Homeschooling

Fall Sports

September 21, 2020 By Annette1 2 Comments

It is that time of year for pumpkin spice, chili’s and stews. Long sweaters and jeans and shuffling through the leaves. Children running around engaged in their fall sports.

Yes! It is Fall again!

Fall is can be an interesting time of year, even for those who are mourning over the ending of summer!

Recently, I met up with a couple of friends who had their little ones with them. They were your typical excited little ones, so I engaged them in some fun activities.

We went along the local trail and saw amazing things like baby snakes and leaves with different patterns – we looked at these through my pocket microscope. We had a chance to watch various animals getting ready for winter. Looking at different mosses that grow on trees under a mini microscope was very fascinating for the children, as well as for me.

Is it just about fall sports?

Typically, when we think of fall sports, we may think of the baseball season coming to an end and get geared up for hockey and other indoor sports. But hiking a trail and seeing what creation has to offer is a fall sporting activity that we don’t think about. Gardening is another.

Sitting here typing this I am looking out my window into my gardens. There is a plethora of plants in my garden that I love to look at. Particularly the diversity of it. There are vegetables, flowers, herbs, and even a bit of bunny greens for my bunny! Fall is a time of harvest and harvesting the veggies is quite the sport at times! Adie form that though, there is a feeling of accomplishment. I believe every sport should have that feeling. Whether you win or lose, there is a sense of accomplishment.

I feel that’s what fall does for me. Gives me a sense of accomplishment for the year, even though we still have a few months left in the year. This year has been strife with all sorts of things starting with COVID-19, and lockdown, social distancing and all that has been involved in that. But there is still a sense of accomplishment in my spirit because I have had some of these small things in my life. I think of the newness of life that spring makes me feel, and how I’ve seen that grown during the summer. Now, I see the fruits of my dreams from spring, just before nature takes a nap from growing things.

If anything, fall sports can teach me one thing, out of many; how wonderful it is to let things go. As the sporting season changes and morphs for the winter, so does nature. Both letting go of the old, to take a rest, and prepare for a new season.

How About You?

The social media challenge for this week was fall sports? What does that bring to mind for you? Does it bring out the athletic side of you or the more let’s get out and enjoy the weather with friends and family? I’d be curious to know. 🙂 Join the linky or share in the comments won’t you?

How Cities Work Activity Book

September 16, 2020 By Annette1 1 Comment

Oh… How Cities Work is a rather neat activity book that I can’t wait to tell you all about! Stickers, colouring, word searches and more fill the pages. Help your children understand how cities work! Tall skyscrapers, bustling waterways, and even the city architect!

What I am Reviewing

How Cities Work (activity book) is a lonely planet kids book. A book that is illustrated by James Gulliver Hancock that helps your children understand the workings of a city through hands-on activities. With over 200 stickers, word searches, writing assignments, mazes and such like you’ll explore most aspects of city life. Written for children 6-8 years old.

I am reviewing this book on behalf of Raincoast books. A companion book to go along with this activity book is How Cities Work. These books are part of the How Things Work Series. This series includes such books as Trains and Airports, and you may remember How Animals Build that I reviewed a bit ago.

Details for How Cities Work

With so much going on in a city environment, there’s plenty here to discover, explore and get creative with. Stuffed full of facts about the inner workings of the city. You’ll discover wonderful illustrations of scenes including rush-hour traffic, garden centres and building sites. There is plenty here to keep your children occupied and challenged either at home or on the road.

Activities include: Search and finds, colouring, spot the difference, add stickers, design a poster, word search, writing assignments, mazes, etc.

Among the pages you’ll find six pages of more than 200 stickers. I love that it’s not just a “put a sticker on” book, but it’s also a “thinking it through” exercise of figuring out what is going on and use a sticker to fix it! Or today we’re learning about animals in a zoo, can you help the escaped animals get back to where they belong.

The illustrations, done by James Fulliver Hancock, match those of How Cities work (another in this series). Fitting these two books together will help your children learn a great deal about the workings of a city. They are well done, fitting smoothly together.

Should you Get it?

Yes! It’s a fun book and well worth getting. It will not only teach your children various functions of a city, but also let them have fun while doing so. How Cities Work (activity book) is informative and gives your children a productive way to utilize their time well. 🙂

Other books to pair this with that I have reviewed are:

Grandma Weekends

September 14, 2020 By Annette1 10 Comments

This week the Homeschool Review Crew has issued the challenge. What can we write a post about grandparents and gratitude? You know what evokes gratitude in me? Grandma weekends. You know those weekends where grandma says “I miss my boy and I want to spend time with him?” So you pack off your teenager and say “go have fun with gramma”.

The Blessing of Grandma weekends

The blessing of grandma weekend is two-fold.

Gramma gets to spend uninterrupted time with her favourite grandchild. Okay… her ONLY grandchild. But it’s time just between her and him. They play board games, go for long hikes, and just be together. They both are relaxed and settled by the end of the weekend, it’s lovely to see.

The other side is: It means that I have time with my fellow… just him, no one else, and that’s a hugely wonderful gift. No child interrupting, usually we get out of the house away from the TV and chores. We might do something as mundane as running errands, but we have no time constraints. If we’ve the finances we’ll do lunch out, if not we’ll pack one and find a hidden park bench to enjoy a meal.

How about you? How do grandparents and gratitude fit into your life? Do they support your homeschool decisions? Pray for you? Provide opportunity to promote the importance of family? Do they help you show how people SHOULDN’T act? (Cause face it, not all families are rainbows and blessings). Are you able to have grandma weekends or do blessings show up in different ways? How are grandparents an important part of your life?

Join the linky if you have a mind too! Linkbacks are always appreciated.

Apples in SW Ontario

September 7, 2020 By Annette1 7 Comments

Apple season is gathering in close, and so the Homeschool Review Crew issued the challenge “all about apples”. Since I have very few apple recipes on my blog, it got me thinking about some of the fun apple things we’ve done over the years. Apple picking has always been fun. Where do you find apples in SW Ontario? So glad you asked!

Apple Orchards

Our family has had tons of apple picking fun at Farmer Jack’s, but they are no longer open which is rather a bummer.

We did a field trip to Apple Land and found it a nice place to go for apples, it’s a bit of a drive from our house though! 🙂 One of the nice things about doing a field trip with them is they give you a small bag you can turn in for a discount on your next apple purchase. When we did the tour last time we also got to visit their bees which was rather fun.

Crunican Orchards is one I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting yet. I like the variety in the apples they raise.

Great Lakes Farms in Port Stanley might prove of interest. They have a good group of apples to choose from.

Over Kitchener way you’ll find Martin’s Orchards. Nicely organized, good apples. I’ve been to this location and gotten good apples.

The Apple Orchard Can be found in the Hamilton area.

Ingram’s Apple Orchard in Bayfield is so close, I can hardly believe I’ve never been! I guess I’ll need to check it out eh?

If you are looking for apples in SE Ontario, here are 15 you might try out. Or better yet, all across Ontario you’ll find apple orchards.

Am I missing any? What orchards to find apples in SW Ontario do you know of?

Apple Recipes

Apple PanDowdy.
Swedish Apple Pie.
Rhubarb Apple Crisp.
Variety of Apple Dishes. Dutch Apple Loaf, Apple Fritter cake, Apple Crisp, Apple Strudel Muffins, Applesauce

Pirate Nell’s Tale to Tell

September 2, 2020 By Annette1 4 Comments

Who doesn’t love a good pirate story? Four to eight year-olds will delight in the story of Nell aboard a pirate ship. She’s a sweet, determined character whose light is not dimmed by the nay-sayers in her life. It is my distinct pleasure to review this delightful picture book Pirate Nell’s Tale to Tell for Raincoast Books.

What I am Reviewing

Pirate Nell’s Tale to Tell is written by Helen Docherty and beautifully illustrated by Thomas Docherty. The words and images work well in tandem. 40 pages of storybook adventure await the 4 to 8-year-old reader. Published by sourcebooks jabberwocky, you’ll find this hardcover book a delight to read.

From the cover:

Nell is finally a pirate!
And she has her trusty Pirate’s Almanac to help her sail the seas, even if Captain Gnash doesn’t like books on his ship. But when the journey gets rough and the captain is in trouble, it’s Nell and all her pirate knowledge that saves the day and leads them to the greatest buried treasure of all. . .

The Details for Pirate Nell

Helen Docherty who also wrote The Snatchabook has written a delightful book of rhymes. It is so easy to read, the words will just roll off your tongue. As I reading quietly to myself, I couldn’t help myself and started reading aloud startling my hubby. 🙂 It’s good to do those things you know?

Nell’s love of books is evident throughout, even if her captain disagreed. He couldn’t see the importance of books, how could they help you be a good pirate afterall?

You’ll find loads of colour filling the pages, finding Nell hard at work whether it be scrubbing the decks or saving the Captain. The Captain seems the not so nice sort, but by the end of the book, Nell has won him over.

It’s a good read for both adult and child, the font big enough to read with a group of children, and illustrations varied enough to provide lots of talking points with them as well. I received the ARC version, but the hardcover style it will come with will provide great durability. Snatch it up, and enjoy with your pirate study today! 🙂

Should You Get It?

Aw, this is such a cute book that fosters a love of reading. Books helps us in so many ways

YES, go get Pirate Nell’s Tale to Tell! Read it with your children. Delight in the antics of the pirates, frown at the short-sightedness of the captain, and sit back in wonder at lessons learned. It’s a great romp through the world of books and learning.

You don’t have to just use for 4-8 year olds though… it would be a great addition to a “fun with books unit”, or a Pirate study, or even a history of oceanic travel book… to talk about the work you need to do abroad ship. Even a unit on how being kind and willing to share knowledge is a great thing to do. It’s simply a lovely book.. read it with your children! I think I’ll have my son read it as part of his speech studies!

Are they really needed? Pens & pencils in your homeschool

August 31, 2020 By Annette1 11 Comments

Pens and pencils, I don’t know about you but I use one everyday. I thought about sharing my favourite pens and pencils but realized that really, I don’t have any. I will happily use whatever I have on hand. It got me thinking, are they really needed? Pens and pencils in your homeschool. Can you get away without using them?

Are they really needed? Pens and pencils in your homeschool

There are two sides to every question aren’t there? With the plethora of on-line resources, and laptops one could argue they aren’t needed. BUT then there’s art and science and…. where it’s hard to argue against the need. So let’s discuss it shall we?

No, you can’t

You can’t run a homeschool without using a pen and a pencil. They are as necessary to life as bread and butter.

Art (drawing, 3-d, illustrating, etc), science notations, something to fiddle with, note-taking and imprints. Add in emergency drum practice, crafts, filling in worksheets, figuring out math problems, and much more. You might be surprised by 100 uses for a bic pen!

My son loves Ticonderoga pencils. Some new pencils were a birthday request, and he SO much enjoys them! 🙂 I have to admit, my teenager is a bit more particular about his writing implements than I am. 🙂

Yes, you can

Take a moment if you will to imagine a world without needing pen and pencil. A world filled with narration, physical activity, spelling bees, hands-on activities, on-line forms, simply telling what you know, computer games for math, language arts and more. The other day I ran into on-line chem labs! You can even find complete curricula on-line, it’s amazing how learning can happen with video, editable PDF’s, and other projects. One could say we’re reaching for a world without primitive technology. 🙂

Do you really need pencils and pens for your homeschool adventures? Can you imagine your homeschool moving into such a world?

Florence and Her Fantastic Family Tree

August 29, 2020 By Annette1 4 Comments

When I opened the cover to Florence and her Fantastic Family Tree, I was immediately brought back to a conversation with a cousin. One of her children was being asked to do a family tree yet her child had a rather divergent family tree and was very frustrated by this. The child didn’t want to look strange to peers, but wanted to complete the assignment. The words “antiquated lessons” came up.

Florence has a VERY divergent family tree and she handles this assignment with all these worries, and yet, she looks beyond her worries to her ability to show off her family. A timely book I think hmm?

What I am Reviewing

On behalf of Raincoast books and Familius books I am reviewing Florence and her Fantastic Family Tree. It will come as a jacketed hardcover of 32 pages. Written by Judy Gilliam with the soft illustrations by Laura Addari.

From the cover

Florence and Her Fantastic Family Tree explores the idea of what it means to have a big, messy, complicated, and remarkable family as a young girl tries to complete her family tree assignment for school. With adorable drawings and the succinct words of a child, you can’t help but love your own family tree, no matter how large or small, simple or chaotic.

Florence and her fantastic family tree information

The problem is real so… does a child run away from it or grab up the opportunity? Florence, using her own words, tells us how she handled this challenged. How can she make a family tree when “my family tree doesn’t just have a trunk, roots, leaves and extra limbs. My family tree is prickly, scaly, and partially overgrown.“

Using soft tones, the illustrator helps us watch Florence’s worry turn into a sense of accomplishment. And I have to tell you as adult… it was wonderful to see. I love watching children take what could be a painful assignment and turn it into something that is great. THIS happens.

The story is told in Florence’s own words. Sharing her words, her working out what her family is like. It’s like sitting next to her as she does her homework listening in.

You’ll find the font easy enough to read. It’s not in bold and appears handwritten. It would be easy enough to hold up with a group of children to share it. I could see a teacher using this with her class before she gives them a family tree assignment. What a great way to let children know it doesn’t matter what their family looks like, just follow how the branches go even if they intertwine or go off ways.

Should you Get it?

I thought Florence and her Fantastic Family Tree was a good read. Enjoyable, easy to read, the character develops, and good results. Regardless of what YOUR family looks like, it would be good to share with your children. Help them develop empathy for what other people’s families might look like. Instead of calling it an antiquated idea, let us celebrate with children what their families look like.

Homeschooling