Both boys had their final ice skating lessons this past weekend. It may seem hard to believe when you look at the pics of ice and snow, but in just 2 short months soccer begins—and it is played on the same field area when this skating ice is! (We registered the boys for soccer today.) [...]
In addition to Fact Flowers, which are quite simple and self-evident, we also made Difference Diamonds, a more complex idea and one that creates geometric art. Begin with a reasonably large, square piece of paper. Choose four numbers between 10 and 20 and write them in the corners. (You’ll want to do this on regular [...]
We did a couple of ‘math art’ projects this morning. I got the ideas from the book Adding and Subtracting (Math Magic series), by Wendy and David Clemson. More here (Canada) or here (US). I started by making a fact flower for the number 4: Well, actually, I only made the petals and flower [...]
Gareth also created a story using Alicia’s pictoral story starters for February; I shared Daegan’s story, The Man with the Giant Purple Ear, here. Here’s Gareth’s story, which he dictated to me. It was based on this story starter picture: The Hippo Runs Wild by Gareth Once upon a time there was a hippo [...]
We had a gorgeous, warm (8C / 46F) sunny day here today, so the boys and I headed out for a walk around the neighbourhood. I started the walk by taking a pic of the boys under the crab-apple tree in our backyard. I am going to try to take a pic from the same [...]
I found out about a writing contest for kids from Alicia’s homeschooling column, a contest that is right up our dinosaur-loving alley. To enter, kids need to look at the cover art for Toni Buzzeo’s forthcoming book No T Rex in the Library, and write a 50-750 word story explaining how Tess got on the [...]
After playing the popsicle stick creativity game, I recalled a game I had seen on Alicia’s amazing blog about using coloured-on-one-side beans to practice math facts. I used a marker to colour one side of some popsicle sticks—5 sticks (red) for Gareth, and 10 sticks (blue) for Daegan. I then demonstrated dropping the sticks and [...]
Here’s a simple, 5-minute lesson about cell scale and size from a site about genetics from the University of Utah. It allows the viewer to zoom in using a simple slider, seeing smaller and smaller objects. It starts with a coffee bean, a grain of rice and a sesame seed, and works through a variety [...]
I saw the kernel of this idea here, and thought this would be a fun activity for us with a few adaptations. This morning we set up the table with watercolour paint, brushes, index cards, a white crayon and a pen. For Daegan, I wrote the answer to a math fact on one side of [...]
Full Disclosure: The book links below are through the Amazon Affiliates Program. The first link (Canada) is to amazon.ca, the second (US) to amazon.com. If you buy a book through a link, I get more books from Amazon to sate our bibliophilic tendencies. For more book recommendations, see the “Books We Love” tab at the [...]