of what we are doing when we educate our children.
animal school video. Video took a while to load for me.
animal school video. Video took a while to load for me.
part one Part Two The lad has been busy this week working at making slingshots. I went looking for what David's slingshot was and learned it was called a shepherd's sling. Found these two videos that teach how to make them.
Our reading The Spider and The Toad. This story started off well with the lad quite interested, but the ending was VERY disappointing with the spider being gobbled up. Why mom? Why did they have to make the spider get eaten up?? That's not nice. Arndt's Night Underground. This title gave the lad and I a chance to practice some phonics and to breakdown words into their smaller parts. But other than that, this story caused the question of "why would they steal the little girl mom? This is just pretend right?" We have finished off the battle section of our world history book. Today we read a brief section on Modern Warfare. Tomorrow we will start the section on Explorers.  Today we learned about the Mexican Free-tailed Bat and about the Mallard Duck. The bat has a high density nesting...250 of them can fit into one square foot. The lad thought that was quite fascinating. And when I said they only weighed 1/2 an ounce it gave us the opportunity to figure out what a 1/2 ounce looked like using different ingredients. Learning about the Mallard didn't really interest him a whole lot as they are very common around here. :) Though learning about the young intrigued him a bit as they mostly look like mom and they can fly when they are only 8 weeks old. math Learning what a 1/2 ounce looks like. History Showed me his ability to recall by working on building a weapon built from Shark Teeth, like what we read about a while back. He used popsicle sticks and toilet paper rolls. He worked on recreating something like this.  Phonics and Sight Words Underground. Under and Ground. Sounded them out. Found words that rhymed with ground. Looked at other words with the "ER" sound in them. Physical Education Swimming lessons at the Aquatic Centre in London. He does this with Gramma on Monday afternoons.
Off an a nature walk this afternoon. Boy did we have fun. We discovered a variety of items and took time to draw some pictures. The lad had hoped to get close enough to some Canada geese to try drawing them but we were unsuccessful in that endeavor but he did find TWO wooly bear caterpillars that came home with us. And he took a fair bit of time to get a small spider to hold still for five seconds so he could get a good start on drawing him. And he did up a leaf. It was good. I sat down and worked on drawing a log with the moss and fungus growing on it, and I showed the lad a trick to outlining a leaf if you couldn't quite hold steady enough to draw the leaf outline. He was quite the curious lad. But when we got home we looked up why one of the wooly bears was more orange than the other and learned that it's a sign of age. "Through the years, research has shown us that the Woolly Bear caterpillar’s coloring is actually based on how long the caterpillar has been feeding, its age and, of course, the species. " We also learned that there has been a fair bit of discussion on whether these caterpillars can be useful in predicting what type of winter we'll have. The jury is still out on that. :) we learned how to care for them over here. For the next four weeks I'll be at a bible study on Thursday mornings. Normally that would mean that Dad would be in charge of the lad's schooling (as in I would get it ready, dad would be there to help). BUT Dad has gone camping, therefore the lad will be coming with me, necessitating quiet work that he can do while we talk of God. As of Wednesday night I'm hoping to get the lad to do this copy work for our earth/Canada Study. He did this well. :) I made up a sheet as well with the compass rose so that he can label it. I also created a wordsearch for him using Armoured Penguin. He enjoyed this. I offered him a small challenge. Study the Compass Rose on one page. Memorize it. NOW....see if you can put the N.S.E.W. signs where they are supposed to. It was self corrective and he got quietly frustrated with himself and then self-corrected. I'll be pulling up some math sheets for him to do as well, and see what else I come up with. :) it's getting late and I need to get to bed. I also came up with some sentences with words that he knows. My goal was to get him to draw a picture (since he's this arty-drawy boy) to show he could read the pictures. Oh.. I also printed off a bunch of math sheets from head of the class... pages on fractions and one of addition (mostly two digit addition). The lad did these really well. :) That didn't go as planned I had printed up a math worksheet for the lad for him to practice his math family facts.
I envisioned 1+5, 5+1, 3+3, 2+4, 4+2, 6+0, 0+6. what I got was 1+5, 3+3, 2+4, 6+0, 1+1+2+2, 2+2+2, and 4+1+1. He did the job, just not quite how I anticipated. :) When I asked why he didn't reverse the numbers...but mom.. it's the same numbers so it's just the same and not different. And you know what... it's true. Just shows he's thinking. :) The draw the picture of the sentences totally BOMBED. The lad was VERY unhappy with the idea of doing this. And when it came down to it, refused. Though, in his free drawing time, he did look at the sentences and put parts of the sentences into the picture...so I guess it wasn't a total refusal. :) We started off at the Minneapolis Heart Institution Foundation. WOW.. that's all I can say about this very informative site. For your non-readers you will need to sit down with them and read the pages to them. We then stopped over at the Franklin Institute to learn about the general make-up of the heart. This is a more grown up, or maturer child site, so if you have young ones, preview it first. :) Do make sure you visit the enrichment pages. We did this one and This one. Then we stopped over here at e-learning for kids to learn more about the circulation system of the body. Again, if you are working with a non-reader, sit with your child to help him understand. The how the body works site was helpful in understanding the heart as well. :) We headed over here to download some human body lapbooks. We stopped by here as well. We stopped by Slimgoodbody where I picked up some resources. We built a jigsaw heart as well. After we did all this, we coloured our hearts. This took a bit of discussion since the lad learned that blood isn't actually blue, it's more like a really dark red so he was unwilling to colour his heart red and blue. We compromised with a reddish brown. I have to admit, I like how it turned out. AND he remembered what we talked about...how veins ooze and arteries spurt since he had a bit of a nick on his foot tonight and he commented... Mom, I cut my vein here, see how it oozes? :) Since it has been a month since we took measurements we did them today, the lad has grown a 1/4 inch, and my efforts to decrease in size have been somewhat fruitful.  Reading We did our normal reading again today. All four books. Can't remember exactly right now what all we did. :) But we did read them! :)
One could merely see this seven year old boy learning fighting, hitting, hurting skills... OR one could see this seven year old boy exercising his inborn creativity as he learns to protect and defend those dear to him.
His armour is built out of balloons, construction paper, cardboard and duct tape (copious amounts of it actually). He gathers weapons and defends the weak and attacks the bad guys who want to hurt and maim the good guys. He tries sweet talking the bad guys, but if they persist he will attack. :) He has fun. He doesn't hit to hurt, he hits to stop and scare them away. :) He's a good lad, growing up to be a man who will protect and defend his family in a variety of manners. And it is SO cool to watch him grow. :) Why did I call this post sustained effort? Simply because the lad tried hard today to do his work. He complained the odd time, but for the most part did all that he was asked cheerfully. :) Today we did a variety of things in school. We played a math fractions game. This necessitated us going over what fractions are, and then the goal was to take fractions and make them one. Once the lad figured it out he was a winner. :) He did a page in our Saxon math book. We parsed in our reading around the various activities that we did. We learned about the Canada Goose and the Common Snapping Turtle. We read a story called Rikki-tikki-tavi which made the boy laugh and listen closely. We learned about the samurai and a story about the moon in the marsh. He worked on measuring. It was rather cool.. I had found a bug measuring sheet through Print-palooza so it was a good fit for the lad. Gave us a chance to talk about the imperial and metric measuring systems, and today we did things "the American way". :) Then we learned four new words: Frog, dog, Bird, and fish. He practiced spelling them and filling in the blanks and then putting them into sentences (without seeing the word to copy it). Our last job of the day was to pull tomatoes out of the garden (giving us a chance to talk about how plants turn into compost which helps other plants to grow, and such like). Nature Walk Currently I am reading through a book called: Pocketful of Pinecones. it's a book about a lady (basically it's her journal) of her early days homeschooling with her children and learning to appreciate all that doing regular nature walks with her children taught them. It's inspired me to at least three times a week to start doing nature walks with the lad. Today we headed out to Morrison Dam. We didn't take a long walk, but we did take along our nature walk materials. A pencil, eraser, sketch pad and "take it home" bag. Today we took home a bunch of fall leaves, and we each drew a picture. Mine was of some Canada Geese standing on a log, the lad's was of a leaf. He had wanted to do the geese, but regardless of where he stood or sat he couldn't get a good look at them through the reeds. Rather than getting all vexed he hit upon the notion of drawing one of the leaves. I was fair impressed as he tried hard to capture some of the details of the leaf. :) I know the scan's didn't come out great, so I'll have to figure out a way to do them better. How does one scan in artwork well??? Anyways, we had a lovely walk. Hubby fished while we walked and talked. At supper I did my normal.. so what was good about today lad? and he thought for a while and then said "our nature walk". :) Makes me smile. :) I would have uploaded a video of some leaves twisting and twirling in the wind that captivated the lad for a spell, but that's for paying subscribers which I am not at this point. :) He asked...how would I draw that mom? How could I draw them moving? I replied I don't know, but I'll ask and see if anyone knows. :)
You can find the e-books free over here. It's getting late tonight so I hope to find the time tomorrow to download them.
Cheerio! :) |
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