Coming up with Pithy titles isn't something that I excell at.  :)   This is what we did today:

Today we worked on painting our paper mache moon and earth.  last week I asked the lad to think on what colour he wanted to start with when painting the earth.   He went back and forth between blue and green.  he had thought for a while of doing a light brown but quickly decided NOT to do that since it would be too hard.  Today he said "I'm going to start with blue since MOST of the world is water right mom?"   Yup, that's right.  :)  

So he did blue on his earth...two different shades since that's more realistic.  I worked on the moon...I mixed red, white and brown together.   So it is currently looking more like Mars, but we have a plan to put some grey over top of it to add depth.

It was interesting doing this as it gave us opportunity to practice brush strokes, to talk about how blue is not just blue but can be different shades, and how it's harder to paint over top of certain colours because of how it can bleed through.  

Today we learned about the Atlantic Salmon - dad likes to catch those fish right mom?   and the Spiny softshell Turtle.   "Have I seen one of those mom?   It looks familiar".   I think so buddy...at the zoo a couple years ago.

The deliverers of their country.  This was a very short story concerning dragons and a couple children wanting to rid their country of them.  It had a somewhat dissatisfactory ending...which of course led to a discussion on what do you think should happen next.  :)

Tiger!  Tiger!  This chapter from the Jungle book of course was interesting for a seven year old boy. 

Today's explorer is Ibn Battuta.  I didn't have a unit study on this explorer so we watched a youtube video.

and a quick websearch led me to this page via Pinterest.   and here we learned more about the dream that started this journey at this website.
`That night, while I was sleeping on the roof of the cell, I dreamt that I was on the wing of a great bird which was flying with me towards Mecca, then to Yemen, then eastwards, and thereafter going towards the south, then flying far eastwards, and finally landing in a dark and green country, where it left me. I was astonished at this dream and said to myself "If the Shaykh can interpret my dream for me, he is all that they say he is". The next morning, after all the other visitors had gone, he called me and when I had related [to him] my dream, he interpreted it to me saying: "You will make the pilgrimage [to Mecca] and visit [the tomb of] the Prophet, and you will travel through Yemen, Iraq, the country of the Turks, and India. You will stay there for a long time and meet there my brother Dilshád the Indian, who will rescue you from a danger into which you will fall". Then he gave me travelling provisions of small cakes and money, and I bade him farewell and departed. Never since parting from him have I met on my journeys aught but good fortune, and his blessings have stood me in good stead.

Got a bit of a late start on homeschooling this morning due to the windstorm reeking a bit of havoc in my rabbitry this morning.  Took some time to put the rack back upright and to clean up spills and what not.   Life happens sometimes.....

the big brown bat and the common merganser.   The lad's short term recall test: the big brown bat often nests in barn, and the common merganser: it's a duck!   That's all he could recall (goes for par with most birds we read about).

Shipwreck on Lilliput. The lad really enjoyed this story about Gulliver.  He found it very funny and immediately incorporated parts of it into his on-going spider/star gate stories.     Since he enjoyed it so much I had him read two paragraphs with me.     I find it fascinating how the lad sometimes knows big words when helping me read, and yet often times won't be able to read the small ones.  Wish I knew why this was. 

The Calf's Childhood.  The lad was quite interested in this story though I found it to be quite long.   He asked good questions and learned abit about how animals are able to avoid each other when being hunted.

We worked through the study from School express. 

one of the things (beyond that they are free) that I like about the Schoolexpress units is they have LOTS of information in them.  Information that it's easy to use as is, or to supplement if necessary.  They are parts were the lad can dictate answers, and parts where he has to use his brain and his own fingers to do the answers.  

Pages to colour (not that the lad likes to colour), pages to draw (LOVES drawing), fill in the blanks and what not.   Good smaller unit studies.

Swimming Lessons at the YMCA with the HOPE group.   The lad really enjoys these swimming lessons.   We just finished our lessons that the Aquatic Centre in London, he passed Red Cross Level Three.

I'll be submitting this post to the Carnival of Homeschooling.    The theme for this week is "check in".

Anyways, I am the editor of the newsletter for my Homeschool group.  As such I see everything that comes through and one thing I am aware of is how few field trips we do, and how often folks assume that everyone knows something because "we've been doing it for years".    That attitude of course does little for the new members of the group.  So I find myself emailing and asking for additional information.  I can get away with this since I'm the editor and therefore just NEED that information.  :)      Communication is vital.

As I find the job of being an editor a fine tuning type of job, I find that homeschooling requires that same level of commitment.  I need to fine tune as we go along in our days.   I need to check in with myself about how we are doing and what I might be able to do better.  I need to ask myself the questions of: Am I covering what needs to be covered?   What do I want to do with this subject?   How can I teach this is more than one format?   How can I.... and so forth.   I need to check myself sometimes to.. I can get so caught up in the subject that I forget the long term view.   Do I want to teach about pioneers all year OR is my focus on the broader scope of what it means to be Canadian?    So I have to do my checks and reining in of myself.  So much I could cover, but I need to keep my focus on where it needs to be.  :)

One of my intentional check ins, is that I need to make a point providing my singleton son with friends and opportunities to play and learn together.

To that end, I am trying to pull together events that the children of my homeschool group can do together.

We had our very first event last week.  We had a pumpkin day.  The children had a hoot.

While we waited for everyone to arrive and settle, the children played on the Wii for a while.   Trying to beat some level on a game.

Everyone brought their own pumpkins and carving instruments.   Since this one the first event we had three families involved, and we met at one of the homes.   Some pics below.

I took lots of other photos, but I make a point of not putting up pictures that clearly show children that aren't mine.  :)

Our hostess made us a lovely snack of macaroons and then this apple dip that was just yummy.  :)

after carving the children went out and play outside, they had a hoot running around, catching frogs, and just being children.   It was good.

Sheppard Software. At our site, we have hundreds of free, online, educational games for kids. But anyone interested in online learning can use our site - we have so many subjects - (geography, math, animals, science) and  many levels, games and activities for learners of any age.

XtraMath.org.  Our goal is to develop effective, efficient, adaptive and intrinsically rewarding supplemental math activities and make them available for free.

IXL.  Junior Kindergarten to Grade 10.  Learn your math.  Practice makes perfect, and IXL makes math practice fun! IXL allows teachers and parents to monitor the progress of their students and motivate them through interactive games and practice questions. Widely recognized as the Web's most comprehensive math site, IXL offers a dynamic and enjoyable environment for children to practice math. Students who use IXL are succeeding like never before.

TimesTales.  Learn your times tables quickly.
NOTE: don't know if this site is free or paid.

Arcademic Skill Builders.  Featuring free multiplayer learning games, math games, language arts games, and much more for kids in K-8.

FunBrain.  Funbrain, created for kids ages preschool through grade 8, offers more than 100 fun, interactive games that develop skills in math, reading, and literacy. Plus, kids can read a variety of popular books and comics on the site.

Multiplication.com.   Our Goal...to provide a fun system to help students of all ages learn the multiplication facts quickly and easily.

Adapted Mind.  30 day free  trial, otherwise a membership site.   math and reading site.

Rocket Math.  Rocket Math is a ten-minutes-a-day, paper and pencil, worksheet-based, supplemental, math facts practice curriculum. It is a uniquely structured curriculum for the sequential practice and mastery of math facts.   From what I can tell this is predominately a pay site.

Khan Academy. The Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.     All of the site's resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.   Our library of videos covers K-12 math, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and even reaches into the humanities with playlists on finance and history. Each video is a digestible chunk, approximately 10 minutes long, and especially purposed for viewing on the computer.

Head of the Class.    Materials for K-5.  Math, Languar and more. 

A couple of Posts from the Homeschool Den.    Part 1 and part 2.  Focus on on K-2 Math.

There are more site on my math pages, go check them out if you so desire. :)   Khan Academy and head of the class tend to be my go to places.   :)

We started off our day with two things... reading the paper and talking about changes in the Federal Act over waterways and what that meant.   And then talking about the rare spotted Zebra.   I thought it interesting that this zebra might not actually be a full zebra, and yet they act as thought it's a really neat zebra (which it may not really be).

Today in our world history book we learned about Marco Polo.   In my ebooks I have a couple studies on Marco Polo so I pulled them out.  One is from School Express and the other from fortunately for you books.    Both were freebies which is always a good thing. :)   We will use them to make a lapbook. :)

Cotton Rock.  Have you ever heard of such a thing?  It's a rock that makes a cotton like substance that makes a fabric that cannot burn.  Fascinating!  Ah... okay.. cotton rock can also be known as asbestos.  see...that I know what it is. :)   But it comes from rock?  that I didn't know.

All freebies today: We did a consonant digraphs thing that we found off Pinterest (I think) and a page of verbs that I made from another thing off pinterest.  This was a page of actions and reading.   And a fun page call "spider sort" which came from Fluttering through First Grade - this activity had the lad thinking about how vowel sounds change in words.  He Also was given a page to look at to help him learn the "ell" family words.

it is interesting watching the lad's confidence grow and his interest in reading as well.  Just rather fun.

Swimming lessons at the "Y" in Stratford with the HOPE group.

We did our regular reading.  :)

Two methods for doing this located.

One uses waxed paper, the other uses beeswax.
Today doing waxed paper won out.

Problem I had.. how to figure out which side was waxed. Never really did figure this out.

Step one.  Get your leaves

Then you get your paper towel, waxed paper and make a leaf sandwich. 

Once you've done that, then you want to take your iron (which you've set to warm) and place it over the leaves.  Unless you have pre-flattened your fresh (not brittle leaves) you will want to pick it up and move over the individual leaves and not just slide across.  I learned this the hard way.  :)      I tried to pick a variety of fall colours, trying to get different shapes and reaching across the colour lines...yellow, light brown, pink, red, orangish, burnt red, and some green tinged.

I had one surprise.  This leaf started out yellow, but once I flattened/waxed it, it turned this rather ugly brown.  not sure why that happened.

What will I or the lad do with them now?  I dunno...we'll figure something.  But in the meantime it was rather fun to do on  a Sunday afternoon.

This video gave me oodles of art ideas to use with the lad.  I really really liked the file folder idea and will most likely use that with the lad when studying the various provinces.  All our information will be able to be kept in those folders.   :)

Just search of art attack on you tube and it will bring up various videos for you to look at.

A site called "More Words"

This site is meant to: Find dictionary words for crossword puzzles, code words and word games like Scrabble®, Upwords® and Words With Friends.

But I can see that it might have a practical application for homeschoolers.   Can you find and write words that have the CH at the beginning of it, or whatever other sound you are teaching a child.

Or if writing a poem, to find words that rhyme and such like.

the potential intrigues.

Since Jim is on holidays this week we planned a day where we could get out of the house as a family.

We decided to go the Ontario Science Centre, partially because some supplies were needed from IKEA.  (besides the fact that browsing there inspires ideas).

Anyways, we got there somewhat later than we anticipated due to having to help out a sick friend with groceries, but we got there and we had a good time.  But it matters not since we have a free pass to get into the Science Centre. :)

First we browsed the "beyond earth" exhibit.

We weren't allowed to take flash photography or movies inside this exhibit.  The lad had fun trying different ways to stop a meteorite from hitting earth and once we were home he's been adding that idea to his games.  :)   It was an interesting exhibit, it was good to see what people are hoping to do.  I found the idea of a space elevator quite fascinating and it makes me wonder just how they will manage to do it.   Certainly caused the lad to ask lots of questions.

We took a brief walk through the rainforest section.   Not too long since we didn't have a lot of time and the lad REALLY wanted to go to the KIDSPARK area and just play.  Needless though, I enjoyed seeing some of the animals they have on display, answering the lad's queries, and walking through the simulated rainforest.  The poison dart frogs are always interesting to see.  It amazes me sometimes how God has designed things in this world of ours.

BUT...on to the play area. :)

Overall it was a very good day.   Hubby got overtired with his back so was a basket case on Friday.   I am hopeful that today (Saturday) he will be in better shape.

This week is a bit odd for us.

Jim is on holidays which means some schedule changes.

Yesterday his back was still bad so he stayed home while the lad and I went to Stratford.   He has started swimming with the HOPE group at the local YMCA, so we went up early to some work in the library.

Parking at the library is NOT easy to find/get to.  Rather annoying that.  BUT we worked with it. 

The lad read a book that he'd never read before and tried another one but it was just a tad bit too hard for him yet.  Made him smile though which is why I chose it. 

We read our regular four books while sitting in the car at a park.  We had hoped to do a nature walk and some drawing but it was just TOO chill for fingers to work properly.   We did have our lunch by the water while watching some ducks be silly.

Then off to the Y for swimming.  We got there a bit early so we played in the gym for a while.   Then swimming.   he did well.  he's in the middle group this year and you can really see how he's improved in his abilities over last year.

Today he's been building some weapons.   We stop and talk as he's doing them - about weapons used in the past, how people often design weapons that do the same thing but are different depending on where they live (like the people who built clubs with a pineapple top... they lived in an area where pineapples grew).  We plan to go to the museum in sarnia.  and then tonight he has kids club.

We ended up not going to the museum.

We did some map work.  one of the stories we were reading today and numerous directions in it, so I had the lad draw me a map with those directions on it.    Overall he did a good job.  I always have to be careful when doing stuff like this not to help him too much, but to give him the affirmation he needs when he does correctly.  The story was the Cow and the Python.