Blog Archives

Conversation Jar

12/28/2012

These are our conversation jars. What is a conversation jar you might ask? We pull from one jar, and put the used ones in the other jar.

A conversation jar is a large jar that contains a variety of slips of paper that hold everything from interesting facts, to questions, to tongue twisters to simple conversation starters.

We do these at any one of meals during the day.

Today we a few of them simple because we wanted to. Normally we only do one a day.

Today we did a tongue Twister
Cheap Sheep Soup. This one made us laugh as it's actually quite difficult to do well quickly.
We answered a question of "have you even gotten bad lost? if so, tell us about it. How did it make you feel?"
We read the statement that Dragonflies only live for 24 hours. This statement made us query the accuracy of it. So we looked it up and found that it was inaccurate statement. This page helps explain it. Dragonfly site. It's good to question that things we read. :)

We also learned what Hink Pink poetry is. The lad struggled with this for a first while until I got him thinking instead of saying "I don't know". A hink pink poem is one that is a two word answer that rhymes. For instance: Fat cat. The clue would be "what is a large feline?"

Child-Led Learning - realism in play

12/28/2012

Stargate SG-1 is a favourite show of my lad.
He watches it, and makes weapons with it and often has to think hard about how to make the weapons and to make things as "real as possible".

Recently he took it upon himself to make "pretend blood". The red on his face is the pretend blood. He came up with a flour, food colouring and water mix and was quite proud of himself. I said "good thinking lad".

And this morning he came down with these cross symbols.
Look mom... Christian Jaffa!

This just made me smile.

My lad...who likes to make weapons, to defend and protect, but most everyone eventually learns to get along with each other and to be nice to each other. I often hear "they are friends now mom". BUT the very very bad guys ALWAYS get destroyed. (aka the replicators).

Experiment with Food Fridays

12/28/2012

My son can be a fussy eater - to the extent that if it looks or has an unusual ingredient he . To help combat that we've instituted Experiment with Food Fridays. I don't do anything completely crazy but I do change up foods that we eat to get him to expand his horizons. Pancakes are easy to change up as I can just print off a brand new recipe and see how it goes. These called for buttermilk which got me a unhappy look, but the end result was "these are good mom".

Banana Pancakes II

These are a bit darker than I usually make them, but I got distracted by a Jaffa attack. :)

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

2 tablespoons white sugar
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
2 small ripe bananas, finely chopped

How to's

In a large bowl, mix all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, salt, baking powder and sugar. Stir in buttermilk and bananas just until moistened.
Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium high heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the griddle, using approximately 1/4 cup for each pancake. Brown on both sides and serve hot.

The lad's contribution
He made the sour milk to replace the buttermilk as we had none. 1 tsp lemon juice in one cup of milk.
He mixed the dry ingredients together after I measured them out.

We added regular milk to the recipe as the batter was thicker than I was comfortable using.

We served ours with maple syrup, though I thought about doing strawberry jam instead.

Homeschooling and Flexibility

12/28/2012

I'm submitting this post to the Looking Back Blog Cruise of the Schoolhouse Review Crew. The Topic is looking back.

As I've considered what I would write over the past couple of days I got to thinking about why I homeschool, what I like about homeschooling and how life has changed in the past while.

paper airplanes: following directions, air pressure, wind resistance, child led learning

Why do we homeschool?

Well...there's a variety of reasons.
1. Both Hubby and I knew before we had children that homeschooling was very much an option for us. He knew people who homeschooled, me I was just intrigued by it.
2. I worked in town at a location that hired a lot of students. I was quite frankly appalled at the attitudes these children had (if it's okay for the person who did something it was okay even if they broke the law) and the lack of knowledge/ability to complete tasks well (no math skills, spelling skills was atrocious) so it was like WHY would I want any child of mine to go to the local schools?
3. God. I want my child to know about God and his importance in life and I didn't want to ship him off to a school 1/2 hour away in good weather.
4. I wanted the flexibility. To be able to sleep in if we needed to, to take off and go exploring if we wanted to, to learn all sorts of neat and interesting things JUST BECAUSE.

Studying Canada: learn about our own country, art techniques, geography, cleaning, and more. :)

What do I like about homeschooling?

1. my creative, intelligent lad who doesn't like to be forced to do things a certain way isn't being stymied by "do what everyone else is doing" type of thinking. He can be free to experiment, explore and educate.    I find it unnecessary to say "do it this way because that's what you have to do". Do I care if he colours, circles, crosses out, simply tells the answer? No. I just care that he knows the answers and knows WHY he knows the answer.
2. flexibility is GOLDEN. My how I have learned this.   We can be doing science at 7 a.m. in the morning, or doing a history lesson at 6 p.m.   We can go for walks, drives, the library or whatever. We can do library schooling, park schooling, car schooling, home learning and it all works. A change in venue can be a LOVELY thing to do.
3. FIELD trips. Need I really say more?
4. New people in my life.   I cannot say how much I enjoy the new people in my life that homeschooling has brought about.   It's lovely. :)
5. I'm venturing into new fields of creating my own work. Hoping to start selling it too. :)

Word Board: following a pointer, not getting distracted, learning to read, differentiating fonts,

How has life changed?

hmm... Over the past three months I've been struggling with some health stuff.
Homeschooling has allowed me the flexibility of sleeping in when I need to. Delaying the start to a day if I need to.

My health struggles have forced me to become a bit more organized in life. I used to have a basic plan about what I was doing and then put it together as the day went on, but now I plan the week out the Saturday or Sunday before. This way everything is together and right at our finger tips. I've learned that my son LIKES knowing what we are doing and when we are done. :) It's really easy to tell when we are done too. (all pages are turned over and all books are closed). It's given us more free time as well (which he loves.. more playing for him, a cleaner house for me).

Homeschool soccer days. Lots of fun. :)

Ben Franklin

12/27/2012

Got an email today from the Homeschool Library of Links.

They were talking about Ben Franklin, well, more specifically they were talking about Poor Richard's Almanack, which I just learned today was written by Benjamin Franklin.

They provided a variety of links, which I"m not reposting since you can just go to their page and find them. Just thought I'd share as I found it quite interesting. :)

ZooWhiz

12/25/2012

I haven't tried this site out. It is called ZooWhiz. It has both a free component and a paid component.

To use it, you need to create a free account.

Zoowhiz is a free online educational resource for school and home use and is designed for use with students ages 5-15. The curriculum based learning covers math, punctuation, grammar, phonics, reading, and other word skills. In order to use Zoowhiz, you will have to create a free account.

I put it under freebies, Free education sites.

Classical Composers Monthly

12/21/2012

Do you like to know more about the classical composers? Beethoven, Bach, and such like? If so, Erica Johns at Classical Composers Monthly is the site for you. Keep reading for a chance to win a collection of your own. :)

At Classical Composers Monthly you get to choose from a variety of collections. There are three to choose from.

I've sampled Collection One. In that collection the following composers can be found:

Franz Peter Schubert
Antonio Vivaldi
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Franz Joseph Haydn
Johann Sebastian Bach
Peter Tchaikovsky
Carl Maria von Weber
Felix Mendelssohn
Ludwig van Beethoven
Bela Bartok, plus Bonus resource: Paul Hindemith
Frederic Chopin
Johannes Brahms

Each composer page is a huge number of links to history, music, word searches and just so much. Basically what Erica has done is taken the work out of the study for you.

We took a look at Vivaldi and Beethoven these past two weeks, for no real reason to pick those two, just did. :) We'll be looking at more later. :)   With Vivaldi we got to learn the history of the violin, and play a game, learn who Vivaldi was and why he was important and we got to listen to music.   My lad was "oh.. it's okay mom".   But playing it in the background worked well for him. :)

With Beethoven it was much the same, but different types of links. With Vivaldi we had a word search, with Beethoven a dot to dot, a quiz and a game of baseball. :) I really like how the activities aren't the same for each composer. It helps keep the studies interesting. The lad's response to Beethoven was more positive, but he liked it playing in the background more than just sitting and listening to it. (he's much like his mom that way). :)

You can try it out for yourself if you'd like. If you go to the home page of Classical Composers Monthly you will find box that you can put your email address into to get a free lesson sent to you. :)

Right now they are having a sale.   Usually a lifetime membership will cost $14.95/collection.   Right now they are on sale for $9.95/collection.

I have collection one, I am considering adding collection 2 and 3.   Collection three intrigues me in that they have artist studies as well.

Classical Composers Collection 2--regular price $14.95 $9.95 Lifetime
Includes Stravinsky, Milhaud, Grieg, Liszt, Holst, Saint-Saens, Shostakovich, J. Strauss II, Satie, Debussy, Dvorak, Faure, and Prokofiev)

Collection 3: Composers and Artists--regular price $14.95 $9.95 Lifetime Perfect for those who are doing both composer and artist studies. This collection includes 5 composer resources and 4 artist resources: Debussy, Bach, Verdi, Rossini, Puccini, Renoir, Ruisdael, ed Hooch, and Seurat.

Check it out yourself

Right now the Christmas Classics is yours to enjoy. Go check it out. :)

A Chance to Win.

If you would like the opportunity to try this resource out yourself.. enter to win!
1. Mandatory: head on over to Classical Composers Monthly. See what the different collections are, come back here and tell me which collection you would like to try.
2. For an extra entry Go on over to their Facebook page, click like and them come back here to let me know. :)
3. If you join my linky... let me know and you'll get a third entry. :) Note: joining the linky does not bring you email, it's just an easy way to follow a blog.

My overall opinion

For the money paid, the work in studying composers is done for you. It's a one time payment for a lifetime of use. Can't really complain about that can you? :) Makes it nice and easy. There is variety. It is suitable for a variety of age ranges. And you get to listen to good music. :) If studying the classical composers and artists is important you, this on-line study will work well for you and is worth the dollars spent.

Disclaimer

I was given a copy of collection one so that I could offer a review of it. My opinions are completely my own and I wasn't required to give a positive review.

Weapons that work

12/17/2012

Please don't think I'm a horrid parent because I let my boy make weapons. It comes by him naturally. All we do is guide that natural expression into a manner more pleasing to God.

He likes to defend and protect.

His most recent weapon that actually works and is fairly accurate is this popsicle slingshot.

He worked on it in his room for quite some time before he was happy with it.
he has learned that shooting it toward me is a good way to garner a yelled: HEY! Watch it buddy! We don't shoot people remember??? Get the bad guys NOT mom!

He doesn't like the yells, so his aim is drastically improving.

It's made of popsicle sticks and lots of masking tape.

While I'm on the subject may I recommend UBER-stix. It's a very helpful device for the builders among us. You can use most anything you have to build with. The cutter works great and is safe for children to use.

Word Cookies

12/17/2012

We made some word cookies

Ingredients/Instructions

Make the dip

NOTE: my boy is NOT a dip person and this did not go over well with him at all.

1.5 cup milk
1/2 sour cream (we used greek yogurt)
1 8 oz pack of pudding. Recommendation is for vanilla, but use what you have at hand.

Mix together, put into fridge to chill and set while you do the rest.

On to the rest :)

You may need to add some water to make the dough more pliable. Dipping your finger tips in water is a good way to do this.

Preheat oven to 375.

Get out the milk and sprinkles you had set aside.

Form the dough into ropes and shape into letters. We chose to make our names, which makes it easy to decide who gets to eat what. :)

When each letter is formed, brush milk over each letter and then sprinkle the colour you want over them.

Place in oven for 10 minutes or until edges are golden brown.

Enjoy with dip if so desired. I liked the dip with them, but found it unnecessary. The lad was very much unimpressed with the dip but enjoyed the cookies very much.

Star Cookies

12/17/2012

Got this recipe out of an old Clubhouse Jr. magazine. It was supposed to be for Easter cookies with a cross, but well...it's Christmas so we did a star instead. :)

Ingredients/Instructions

Mix these together ingredients together. I used a fork.
1/2 cup softened butter
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla

add 1 egg (again used a fork)

Separate bowl, mix these together
2 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Then mix the dry into the butter mix.
It will be somewhat crumbly.

Divide in half.
Put half in the fridge in covered bowl.

To the remaining half, add in
3 tbsp unsweetened cocooa
2 tbsp miniature chocolate chips. We didn't have miniature ones so we put our regular sized ones into a chopper and diced them up tiny.
2 tbsp milk.
Mix well.
Put covered into the fridge for about 15 minutes.

Now the fun part

Take two cookie cutters. one larger, one smaller. We used a heart and a star.

Roll out whichever colour you like.   If you need to add some water to the mix to make it workable do that.   All I would do is dip my fingers in water, grab some dough and knead it in my hands. Doesn't take much to make it less crumbly.

Roll it to about 1/4 inch. use the large cookie cutter. Then use the smaller cutter inside.

Transfer to cookie sheet.   Do a bunch of them. Set the smaller pieces aside for now.

THEN take the other colour, do the same thing BUT take the smaller pieces and put them inside the previously cut big pieces.

Place on cookie sheet, cook for about 12 minutes in 375 oven.

The lad thought this part of was fun. :)

I think it'd be neat to do this as green and red cookies but I don't know how to do that so I didn't. :)

But even better was this part. :)

We decided to conduct an experiment on what happens if you mix the two colours together. We got a few blocks of colour and layers. :) We thought that was pretty neat, though we thought we'd get more blocks of colour.

<<Previous

Conversation Jar

Child-Led Learning - realism in play

Experiment with Food Fridays

Banana Pancakes II

Ingredients

How to's

Homeschooling and Flexibility

Why do we homeschool?

What do I like about homeschooling?

How has life changed?

Ben Franklin

ZooWhiz

Classical Composers Monthly

Check it out yourself

A Chance to Win.

My overall opinion

Disclaimer

Weapons that work

Word Cookies

Ingredients/Instructions

Make the dip

On to the rest :)

Star Cookies

Ingredients/Instructions

Now the fun part

Who Am I?

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2013 TOS Reviews

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Ingredients

How to's

Why do we homeschool?

What do I like about homeschooling?

How has life changed?

Check it out yourself

A Chance to Win.

My overall opinion

Disclaimer

Ingredients/Instructions

Make the dip

On to the rest :)

Ingredients/Instructions

Now the fun part

Who Am I?

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Archives

Categories

2013 TOS Reviews

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