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

introducing “the shards”

October 3, 2011 by Stephen

Well, here we are finally, our family journal is up and running.

The original plan was to have everything set up before for the beginning of the school year so we could take you all through our latest adventures in homeschooling and/or general shenanigans. Unfortunately, technical hiccups with domain name transfers and whatnot, delayed things a few weeks.

But fear not! Now that the shards are finally online, we’re ready to rock the interwebs.

So, since we completely missed the start of the school year, we’ve decided that the first few updates will chronicle the long-overdue dismantling and reconstruction of our front deck, set to start first thing in the morning. 🙂

[stephen]