Jim and Daegan earned their first karate belts tonight: yellow-stripe. To say the younger was pleased and proud of himself would be quite the understatement. Here they are in a pic with their instructor.
This morning Jim and the boys headed to their weekly Wildwood Running Club, for kids ages 6-12 and their parents. Daegan did this program a couple years ago as well—and the boys are having such fun with it. When I returned from a quick grocery shop, the club was heading back from an activity where [...]
Over the past few days the boys have been playing with the free Mad Libs app we found and downloaded on their iPad. I’m assuming most of you know how Mad Libs work—basically, they are a series of stories with blanks you fill in, often with riotous results. You begin by typing in answers to [...]
I recently read one of my favourite books from my own childhood, E. L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, with Daegan. It’s the story of Claudia Kincaid, 12-year-old suburban girl with three younger brothers, who hatches an ingenious plan to run away from her dull life to the Metropolitan Museum [...]
Over the weekend we took a short family break and headed to Brooks, Alberta, about 2 hours SE of Calgary—this was in lieu of a birthday party for Daegan (each year we give the boys a choice between a short family trip or a party). We visited a few nearby sites (more tomorrow), including Dinosaur [...]
Yesterday our eldest turned 9! Yes, halfway to adulthood; last of the single-digits. Where does the time go? We did several things to make the day special for him. First, we headed off to buy some Pokemon cards, which Gareth decided would be his gift to Daegan. Gareth got a pack for himself too—paying for [...]
I’ve been spending a lot of time on the Well-Trained-Mind (WTM) curriculum board lately, getting tons of ideas for homeschool next year. I have to say that’s a place I never thought I’d find myself, as several aspects of the WTM philosophy of education don’t fit with my own beliefs. But a friend of mine [...]
Last month, over several days and with me administering, Daegan took the CAT-3 standardized exam (level 13, which is the one for end of grade 3). You can find details about the exam here. It’s a Canadian exam with 7 parts: Reading/Language, Math Concepts, Word Analysis, Vocabulary, Writing Conventions, Computation and Numerical Estimation, and Dictation [...]
Last week we went to another of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra’s Education Series concerts, this one called Music in Motion, which highlighted different musical and dance styles: waltz, tango, polka, samba, cancan, ragtime, etc. You may recall that last month we went to a concert about the sounds of nature, which I wrote about here. [...]
Just a quick post tonight about something Daegan did over the weekend, using the same 3 pieces of Duplo. Jim chimed in that he used to build similar things out of Lego-type toys as a kid. Here’s the sea serpent: The snake: And the inchworm: