A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

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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?

TOS has things to help with homeschooling

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From September 1 to September 5, they’re offering resources that will help you save time cooking, cleaning, organizing your home, running your home, and teaching your children. Some products are discounted up to 50%! You’ll even find labor savers that will get your kids working too!

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Monarch into Chrysallis

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Check out this youtube video.

Both monarchs that we have are going exploring. The one is currently hanging, the other is looking for a place to be safe. We’re having to keep a close eye on that one.

Hopefully in seven to 10 days we’ll have a couple of butterflies to watch! 🙂

our previous attempts at Monarchs failed, so we’re thrilled that this one appears to be working.

actually doing day one airplanes

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Working from our plans this is how our day went.

NOTE: I had a lad with bad tonsils, who can’t hold down food today.

We started out watching the five part series of the wright brothers on YouTube. I chose the animated version as it had short snippets that we could stop and talk about what we learned before watching the next in the series.

here is part two

We learned about their main rival in Alberto Santos-Dumont.

Santos-Dumont he was a rival to the wright brothers to see who would be the first to build an airplane. 🙂 The lad was quite fascinated by him and asked tons of questions so we researched him for a while. (a bit of a rabbit trail that). 🙂

we read through the beginning of flight.

the lad liked this one:

and this one caused lots of questions to be asked as it looks quite different than the others we saw

we spent a great deal of time on the Canadian Wings site. Rather fascinating to watch the changes in how aircraft developed. and the wright brothers museum was quite interesting as well. I read through the encyclopedia on the wright brothers but the lad was getting wiggly at this point. So we closed our computer time by learning all the different TYPES of aircraft and doing our copy work. I am hoping later to find some pictures of different aircraft and making a small lapbook book with the lad.

Question: is there such a thing as a helicopter that is amphibian?

Does anyone know the answer to this question?

Thanks to the gals on facebook I have an answer to that question! YES! they make amphibous helicopters. Here’s the wiki link.

We did our airplane sorting into

Fast planes, medium planes, helicopters and mommy’s planes.

the fast planes are JET engines, the medium planes use propellors, and the helicopters are medium planes too but they are different because they are helicopters. 🙂

he also observed other ways that they are the same and different, good to see him learning and thinking.

and then we made a couple of planes and had a LOT of fun playing battle. 🙂