My friend Alicia writes an online column about homeschooling for the Examiner in Minnesota, and a few weeks ago she published some wonderful pictoral story starters. Gareth was amused by the photo of a polar bear lying down beside a Christmas present, and wrote a story about it, which Alicia published here. (You can see [...]
Just a quickie post tonight as its been a very busy past two weeks for us; I’ll get to this week’s Reading Round-up sometime over the weekend. Last week the boys started the remainder of their classes, which means right now skating and drama classes on weekends, Sportball and art classes during the week. Last [...]
Daegan has been working from the Draw Write Now series of books, to learn both his lower case letters (one of his goals for the year—that HE picked) and to further improve his drawing skills, which, truth be told, already surpass my own. Draw Write Now is a series of drawings on different themes (barnyard [...]
I just saw this on this blog, and it is simply too fun not to share. Enjoy!
We started off our homeschooling day with a game, inspired by this blogpost: Race for a Loonie! In Canada, our 1 dollar coin has a loon on the front, and is commonly referred to as a loonie. (Our 2 dollar coin is called a toonie). I figured this game would be perfect for Daegan right [...]
Daegan started his homeschool art class last week, and this week they completed their first project: a penguin. The kids drew the penguin themselves, coloured it in using charcoal and chalk, and cut it out. Here is Daegan’s completed project; he chose to do an Emperor Penguin: It’s difficult to get a sense of how [...]
I recently discovered Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project blog, and in addition to all kinds of fascinating material and inspirational quotes, she has oodles and oodles of book suggestions—enough to keep even a bibliophile like myself happy for months! One of the most provocative and insightful books I read off her list is Barry Schwartz’s The [...]
We finished Stuart Little this week, and have started on what was my favourite E.B. White book when I was a child: The Trumpet of the Swan. It’s an interesting process to go back through your childhood favourites as an adult and have a better sense why they resonated with you as a child. Sam, [...]
Monday January 18th was A.A. Milne’s birthday, so I did a few Winnie the Pooh activities with the boys. We watched the classic The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, read bits from various books, and learned a bit about Winnie’s history. Did you know that Winnie is named after the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, [...]
The boys and I headed over first thing this morning to watch a segment of the Olympic Torch relay. How can you not go when they are coming a matter of blocks from your home!?! We walked up the street about 8:15am, getting there in plenty of time for the expected runner at 8:44. There [...]