A little science and some bowling

April 29, 2015 by tam

I love it when we can fit in a science experiment using everyday items. We do need to get to the hobby shop to buy some supplies but for now it’s nice to be able to make do with what we have. So yesterday we sliced ice. It was fun to watch the wire cut through the ice and then the ice patch itself back up once the wire had passed through. Love this stuff. I always wonder why I didn’t when I went to school, though…I get to relive it now!Just recently a Home school Tween group was started on FB and so every week or other week this is something planned like bowling or going to an indoor play place to meet and get some good fun physical activity going. Hopefully once the weather here is a bit friendlier we can start something outside too! There is also going to be a regular meet-up to play Magic: The Gathering!

Today we went bowling and the boys had a great time!Spare!These fast moving kids are no match for my phone in a dark bowling alley! Why are they so dark, anyway. I felt blinded when we went outside! Good times!!

A busy but good day

January 14, 2015 by tam

Yesterday was a darn cold day. We didn’t go out for the trail walk as planned due to the road conditions outside of the city. We did, however, go to Chapters so that the boys could use some of their holiday money to buy more Lego, Minecraft Lego. But, we had to finish our lessons first and I have to say, it was smooth going!

I happily wore the hat that I just finished knitting the night before. So warm. Love it!

Our lessons include handwork. X is knitting a scarf on needles and L is using one of the loom kits. He is so adept at it. If I can get him to do even 15 minutes a day he will have it finished in no time!

Xman and I did some time-telling practice with this fun little book I picked up a while ago. The pages are magnetic as are the little pieces so it’s quite fun! Xman is pretty good with telling time but when it comes to analog without the numbers it takes a bit of practice.

I took some time during their copy work to prepare some kale chips – so good!

And these cookies…oh my goodness you just have to try them – so many good things to be found.

Lessons done and off we go to get the Lego. I have to say, Minecraft and Lego really is the perfect combination…

While the boys Lego’d it up I took a bit of time to check out these new arrivals and put that Dreamscapes book to good use right away!

*if you do get the pattern for the hat here are a couple of corrections:

Row 17: *k5, p6, k5, p1* to end
Row 18: *k3, p10, k3, p1* to end

Make and Listen along

January 30, 2014 by tam

I am excited to be joining Dawn this week for Make and Listen!

Earlier this week…

I made almond milk, almond butter, chia banana muffins and lentil mushroom burgers from this amazing book by a local food artist…

Finally finished those Minecraft-inpired fingerless gloves for the boys (!)… they love them!

Yesterday morning…

I awoke before anyone, pracised yoga, made tea, and then worked on and posted my character study to my art blog for an online year-long art workshop…

Made some yummy paleo brownies using the almond meal left over from the almond milk (love that!)…

Xman came downstairs and immediately began weaving a blanket for him Pokémon Pidove, whose nest I felted last year with the same yarn. He did a great job and in no time!

L decided to draw out a plan for a constructed Mincraft Enderman and began painting the head. I love that he takes the time to plan out how the character will look and what supplies he will need. Even I am excited to see it when it is all finished! Those boys love Minecraft, especially now that they are playing the survival mode and not the creative mode. I listen in to their conversations and planning and am quite impressed. Can’t wait until they begin Minecraft Homeschool in a couple of weeks! (Did I just say that?)

Watching L so carefully trying to keep the pink paint inside the boxes he drew of the eyes made me grab the painters tape and show him how to tape around the eyes so that he didn’t have to worry so much about precision. They were both so excited when the tape was removed but I will show more at a later date as things progress.

The boys went outside to play during the snowfall/storm. Yay! I love it when they go out in the snow because I remember when I was little and snow stayed all winter long. These days if you don’t go out right away it will be washed away sometimes by the next day.

The snow was so, so beautiful and quiet. Just lovely watching the snow falling and hearing their happy voices. Speaking of snow, I added water to some muffin tins and put them in the freezer for a little experiment from the latest issue of Alphabet Glue!

I decided to use the time to sew (gasp, I know, it’s been soooo loooong!). I was going to read or knit but decided to try the zipper pouch pattern that Dawn had shared a while back. It was so super-easy! You have to try out this pattern! Seriously! I am addicted and now the boys each want one. I knew it! 😉

All this time we were weaving and painting and sewing, guess what was playing in the background?

No…not CBCR2! The Red Violin Soundtrack (love that movie) and Kidz Bop 21! The boys love Kidz Bop and L put another 6 of the CD’s on hold from the library. Some of the songs are rather addictive!

As for reading…

I just finished Wild and let me tell you, I wanted to quit what I was doing and go on a soul searching hike. My goodness, what a gut wrenching, painfully honest journey she shares. Amazing. Read it, I say!

The boys are devouring the How to Train Your Dragon Series which is pretty cool. As a group we are reading The Mysterious Benedict Society and truly enjoying it. The other Doodle Stitching book just arrived for me at the library so I know where I will be heading tomorrow on the way to the boys’ drama class…oh yeah!

Today, we go tobogganing after drama and then a nice Skype with a good friend. Happy days!

HOMESCHOOL ADVENTURE WEEK 10

November 18, 2013 by tam

This week was all about the number six.

We were talking about shapes that had to do with the number six, such as a cube (six sides), a tetrahedron (has six edges), and an octahedron (has six points). The boys made a cube, tetrahedron and octahedron out of their crazy fort pieces.

12Nov13_HAW10_01

I took this picture of the Octohedron to show the star shape on the inside and the hexagon (six sided) on the inside of that. From there we started talking a bit about mandalas but we will work on that this week.

We also made some six-sided stars. This is a great link for making your own stars. We then flattened the stars under a phone book and forgot about them. We will be hanging them soon!

L decided to take one of his stars and instead of making the final folds and cut made a dog instead!

From here the boys made their own 3d shapes. I found a site which gives the printouts making it easy for me (paper folding into 3d is not my forte!). The website is so wonderful for showing the shapes in a rotating video to fully understand them in 3d.

This site is great for getting to know a bunch of shapes – very cool! We will be making more!!!

Of course, one could not make these shapes without including this one…

Oh! How we are loving The Weather Watcher’s Handbook! It is taking us forever to get through because it is so interesting!

This time we read about longitude and latitude. We then went to our world map and I called out co-ordinates and the boys took turns finding the country which matched. It was great fun and really helped them to understand the use of these lines that they always see on globes and maps.

We went online and found this fun song on youtube for longitude and latitude:

We also watched some great videos on this youtube site which I have bookmarked for future viewing. These videos are great and so fun – I think they may have been made by students as part of their program…

We learned about the layers of the earth, longitude and latitude, why there are seasons (also in the handbook!) and more.

Then we somehow got onto fractals and the boys were amazed!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwWyTts06tU Fractals

Nature excursion and search

October 29, 2013 by tam

We have had a couple of fun weeks keeping our eyes peeled more than usual for fun and interesting bits of nature for our nature exchange. Two wonderful places we went were Lawrencetown Beach and Point Pleasant Park, and also a gravel road to find pyrite!

We had a great time and can’t wait to send our package off and see what we receive in return!

We went to the beach in search of fun things to exchange but spent most of the time enjoying the water – I planned well with the rain boots! What a glorious time we had and the boys can’t wait to do it again.

2013Oct22_Lawrencetown Beach_08 Waiting for the water to fill up their boots!

Out comes the water!Which makes for very wet socks!Spotted some wildlife on the way home.
Some fun flyers!Point Pleasant Park
Sumac tree berries?
Perhaps some of you remember the Asian Longhorn Beetle passing through the park and destroying many a tree after Hurrican Juan had already thinned out the forest. It is still a beautiful place to go walking but where you couldn’t see from one trail to the next, at times you now can as the forest is much less dense. (sad face)

A short visit to the Prince of Wales Tower to see the canons and the canon balls.
Permanent resident.Some of the left over stumps from trees that had to be cut down.
I could not go without finding at least one mushroom!This was the coolest trunk! Look at those amazing swirls!
Learning how to skip rocks.

I am a few weeks behind with our Homeschool Adventures posts – those will come next, pinky promise! 😉

Homeschool Adventure Week #5

October 14, 2013 by tam

X ended up catching a cold again this week so there was a lot of low energy going around. I brought L to sports class this week while X stayed home with Daddy and played Yahtzee. I really didn’t want him running around being all snot-filled and feeling like he just wanted to lay down and rest. That being said, L scored a goal during their soccer game!

This week was filled with little projects and board games, me second shooting a wedding on Thursday (weird I know!), reading and resting, and Xman really wanting to clean the floors!

X Washing floor

Floor washing attracts a curious Gypsy girl!

L got the Lego Play Book for his birthday and he has been building a miniature town complete with a museum, beach and hover trucks.

The days were beautiful so we took advantage by spending our time outside playing chess, strategizing, snacking and planning more creations.

X won chess pretty much fair and square I gotta say.

X-won-chess

…all while the house siding is being torn down around us to make way for new siding!

L and I played scrabble and I showed him how to incorporate one word into another while utilizing the ‘triple word score’ making him beat me by a long shot. See bottom left where he added ‘go’ to ‘car’ then next turn ‘soy’ to ‘cargo’. Great game!

We read a FABULOUS book by Neil Gaiman which had the boys and I roaring with laughter and enjoying the notion that time travel can make someone be in two places at one time, while flying in a Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier with a dinosaur. Dinosaurs aren’t really extinct, did you know that?

I just finished reading a wonderful book filled with myth and magic which has left images in my head and set my mind to wondering…and wandering…

We have a cousin arriving today for a week of visiting! I am glad and thankful that Xman was so keen to clean the floors!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend – we bought two Tofurkey’s this time around because last year we found they were so good that one just wasn’t enough! 😉

L discovers the cure for cancer of the lungs due to smoking

February 3, 2013 by tam

we were talking about the effect of smoking and L said, “If there was a pill like microphage and neutrophil white blood cells that eat bacteria, we could put the pill in water, wait until it evaporates, then drink it, then it eats up the smoky stuff in the lungs”.

I really didn’t know what to say. cute. then I had to look it up.

~smile~

the shards

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