A Net in Time

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Doing more with Transportation

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Car Spelling Song

On the road to Spelling

When teaching it is important to use as many senses as possible. Here is a way to use music to practice spelling words.

“Car, Bus, Van” song (Tune: Jingle Bells)

C-A-R, C-A-R that’s how you spell car

B-U-S, B-U-S that’s how you spell bus

V-A-N, V-A-N that’s how you spell van

Transportation helps us, I hope you understand!

Sing the song several times so they feel successful and can spell the words.

Car Play with Ramps
Help your child set up a ramp and watch the cars go.

1. Which cars go faster?
2. Which cars go further?
3. What happens when you change the angle of the ramp?
4. What happens when you change the surface of the ramp?

I asked questions such as.. if you were going to divide your cars into teams, what teams would they be on? Why? How many do you have that are cars? trucks? how many of blue or orange or ??? We weighed them to see if that would help determine who went the fastest. We guessed how would go the fastest. we experimented with ways to “protect” the boulders.

suggestion by the author: If you take digital pictures you can turn this experience into a book. Have your child help to label the pictures and soon he will be able to read his own book.

Forms of Transportation

we started to make a time line of transportation. I’ll use this link as a idea place. 🙂
We started with walking, and progressed to swimming. 🙂 (yes I know that’s not an official mode of transportation, but YOU try convincing a six year old that it’s not a valid form of getting around?). 🙂

We did a thing with links… figuring out solutions to problems using links and clues given. It was interesting how it all turned out.

others in this series
day one airplanes
planning to do airplanes

Monarchs and drawing

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We have a monarch actively hatching right now! It’s just TOO cool. 🙂 Both hatched and have since been released! 🙂 It was very exciting to watch. It’s amazing how quickly they go from wrinkled to full wings.


The chrysalis when first made.


they got dark..pretty cool eh?

the wrinkled just out stage


both Monarchs.
This was just fun.
We put them outside so when they were ready to leave they could.
The last one was gone by 6 p.m.

Worked on some work books.

we finished “Thinking Skills”

We did a few pages in Complete Canadian Curriculum 1

we practiced our alphabet again using blue clues flap cards

Read some poems and then got inspired to draw a picture of what one of the poems was about. It was rather fun to talk and draw and think.

Went for a walk. Brought a sock back to a friend, and then stayed for tea. On the walk there we gained a male mosquito and a caterpillar of some sort. 🙂

Dug some potatoes.

And made decisions about supper. We had roast pork, carrots and pasta.

I can tell the lad is quite a bit better from his earache but he’s not all the way back yet. I am looking forward to the day when he is all better.

Starting to school properly this week :)

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This morning we played an alphabet game and we went through, do you recognize this letter? He got all but 5 of the 26 letters of the alphabet. Not sure why he struggles with G, K, W, D, and N. but he does. He struggled with them last year as well.

For the alphabet we used the flashcards we had on had (though he’s a bit beyond blue’s clues we had them so we used them).

I just took random cards and asked him what they were and if he didn’t get them just put them in a separate pile. then I took those eight cards and lay them out and got “OH.. that’s “E” and we were left with these five that “I just don’t have a clue mommy, I can’t remember that one, My brain is all confused mommy.” I said “that’s okay buddy, just means we get to practice more.”. 🙂

Then I had him put the cards in alphabetic order and he did pretty good with that with having to use our alphabet chart on the back of the door a bit. In time he won’t be able to use the “cheat sheet”. 🙂 but for now, with a boy still recovering from an ear ache, I’ll go with what I got.

We also did three pages in one workbook, and two pages in another one. Mostly we worked on math type sheets.
The complete book of numbers and counting

My heavenly Helper

Kumon, my Book of numbers 1-120

We played battle for 15 minutes. Then the lad gathered up random dishes so they could be washed, I planted some things out in the garden (parsley and radish) and then folded a load of laundry.

Then off to town for the afternoon/evening. The lad enjoyed spending time with gramma and going to gymnastics.

Today’s Efforts

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Started reading magic tree house the rain forest. the lad is enjoying this book though he thought we’d start reading a hardy boy book.

Played Farm Sounds. I have a cd with bingo type cards produced by myactivemind, which is a company that seems to no longer be in service. We got it at the dollar store. The lad had fun playing it though we had to have the sound turned up as his ears aren’t working the best right now.

did some work in books as well.
kumon counting – so nice to see him better than where we left off in the fall. 🙂

Jesus heavenly friend – needed a bit of help with the alphabet dot to dot, could say it, but couldn’t remember what some of the letters looked like

and a math skills book – did an excellent job on this.

then we played battle until my body said.. GET UP OFF THIS FLOOR! 🙂 But by then it was time for the lad to chill out for a while again. Earaches are NOT fun things to deal with.

the afternoon was taken up with canning applesauce and watching mammoths and the ice age, we also watched Astro Boy – which provoked all sorts of questions about what the future world could possibly look like. 🙂

We Choose Virtues

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We Choose Virtues is a company that makes a quality product. They focus on providing materials that help parents/teachers teach their children virtues.

The Crafty Classroom is hosting a giveway of their products, and give an extra entry for blogging about it, so here I am. 🙂

I have to admit to having mixed feelings about a curriculum that teaches virtues.

On one hand I see it as a helpful tool for people to use to teach character to their children.

BUT on the other hand… with good biblical training doesn’t one teach these character traits as one lives life?

So it’s a mixed bag for me. The helpfulness on the one hand in promoting vs the taking away from the parental responsibility to simply train as one lives life. It seems schoolish to me. As in the public school actually have built curriculums to teach character in the school system because so many parents are working and abdicating some of their responsibilities in this regard.

I don’t tend to see homeschooling parents doing this. We’re with our children mostly all the time so it’s hard for us to let that sort of thing slip.

But on the other hand… it is an aid. And should aids be shunned? or merely carefully examined?

A mixed bag. I haven’t made up my mind.

What do you all think?