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Review: A Country of Our Own: The Confederation Diary of Rosie Dunn

9/12/2014

This diary is from Rosie Dunn, written back in 1866-1867 when Canada was making decision on becoming a country.

It was interesting to walk through the life of Miss Rosie Dunn, and listen to her observations and thoughts about confederation.

It was fun watching her grow up a bit as well.

It made me more aware of why there are some of the struggles our country continues to have today between the French and the English.

My son was most taken up by why people might accuse someone of theft when it was plain as can be that the person accused was not guilty. He was quite outraged at the very thought of it. The over arching theme of the confederation for the most part passed him by as most of the book is about the daily life of Rosie Dunn with the occasional sections where confederation issues were talked about.

Despite that, I know more today about they ins and outs of battles of making Canada a country than I did before we read this book, and I trust that some of it sunk into my lad's head as well.

Some facts you might like to know
A Country of our own, the Confederation Diary of Rosie Dunn, Ottawa, Province of Canada, 1866.
Part of the Dear Canada series (aimed at girls).
Published by Scholastic Books.
183 pages

Schooling this week, an overview

9/12/2014

Hmm.. what can I tell you about this week in our life?

We've developed more of a relationship with our international student. We've learned he is a polite boy, who likes some of my cooking but not all of it. :) Pancakes are a hit! Baked beans are not. Fried ground beef means seconds and slow cook chicken.. not so much. :) Pasta yes, potatoes... well.. you get the idea. :) He will need to adapt to a certain extent as we like potatoes in this house and we eat plenty of chicken, but I'll be experimenting a bit I think with different ways to make it. We haven't spent a WHOLE lot of time with him as he's made some friends and like all teenagers likes to be out and about with them. We continue to work on our ability to communicate well with him. It's a work in progress. He knows some English but not heaps and heaps of it.

We've done some art with geography and Egyptian art.

Let's see what else have we done.

We've done math everyday, one day using "Barron's Painless Junior Math" and other days using computer programs such as UberSmart, CTC Math and Standard Deviants. Standard Deviants is a review that we are working on it has a variety of math, science and other courses. We signed up for the Grade Four Math program but my son at this point prefers the other programs available to us. A review is coming! :)

We are Doing a variety of things for Language Arts. We do some with Essential Skills Advantage. I like this program but think variety is a good thing. To that end we are daily doing one pages out of Reading Skills (pictured left). We are also pulling outLogic of English once or twice a week.

We finished off "A country of our own" This is a book in the Dear Canada series. The lad enjoyed it and wants to do more out of the series. He likes the boys series more, but didn't find the girls series too difficult and it made him ask questions and learn more about the history of this fine land of ours. The thing I like about his series is that they give a fictionalized story but at the end of the book they give you all the true facts. The lad finds this part just fascinating.

After being sporadic in our study of Canada over the past year or so I thought spending more time would be a good thing.. so once or twice a week we're going through our books on Canada. Good to learn about the land one lives in eh? :)

This is Canada My Country from Norrthwoods Press by Danna Ward.

Today we had our co-op day with our homeschool group. It was a good morning and then a good visit afterwards with friends.

And that's a good overview of our week I think. We did many things this week such as finish the pond, go for the odd walk, make an extra trip to town to help our international student find a coat and new shoes etc. It was a good week overall. I really have no complaints (not that complaints are good to dwell on). Currently my son's week is complete as a friend is over for an overnight visit. Life is SO much better with friends, don't you agree? :)

28 days of bible and missions

9/12/2014

For the next 28 days we'll be learning from two books for our bible and missions focus on our schooling. Missionary Stories with the Millers by Mildred A. Martin and Bible Lessons for Juniors The Early Church by Andrew VanderVeer.

Bible Lessons for Juniors was published in 1959 and is KJV based.   It is going through the book of Acts and just talks about the bible. The process is to read the chapter of Acts, and then to read through a simplified version of the chapter and at the end there are a series of questions, T/F questions and fill in the blank along with a couple "thinking" questions. Sometimes the thinking questions are too vague for my son, but other times we get some good discussion out of them.     The lesson includes a song to sing and memory verse as well.   We haven't been doing that portion.   I must say how surprising I find how helpful it is to read through a chapter and then immediately after read a paraphrase of the same chapter. One picks up things immediately that first time one missed.   My son is finding it helpful in the answering of questions afterwards.

Missionary Stories with the Millers.   Just as the title suggests, this is a book filled with missionary stories.   The first one we read showed how God can keep us from showing fear even in the midst of grave danger.   This story made my boy sit up and ask questions.   How does that work mom?   Why did those bad people want them to be scared?   How did they not be scared mom?    Why did not being scared keep them safe mom? Why???    It prompted an excellent discussion.

Both books have 28 chapters, and have so far proven to be good fits for us.   Not sure what we'll do when they are done but we'll pick up something off our shelves.

Five minute Friday: Ready

9/12/2014

The rules are simple: Write for five minutes on a given word prompt. Link up and then....Also, the most important rule is that you visit the blog of the person who linked up before you and leave some encouragement. That’s the most fun of all, and the heart of this community.

Today's word is Ready.

click on image to go to source: Katemotaung.

Time is 656 ready set Go

Ready... oh man I DO NOT feel ready.
Today is the first day of our homeschool group co-op days and I don't feed ready.
Yes, I have a lesson.
BUT
I don't FEEL ready.

I always get like this.
I have a plan, an idea I want to teach and then I just can't find the time to prepare for it properly.
I do it the night before.

And yes, that's not so good eh?

It's great when I'm doing rabbits right? When I teach the kids what I know about rabbits, that's easy peasy as I can live and breathe talking rabbits, but this time round the boys wanted me to teach them survival skills.

Yeah.. me.   Teaching survival skills.

ACK!   What was I THINKING?????

But you know what.. I ready last night that that youth ages 9-12 are most apt to get lost.
They think they know what they are doing and suddenly the trail is gone, or they can't see the campsite for looking hard, and they freak out and suddenly they are lost.

So teaching THIS age group survival skills... even though most are town raised and don't get out in the bush, it's still important because you know what.. things happen in life, things that it's good to be prepared for.

So I'll do what I can to train them up... even though I'm feeling totally unprepared for this.

Let's be ready for the unexpected shall we?

Oh..and that makes me think.... we Christians we need to be ready too. We're told in the scriptures that Christ will return like a thief in the night, so to BE ready.
Are you ready for him?   I know I"m trying to be but like with so many things I feel totally unprepared.... I need to work on that too.   How about you?

Let's get ready!

and STOP 701

click on image to go to source. KateMotaung.com

Egyptian Hieroglyphs

9/11/2014

This past spring I made the determination to add more art to our homeschooling journey. Doing art makes things more interesting, and leads to all sorts of discoveries. For my creatively minded lad, I figured it would be good nurture this aspect of his life as well (adding a good break to our day). To that end I looked through our art books pulling out ones I thought we could go through, as well as purchasing Hands-On Art Projects this summer.

We had wanted to do this yesterday, but I couldn't find our clay anywhere, so we decided to put it off until today. Then we both searched the house and came up with some clay but not quite what we were looking for, we decided to work with it anyways. :) Me with neon pink and the lad with purple. :) Won't quite be authentic but it will do the trick in the end.

Our goal was to experience making Egyptian art.

click image to go to source: TuttArt

We spent some time looking at various pictures of Egyptian art noticing how the people face to the side, how they often have hieroglyphs on the back and how they seem to tell a story. That SOLD my son on the idea of doing this kind of art. He likes to tell stories with his art and often makes small books that tell a story. Here's my lad hard at work making his Egyptian art. He refused to colour it in though, stating that it looks better as an outline. His story is that of the Warrior cats where LionBlaze needs to get the catnip for JayFeather and the sick cats.

Looking at the hieroglyphs led my son to ask, "mom, Do you think we could use them to tell a story too?" I responded with sure, perhaps we could use cardstock? Let's see if we can find some paint that we could do it with. That led me to the discovery of some plaster of Paris molds I made for an art class last year So we made a sentence in Egyptian hieroglyphs. The advantage to using plaster of paris is the white out works really well for covering up mistakes.

(son's name) and I are painting. Annette

Warriors: the power of three

It was a lot of fun to do this art project, I hope over the course of the year to discover some art projects I could do with children in an art class in the spring. :) If you are interested in looking into this book I've included a link below.

I linked up below: Click on image to go to site.

#abcblogging: T is for Making TIME

9/10/2014

At the end of August I talked about how we managed our computer game time. In that post I mentioned how my son needs to earn his computer time over and above the 1 hour he gets to play daily. It's sometimes hard to come up with things for him to do, and we've been working on getting him motivated.. over the past week he's been very diligent about working on the new pond.

You may recall that back in June my son made a small pond with a friend. He did an excellent job with it, but it was...in a couple of different ways not satisfactory.

1. the toads kept escaping.
2. the space between it and the rose of sharon bush was tight making it hard to navigate the back yard
3. the pond just wasn't quite big enough...his pond fish were a tad crowded and
4. all the plants he put in it were "mom.. they are just too big now mom!"

So we thought that perhaps a bigger pond was in order. We'd need a couple of supplies.. like a pond liner and eventually an outdoor pump (still need to find that).

At the end of July/beginning August I found a pond liner on sale and said okay.. here's the liner. Let's get building, we considered a few different spots but finally ended up with right beside the old one, using up an flower garden that I've been unsuccessfully battling weeds in.

My son had me take this picture to send to our international student to show himself hard at work. The student promised to help our son finish it when he got here, but the lad had it mostly all done before he arrived. All he needed to do was help us put the liner in yesterday.

So what do you think? Did we do good? Think the fish will be happier now? Think it will be easier to raise toads and frogs and encourage snakes to come around? That's what we are hoping for. :) We have some pond liner left over that the lad is saying.. Mom.. can I use this to make a couple smaller ponds? For the toads I don't want to have them escape? Think I can mom?

I'm figuring we probably have room along the side fence for a couple of smaller ponds. :) We plan in the spring to put flowers and plants in that will lean down into the water, and put in some flowering plants around the edges a bit. Possibly throw a water lily or two in there along with some pond plants. Tomorrow (Wednesday) we hope to catch our fish and crayfish and show them their new abode (though that might have to wait until Thursday evening).

It's supposed to rain today which is one of the reasons we didn't fill it all the way up (besides it was getting late and didn't want to risk forgetting the tap on).

Let me give you a quick run down on how we did it. The goal had been for the pond to stretch along the fence, but we ran into an issue with an old sewer cover (at least that's what we think it is).   That cover didn't allow us to dig down deep enough.   So with went with coming out into the patio area.   The back half and one side are about 2.5 feet deep, and the front corner is about 12 inches deep. This gives frog/toad eggs and little fishes a place to slip away from bigger fish.

We cut away all the roots really short, cleaned out all the rocks and added a layer of sand from our old sandbox to the bottom. The lad doesn't use the sandbox anymore so we figured we'd might as well make good use of that sand.   The lad took a good amount of time making it as smooth as possible.

The stones around the top are from our old rose garden/small pond. We have a piece of wood in the new pond as already small finches have slide on the plastic in their attempt to get down to the water. We don't want birds drowning in it. Hopefully the wood will help. We may need to make a small island of some sort. We saw those at a pond place in London and that gave us ideas of our own to try to recreate.

My son has learned
1. A big project is made smaller if you just work at it for 30 minutes at a time.
2. Asking for help doesn't mean you aren't doing the job, just means you are asking for help with things you can't figure on your own.
3. Things work best sometimes with a team (mom, international student, lad and sometimes dad).   We couldn't have gotten the liner in all by ourselves, it took a team.
4. Paying attention to detail matters when it comes to making an area smooth.
5. To use the right tool for the job. sometimes he needed a spade, other times a square edge shovel and sometimes a trowel was the best tool.

Anyways, that's T for Making Time.... our new pond. This post is part of a series from Marcy at Ben And Me. You can find that post here. :)

click image to go to source: Ben and Me

Review: Carole P. Roman Books

9/9/2014

Last year I had to chance to review a few Carole P. Roman books for the TOS Crew, this year I had the chance to do so again, this time a private reviewer.

My son chose these as his "reading books" for a couple of days at gramma's house, so I have to admit I didn't see him read them, but gramma did. Her response was.. "He asked me questions, and told me what he was learning."

I consider that a is a sign of a job well done by a book.

Make it so a lad can read it himself and then tell other people what he read.

As you can see we reviewed the following books:
- If you were me and lived in Australia (has received the Clarion five star review)
- if you were me and lived in Russia
- if you were me and lived in Portugal.

These books are not long, averaging 24 pages. They are billed a child's introduction to culture around the world." They live up to their billing. They start with a map of the country you are visiting and go through a "day" in the life of a child. You learn some of the native language, see some the foods eaten, and learn various things about the country. These facts can include common names for children, what to call your parents, sports, capital cities, famous landmarks and more.

Colourful pictures decorate each page and the print is large helping children be able to read the pages easily. A pronunciation list closes off each book.

Product details:
Books on If you were me and lived: Australia, Russia and Portugal.
Author: Carole P. Roman
You can learn more of Carole overhere.
Publisher: Away we Go Media.
Price: varies depending on where you get it.
Pages: approximately 24

this post is linked up at the following

Review: Get to Know Mary

9/9/2014

I've read quite a few of these books, written by Nancy I Sanders, now with my son, he's nine and he thoroughly enjoys them, often asking me questions as we go through, though with this book he seemed to pay little attention to the pictures they get include.

In this book you get know a bit more about Mary, or at least what women in Mary's day would have been like. You get to follow her life as she learns she will get pregnant and bear the son of God. Her joys and struggles of being a parent in the time of Christ.

It's a good book and well worth reading with your children.

What does it include?

A timeline.
Eyewitness accounts.
Good vocabulary list
Maps.
Numerous full colour pictures.
Vignettes of Bible Heroes as well as questions/facts you might find interesting.

This book is a full-colour biography that does a good job at introducing children to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Through the book you will find plenty of Scripture references.

My son's Opinion

"Good book. I liked the pictures of the money."

Product Details.
Product: Get to Know Mary. softcover.
Author: Nancy I Sanders
Publisher: Zondervan
Pages: 110
Age Range: 8-10 years old, though children younger or older might well enjoy them.
Reviewed for: Booksneeze.com

Franklin Expedition

9/9/2014

Talk about history coming to life here.. or at least being relevant.
We're reading through this book Graves of Ice, about the Franklin expedition and what have they discovered? One of the boats!

Lost Franklin expedition ship found in the Arctic.
Excerpts of the article follow:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says one of Canada's greatest mysteries now has been solved, with the discovery of one of the lost ships from Sir John Franklin's doomed Arctic expedition.
....
At this point, the searchers aren't sure if they've found HMS Erebus or HMS Terror. But sonar images from the waters of Victoria Strait, just off King William Island, clearly show wreckage of a ship on the ocean floor.
...
"It appears to be perfectly preserved," Harper said of the ship, adding that it has "a little bit of damage."
....
In a statement, the prime minister said Franklin's expedition laid the foundations of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty. He called the lost ships Canada's "only undiscovered national historical site."
....

"The beauty of where they found it is it's proof positive of Inuit oral history," CBC chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge, who has covered the Franklin search for many years, said Tuesday.

"The Inuit have said for generations that one of their hunters saw a ship in that part of the passage, abandoned and ended up wrecking…. It's exactly where this guy said it was."

Kinda neat eh! :) Here's a video on the Franklin expedition for your own personal enjoyment. :)

Drawing our way through Geography

9/9/2014

The lad and I started a new geography course this morning.

It's called Mapping the World with Art. Once we got past the angst of "do your best" (which in my boys' mind means I'm ordering him to do things perfectly and that's just the worst thing in the world).. so we needed to talk our way through that. But anyways, once we got over that, this went over really really well! WOOT WOOT! Good choice mom! (sorry, but sometimes I DO have to give myself a pat on the back).

The course is organized like so.
Lesson.
Map to draw.
Activity to do.

Our lesson today was on early maps. The lad was fascinated by the ocean currents (reeds) and island (shells) maps of the polynesians. If I could figure how to make one of those I would indeed! :) Below is my lad's map of Mesopotamia. It's hard to draw a map accurately and the lad was all stressed out about it until I started showing him that even the map we were given as an example doesn't have the river exactly like real life, it just shows the major bends and the bigger towns and of course the mountain range. Drawing the mountains was just plain fun. :) I did some of the labeling, the lad did the rest... and he wants you to notice how he is making Iran.. I >>> RAN. :) He just thought it was funny. :)

I gave myself a go at it as well .... oops.. I took my picture before I added the mountains, rest secure.. I DID add them. :)

Our activity today had us making "clay" tablets with mesopotamian drawings on them. In fact it was edible art which we thoroughly enjoyed putting together and working with. :) We did this right before lunch.

My lunch was egg salad sandwich with some unfortunate help from a nine year old... Needless to say my lunch talked to me until I finally ate it's brain... :)

The lad's lunch was: edible map. Mom.. is it okay if I have another lunch later? I might be hungry again, cause I can't eat all the art Mom. (I said sure, as long as it's before 330).