The boys and I did very little “formal” homeschooling today, for reasons involving a HS drama class smack in the middle of the day, unusually warm weather, a Halloween candy hangover, and all of us with the sniffles and fighting off colds. But we did do some reading this morning, including a book about camouflage [...]
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 [...]
One of the changes I’ve made in our math lessons is to incorporate more math readers—books and stories are always a big hit with my kids, and a reminder to me that doing math does not have to mean doing worksheets. (Though we do those too). I wrote about Sir Cumference and the First Round [...]
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 [...]
Another of my homeschool goals for the year is to incorporate more games. I loved playing games as a kid, and am convinced that my strong skills in math, logic and reasoning come in large part from the countless hours of cribbage, canasta, Yahtzee and other games I played with friends and family. We want [...]
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 [...]