Homeschooling

Add Board Games to Your Homeschool Routine

March 16, 2019 By Annette1 2 Comments

I love having people guest post on my blog. Today I want to thank Tyler for visiting with us. I hope you enjoy Tyler’s post.

Add Board Games to Your Homeschool Routine

One of our goals in homeschooling since the start has been to find a way to make it fun. My wife and I both went to public school and we knew we didn’t want homeschooling to be ‘public school at home’. However, we weren’t sure what we DID want it to look like. Starting out we were planning fun activities each day. The kids loved it and we could see they were having fun while learning, but we quickly realized we would be burnt out on creating this fun learning environment long before they learned everything they needed to know. So we started looking for something fun (and easy!) to supplement our homeschooling activities. Enter gameschooling.

What is GameSchooling?

Put simply, gameschooling is homeschooling using games to teach. For us, gameschooling is primarily board games, but also includes some outdoors games. Adding board games to our homeschool routine has been an amazing change for our house. For the kids, board games have kept learning fun and engaging. As parents, gameschooling has taken a lot of the stress out of homeschool planning, because we know board games are there to help us teach or reinforce our homeschooling efforts.

How to Add (or Increase) Games to Your Homeschool Routine?

Fitting board games into an already full day of homeschooling can be a challenge. Here are our top five ways to fit games into our homeschool schedule:

1. Pick a Subject and Find a Board Game A great way to get started using board games in your homeschool activities is to simply pick a subject you are working on and find a board game to reinforce it. Looking for some inspiration? Check out this article on 100 things kids learn from board games, with game recommendations for each!

2. Add a Daily Game Time

Another option to consider if you’re looking to add some gameschooling to your days is to set aside a certain time each day for board games. A lot of modern board games can be played in fifteen to forty five minutes. This makes them a perfect activity when the kids need a break. We love to play board games right before lunch when the kid’s focus starts to be more concerned with what is in the fridge then the topic at hand.

3. Start a Family Game Night

Rather than cram board games into your school day, try out a family board game night. One of my favorite memories growing up was playing board games as a family. Board game night was the one time all the hecticness of work, school, and other activities seemed to fall away and we were able to enjoy family time playing board games. Little did I know I was learning at the same time! If you have a family with a large age range, check out this list of the 10 best games that preschoolers through adults will all love.

4. Use board Games to Wind Down for Bed

I know I can’t be the only one who has kids who seem to get more and more awake the closer bedtime gets. Board games are a great tool to burn some of that excess brain energy off and help your kids wind down for bed. We try to avoid silly games, or active games right before bed, and instead target something like sleeping queens or robot turtles. These games hit the right balance of challenging without being too complex for them to focus on right before bed in our house.

5. Travel with Board Games

Traveling is a great time to try out gameschooling. Regular homeschool activities are difficult when your away from home. The combination of not having your regular homeschool tools at your disposal and kids being excited about traveling is not ideal. If you pick the right board games, they’re easy to play in a car, on a plane, or where ever you might be traveling and they won’t take up much space in your luggage! To get you started, here’s a list of our favorite kids board games to travel with.

Start your Gameschooling Journey!

I hope these tips can help you start (or expand) your gameschooling and see what a powerful homeschool tool it can be. I’d love to hear from you in the comments! If you already gameschool, what is your favorite way to fit board games in your day? If you haven’t started yet, which of these tips will you try?

Tyler blogs at kidsloveboardgames.com. Kids Love Board Games focuses on the benefits of playing family board games, gameschooling, as well as board game recommendations and reviews. Sign up for Kids Love Board Games newsletter and follow Kids Love Board Games on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Junk Drawer Physics

March 13, 2019 By Annette1 2 Comments

Learning while doing is by far the best way to cement material. Junk Drawer Physics is filled with 50 different experiments and builds to help the learner understand physics. Understand potential energy, vibrations, magnetism and more by creating toys and small machines as well as conducting experiments.

About the Book and Author

Bobby Mercer has been a high school physics teacher for over 20 years. He takes that knowledge and turns it into practical, hands-on experiments. His assumption is that you have what you need right in your own home.

Turn a plastic cup into a Pinhole Camera using waxed paper, a rubber band, and a thumbtack. Build a swing wave machines using a series of washers suspended on strings from a yardstick. Use a cork, string, and water-filled plastic bottle to create a simple Accelerometer. Or construct your own Planetarium from an empty potato chip canister, construction paper, scissors, and a pin.

What you Get

Six chapters divided over 194 pages.

Chapter titles are

Forces and Motion
Energy
Sound and Waves
Light
Electricity and Magnetism
Fluids and Pressure

50 Experiments which include builds such as a cork accelereomter. ball blaster, straw oboe, Pringles Planetarium, No-touch race car, and ketchup diver. The experiments all vary from each other which I really like. You know how sometimes you can get a STEM book where they say x number of projects and then you find it’s project a that becomes b and in the end it just feels like one project with different steps to it. Junk Drawer Physics doesn’t do that.

One of the projects we made was the air horn. We found the instructions very easy to follow and because we were using random items from around the house we were able to make two different ones that sounded quite different from each other.

Because they were different from each other we were able to expand our knowledge base as well, comparing the lower and higher notes we made. This would be fascinating to do with a larger group and then see if we could make our own air horn musical group. 🙂 haha

Most of the time pictures are used to help convey expectations for the project, but as you can see above, sometimes simple diagrams are used.

There is always a materials list that proceeds the directions for any given experiment.

The close of the experiment tells you why it happened, or what principle is being demonstrated. This gives you time, if you choose not to read the explanation, to come up with your own explanation using deductive and logical reasoning.

My Thoughts

Today my son woke me up asking “Mom, for my hands on stuff today, can I do experiments out of Junk Drawer”? Fridays is our “hands on plus do what’s important for you” day. So for him to choose Junk Drawer Physics over taking apart electronics, working on his crossbow, or any of his other projects that he is working on, tells you what he thinks of it.

Easy experiments that he can do on his own, figure out on his own, and if he can’t, tells him what he needs to know. Makes it a winner in my eyes.

Age level? It’s hard to say. To me these experiments are great for youth 7 years old and up. I’ve been doing science with my lad since he was very little so I have full confidence in his abilities. Although, I have seen in the grade 9/10 science courses I mark that, not all students have that same level of confidence.

It would be easy to make these experiments harder for highschool students by having them to define what principle the experiment is showing before revealing the science behind it. Younger students might need to have the answer given to them, or be asked questions to help them figure it out on their own.

Junk Drawer Physics: 50 Awesome Experiments that don’t cost a thing.
Bobby Mercer
Chicago Review Press.
Softcover, 204 pages,
Physics, Science, Experiments,
Reviewed for Chicago Review Press.

C is for Culling Well

March 12, 2019 By Annette1 4 Comments

I will freely tell you that this isn’t an easy topic, but it is a necessary one. When you raise animals as livestock, breeding and/or show animals culling is a necessary part of the equation. I breed rabbits (love the hobby) and have learned the importance of this vital task.

What does Culling Mean?

Culling means that you are reducing the animals in your herd. You do this for a variety of reasons: Perhaps you need a meal for your table or your pets, you have a sick animal, you have too many animals, or just need to cut back. Life choices affect the animals under your care. This refers to when you are raising animals with an intended purpose in mind, not animals you have as pets. Rabbits, like many other animals can serve both as livestock and as pets. Using the correct terminology for how they used is important.

Methods to Cull

There are two proper methods to cull.

Sell the animal. In my opinion only animals that you believe to be healthy should be sold. This means good temperament, no genetic defects and no health problems. Unloading sick animals on someone else should never be done.
Kill the animal. You do this by the quickest, most painless method possible. I am not going to discuss those methods here. Always have a backup method. Sometimes your primary method won’t work and causing unnecessary pain to an animal under care is wrong.

Improper method is to

Let an animal under your care slowly die because you aren’t caring for it properly…. whether that be from disease or lack of care
Releasing it into the wild alive.

Desire to save from Death

One of the things I run into on rabbit forums is this desire to save every animal from death. I don’t where it comes from. I sorta understand it, because honestly rabbits are cute. They are! Rabbits make excellent pets or livestock. They are great as companion animals, show animals, working animals, and food animals. Regardless of their purpose they are cute, easy to handle (usually), and are just lovely beasties.

But.. They aren’t always. Sometimes they get illnesses that never go away. You can make the illness hide, but not cure it (pasturella), or have Genetic defects (malocclusion). Sometimes they injure themselves badly (broken back, teeth). Other times they get an illness that is too expensive to treat, or even with treatment leads to an animal with a compromised immune system (enteritis). Occasionally you get a rabbit with a nasty temper. I am currently dealing with that right now. This doe wants to bite and attack me, and she regularly nips her kits for no readily apparent reason. Temperamentally, not the kind of rabbit to pet out or to continue to work with lest she cement that character flaw in my herd.

Never to be Sold

These animals should NEVER be sold.. in my opinion. Why? Well part of my opinion is that I used to work in rescue. I know what happens with rabbits with poor health in the hands of pet people. I do. It’s not a good picture. Rabbits slowly starving because their bad teeth are clipped once a month. Rabbits developing complications from hidden illness. Bunnies with eyes perpetually running and developing skin lesions or going blind as a result.

A secondary reason to not sell unhealthy animals, particularly those with an illness that hides. If you watch ads on any site that allows the selling of animals you will find numerous rabbits, many of them coming out of pet homes. People will often breed their pet rabbits together without knowing you shouldn’t breed weepy eye bunny to snot nosed bunny. The end result? Young rabbits with a compromised immune system. That’s not good for rabbits long term. Just isn’t.

If you breed rabbits DO NOT sell unhealthy animals. Not to the pet public and not to your fellow breeders. Just don’t.

What animals to Sell

Animals that are healthy with good temperament, can be sold for a variety of reasons. These rabbits can be sold as pets, breeders, companion animals, food, and more.

It helps other rabbits. If rabbits with health issues are dispatched humanely, you keep that rabbit out of the genetic pool. A rabbit with strong genetics will hardly ever get ill. Strong immune systems and genetics are what we need in rabbits. Not coddling of ill animals, with their potential to pass on their poor genetics.

Kill the Animal

Humanely culling an animal that is not in peak condition is the best thing you can do for that animal and any future rabbits you may have. Killing an animal when you have need for it is fulfilling it’s purpose. Rabbits are prey animals, and treating them as such is not a bad thing.

You need to cull humanely and calmly. Always having a back up method at hand. Being able to cull means you can also quickly end suffering, because sometimes injuries happen, or illnesses strike hard. Do you want an animal you care for to suffer?

Culling an animal doesn’t mean it is a waste. Raptor rescues, snake owners, raw feeders of cats, dogs and other animals, zoos and animal sanctuaries will gladly take your animals. You can eat them yourself or feed them to your own pets. if you can’t find an outlet you can bury them deep (letting them return to the soil) or bring them to a forest for wild animals to enjoy. No waste, just a well cared for rabbit right to the very end.

Sorrows and Joys

I have had the misfortune of having to cull babies when momma over cleaned them taking off a foot or when a baby is born wrong (it happens, you just don’t rebreed the parents). I’ve had rabbits do a crazy kamikaze leap out of my arms and break their back. Windstorms come creating lots of noise and fright and sometimes rabbits don’t cope well with that. You need to end that pain and suffering as quickly as you can.

I have also had the joy of sending a rabbit off to a new home, owners grinning with delight. Experienced the expressed gratitude of a large snake owner when he finds me saying “wow.. now I can feed my big girl properly”. The joy of seeing my son’s cat do better on an all protein diet. The pleasure in helping the family budget with a home-raised meal. These are all good things.

Cull your animals well. It’s an important part of raising rabbits.

Each week we will be linking up with the hosts of Blogging Through the Alphabet. Please visit some of these other blogs to get things like book lists, vegan recipes, and wonderful places to visit, just to name the topics I can think of off the top of my head.

B is For Baby Bunnies

March 5, 2019 By Annette1 5 Comments

Do you see how I did it? Two b’s for this second letter of the alphabet! Today we are going to talk about all things baby bunny!

First it starts with introducing one male bunny (a buck) and one female bunny (a doe). You let them do their thing (which by the way is sometimes super easy, and other times… not so much) BUT that’s a topic for another post (reproduction anyone?)

Then you need to wait. Some people can palpate and others can’t. If you do it wrong you can cause a spontaneous abortion. Anyways, again, topic for another day! 🙂 The easiest thing to do is simply wait. Bunnies usually kindle (have their babies) 31 days after they have mated.

Babies come! WOOT WOOT! Nothing better than day old babies except day three babies or day 21 babies! or… day 28 babies or….. 🙂 Can’t tell I love babies can you?

Newborn babies need to be checked out carefully. Sometimes mama bunnies make mistakes when giving babies their first bath and clean up. Other times babies are born dead. The very odd time they are born with birth defects. Once in a while mama will do a horrible job at building a nest or does WAY too good a job in the middle of summer. Check the babies, the same as you would for any baby, look for all their toes, tails, eyes and nose!

Wait for your day three babies… you can really start to see their colours coming in. The sables will look silvery, the whites and pointeds will look white, and the subtle differences between the lilacs and blues will be apparent. It’s a great day to give them all a very thorough check over.

Week One

I love the pristine whiteness of the light coloured week olds. Aren’t they adorable? 🙂 Did you know that babies have to be checked over every single day? Sometimes a baby will die, or miss a bath from mama and have poop stuck to their bum. They also need to get used to the smell of people, so picking them up every single day keeps them used to you and teaches them not to be frightened.

At about 10 days old their eyes open. I sprinkle a little bit of food into the nest box for them. This gets them started if something untoward happens with mama.

Week Two

They continue growing, you continue checking on this. Week two is when you’ll find out which ones are a bit more high strung. You’ll reach into the box, waking them up and one will start to scream. My lad loves the screamers. He’ll just keep picking them up until they realize that screaming doesn’t get you anywhere, and before long he’ll have them snuggle in his hand. Brings a smile to both our faces! 🙂

At two weeks, Spring through later fall I tip the nestbox on it’s side. This gives babies a solid platform to huddle together on. At this age they still can’t regulate their own body heat. Having a platform helps them stay healthily warm. I give them a creep feeder at this age. In the cold of winter I change out the litter and start shelving them at night.

Week Three

Young rabbits are called kits. They grow like weeds and have an amazing ability to heal quickly from injury or damage. Scratches, nips, broken legs, bug bites and more. Kits can get hurt even in the safety of their own boxes. Keep the fur out of the wound and they heal up right smart.

Week three babies are out of the nestbox and you start to see personalities emerge. The bold, the shy, the curious in your face ones. It’s good!

The nestbox is removed in the warmer weather, tipped during the winter at this stage.

Week Four

Week four babies can be almost impossible to take a picture of. They are SO curious and into things, OR so incredibly shy you can scarce get them to stop trying to hide.

The two kits pictured above were really showing their personalities off. The wee one in the corner just wanted to hide, I had to make sure there were no folds in the cloth. The other one, my son bribed her with a piece of carrot. She was bouncing EVERYWHERE!

If you have a large litter it’s really hard getting a picture of them lined up and looking at you. 🙂 You’ll get bum pictures and sideways bunnies, or young boys coming out to check the camera. It’s a mess.

They are very much like toilet-training toddlers at this stage. Learning to keep themselves clean but often times needing help. Daily checks for poopy butt are a necessity at this age, particularly with my hollands and fuzzies.

Week Five

Curiousity and training starts to play a role. They are getting used to the word STOP and a knock on wood or cage gets them to sit still a moment and start to assess the situation. It gets easier to take a picture or two. Telling genders becomes easier. They are getting smarter and more aware of the world around them.

Week Six

Ears in loppies start dropping more, the girls start to act more like girls, the boys well… they are super sweet but won’t sit still for nothing! Usually takes a bunny threat or two to keep them in line. 🙂 Here I start more seriously evaluating who will stay in the rabbitry and who will need to find a new home. I’m harder on the boys than the girls as the boys tend to stick around a bit longer than the girls and affect all future generations. Kits that are ready to be sold I list (I can do that in Ontario) Stateside the rules are different, there are you legally obliged to hold them until they are eight weeks old.

Week seven-eight

I can’t recall exactly how old this girlie is above. She’s around 8 weeks old. Really starting to show what she’ll look like as an adult. They are pretty self-sufficient at this age. It’s good to watch them grow. 🙂

Others in this series.

A – American Fuzzy Lops

blogging through the alphabet #abcblogging

Letter B Link Up

Battles of the Eastern Front, World War 1

March 2, 2019 By Annette1 8 Comments

We’ve been working off and on with the Battles of the Eastern Front for the past 2-3 weeks. Our time has been scattered by snow days, sick days for the lad, and mom has no brain days (sick, tired and/or distracted). Nevertheless we did have some focused days

Last week the lad did some reading on the Eastern Front using various books from the library (which have since been returned so I don’t have a picture of them). He used many of the same books from when we learned about the Western Front.

This week we watched a number of videos.

We found the Khan one a bit dry, but it did tell us about some of the big battles of the Eastern front. We learned about Tannenburg which led us to this video. Some sites that we found helpful are

Britannica. we learned why Germany was so effective.
Ducksters gave us a good overview
ThoughtCo helped us understand Russian mindset.

Then the lad brought up this one:

Looking up the battle of Galacia brought us this short clip. It left us with a few questions, but gave a glimpse of how battles affect each other.

We decided to learn a bit about the Russian army of World War 1.

We also found these websites helpful.

Marxists.org – good overall start for us.
Spartacus – taught us the repercussions of WW1 for Russia.
ww2 weapons – highlighted the shortage of weapons and training in the Russian Army.
Encyclopedia of WW1 – details of Russian war involvement.
The history learning site – political intrigue didn’t help the Russian effort.

Research Project

So the lad chose to map out the main battles of the Eastern Front. This proved more problematic than he expected. He’s been learning some important research skills including how to ask for help when needed. Once he got that help (battles are often named after towns close by) he was off to the races. Connecting battles, finding a blurb to write about each, he was very involved in the process.

He’s written up blurbs for each of the battles he chose (Tannenburg I know was one of them) but hasn’t printed them off yet.

Next week we plan to learn about … Oh.. I’m pretty sure he said Sea Battles and he’s apparently done some research into them already.

American Fuzzy Lop

February 25, 2019 By Annette1 12 Comments

I know I didn’t do an introductory post last week, I was considering whether or not I would do a blogging through the alphabet this year, or just let it go like I did last year. Then I got to think about how I want to start blogging about bunnies again … though technically I should do this on my rabbitry blog, but I figure I can do cross-over posts! 🙂 Makes it a win-win eh?

Theories on History

The American Fuzzy Lop, like it’s name suggests was created in the United States. There is some fuzziness about what all is in it’s background other than the certainty that Holland Lop is part of it.

One theory is that it is a genetic mutation found within the holland lop.

The other theory is that Holland lops, which only came in solid colours, were bred to English Spots. This resulted in the wrong coat for the holland lop breed, thereby necessitating the breeding in of the Angora coat in order to regain the proper coat quality for the Holland Lop. This tends to be the most accepted theory.

Oh, another theory I have heard is that somewhere along the line Jersey Woolies were part of the mix. I can see this, as some of my hollands that come out fuzzy, if you look at their head in profile they look just like a Jersey Woolie. This theory is more scuttle-butt that I have’heard among breeders, I’ve been unable to find a source on-line about that.

The Basic Standard

Fuzzies are very similar to Holland lops. They weigh about the same, have the same blocky head, and have similar lop-ears. I’ve read a few sources that say they are exactly the same as Holland Lops but that’s not accurate. American Fuzzy Lops, when you show they, sit flat on the table, whereas Holland Lops sit upright. Just like with a Holland Lop it can take time for the head and ear carriage to develop well. They mature to around 3.5-4 lbs.

Type of Rabbit

The American Fuzzy Lop is a fancy breed of rabbit, rather than a commercial breed. It is bred primarily for the pet and show market, but it can also be a working animal.

As a show animal they are shown in solid (one colour) or broken patterns (white with colour). In North America, showing is done under the auspices of the American Rabbit Breeders Association. In Ontario, the provincial club can be found here.

As a working animal, it’s fur (plucked usually) can be spun for a fine wool. Even though it’s only 2 inches long it can be spun and used as needed. Sometimes it is mixed with other wools.

Personal Experience

If I had to compare personalities between my fuzzy lops and my holland lops, the fuzzies are much more laid back than my hollands. They more apt to just sit there and chill out. The more fuzzy they are, the more chilled out they are. I don’t know why.

I do know that I don’t like getting them in my litters.

Why?

Care of a Fuzzy Lop

Well, as young animals wooled breeds take more care. Babies need to learn to keep themselves clean, just like a toddler needs a bum wipe. For me this means trimming their hair about their vent region every three days or so and checking them daily to make sure accidents haven’t happened. One day missed can end up with a young rabbit with it’s vent region swollen and infected sometimes causing problems with how the skin heals up. With rabbits, particularly young rabbits, skin rips happen easily.

Also, when I first started in rabbits I did a lot of rescue. I had more than one wooled breed come in with matted hair so tight that the skin was ripped underneath. That is SO not cool.

So any fuzzies I sell come with a caresheet and a long conversation about how to care for them and my permanent return policy. I don’t want my fuzzies ending up with torn skin.

Care sheet

This care sheet speaks to how fuzzy lops need to have their vent area checked for any fecal remains caught in the hair.

They need to be groomed regularly, daily during their moult. For some rabbits that will be twice a year for about a week, for other rabbits they moult steadily all the time. It’s so variable so people have to be aware of the time commitment.

Baby coats need more work than adult coats and care needs to be taken that they don’t get matted. Matting happens fast so their coats will need daily care. Once they hit adulthood, this daily care usually becomes weekly brush-outs.

Other than this, caring for rabbits is pretty easy! 🙂 Feed them a balanced diet (this is one way to do that), keep them clean and give them plenty of water and you’ll have a healthy happy bunny.

Letter A Link Up

Family Day 2019

February 18, 2019 By Annette1 10 Comments

Today was Family Day. We were able to show our student a good time today. We did horse-drawn wagon rides, darts, pool, a movie and fireworks. It was a rather busy day but it was a good day.

Family Day is not a statutory holiday, but it is only observed in New Brunswick, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan and in British Columbia. PEI also has a February holiday called Islander Day, and Manitoba has Louis Riel Day holiday. Since it is not a federal holiday, federal employees still need to work (total bummer). I was concerned that my darling wouldn’t be able to join us, but…. his work CHOOSES to celebrate Family Day so he got it off. WOOT WOOT!

Anyways, Family Day was originally created to give people time to spend with their families. The date in February was chosen because it provides a day off between New Years Day and Good Friday.

We were promised a classic snowmobile show so we headed off to the Rec Centre to check them out but… No snowmobiles. What a bummer! They did have a guy there handing out free bananas and apples.

After the wagon rides we headed off to play pool and darts. Oh.. we laughed! I used to play pool fairly frequently, but you’d never have known based on how I played today. Hubby on the other hand played well. The lad learned quickly, and our student well.. let’s just say that some things got last in the translation. Pool was a bit beyond him but we laughed a lot! 🙂

I am so happy that our current student doesn’t let the unknown stop him from trying something new. 🙂

From there we moved to darts. This is a fairly individual sport, so after the gentlemen on deck showed the boys the basics of how to shoot with an elbow at 90 degrees.

We watched the Movie Inside Out at the Elementary School.

We went home for supper where I tried out a new dish. It was kinda fun to play around making up a new recipe. I’ll have to share it with you later. 🙂 Huge hit with our student! Then we headed off to the fireworks.

Wow! It was SO pretty watching them over snow. I didn’t expect how wonderful they would look. I would have taken a longer movie of them but my hand started to freeze (it’s rather cold up here). And the video doesn’t do them justice over the snow, but it was a really nice show.