On Saturday after the theatre presentation, the boys and I headed to the local school yard to play. They have such a neat set-up there, with a full-size Stonehenge replica: A fabulous play structure, with swings and slides, climbers and merry-go-rounds, and a bajillion other ways for kids to expend some energy: And huge open [...]
I’m trying out something new with the boys for getting household chores done: simple, 5-minute alliterative jobs, like “Mirror Monday” and “Toilet Tuesday”. Yesterday the boys cleaned bathroom mirrors, today they scrubbed toilets. So far, so good—they are looking forward to “Wipe the sink” Wednesday tomorrow. Gareth, age 5, was particularly enthused with this idea. [...]
Today the boys pulled out the Mighty Mind (US) visual puzzles, similar to tangrams and getting progressively harder as you move through the numbered cards. The cards start out ridiculously easy (i.e., can you make two semi-circles form a circle?), but get moderately challenging fairly quickly. The first 18 (of 30) cards give you a [...]
This afternoon we attended a Halloween-themed nature class led by Judy, the nature-and-outdoor educator that led us on a nature walk a few weeks ago. This class focussed on spiders and bats. She began by pulling various critter replicas out of a bag and asking the kids if it was a spider or not, and [...]
I recently purchased the first in a new series of math workbooks from The Critical Thinking Company, whose products are a very well-received by my boys. Daegan is now working on multiplication in his math (Math U See Gamma), but does not yet have a completely solid grasp on his addition and subtraction facts. I [...]
On Saturday we headed to one of the branches of the Calgary Public Library to check out a free rock and fossil show. There were several types of fossils on display, neat maps showing the underlying rock formations (age and type) for different areas of Canada, scientists to talk to, microscopes for getting a closer [...]
Today we had a few friends over for a playdate and made the most of our unseasonably warm, sunny weather by playing in the yard and at the local park / playground. Last Thursday we headed to the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary with these same friends. As it turns out, some of these friends are distant [...]
Last night I finished one of the chapter books I’d been reading to the boys before bed: Oliver Butterworth’s 1956 classic The Enormous Egg (Canada) (US). Twelve-year-old Nate Twitchell, a farm boy from New Hampshire, tells the story of ‘Uncle Beazley’, a triceratops that hatched from an enormous egg laid by one of the family’s hens. [...]
The whole family went for an after-dinner nature walk in our local neighbourhood ravines. The ravines are not that wide and are fully surrounded by houses, roads, schools, shops, etc. so I wasn’t sure how much wildlife—if any—we’d see. Am I ever glad I took my camera just in case! Here’s the entry to the [...]
This afternoon Daegan and I joined several other homeschoolers for a guided nature walk, led by a woman who teaches nature classes to youngsters. (We’ll be taking more of her classes in the coming weeks). Gareth was supposed to come too, but unfortunately he has a cold, and his accompanying asthma has him feeling quite [...]