Category:

Hey... Today Happened

9/12/2013

Ah.... today happened.   That's what I can say, it happened.

Our household has been somewhat lacking in the sleep department lately what with the humidity and heat... we needed a thunderstorm to cool things off and FINALLY we got that early in the morning. :) WOOT WOOT!

So my tired boy wasn't quite as tired today, but was still highly distractable... much like his momma.. so we did well to get things done.

FIRST OFF we did Target the question.   I did a review on this program oh.. back in March. You can find it here.    The lad needed to think abit and wasn't happy that I made him read the questions for himself today. BUT MOM.. why? you ALWAYS read it for me.   But son of mine, if you read it, we don't need to read from the yellow book. Oh.. okay. but if I read now I won't have to read later right?   Yup. :)   So he read, he though and he figured out his math word problems.   It was good. :)

Oh.. almost forgot. One of the lad's friend caught a garter snake today and asked if I could sell him mice for it as he wants to keep it over the winter. This lead to the lad (who was quite excited by this news) and I learning a bit more about garter snakes.    This site was VERY useful.

Then we went and did some art. Last week we worked on a fresco and today we decided to take a good look at the frescos that we did and turn them over and see what it was like to paint on the opposite side.    The lad was MUCH happier with his efforts today.

mine is the one with the tree and the birds and cold snow falling... and the lads is the one with the monster pig and the regular angry bird pig. :) I think the lad did a better job....

We had some paint leftover so I submitted to the lad a challenge... draw/paint ANY sort of picture, but add some fall colours to it. This proved to be a challenge, but this is what he came up with.

it's actually NOT black, it's a dark greenish brown that he worked hard on to develop with a whole whack of colours... but he added in some orange (Cause that's a fall colour right mom?)

this is what I came up with.. I'm not terribly unhappy with it but I wish I knew more about art and how to make transitions better from one thought to the next. The lad really liked how I did the clouds and made the day look like it was going to rain. :) And the birds totally impressed him.

I had hoped to portray a windy autumn day.... not sure if I succeeded.. what do you think?

While the lad was finishing up this picture we did another chapter from "a child's geography". The lad scoffed at the Greek myths and wondered why people would make up such stories. He doesn't quite understand that people always have a need to connect with God and when they don't know him, they make up their own gods. If you want to know my thoughts on "A child's geography" I did up a review on it last week. You can find that here.

We made some zucchini bread (recipe to follow) today for HOPE days tomorrow, and I had the lad do four lessons from Time4Learning. That review is here. He did well on today's lesson. He's a picture of him working away.

and yes, my desk always looks like a cyclone has recently come by.

We got in some phys ed later by going for a bike ride, the lad continues to gain confidence in this skill. We also cut the lawn, cared for bunnies, and kept ourselves occupied. Overall the day went much better than I had anticipated. God held us up nicely today. :)

Inspiration from a Homeschooling Conference

4/9/2013

This past Saturday I went to the homeschooling conference put on by KWCHEA. it's the biggest quite local homeschool conference and reasonable in price so attending is something I do once a year.

While there I attend seminars. Went to two, plus attempted a third. One of the ones I went to was called math and art. It was fascinating. I really enjoyed it came away with good ideas about how to do art with my seven year old and math at the same time.

As I was browsing the books (as that's a big part of the day) I came away with two thoughts.

1. Some companies seem determined to nickel and dime you for everything. They charge you the teachers text, the student text, the additional worksheet text, then the exams text, and then separately from that... the answer code.   Makes me NOT want to do business with those companies. I'm sure there are good reasons for it, but I find it incredibly irritating....as you need to figure out exactly what you need with the hold over your head of "just what if you need it" or ACK...what if I forget something important.

2. some books are VERY good for inspiration.

I saw a book called speed math or some such. It was for drilling math facts. The book well, cost more than what I'm willing to pay but it gave me the idea for helping the lad learn his math facts. he doesn't want to do flashcards, so I'll get him to practice his math by doing a worksheet everyday.     I went to Softschools.com for some help in printing off sheets. I was able to put an upper and lower limit on the numbers I want used and then I printed off the sheet.   Gave the lad two minutes to get the sheet done. Once he's getting a whole sheet done in two minutes then I'll give him 1 minutes 45 seconds to get it done. And eventually get it down to 1.5 minutes which would be 3 seconds per question which is what every program I've seen uses as a goal.

Other work done today

We did some reading - George Brown class clown, a bird book and our devotional time. We didn't have time to read the paper together today.

We did adventus - he continues to improve in his musical understanding, today he learned more about how notes are different lengths and they are introducing what those notes are called, target the question - today's challenge really made him have to play attention and think his way through the problems. and Tutorsoft math -. The lad was working on learning shortcuts in multiplication today. He found it a bit of a challenge but we'll continue to work on it.

Today was better...learning, exercise and fun

4/4/2013

we have graduated from CMJ1 and have moved onto CMJ2. (this in adventus)

Today was a MUCH easier day than yesterday.

We did our adventus, looked through an offer from Educents ....regarding Samson's Classroom (we did the demo and that worked well for our reading, phonics, and sight words). Looks like it will be a good fit for the lad and progressive so that will help I think. With my coupon turns it into a $20 purchase for the year.   So that makes it worthwhile to me.

Did a little bit of review of what we learned yesterday with Great Empires.   Did our Target the Question....good practice today for rounding up to 10 and figuring out how

I wanted to do some math with the lad but he was VERY much not interested in doing A+Tutorsoft today so I said okay... we can do math from our upstairs book.... We worked on Area and Perimeter today. That lead to fun ...oh my.. we had FUN with this.   Doing the work was boring (said the lad) but learning what it actually met... My son is into angry birds so putting into angry bird speak.....The bad piggies set up their area that they want to hide in. The birds are wanting to breach their perimeter in order to get into the area that the pigs are hiding in.

using geometric shapes to build bad piggies.

the helmeted pigs have chosen an area to defend and have marked off their perimeter...can headband pig outsmart them???

Later on we went for a walk, on our walk we looked for places that it would be easy to set up a defense area. One of our balloon pigs came along for the walk as well and she kept on pointing out....see...I could hide there and see where I could form a perimeter?? SEE??? (she was VERY talkative). :) It's just very nice to have fun and learn at the same time. Sometime I'll have to set up a capture the flag game with the lad. :) It will be just another way to help reinforce how math concepts work in real life situations. :)

Magnets are Fun (and other things)

4/2/2013

Before I get to our magnets are fun aspect of learning today, let me talk about some of the other things we did today first.

1. read the paper. No...didn't read the whole paper with a seven year lad but I read headlines and the comics and then we talked about them.   Whatever grabbed his interest or mine.   This leads to some interesting discussions at times.

Garfield's comic this morning had Jon reading from the paper
"If space aliens were to invade earth, they could take the form of animals"
Jon stares at Garfield
"do you come in peace"
Garfield
"take me to your refrigerator".

I asked the lad....(after he finished laughing)... why was that funny?
BECAUSE mom... Garfield didn't say Take me to your leader...He likes food too much!

Then I asked....do you see what Jon did with the paper?
(that drew a blank)
...he read it!
yes, he read it...but what else did he do?
He believed it mom.

Ah...he believed it.   Do you think he should have?
No...he's being silly mom.

Exactly. :)

It's good to read the paper, but one always needs to be aware that it's not always telling the truth.

We read a bit from his current breakfast book "Ghosts don't eat potato Chips".
Then did Adventus (at lesson 12 now I think?), A-Tutorsoft Math (continuing our work on multiplication), and Target the Question.

We took a side trail to do some air pressure experiments with balloons.

The lad's been making balloon pigs and said MOM....do you think we can make a pig inside another balloon. I told him TRY. He tried, he failed and so he asked his mom to help. I blew and blew and about gave myself a heartattack (not really)....but that was tough going. BUT finally we got the balloon to expand...and it popped out of the other balloon mostly...can you see how we have a covered expansion? Fascinated the lad but we couldn't get it to duplicate with another balloon (and I ran out of breath).

Magnets

We decided to take a break from learning about motion to learn about magnets this morning. We are doing this for our review for SuperCharged Science.

To that end we made magnet dance, we made a snake that could wag it's tail, learned we have some super strong magnets that will pinch your skin if you aren't careful, had fun with iron filings - scaring them and calming them down, and just generally were well amused by how magnets work. We are hoping to see how to do electomagnets works as well...but not today. :)

Do forgive the blurriness that lad tried mightily.

magnets work even through a seven year olds hand

This was an unexpected result. The lad wanted to see if he could make the paperclips move the iron filings when the magnets literally jumped out of his hands and grabbed the iron filings through the paper.

Lone Star Learning - a Review

3/3/2013

As a member of the TOS review crew I've had the privilege of reviewing one of the products produced by Lone Star Learning.

The product I used was Target the Question.

How the program works

I used Target the Question for second grade with my son.
This product is aimed at grades 1-7. They also have a Spanish version for grades 1-5. The Target the Question digital product is as a purchase from one to five year programs starting at $59.99 up to $199.99. If you purchase a multi-year license, you are allowed to change the grade level once annually. There are free samples of each grade level available here.

It's all computer based with nothing really to download. A nice digital product.

The goal is to use the program about 10 to 15 minutes a day. The skills meant to be learned are as follows:

choosing and applying problem-solving strategies
techniques to find needed information
identifying extraneous information
focusing on the question

I needed to log the lad on and off.   Which was easy enough to do, older students should be able to do this easily enough and I expect by the end of the year that lad will be able to do so as well.

The set up is a situation is given that lasts for one five day period.   They are conveniently listed as Monday-Friday.   Then a word problem based on that situation is given. A different question each of the five days. It does not take long to do. The 10-15 minute period called for generally lasted about 5 minutes for us.

There is an on-line area for problem solving that we didn't use. The lad preferred to either work it out in his head or to use a piece of scrap paper.   I did print out the pictorial picture for him on some weeks as it involved actual counting of items which was easier to do on paper than on a computer screen sitting 30 inches away. :)   I could see the note pad option being more helpful for older grades when children are better able to manipulate a mouse to draw numbers/pictures.

Once you have figured out the solution you can click on "view the answer" and see if you are right. The lad really liked that he was always right. :)

My thoughts

I overall liked the program.I thought it was a great interactive idea for helping children learn to think critically and to help them look past information they really didn't need.   We like computer based programs in this household. :)

We did weeks 1-4, 7 and 9.   I skipped a couple of weeks because I wanted to see if the problems got exponentially harder but they didn't with the weeks that we used.

They were quite easy to solve thought the lad and I.   So in that aspect I didn't really find it helpful with critical thinking/problem solving.

I liked that I could get him to read the question himself. I helped with words he didn't know, but by the end of the week, with repetition he needed no help in reading.   (it's always good to kill two birds with one stone). So the language used is quite age/grade appropriate. :)

I will continue to use it the product.   I think it has merit. I am hopeful by the end of the year my son's learning will continue to grow and that this program will grow with his abilities.   Time will tell. :)

The lad's thoughts

Mom.. do we HAVE to do this again?
Mom.... this is different than I thought it would be. It doesn't talk to me or have fun things to do. It's just answering questions.
Mom... I don't care how many more elephants there were....
Why can't they have angry birds in here Mom?
I GOT IT RIGHT MOM! :)

If you want to see our progress with this program follow here.

For other reviews

Lone Star Learning has a number of other products available for use. Not all are digital, some are quite hands on. I invite you to go check them out by going here OR clicking on the image below. :)

Disclaimer

I received a free copy of this product to use in my own household in exchange for my review of it for the Schoolhouse review crew. I was not required to give a positive review of it. I was not compensated in any other way. All opinions expressed are my own or my families. I am revealing this information according to FTC regulations.

Very tired household today

2/27/2013

We started off our actual homsechooling day doing language arts. The lad had already spent a good portion of the morning learning about making his own film. He's seven and is just starting to learn about not showing EVERYTHING, that you can stop, set up the shot and then go on from there.   He's learning to be aware of back ground noise.   To zoom and out and such like. It's a work in progress.

Language arts: We read a story from our reader and then I asked the lad a variety of questions.   What would you do in that situation?   What do you think of what the boys did?   Are you glad they figured out how to get help?   Do you think what they did could really have worked?

Then we went to Adventus.   The lad LOVED this lesson (did it three times) and wanted to go on to another lesson but I said let's do our question from Target the Question first as well as our Essentials in Writing lesson.    That of course led to our doing our first DO IT multiplication question through A+Tutorsoft interactive math.   He did well with this once he figured out exactly what they were asking from him. It's hard to focus on things today.

So once we were done all that I said... GO PLAY for while. We both need to let our brains chill out. :)

We're going to make some indian bread this afternoon and do some more picture making for our First Nations work. Also we plan to build a paper castle. We're using these plans from My Little House.

Today's Efforts In Learning

2/26/2013

We started off our day with Adventus. Today's lesson was a bit of a challenge for him to figure it out. We needed to work together to bring understanding. We did our question from Target the Question. We did another lesson from A+Tutorsoft math, we did the starter lesson for multiplication. I told him all he needed to do today was listen to it.

We plan to do the Essentials in Writing lesson when we return from the library.

At the library we drew some more First Nation Lodges, find more First Nations recipes we can make at home, and work through immigration - when people came to Canada. Ended up working on the timeline for immigration to Canada. It needs some fine tuning yet.

Had gym time with the Homeschool group.

Then home to make supper.

This is what we are having

Easy Crockpot Pulled Pork

Yield: 6-8 servings

INGREDIENTS:1 large Vidalia onion, sliced thin
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon paprika
2 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 (4-6 lb) boneless pork butt or shoulder
¾ cup cider vinegar
4 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 ½ teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes
1 ½ teaspoons sugar
½ teaspoons dry mustard
½ teaspoon garlic salt
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

DIRECTIONS:1. Rinse pork roast under cold water and pat dry with paper towels.

2. Place onions in crock-pot. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar, paprika, kosher salt and pepper; mix thoroughly. Rub mixture all over roast and place the roast on top of the onions.

3. In a medium bowl, combine vinegar, Worcestershire, red pepper flakes, sugar, mustard, garlic salt and cayenne pepper; whisk to combine. Drizzle about 1/3 of vinegar mixture over roast. Cover and refrigerate remaining vinegar mixture.

4. Cover crockpot; cook on low for 10-12 hours. Drizzle about 1/3 of reserved vinegar mixture over roast during last ½ hour of cooking.

5. Remove meat and onions; drain. Chop or shred meat and onions. Serve with remaining vinegar mixture or your favorite barbeque sauce.

Busy Day

2/19/2013

If you haven't see the Complete Canadian Curriculum books yet, you aught to check them out. They are fairly handy for teaching youngsters a variety of subjects. We were working in this book today because the lad has been struggling to understand a math concept taught by A+Tutorsoft Math so I thought I'd give him a gander at a simpler version of it and give him a boost in confidence that he too can do this (and he can he just needs to KNOW he can).

if you want a chance to win your own copy of it as well.. head on over to The Canadian Homeschooler and check out her give away.

Anyways, working in that book we came across a flowers poem that taught about how flowers have meanings attached to them. So the lad asked. MOM, what flower says I'm sorry? I did a quick google search and found EasyFlowers which told me that the Purple Hyacinth is the "I'm sorry" flower. isn't that interesting to learn? You can make whole bouquets up to express your thoughts to someone else (as long as they are also conversant in the meaning of flowers).

Yesterday we started our work with Adventus, and this morning continued it. I thought it was interesting this morning how the lad came and asked.. Mom, why do they call it bird notes and whale notes? Why couldn't they call the bottom one pig notes? Then the angry birds and the pigs could have fun playing with each other.

So far the lad is enjoying the music program. It's starting very slow and easy and is a bit "below him" mentally, but since he doesn't really know music terminology at all, I figured it was okay to start him lower and he can get up to speed fairly quickly.   Should be good.   Can't quite figure out why the high notes aren't picking up at times...so I've sent off an email asking about that.

What else did we do today?   um.. We did Target the question.   This weeks questions are significantly too easy for him, so I think we'll be skipping ahead a bit.   See if they are harder down the road..but I'll do that this week. Once started a week we need to finish it or the lad gets annoyed. :)

He read a BOB book fairly independently.   I think soon I'll have to start challenging his reading a bit more as he's really coming along here. We also worked on some CVC words.   He got these fairly easily, though I did confuse him with A.C.T.
m -Can you make a word?
TL - yes.. CAT.
m - can you make another word?
TL - NO.. CAT is all you can make from those.
m - So I said what about TAC?
TL - TAC???
m - Yes, TAC, as in I will TAC that to your head.
TL - What does that mean momma?
m- well... it means I'll take something sticky and TAC it to your forehead.
TL - Oh... Not like a TACK for the bulletin board?
m - NO.. that would just hurt you I laughed...wouldn't it? I wouldn't do that to you. :) You are a silly lad.
TL - Giggles and then tacs something to MY head. :)

Oh....I annoyed him to no end today.   He's been struggling with his math facts so I made flash cards for him and had him go through the whole works today.   That's alot of cards to go through and he was not impressed with the amount of time it took. BUT he knows about half of them which means tomorrow it's less work.   That didn't make his efforts any more satisfactory to him though, just resented it he did.   The biggest thing is he doesn't get the point of it. Why memorize when I can just add it up in my head. He doesn't quite get the speed factor aspect and how much easier it makes it to have your facts memorized. The two pictured he knows full well, harder higher ones (such as 8 + 7 he struggles with).

OH! I almost forgot.
We wasted some fun time today looking over the Quirkology videos. Boy.. are they FUN to watch. Some we had to watch a couple of times before the lad figured them out. The lad was most intrigued by: 10 more amazing bets you will always win.

So that overall was our homeschooling day. I did some clean up/tidy up in the book room today, not as much as I wanted to, but some anyways.

But if you have any ideas on how I can encourage sheer memorization that would be lovely. Thanks! :)

Skating, The Basics and First Nations

2/14/2013

We started the day by going Skating. My goal is to skate for 1/2 an hour, more if I can do it. Today we got to 1/2 hr and the lad was done. I skated a bit longer as he learned how to remove his own skates. :) This I've learned works much better if he does it without anyone around.

Did the Regular Basics

I needed to run an errand so we did that first then home to do our regular work. Two questions from Target the Question..which he did a good job at , we did two since tomorrow we are going out for the day. We listened again to regrouping for Subtraction with A+Tutorsoft math he's almost got the gist of it. I"m going to send him to gramma's this weekend with some very basic math subtraction just to give him a bit of confidence that he can do this. Doing the 100's is just messing with his mind. We easily did The Essentials in Writing lesson. Two pages to do today which he was surprised by, but he did the job well and had a basically good understanding as well.

Math - an Issue

Despite me doing a few different things to help my lad learn his basic math facts nothing has really worked so I"m going to the straight rote memorization. To that end today we made some flash cards. i wrote the facts on the front and the answers on the back so they will be self-correcting. He knows the facts up to about the 3+'s, but sometimes he still counts in his fingers (mentally). Though today he told me he figured out how to do the 8 and 9"s.

Mom.. I know they are close to 10 and adding 10's is EASY so I just pretend it's 10 and then I just take away 1 or 2.

I told him Good Job figuring that out. :)

First Nations

We didn't build the sleeping racks in our longhouse yesterday, we're going to build them today but without building the actual longhouse. We're hoping to make it a "see into" type of structure so we can show how it was used. The goal is to put this into our homeschool groups project fair at the end of the year.

And the lad got inspired to do some other building as well. He made some furniture for his angry bird/bad piggies toys. Made from a simple dollar store kit.

From AW I don't wanna to .... Mom, this was the best EVER!

2/13/2013

My goodness....talk about fighting homeschooling this morning. The lad was full of complaints and general disagreeableness this morning.

We struggled through Target the Question..which he did a good job at (sans the complaining). We listened to two math teachings and one Q & A with A+Tutorsoft math.   The one lesson is just listening to so he can let the concept ruminate in his head for a bit as he's struggling with understanding it.   He's better today than he was last Friday so ruminating is good.   We easily did The Essentials in Writing lesson.   Once again...filled with complaints and I don't want to.. I want to PLAY mom. I just want to PLAY.

That's all he's got on his brain this morning.
Tough luck he has to school eh?

Then we got onto our Canadian studies.   We've been learning about the First Nations people and today I had planned we'd work on a longhouse (building) and make some Indian bread.   I DON"T WANNA I wanna PLAY!!!!   Was the beseechme

Son, this will be fun. You go get some sticks and bark, I'll go get some branches.   This will be interesting come on... no playing without getting our schooling done.

Long house - -such as what the Huron's built

The Huron people lived right about where we live now. We've seen the one they have up in London. We thought it would be cool to build our own. In the spring we'd like to build a wigwam outside which will be a fun place for a boy child to play in out of the sun and he can put all his own "Stuff" into it. Please mom! :)

But it's winter, one toy sized long house to build.

We used these places as inspiration in our building design but ultimately did our own thing. The Lenage longhouse. F1W Longhouse.

Supplies: birch bark, Construction paper, Apple branches, hot glue and gun, something to use as a base, and a picture as inspiration.

We ended up rejecting the styrofoam as a base as it wasn't strong enough. We went with a cardboard box instead.

The apple branches were used as they are somewhat flexible. We curved them around and hot glued them in place.

We wanted to tie them together like the First Nation people would have done but couldn't for the life of us figure out how to do that so we decided to use construction paper over top. Is it accurate? NO. One can't soak construction paper to make it pliable to stitch it together with stitching to go around logs. Just won't happen. BUT this will do the trick.

Indian Bread

The recipe is found on page 13, it's called Blackfoot Fried Indian bread.Directions

1. Sprinkle one package of dry active yeast over 1 cup of lukewarm water. Let sit for five minutes.
2. then add 2 tbsp soft butter, 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tsp salt, and then 2.5-3 cups of flour.
3. Knead. you add just as much flour as you need to make a stiff dough. Our recipe used about 2 3/4 cup flour.
4. Let sit for one hour in a warmish place (we turned the oven on for a while then shut it off, letting the bread sit over the oven vent)
5. heat some oil in a saucepan til it's decently hot (about 175 celcius). We used canola oil as that's my preference in cooking.
6. Form the dough into cakes approximately 3 inches across by 2 inches wide and drop into the oil carefully. I DID THIS PART.
7. deep fry for about one minute per side or until golden brown.

As they cooked we discussed what the First Nations people might have eaten with these. Berries! Meat maybe mom?
Hmm.. what about honey? I asked.
The enthusiastic response was "OH YES MOM Honey! They could find honey from bees right"?
Indeed they can lad, was my smiled response. :)

So we enjoyed them with honey. They were DELICIOUS! :)

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Hey... Today Happened

Inspiration from a Homeschooling Conference

Other work done today

Today was better...learning, exercise and fun

Magnets are Fun (and other things)

Magnets

Lone Star Learning - a Review

How the program works

My thoughts

The lad's thoughts

For other reviews

Disclaimer

Very tired household today

Today's Efforts In Learning

This is what we are having

Busy Day

Skating, The Basics and First Nations

Did the Regular Basics

Math - an Issue

First Nations

From AW I don't wanna to .... Mom, this was the best EVER!

Long house - -such as what the Huron's built

Indian Bread

Who Am I?

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2013 TOS Reviews

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Other work done today

Magnets

How the program works

My thoughts

The lad's thoughts

For other reviews

Disclaimer

This is what we are having

Did the Regular Basics

Math - an Issue

First Nations

Long house - -such as what the Huron's built

Indian Bread

Who Am I?

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