A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

Homeschooling

C is for O Canada, a blogging through the alphabet post

By 23 Comments

Welcome to week “C” of blogging through the alphabet.  I am so happy you are joining us today.

Today I am going to talk to you about our national anthem “O Canada”.   The C being the C from Canada or if you wish Chant National as it was originally known.  🙂

Did you know that O Canada was originally called “Chant national”?   Our anthem was written by Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier, in Quebec City, with musical composter Calixa Lavallee.   Originally written in French, it was first performed on June 24, 1880.

It was sung widely in French but the English versions varied widely for quite a few years, partly due to the translation from French into English, until the version written in 1908 by Robert Stanley Weir became popular.  It is very similar to the verses we use today.

“O Canada” was approved as our national anthem on March 15, 1967, but the current version wasn’t officially approved until June 27, 1980 under the National Anthem Act.

Lyrics
O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land, glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee;
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada! Where pines and maples grow,
Great prairies spread and Lordly rivers flow!
How dear to us thy broad domain,
From East to Western sea!
The land of hope for all who toil,
The true North strong and free!
God keep our land, glorious and free.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee!
O Canada! Beneath thy shining skies,
May Stalwart sons, and gentle maidens rise.
To keep thee steadfast thro’ the years,
From East to Western sea.
Our own beloved native land,
Our true North strong and free!
God keep our land, glorious and free.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee!
Ruler supreme, who hearest humble prayer,
Hold our Dominion, in thy loving care.
Help us to find, O God, in thee,
A lasting rich reward.
As waiting for the better day,
We ever stand on guard.
God keep our land, glorious and free.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee!

I have to admit, most of the time we only sing the first verse, sometimes the second and very rarely the last two.  I don’t know why that is, but it is what it is eh?  🙂
But it’s our national song and we love it.  It’s easy to sing, rolls easily off the tongue, and inspires the lot of us to rise to our feet.  I’m assuming your national anthem helps you do that too!  🙂

So what do you think? Would you like to join us? You are very welcome.

Rules:
1. Linking time is Tuesday through Sunday.
2. Family friendly posts on a variety of topics. If you aren’t sure, ask one of us.
3. If it isn’t family friendly, it will be removed. 🙂
4. Linking back to us would be great. Grabbing the button below might be the easiest way or you could link to this post.
5. If you need a hashtag, you can use #abcblogging
6. Visiting and commenting on others is always a great social thing to do. Let’s other people know you are reading them, and encourages them to read and hopefully share your great posts.
7. HAVE FUN. That’s the point you know? Have fun and share what’s on your mind.

 

A Net In Time Schooling
A Net In Time Schooling
 
An InLinkz
Link-up

Reluctant Artist?? What do you do?

By 22 Comments

It’s week five of the Virtual Curriculum Fair.   This week.. it’s all about art and beauty.  See in artistic forms of music, art, dance and whatever form that takes in your household.  
The VCF is hosted by Susan. 

Week One: A Time to be Encouraged.
Week Two: Language Arts: Our Style.
Week Three: Practical math.
Week Four: Exploring the World Starting with Canada.

Today my topic is: What to do with the reluctant artist?

I would never say that I am an artist, but I have birthed a lad who has creativity tied into his bones.   I’ve worked to bring that creativity into our schooling…and this year and finding myself tying it in however I can.

BUT in all his creativity he’s a rather deliberate lad.  He hates, absolutely HATES to waste his time.   Despises it with a passion… which sometimes creates a reluctant artist.. What’s a teacher to do?

Talk
1. Talk to your student.   You are looking for what is causing the reluctance. 
 a). The Style – realism vs abstract, 3-D vs 2-D etc.
 b). The Medium – painting vs drawing, colouring vs pastels, oils vs acrylics etc
 c).  The Topic – A river vs. mountains, a building vs a landscape etc

Discover
2. Discover what about the reluctance causes concern.
 a). Lack of confidence – has never used this medium/style/topic before and has no idea about how to use, approach or even if likes the idea.
 b). Medium not correct for the type of project – topic of discussion sometimes the student is correct!  And then changes can be made.   Or change the topic or style and suddenly the medium isn’t so bad.
 c). Fear of wasting time – This one is hard to get past, but I have a method that is proving to at least raise more curiousity and help!
 d). Dislike of style and not seeing the point of it – often a matter of showing the student a wide variety in the style until something appeals.   I saw this recently in my class on cubism… one student could not get a handle on it until he thought about doing shades of black!  It worked and turned out well.  
 e). Wants a different topic – Let them choose the topic if possible, it’s their art.  You can set the parameters and then let them choose what they can fit within that.
 f). Page size – could be too small, large, wide, narrow etc.   This is so easy to change, some students do their best work in miniature and other need to express themselves in wide open spaces.   It’s relative.

Action
3. Take Action.  
  a). Remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder
  b). Learning new things is sometimes difficult.
  c). Sometimes helping someone with a new form of art takes away the pressure of wasting one’s time if it doesn’t work out.

Let me expand on the latter idea.
My son and I were going to create an abstract mountain art work but okay… it was MY idea to do an abstract mountain art work and my son stopped dead in his tracks.  All he could see was the potential of failure.

So after talking with him through all the different steps, it’s still all he could see was “it’s not going to turn out and I’ll have wasted all my time.”.

We decided that he could do his own thing (he wanted very much to do a pencil sketch with shading) and that I could do the abstract art.  We work side by side so he can see me work and I can see him.  It’s a great time to chat, provide encouragement and ask questions.  

So I sit beside him and I modge-podgy tissue paper to my page and I talk about how I am not sure if this colour goes there, or what do you think if I do this for the mountains, do you think making sticky-up flowers will work?  He starts off very hesitant at first, so I show him how to make flowers that can stick up off the page and how if I crinkle the tissue paper I give it more texture, and he watches and thinks.. and the next time I come back and talk he tears off a piece and says, “I think this colour would work there mom”.   

And after some time we get this:

It’s not done yet, the lad and I are currently discussing if I should cut out a picture of a canoe for the lake or do abstract drops of colour.   We’ve talked about the pros and cons off adding birds, or how to add texture to a tree trunk and how to make clouds seem more real.  And through it all we look at pictures of the Canadian Rockies and see what they are like and the animals that live on them and what not.  We learn, we talk and we complete “what might be a waste of time”.    Over time you see, tissue paper art, of an abstract nature is not as weird or unknown and just maybe someday a lad might take a chance on doing something different with his art that’s a bit out of his way of thinking… and that’s a good thing.  For now.. he’s helping, he’s talking art and helping me see what works and what doesn’t.   The fluffy clouds…. I started…he finished.  The tree trunk I did.. but he made the branches.  We discussed how to give the tree trunk texture and depth…our first method didn’t work, so we tried another.

Is it great, out of this world art?   I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter.  What matters is this… it’s fun, and we’re both learning a ton!  🙂

If you need inspiration to do art with your students, check out my art series that you can find here and here. 

Now I invite you to visit my fellow homeschool bloggers who are talking about seeking beauty in their homeschools:

Links will all be live by Monday at 12 noon EST.

B is for Beavers!

By 23 Comments

Welcome to blogging through the alphabet. Amanda and I are having a hoot with this series. Join us won’t you?  Today we are at letter B.

I have to admit, beavers wasn’t my idea, it was completely my son’s.

He is all into Canada this year and beavers are an animal we just finished learning about.

I thought I’d start off with a simple primer on beavers, it certainly doesn’t tell you everything, but it’s a good intro anyways.

We learned some interesting facts about beavers
  1. The sound of running water makes them build a dam.  This is why, if a culvert is running water and a beaver is anywhere nearby, they will keep building a dam as often as you tear it down.
  2. They do not use their tails to carry mud.   They carry stones and mud in their very capable front paws.
  3. Their tails are used as an early warning device for family members and other animals that live near the pond.  They sometimes slap the water for fun, and their tails are a fat resevoir to help them over the winter.
  4. Their latin name is Castor Canadensis
  5. They are North Americas largest rodent, weighing 40-60 lbs, and are clumsy on land, preferring to stay close to water for quick getaways. 
  6. They compensate for their poor eyesight with an excellent sense of smell and hearing.
  7. Beavers do not hibernate, in fact they build stash piles of wood under the water to hold them over the winter. 
  8. They have a double layered coat, which is part of the reason they were hunted so extensively when Canada was forming as a nation.  Beaver skin hats and coats were guaranteed to keep the wearer warm. 
  9. Vegetarians, with webbed feet that are strong swimmers.  Warm coats, large animals, beavers are an important part of Canada.
  10. Beavers are a symbol of Canada.   The fur-trade was an important part of colonial North America bringing in people from all over to exploit this natural resource.  It brought in money for the developing colonies, which fed a range of other businesses, all helping with the growth of our nation.    They are seen as a hard-working animal and as such are placed on our nickel. 
Feel free to link up your family friendly posts using the letter B this week.   

A Net In Time Schooling
A Net In Time Schooling

Rules:  

1. Linking time is Tuesday through Saturday.   
2. Family friendly posts on a variety of topics.  If you aren’t sure, ask one of us.
3. If it isn’t family friendly, it will be removed. 🙂
4. Linking back to us would be great.   Grabbing the button above might be the easiest way or you could link to this post.
5. If you need a hashtag, you might want to use #abcblogging
6. Visiting and commenting on others is always a great social thing to do.  Let’s other people know you are reading them, and encourages them to read and hopefully share your great posts.
7. HAVE FUN.   That’s the point you know?   Have fun and share what’s on your mind.

A Week of Change

By 17 Comments

So this has been a week of change.

  1. January 14, 2017 was the official closing of our church.  Hubby is currently jobless, so we are working on living on severance as he looks for new work.  
  2. Toilets needed to be repaired thus necessitating a change in schooling on two days. 

But we still got school and life lived eh?

Monday:
The lad again worked like mad to get all his schooling done before heading out to London and Gramma’s for the afternoon.   He’s currently working on building a pikachu for his dad.  It’s proving to be a bit tougher than the other one that he made so no pictures available yet.

I had a physical and I’m in good shape apparently (other than the obvious weight loss needed)

Tuesday
oh.. what did we do then?   (usually I write these up as the week passes)…. OH!  right we made a human skeleton!  🙂   We are using God’s design to study the human body and currently are learning about bones.   We also did our other schooling.

We had a lot of fun building this skeleton and reading through the bone section of the booklet.  Currently the skeleton is buried in with snake…

Wednesday:
We would normally go to the foodbank but we had a “closing interview” that we needed to be home for so… we stayed home and got some schooling done.  We did math differently today.   Studied probabilities with the game of Sudoku.   Got other schooling done as well.   The lad was so good, doing some art on his own while we finished up the interview.

Thursday
Had an unexpected trip to London, decided to take along all my young stock and sell them to the pet store. Variable weather can play havoc with rabbits, so figured it was better to get them into a brick and mortar building.   Hubby needed to pick up some wax rings in order to fix the toilets.   Plans were made to fix the toilets on Friday.

Friday
Big job today: Fixing the toilets. They needed my help to move them in and out of the house   We still need to fix the downstairs toilet but that’s not a terribly pressing issue so we’ll attack that issue next week.  BUT my lad really helped his dad well, enough to say “I don’t want to be a plumber mom”, but that still leaves a variety of the trades open.  One of my goals is that he will pick up a trade as that will help him throughout his adult life.   Still in consideration is: carpentry, electrician (which currently he thinks would be neat), construction, painter etc… actually a whole lot of ideas are open to him yet, but plumber…not so much.  🙂

 We also made an automaton which worked!   It was rather cool.   Had plans to do art but that didn’t work out timewise.   But the automaton worked!!!

Saturday:
Big day… grading for orange belt in karate!

Here he is showing he knows his katas.  Sorry for blurriness at the end camera went wonky.


As you can see, success!  Not that there was any doubt, as no grading if Sensei doesn’t think you can do it.  🙂

Reviews:

Fatal Frost.
The Kindness Club.
Art Series: Zentangle – anything is possible one stroke at a time

Homeschooling and more:

STEM: Popcorn Robot
Question of the Day: How Do They Make Pudding Cups?
Field Trip: Bird Kingdom
A is for Sidney Altman
Practical Math
Recipe: Spaghetti Casserole 

Faith:

God’s Chooses to Weaken Egypt
Egypt: Alas the day
Discipline, Protection, Promise
And They Shall Know…
Refine: seeing God as Lord more clearly
Hymn Study: Praise Ye the Lord, The Almighty

 Linking up with the following folks

http://www.rockyourhomeschool.net/family-friday-9/ 
http://kympossibleblog.blogspot.ca/2017/01/homeschool-highlights-quick-update.html 

A is for Sidney Altman

By 26 Comments

Welcome welcome one and all.. to the first letter of the alphabet.

The letter A.  You’ll join Amanda and I won’t you?
 

I am so looking forward to seeing what others have to say.   It’ll be fun eh?

For my part, I am intending to be talking about all things Canadiana as we go through the alphabet.   Some will be obvious.. Like the provinces in our fine land, and others I am hoping, will be a bit more obscure.   All in all I hope that we all can learn more about my lovely land of opportunity….. CANADA!   🙂

Today we start with Sidney Altman, a scientist who received the Nobel Prize in 1989 for his work in Chemistry.

Born in Montreal, Quebec in 1939 the son of working class immigrant parents.   His dad owned a grocery store and his mom worked in a textile mill.   Learning from his parents the value of hard work and determination, which served him well in the long run.   As a youth he read anything he could get his hands on.  Reading a book Explaining The Atom by Selig Hecht got him hooked on science.

Educated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in physics, he later changed his major to biophysics.  He studied chemical compounds called acridines, focuses on how they affected the replication of viruses that infect bacteria.

He had many false starts and job changes over the years, eventually finding himself working in England, which is where he started on the path leading to the Nobel Prize.    His work led him back to the United States.   Working with RNA (Ribonucleic acid)  he, over a period of 20 years, discovers catalytic RNA, thus earning the Nobel Prize.

If you want to know more about this work


 
Mr. Altman remains a Canadian Citizen, though he is dual citizen with the USA.  His work with RNA continues. 
Sidney Altman, Canadian Citizen, winner of the Nobel Prize, Holder of the Letter A for this week of Blogging through the Alphabet. 

 

Feel free to link up your family friendly posts using the letter A this week. 
A Net In Time Schooling
A Net In Time Schooling

Practical Math

By 17 Comments

My son and I have … A struggle with math and I have to admit that I am not always sure what to do with it.   He’s been getting a bit weary with the struggle (as am I). 

We had picked up a math program last year that I thought would work well for him but it has proven, over time, to be far too easy for him, yet I know he has gaps in his learning (as evidenced today when, to my surprise, I learned that he doesn’t really get what fractions are)…yet he has done lots of fraction work and done it well!   So… I’m currently feeling a bit floored and flummoxed.

So anyways, the point of this post is about math.. practical math as you can see from my post title, and how needful taking a day away can be.  Susan from Homeschooling Hearts and Minds is hosting the Virtual Curriculum Fair this month and math is the focus this week.

Recently I had to bring a bunny to London, a person from Toronto was planning to come by to get the rabbit, but we live in South-western Ontario where we are prone to winter storms, so bunny needed to travel in something that would hold for a few days, if their person couldn’t make it.

ERGO enters a practical math problem.

Our issues:

  • Normal rabbit carrier is frozen solid from an unexpected leak
  • Bunny will be staying at gramma’s so tidyness is very important (measuring lower side height)
  • bunny needs sufficient room to move around for health and mental outlook (area)
  • Needs to hold food and water dishes for continuity of care (perimeter)
  • needs to open and close easily to avoid confusing gramma.

 I’d heard about rabbit carriers being made out of rubbermaid containers so thought that might be the route to go.

Canadian Tire had a sale on containers so off I set.

We came home with two containers (in case we made an oops).

 What we needed:

  • a drill with two different sized bits
  • jigsaw
  • wire for the side
  • wire cutters
  • zipties
  • rubbermaid container
  • very sharp knife
  • markers
  • straight edge

My son asked me “How is this practical math if we aren’t actually doing measuring mom?”

I said “Math is more than measuring, it’s doing estimation and lines, learning how to use a straight edge and stuff like that”.     So we used line of sight, hand measurements, estimation and approximation, and so forth.

He was happy.. he got to use a drill once I showed him how to do a quick up and down with the bit.  He learned how slippery plastic was to cut and so learned to slow down so he wouldn’t take mom’s fingers with it.

I have to admit, that even though my lad is very good with knives I didn’t allow him to do any cutting.   Cutting plastic can be temperamental and using a really sharp knife is a must.  As it was I got nicks taken out of my fingers.

First up.   Taking one piece of wire (taken from an old bird cage) and eye ball it to see what we have to cut back.  It was too wide and a touch too long.

We needed to consider having room to connect it, maintain the stability of the container, and not waste the wire we had.

Using the wire cutters with the wire was pretty easy though dad had to lend his strength to cut through the thick wires.

Cutting through the plastic had dad helping with drilling holes into the corners.  We learned quickly that regardless of what markers I used they didn’t hold well on the plastic making it difficult to see the lines, so after helping cut one line with the jigsaw and not being able to see the lines he left me to cut the rest with my sharp blade.

We needed to put two holes close together to hold the wire onto the sides.

We discussed if it was better to put the wire on the outside or inside and had differing opinions until Dad called from across the room.. put in on the inside…keep the rabbit from nibbling on the plastic.  That cemented the decision-making for us.  🙂

It proved to be a two person job to attach the wire.   Working from opposite corners we managed to get the job done.

The lad completed the job by trimming off the excess ziptie (to keep bunny from thinking…ooh.. free nibbles here!)   Yes, bunnies can be silly.

This took us about a half hour from start to finish, including installing bunny in her temporary home.

Does she look content?   Hay given, water and pellets when she gets to gramma’s.   She should do well eh?   Opens from the top as well as the sides for ease of access.  Turned out to be a good thing as gramma couldn’t figure out the side panels at all.

The bedding for those curious, is a mixed shaving and straw bedding.  Safe to use with small animals.

My math weary child was so delighted to use this project for his math work, it inspired him back to doing “regular” math… even though fractions proved more problematic than we thought they would.  🙂   go figure.   Sometimes taking a day to do practical math.. even without actual numbers .. is just what a lad needs.

This post is part of the Virtual Curriculum Fair, it’s math week .. having fun with numbers.

Please visit my fellow homeschool bloggers who are talking about
Discovering Patterns: Math and the Mathematical Sciences this week:

Finding Our Math Equilibrium: Our Plan for 11th, 7th, 5th, and 2nd Grades + Free Printables! by Susan @ Homeschooling Hearts & Minds
Math Resources and Programs for All Ages by Amanda H @ Hopkins Homeschool
Math (doesn’t) Stink! by Jennifer King @A Peace of Mind
When Math is NOT Your Thing by Michele@Family, Faith and Fridays
Math U See and All the Supplements by Laura H @ Four Little Penguins
Discovering Patterns in Our World: STEM Studies by Laura @ Day by Day in Our World
Junior High Math by Jennifer @ A Glimpse of Our Life
Science & Math for Struggling Learners by Yvie @ Gypsy Road
Maths: a subject in progress by Sarah @ Delivering Grace
Taking Mathematics out of the Textbook by Dana Hanley @ Roscommon Acre
Maths for a Very Maths-y Boy by Lizzy @ Peaches At Home
Practical Math by Annette @ A Net in Time
One of the greatest benefits of homeschooling by Kim @ Good Sweet Love
Math, How I Loathe Thee by Shecki @ Greatly Blessed
Math and Logic in Early Elementary and Preschool {virtual curriculum fair 2017} by Meghan W @ Quiet In The Chaos
Low Stress High School Science and Math by Christy @ Unexpected Homeschool
Are these toys or manipulatives? This is math? by HillaryM @ Walking Fruitfully
When You Don’t Have a Math Plan by Brittney @ Mom’s Heart
Clear Horizons by Lori H @ At Home: where life happens
A Few Thoughts on Teacher Math by Kristen @ Sunrise to Sunset

An InLinkz Link-up

This post will also be linked up on January 25 with the Canadian Homeschooler. 

Books We’ve Enjoyed Recently

By 16 Comments

 I wanted to update you on some of the books we’ve read lately.  

They’ve been a varied bunch, but I thought you might like them. 

 The Cat of Bubastes: A Tale of Ancient Egypt.   This is a GA Henty book that took us quite a while to finish.   We did it as a read-aloud, starting with it being a lunch time book and then a bed time book so we could get it done.   I found it very wordy and often summarized sections with my lad.   BUT the tale itself is well done with it becoming not only a story about Egypt but of people coming to the know the Lord and how, in time, it changed an entire people group.    Excellent story.


Here, There Be Dragons   I read this one for myself a while ago and it’s been sitting in my “put this on my blog” pile.  🙂  Good read, want to read more in the series.  It’s a typical protect the world from the bad guys type of fantasy fiction.   Good read though.   Character development, interesting scenes..

Sky Dragons: Dragonriders of Pern.  I freely admit that I love Anne McCaffrey books, and the books she writes with her son Todd… love them too.  The Dragonriders of Pern are one of my favourite fantasy books.  Dragons, danger, people, mystery, drama and they have everything.  I really hope that when my lad gets a touch older that he will love this series as much as I do.  Time will tell eh?

Anyways, SkyDragons takes us back in time to Xhinnia needing to help save Pern.  They land in an area with no caves and no safety.  Where will they nest to stay safe?   read the book and find out!

Recommended reading level… teenagers and up.   Not a lot of adult theme, but there is some.

Mystery of the Egyptian Scroll: Secret Agent Zet Series Book 1.   My son and I absolutely loved this book.   It was a quite read, held our attention, taught us alot about Egypt and her people, and was just a great mystery.  We were on pins and needles as we waited to find out how the bad people would be stopped.  Rest assured they were.   Definitely recommend reading this one.

I think this was a veritas press history book selection but I can’t remember for sure.  But go.. get it, read it.  🙂

Another one of my favourite authors is Mercedes Lackey.   The Companions of Valdemar is high on my lists of must reads.  🙂   Recently I have read Closer to the Heart (The Herald Spy Trilogy Book 2)  as well as Closer to the Chest (Valdemar: The Herald Spy).    I am currently awaiting in the release of book three of this series.. patience is sometimes hard come by…  🙂   Anyways, Mags and Amily have work to do in both of these books.   Can they help Valdemar?   We are introduced to some interesting characters in both books.  I particularly liked the addition of a special needs fellow (his name currently escapes) who is able to help out the rangers.  Can’t talk well but can do amazingly specialized weapons and works of beauty.   Bands of informants created by both Mags and Amily that work two different sections of society.   A lot of a kindness in these books despite the danger and evil that sometimes surround.   Probably why I like them so much.  🙂  

I will warn you.. if you do get hooked on the Heralds of Valdemar series… it’s huge!!!   So many lovely books to read.  🙂

Well there you have it.. I think I’ve gotten through all the book in my stake.   Need to do this more often you know?   🙂