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Highlights of our week learning

12/3/2015

We've had a somewhat unusual week here so far.. For a variety of reasons, but learning happened, it really did. :) These are some of our highlights.

Today we did some learning abit about Russia. :)

My son's delight in learning that he can work ahead in his dailies. :) A decision made that I will be making a list of what needs to be done each week and if he works ahead in it, it means free time to do other stuff. He was so happy on Monday that he had to bring hardly anything with him to gramma's on Monday since on Wednesday he worked ahead. Just his reading and his math were all he needed.

My delight in knowing that he is delighted to work ahead on his materials if it means I can get work done out in the garden, or prepare a lesson without having to be right with him to keep him on track. :) This week I needed two hours to prepare a garden plot for doing an archaeological dig. My lad CHEERFULLY worked on his dailies and got ahead on his reading.

The wonder of learning that such interesting creatures live in our world such as the Sea Mouse. It's a type of annelid and doesn't it just look like an underwater mouse should look? My lad and I grinned. :) Learn more about the sea mouse HERE.

Ooh...ooh..ooh.. I must not forget. My son earned his advanced white belt in Karate this week. The picture below is him receiving his new belt from his Sensei. He told me the Sensei said he was doing a really good job learning. :) As we went out to the car "Mom, how long before I can get my yellow belt you think?" Looking forward is as good thing eh?

And the picture of the whole gang who moved up. I found it interesting watching what each of the next levels needed to do to earn their belts. Gives us something to look forward to in training.

Gym Time at the YMCA

10/29/2014

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My son is taking part in a weekly gym program run at the YMCA for homeschooled children. $50 for 10 weeks of activity.

On Monday he did high ropes, low ropes and rock climbing. Forgive the less than stellar quality camera pictures please.

High ropes below.

The wall was a horizontal one rather than vertical. the children needed to go across rather than up.

Someone explained to me that the low ropes helped you balance on the beams but they seemed rather pointless to me and my son son "they made it hard mom". They also did the beams using a partner.

It took the organizer three years to get this program together and she made it very affordable. It is a popular program. Do you take part in a phys ed program with your children and other homeschoolers?

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Archery Lessons

10/1/2014

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The day was a tad rainy and a touch cold but that didn't dampen the spirits of 11girls and boys and assorted parents as we headed out the Circle R Ranch to do some archery. The littles went to learn about sheep, and the olders off to harken back to the days of old. :)

Below is our intrepid instructor. She was a soft-spoken lady who needed to polish her teaching skills a bit (but don't we all?)... and the children learned. We soon discovered she excelled at one to one teaching... as the slower quieter children blossomed under her watchful hands-on approach.

Four people could shoot at a time, so we had two groups of four children, and one group of three children, giving us adults a chance to try our hands at it. It was so fun watching the children improve each time they shot.

The children learned the different parts of the arrow. They learned why one feather is a different colour. It shows which way the arrow should face. The odd coloured one should be facing away from the bow (out to the side my son says). By doing so you keep your fletching from robbing off on the bow.

click on image to go to source, today's bowhunter

The children learned to hold the bow on a bit of a angle to help hold the shaft of the arrow onto the grip of the bow. The proper direction to hold a bow and arrow (at target or at the ground). The children all listened well and followed through on instruction received...though hunting for arrows shot was frequently a task many tried to avoid. :)

We learned to pull the bow back until your thumb hit your cheek and to keep your elbow level and up. To stand sideways to the target with your feet shoulder width apart. Put your fingers in the shape of a "v" and then to place the tips on either side of the nock on the bow string. Bow arm out straight and pull back to a consistent depth to your cheek.

If all goes well, then success is to be had!
By son

And by Dad!

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#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

Mom? Can We Please? Do you think they are out yet?

5/7/2014

I don't know Lad, shall we go see?

So with anticipation and rubber boots on foot we headed out to McNaughton Park.

We saw the newest members of the park

We assume members in waiting are guarded here....

We saw various flowers....

But Look

And look....

and look as we might...

No frog or toad eggs were there in sight... NOT A ONE!

The only thing the lad managed to catch were two big water striders who got the fright of their life.

We did release them later upstream when feet too cold were found...
Disappointment reigned, but with hope for another day....

For according to google... mid to end May is when they should be out... and that's just days away! :) (I foresee many more walks in our future).

It was a lovely day outside, a great 30 minute time of discovery.

Moms and Olympics

1/16/2014

Heart touching video from P&G. If you want to find a bunch of resources on the Olympics, check out what the folks at TOS Crew have put together. :) I missed getting on this one for a whole bunch of reasons, but there's no reason I can't share with you what they've done.

GO HERE.

Swimming Lessons

6/20/2013

This year I inadvertently made things a bit tougher for myself.

I scheduled soccer (which is supposed to run til 430) and then I scheduled swimming. NOW swimming I had tried to book for a Monday but that didn't work, so the only available days were Thursday or Saturday. And I had forgotten about soccer at the time and was feeling pressured... so I went with Thursday ONLY to realize that I had slightly double booked myself.

So what ended up happening was that the lad left soccer 10 minutes early so we could get to swimming.

The red headband is the lad. :) I know, not the best of pictures but it will have to do for now. :)

It ended up working out really well.

My mom-in-law, who is a marvellous lady by the way, would have taken the lad swimming if she needed to, but she didn't really want to. She was delighted that she didn't have to break up her play day to take the lad swimming. And it worked out for us as missing 10 minutes of soccer didn't really impact on the lad over much and meant we only had to drive to London twice in one week.

Homeschool Soccer

6/20/2013

Once I read a post from a homeschool blogger who mentioned that homeschool parents shouldn't segregate their children for playing sports.

I thought her opinion was quite valid as sometimes as homeschoolers we stick to ourselves too much. We try too hard to just make a community for ourselves and shut off the "schooled" world. Not particularly useful that approach I think in the long run as our children need to be able to cope with the world as well.

BUT all that said... I do put my son into homeschool soccer. Why?
1. it's six weeks
2. it involves no weekends
3. there are no self-important groups
4. it's very manageable.
5. it's highly affordable

Is it the best soccer out there? No.
But when you have a child who isn't particularly sports minded, it gives him a safe place to do soccer and to have some fun.

It's very much a parent run enterprise, with people of various levels of coaching experience involved. Sometimes older teens help with the coaching, sometimes parents.   People bring different things to the field and the children need to cope with that.

Last week a dad coached and made the girls quite angry.   He had all the boys play forward positions and stuck the girls playing defense and then made the decision to tell them that they weren't switch positions with the boys at all.    I wasn't particularly impressed either but decided to let it be (and couldn't discuss due to commitments elsewhere) and after thinking about it, decided it was a learning experience for the children and nothing to worry on. Also it was interesting to me seeing how the girls figured out how to deal with it, some of them played hard and watched the ball, others rebelled and decided to ignore the game.

Other weeks we've had coaches let the children pick their team-mates so some children needed to deal with being picked last. Other weeks the coach has needed to help out a weaker team.    It all works out The children have different life experiences and figure out a way to make it work for them.

Edited in to add: Despite different learning/coaching styles and different life experiences I am delighted to be part of this homeschool soccer group. The coaches surprise me sometimes with how they coach and more often than not, encourage me in my coaching/teaching endeavors. It's interesting to observe what people do and how they do it. Do somethings bother me? Yeah, but then I do some things that also bother people, and I figure roll with it as much as you can. That's the way it all works right? Do the best you can, roll with the experiences you are offered, and learn from it.

A lad worked hard and learned while doing so

5/4/2013

Do you see this mostly empty area?
It was filled with all sorts of metal recycling items.
Parts of cars, old metal easy up parts, metal from old cages, and pop cans.
Today the lad learned about taking metal out to the recyclers.   We talked about how metal can be reused, what sorts of metal, what kinds of things can be made from old pop cans, and why they like to take old metal back.

We found our way to the recyclers. it was a new place to us and took a bit of figuring to get to, but we made it okay. On the way we talked about a dream to make an outdoor cattery... or what the lad calls a cat coop. :)   We got on that discussion when I mentioned where we got his cat Milo from.

The lad helped us unload the pop cans and then helped me safely back up after we went on the ramp to be weighed.   He was a good spotter, I am NOT a good backer upper. :)

How is this homeschooling?
1. teamwork
2. practical learning: hands on seeing what metal is, sorting it, crushing it to conserve space,
3. the answering and asking of questions
4. conservation of the earth
5. saving money, earning money
6. starting and finishing a project (saving pop cans and then selling them)
7. attention to detail

Before we left the lad also had this brilliant idea about making money at the yard sale next month. He dug up some of the maple trees in the yard and has temporarily planted them in one of the raised beds. His goal: sell them for $1 each. He'll need to keep them watered, but dad and I will help him remember. And he'll need to look for pots to put them in (gardening centres we hope will help with this aspect of things).

After the recyclers we stopped at a friends house to pick up my old doe Slip. She was staying at their house for the winter since she didn't like the cold. we took their younger doe here for the winter. It worked out well.

The lad played while I helped her pack for a weekend away. Being 8.5 weeks pregnant makes for some exhausting days and she needed a bit of a push to get some things done. I helped her brain work and her body to pack. :) Even loaded the car for her. The lad did an excellent job of entertaining her children during the whole process.

All in all an excellent homeschooling day, which rounded out an excellent homeschooling week. If all weeks went like this one life would be very grand indeed. :)

The Lord's Prayer and More

4/23/2013

Today we started a new review from Christianity Cove. It's a lesson the Lord's Prayer. To that end we listened to this rendition of the Lord's Prayer.

We also talked about how a balloon can show how our prayers go up to God and attempted to make a scroll. We obviously fail at following directions as this didn't go over too well. But the whole prayer is a balloon and incense is like a sweet smell to God that the lad could understand. :)

The lad worked on his Adventus Music program this morning. He's getting to harder lessons now so needs to practice more and is fighting that. It's a change in routine and such things are often difficult to master. :)

I got him out on his bike because I want him biking decently well before we go on vacation this year as he's outgrown the trail-along bike.

Then we worked on Joyce Herzog Scaredy Cat reading system. He worked on mirror words, finding commonality in words and then figuring out how to say them and then to come up with new words with the same sounds in them. Then he took a speed drill. he completed all the words in 3.20.1. We'll do it again in a couple of days and see how he does with pronunciation of that list of words. He's starting to get it though he's easily "ACK!!! I can't do this mom". And I just need to continue to remind him that he can do it, he just needs to slow down and think.

He managed to complete a whole sheet of math facts this morning in 2 minutes. All correct and complete. earned one free dig in his treasure box for doing so. "Mom.. I worked HARD at that today". :) WOOT WOOT! We have improvement. Really like being able to use the sheets from Softschools.com.