This morning I gave the boys the same reading assessment I gave them last year around this time. Gareth’s results of last year are here, and Daegan’s here. You can find the reading assessment here, if you want to try it with your own kids. I am very pleased to see that both my boys [...]
Gareth is growing more confident in his literacy skills. He wanted to try the Spelldown (US) game, which up until now has languished in the cupboard. In the game, each player has 10 letters that need to be used to spell words—at which point you flip up any letters used—and two dice (one vowels, one [...]
I tried a couple activities with Gareth this morning from Peggy Kaye’s classic Games for Reading (Canada) (US). I love her books, as they are full of simple learning games and activities for the pre-K to grade 3 crowd, though I have successfully adapted many of her games for older kids when I tutored junior [...]
This fall, the boys took a new homeschool offering: drama class at Evergreen Theatre. Evergreen does educational productions for schools on themes of science, nature and the environment; you can read about when we went to see their production Flushed, all about the wastewater treatment process, here. The theme of the boys’ drama class was [...]
This fall the boys took gymnastics classes at Southland Leisure Centre, through the City of Calgary Parks and Recreation. Their final class was yesterday. Daegan’s class was called “Tumble, Twist and Turn”, and Gareth’s “Jumping Jacks and Jills”, but as the classes were in the same space at the same time, there was lots of [...]
This fall the boys and I joined CHSA for the first time, taking advantage of the weekly get-together of homeschoolers for classes, socializing and just plain fun. We signed up for a science class built around exploring the activities in 4 crates from the Science Alberta Foundation. We began with F.A.R.M.S. (Animal Needs and Lifecycles), [...]
Gareth and I have been reading several titles in the Step-Into-Reading series lately. We’re working our way through level 1, one book a day, with me reading him the book first and them him reading it back to me (with help). In the process, we came across a book Gareth absolutely LOVED, as it combined [...]
Here’s some of Gareth’s recent self-created (no adults involved) art. Amazing what a 5-year-old can produce when given free reign, eh? The same evening Daegan worked on his Baby Blues Darryl, Gareth produced this from his Monkey Magnets (US) collections. He told me it’s Nigel Marvin (star of Prehistoric Park (Canada)(US), one of Gareth’s favourite [...]
The other day as I was tidying up, I found this at Daegan’s spot at the kitchen table, a diagram of the area of the laptop at (8.5×11.5) 97.75 square lego blocks: I recognized it as being inspired by a recent MathMatters title we read, Sam’s Sneaker Squares (Canada)(US). In it, young Sam has a [...]
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 [...]