite intrigued as he's been catching toads lately.   This lead to us looking up a cousin the American Toad called the southern toad.  This toad lives down south and has head ridges.

We read about the next two labours of Hercules.  This inspired questions and memories from the lad as he learned about water and how it can be used to move dirt.  The duties were to clean the Augeian stables (where the lad recalled the importance of keeping your word - the king refused to pay Hercules what he promised to do) and to kill off the birds of Stymphalos.

today's story made the lad go HUH?   it was a tad confusing and not at all satisfying.  It was written like a story but ended like a dream and well...it just didn't do it for us at all.  Gave us a chance to talk about how authors use different literary styles when they write.

The barbarians...the huns scared the Romans with their horseback manueverability and archery accuracy, the country of France, named for the Franks, who were named for their weapon of choice the fancisca and the Dacians fought on foot with a horrid weapon that could cut people in half.     Interesting reading for a seven year old boy. 

Today we set out to figure out why sometimes maps are flat with odd shapes to the continents.  So first we looked at a plum.  A plum has a crust, it has a mantle, it has an outer core and then it has an inner core.  The outer core is HARD to get through to get to the inner core, much like with the earth.

Then from the above book we did an experiment with an orange.   We drew lines on the orange with a black markers...longitude, latitude, the tropics, international date line and so forth.  Then we used on orange peeler to cut off the "map" of the orange.   We learned that black marker and oranges... not a good combination.  :)

But we got our flat map and that is what's important.

We traced that map to get a hard copy we could work with.

Since the lad REFUSED to write to write on his map (and it wasn't a mountain worth dying on).. I had him copy out the words on this worksheet.

Part of this lesson became an informal science lesson.  Not only do oranges taste good (evidenced below) but it was discovered how one can make juice from oranges as well.  :)   he had fun squeezing with his hands, and then learned about using a tool to do the same job so you don't get all wet and pulpy.    Good stuff that!

Since I've a tired and grumpy boy after too late a night out I thought that we'd do some art.  Very simple stuff (so I thought) as we did it last year more informally and as part of a science experiment.   But it was like pulling teeth this morning.    And since I didn't take pictures of it I can't really show what he did (though I do have it in his art binder).    It was just learning the primary colours, learning the secondary colours, introducing tertiary colours.  He needed to do some colouring, some thinking of which colours make what other colours, and then to draw a picture ONLY using the primary colours and then another only using the secondary colours.  The drawing pictures part went well for the most part.

Then we used this book.. geometry brainteasers with 3d Shapes as a math book.  This was NOT a day to do math via worksheets.   We went through the different shapes.   Then I had him do a search trying to match up the shapes with the descriptions I came up with.  For one exercise he needed to tell me WHY he rejected a shape as not fitting.

one of the exercises was to build three towers.  This took him longer than I expected, but in the end he came up with four towers.

While Doing the geometry work we listened to "the story of the world" Ancient times disc 2 playing in the background.  The lad is really enjoying this series and I hope to find the next few in the series.

We then called it a day as cries and pleas "mom, can't we be done?   I really want to play and I'm going to have no time to just play today mom".  And since overall he did okay, we called it quits as forcing tired boys to work is not my idea of good schooling.   We'll be going out for a nature walk later...to the creek to see if we can find bugs and toads.  :)

oh... while the lad was playing we listened and watched two books from OnLine Barnes and Noble.

I won this: world's greatest Composers

You can find it over at Confessions of a homeschooler.

You get the teacher and student manuals as separate downloads.  I had a bit of trouble convincing my computer to open the student one but we eventually got there. :) 

These composers are covered
Johann Sebastian Bach
George Handel
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Frederic Chopin
Peter Tchaikovsky
Igor Stravinsky
George Gershwin

It's a lapbook style study which I will like and the lad may or may not like.   But it'll work!  AND it will fit within our study parameters for the year.  :)

I need to go to Sarnia Ontario on September 22.
So I'm looking for things that are homeschool related to do with the lad.

Things I'm considering

1. the bluewater bridge.
Despite the in your face warning not to copy pics from this site, they have good pics of the bridge going up. :)
Wiki tells me this about the history
The original span is a cantilever truss bridge with a total length of 6,178 feet (1,883 m) and a main span of 871 feet (265 m). The second, newer span is a continuous tied-arch bridge with a total length of 6,109 feet (1,862 m) and a main span of 922 feet (281 m).   ....
The first bridge was opened to traffic on October 10, 1938.     .....
The second three-lane bridge, just south of the first bridge, opened on July 22, 1997.

2. the Stones 'N Bones museum.
this sounds like an interesting museum to go to with plenty of things to talk with a lad about.

Do you have any other suggestions of things we might consider?

I posted the question of what to do in Sarnia and got these responses:

1. Stones n Bones museum is worth a look, especially if you are able to catch Jim there to give you a tour.  He knows EVERYTHING about everything they have on display.  http://www.stonesnbones.ca/  Its located in a store front downtown and doesnt look like a real museum from the outside, but has a pretty impressive collection once you get in.  The price is right too!  Make sure you take them 'under the bridge" for fries.  The fries are decent, but eating them on a bench overlooking the river and the USA makes them very pleasant.  If a cargo ship goes under the bridge, which happens at regular intervals, get the kids to pump their arms and if the captain sees them, he'll blow the foghorn.  If you've never really seen it, take a drive south on hwy 40 and check out the chemical valley.  Its one thing to know its there, but quite another to see the magnitude of operations that spans the length of the St Clair river.  Pay special attention as you go over the overpass on Vidal st.  On your right, you can see the mouth of the St Clair Tunnel that goes under the St Clair River to the USA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Clair_Tunnel  A bit of an engineering marvel for its time.

2. You might like to check out Canatara Park as they have an animal farm when you enter the park off of Christina St., just head straight through rather than taking the bend in the road that leads to the park and beach. When heading towards the beach area there is also Lake Chipican where many ducks, geese usually are.You might also like to view the Twin Bluewater Bridge which you can access off of Michigan Rd. I believe.Here you can watch the big ships come in or go near the old lighthouse which you can access off of Michigan & Alfred.In Pt.Edward there is the area where the Marina is.

3. There is a really great Animal Farm in Canatara Park. Goats, ponies, ducks, that kind of thing. And there are nice walking trails through Canatara around the pond. It's off of Christina St.  "http://www.city.sarnia.on.ca/pdf/canatarabro.pdf"

4. http://sarniaontarioheritage.blogspot.ca/

5. Here are a few sites to check out for Sarnia and Lambton County.
http://www.city.sarnia.on.ca/
http://www.tourismsarnialambton.com/
 http://www.waynecook.com/alambton.html

Together with another homeschooling family,  yesterday my family went to the Pinery Provincial Park for a walk about.   We had lunch, walked a trail and dug holes at the beach.   We had a very enjoyable time.

The lad found bugs galore with the other children.

He traded one of his toads in order to keep some of the bugs.  All types of caterpillars.   He gave them a whack of green stuff to eat so they should be okay for a spell.  The lad usually releases them in about three days so no lasting harm done to the wee critters.

The highlight of our walk was the young lad from the other family used my son's bug net to catch a big green frog.   Hubby took a pic with his camera so I don't have it here to show you.  :)

We also found a small toad that we took home with us.  The lad liked this since now he still had a toad even if he gave away his bigger one.  :)

I used to do all my blogging over at A Net In Time through Blogger but ran into issues with being able to link to that site through facebook and such like.  I switched over to weebly since I already had my education site here.     Anyways, I have SO very many people who come to that blog for the following poem.

Mice

I think
Are rather nice.

Their tails are long,
Their faces small,
They haven't any
Chins at all.
Their ears are pink,
Their teeth are white,
They run about
They house at night,
They nibble things
They shouldn't touch
And no one seems
To like them much.

But I think mice
Are nice.

~ Rose Fyleman


This is a poem that I learned as a child.   I wish I could actually see the original as over the years this poem has been copied down wrong I think.

You find it starting with "I think mice are nice", or ending with "but I think mice are rather nice".    So either they add or remove the "rather".   I best remember it the way I copied it. :)

Anyways, it was my favourite poem as a child, and I still like it now-a-days.  :)