Daegan and I have been enjoying James Burke’s original Connections (US) series, which was made in 1978 for the BBC. In it, Burke delivers a fascinating mix of history and science, tracing how one invention, technology, or scientific finding led to others, often in most unusual and entertaining ways; the full title of the series [...]
Another slow day for homeschooling, with much of my afternoon spent like this: Gareth (age 5) took this pic of me in pjs and robe, zoning on the couch. I even got a bit of a nap. Such a disappointment too, as we had planned a playdate with friends after their school on Friday, with [...]
I’ve been trying to figure out how to incorporate more history and geography into our homeschooling, and have decided to try borrowing various DVDs from the library and see if anything catches the boys’ interest. We watched two DVDs today, including one called Families of Australia (US), part of the Families of the World series. Both [...]
Shortly after returning from our roughly 1400km (900 miles) dinosaur tour of SE Alberta and SW Saskatchewan—a tour I am glad we made when we did, as the region has received torrential rains and has flooded badly, washing out sections of the Trans-Canada highway: The town of Maple Creek, SK, which we went through, had [...]
After picking Jim up at the Greyhound bus station and sleeping in Swift Current Thursday night, we headed to the T Rex Discovery Centre in Eastend, SK first thing Friday morning. The boys were uber-excited! I am including lots of pics from the Centre (at the end of this post) as I am sure at [...]
Last Thursday the boys and I headed to Swift Current, SK to meet Jim, who was taking the bus from Regina (about 3 hours E of Swift Current) there after his Prairie Developer conference. We then headed out on a mini-vacation of sorts, heavy on dinos and wildlife and landscapes. Despite all of us catching [...]
Yesterday the boys and I left the workbooks, and did some activities around negative numbers as Daegan has been asking to learn about them. I adapted ideas I found on two very helpful blogs, here and here. I began by writing a problem of the day on our board, leaving Daegan to mull it over: [...]
For a couple weeks now the boys have been expressing an interest in Ancient Egypt, our first foray into people history, rather than that of dinosaurs and animals. Yay! Admittedly, it was Daegan who first brought up the topic, after Jim mentioned a show about dinosaur finds in Egypt, and got the companion book for [...]
Daegan and I headed out for a short morning nature walk before his drama class last Saturday. We saw more signs of spring, including magpies building a nest: Daegan found a patch of ice that reminded him of a map of Europe (France and Spain, UK up above across the ‘channel’): He learned a bit [...]
After we completed the dancing craisins experiment, Daegan had an idea for an additional activity: “Let’s put the dancing craisins in the freezer!” When I asked him why he wanted to do this—as I must admit I thought little of the idea—he said, “I’m curious what happens to bubbly [carbonated] water when it’s frozen.” So [...]