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Springtime in Small-Town Ontario

April 12, 2021 By Annette1 2 Comments

The crew has a challenge for us this week. What are our Spring Routines? Well… honestly I don’t know. We work in the garden, go for long walks, enjoy the spring flowers… you know… springtime in small-town Ontario. Nothing too fancy for us here. As I sit here though I have to remember that not everyone lives in small-town Ontario. 🙂 So let’s talk a bit about my neck of the woods and what’s normal for us in the spring.

You’ll find the odd affiliate link in this post. Costs you nothing, helps to support this blog.

Teens Build!

I have a teen boy in the house. Every year around this time he gets antsy to build and create. He once again wants to build an air-propelled weapon. Last year he modified his old marshmallow gun to create a weapon that could propel an arrow more than 100 feet. He accidentally broke a piece on it so it no longer works ergo… the need to build a new one! He’s on the hunt to find the parts. It was rather quite impressive how far it would shoot.

Springtime in Small-Town Ontario

Going for walks in the spring… soaking in the warmth of the sun, enjoying the light after a winter of dark. I have to tell you, it’s one of my favourite things. It’s wonderful to see the geese back in the park, to see the beauty of our local dam and waterways, and even to see the white squirrels running about.

Being out in the sun is good for us. Did you know it helps us to regulate our serotonin levels? It’s UV rays help us absorb chemicals and minerals. The Vitamin D we gain from being out in the sun for even 15 minutes helps us to fight autoimmune diseases, and the exercise we get gains us a better night’s sleep. Early morning walks help to shrink fat cells which is rather cool! 🙂 Sunlight helps boost a chemical in your brain called serotonin which keeps us more balanced and happy over the course of a day. Rather good to know the benefits of being outside eh?

Since I have that teen… the spring is a great way to encourage him to get off his duff and out in the nice weather. I have to admit, it’s not a hard sell in the spring. It is probably the easiest time of the year for me to get him out and about. I’ve noticed that the more he is outside the better his eczema is too!

Running errands to the store, getting out with local friends, and just gadding about. It’s GOOD for a teen boy! I love letting him use his muscles helping me in the garden, doing yard work, or even doing spring cleaning.

If you’re looking for gardening or food production resources for your homeschool, you’ll find SchoolhouseTeachers a good place to start.

Getting Out in the Gardens

Springtime is a great way for the enterprising teen in your life to make a few dollars. Last year my son started some crabapple trees, helped me dig up extra gooseberry bush starters, and got some maple trees growing.
This spring he’s working with me to sell them. Half for me, half for him. He thinks it’s a good deal since he struggles yet with marketing. As he helps with clean up he discovers other items we can put up on the marketplace as well, like our excess feedbags from the rabbits, flower pots we’re not using this year, and more. It’s good to see him thinking about possibilities.

If you are looking to encourage the entrepreneurial skills of your teens, these books (affiliate link) might help.

Fun Games for your Family

December 3, 2020 By Annette1 3 Comments

The other day I was suffering from lack of sleep and feeling rather grumpy and decided that keeping busy was far preferable to sitting around feeling growly. Getting busy is generally the best attitude adjustment I can make. Do you ever have that?

Anyways, I decided to clean off our games shelf. I’ve been feeling a bit dissatisfied with it lately and games were starting to scatter throughout the house. I wanted to share with you some of our favourite games, perhaps they might become some of your favourites as well. Today let’s learn about fun games for your family. I’ll give amazon affiliate links if you want to look into them further.

There are all sorts of games available for us aren’t there. Card games, ball games, board games, dice games and so much more. Playing games helps us build good memories, learn new skills, learn to think logically and just have fun.

Strategy Games

I have a teenage son, and overall he likes playing games with his mom, but he prefers them to be strategy games. Games that are pure chance don’t interest him a whole lot. By FAR his most favourite games require strategy to win. Games like Everdell, Risk, Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, chess, viticulture and Blokus. He just adores figuring out the best way to play a game and is really good at figuring out the best way to combine moves. His skill surprises me sometimes. I’m even getting used to losing with grace! It’s not as easy as it sounds……

Quick Play Games

Some nights we just want a game we can play quickly. A game that doesn’t take a lot of brainpower and still makes a lad smile. These are generally card games. Uno, Saboteur, SkipBo, War, Tenzi, Wizard, and such like. Fast-paced, no full strategy, who wins depends on how the cards are played. Mind, when we play war it’s with a regular deck of cards, I was surprised to see they actually turned it into a card game.

Games that make us laugh

When we play a game in the afternoon rather than in the evening we’ll often play a game that takes a different skill set. Games like wonky, topple, jenga, frustration/trouble, and the like. These games provoke a lot of laughter! 🙂

It’s fun watching someone try so hard to balance and object, exercising so much care, and then it topples completely. It’s a good-natured fun time. Or get almost around the board and then be sent home. GAH! It’s a lot of fun isn’t it?

Extra Resources For Time Off

March 16, 2020 By Annette1 6 Comments

March Break is on deck and I don’t know about where you are, but school has been cancelled for two weeks after to act as a buffer zone. With COVID-19 running around, the government wants precautions taken to ensure any transmission is kept to minimums. To that end, I know that parents are looking for ways to keep their children busy during this extended break. I hope to be helpful by listing some extra resources that companies are offering to help during this time.

Amazing Educational Resources has put together database to help keep these companies organized.

My favourite resources from this list are

Curriki which has lessons for k-12, some of which looks fascinating.
DeltaMath which I haven’t fully explored but intrigues me.
Computer Science Academy is one that I sent to my son to explore. He’s quite interested in learning computer sciences so I’m hoping this will be something he’ll work on.
CK-12. We’ve used some of their textbooks before, it’s nice to see they have a website as well.
ChemMatters. We’ll make good use of this site in another year or two.

Other Resources Available

From Twinkl: To support your community, Twinkl is offering teachers access to all of our teaching resources at www.twinkl.ca with a completely free one-month all-access membership. We’re also extending this to every parent in your community so that students can have access to high-quality learning materials during school closures. Setting this up is easy to do. Go to www.twinkl.ca/offer and enter the following offer code: CANTWINKLHELPS (This code will only work for new memberships. Existing members should contact twinklcares@twinkl.com)

Over the past year I’ve put together a number of posts with free links in a number of subject areas.

Links from other Bloggers

Captivating Compass put together a lovely list.

Raising Royalty listed online apps and games.

Teach Me I’m Yours has 218 kindergarten resources.

Witty Hoots has a number of free resources.

The biggest thing though, with this extra time off from school. It’s Great to have extra resources to offer your children to keep them busy. The best thing though, give them you and your time. Read together, watch movies, give your house a thorough spring clean, do whatever you need to. Just make memories, spend time together, and enjoy the break from the rush of life.

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is having a sale. It’s an amazing start. A full curriculum for k-12, interactive elements, variety in courses. My affiliate link will take you to a site that will satiate the most curious of your children. Let them explore, let them learn!

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Canadian Online Homeschool Conference

January 13, 2020 By Annette1 9 Comments

Put on by Canadians, but not only for Canadians. 🙂 Welcome to the Canadian Online Homeschool Conference. 34 speakers, about 40 topics. In both French and English (not all sessions, just some). Sessions for parents, kids, youth, highschool, homeschooling, preparing for beyond college and more.

Some details for you

REGISTRATION FOR THE 2020 CANADIAN ONLINE HOMESCHOOL CONFERENCE IS OPEN!

This year, you have two options. The first is to join us for free – this will give you access to daily sessions for 24 hours (until Midnight Eastern) starting on February 5th.

The second is to grab a Complete Access Pass. It’s only $17 (until Feb 12th). You will get lifetime access to all sessions on the 5th to watch at your leisure.

Find out what sessions we have this year, see the speakers that we have lined up, and grab your spot now!

access pass for Canadian online homeschool conference

Some Sessions To Perk your interest

Homeschooling Sessions

How Can I Get My Kids To ‘KNOW’ Their Times Tables?
Gameschooling
Why Homeschooling Your Child With Unique Needs is a Good Choice

French

Découvrir les étoiles et les constellations
Apprendre en s’amusant avec les technologies

Kids and Youth

Learning About Rabbits
Start Your Own Business
Watercolour Ice Cream Cones

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For the Love of a Stink Bug

August 14, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

My son has this thing for bugs. He thinks they are such interesting little critters. Today he was researching flies since he found one that was green! He learned that the iridescent ones I am catching on the fly paper in the rabbitry are bot flies. We haven’t figured out what type of fly it is yet.

We were fascinated by a tiny spider we discovered Monday, that looked a bit like sparrow poop! It was a fascinating little spider and I tried mightily to get a video of it but just couldn’t get it to come in clearly.

Anyways, this lad has shown me his heart in the care he bestows upon these wee ones of creation. He researches and studies, he’s learned where to ask questions, and he spends so much time looking and watching and learning. He’s lately starting to gravitate toward ants and recently captured a wild carpenter ant colony. He’s checking it regularly to see if he can find the queen. If he has the queen he’ll have a long working colony.

This post isn’t about ants though! 🙂 It’s about my lad’s heart and his love of the creepy crawlies in our world.

I saw this clearly when he had discovered a stink bug in the house last fall. They don’t stay over the winter and tend to die off fairly quickly when frost hits. Occasionally they make their way into the house and we find them when we step on them (don’t do that by the way, they will live up to their name). Knowing this my son argued about the need to keep him in the house where it was warm. He didn’t bite, just a harmless fellow, so I said “sure, do what you can for him.” He found an old crate that we got some Easter bears in added popsicles sticks, bottle caps, felt and string to make a nice living area for a climbing bug.

Anyways, this green fellow intrigued my lad, so he figured out how to care for him, and built it a habitat. He fed it a variety of food – predominately apples, oranges, some pomegranate, tomatoes and lettuce. That wee stink bug kept going over most of the winter.

When finally Stink Bug bit the dust there was much sadness in our house as he was the perfect house guest. He made no fuss, and NO STINK, and ate a good variety of feed. My son loved watching him climb around in his habitat. Toward the end of his days he found ways to escape his habitat but never ventured far much to my lad’s delight. Isn’t that what we want for ALL our pets? 🙂

Interested in doing your own insect research? Discover the fascinating world of insects!

SchoolhouseTeachers.com also has a bug class. Did you know that right now if you become a member you can get two years for the price of one? I KNOW! It’s an amazing deal. School for your whole family for one low price!

My Son’s Favourite STEM Crates

January 30, 2018 By Annette1 6 Comments

My son and I have been doing KiwiCrates for a while now, and last year finally upgraded to doing the TinkerCrates. Tinker Crates are for kids 9-16. They are a bit more involved and have a fair number of projects available to them in the TinkerZine

I thought today I would talk with you about some of my lad’s favourite crates that have come to us via kiwi/tinker crates. He’s done a lot of crates so it’s a tiny bit hard to choose. 🙂 Suffice it to say, he’s had lots of opportunity to do STEM projects.

First up: DaVinci’s Clock. You know a good crate when it’s still being used long after it was made.

There’s the planetarium, which he uses to light starts up on his ceiling at night. I still remember his joy when he got it all put together.

I haven’t written about this one yet, but the lad still plays games with the Tinker Crate Arcade game. And some how unbelievably I can’t find a good picture of it to share with you! GAH!!! Sometimes.. oh sometimes I just want a different camera. 🙂 But hey… trust me.. he plays with it. It’s like the toss the ball to get it into a hole…. except he’s made all kinds of interesting rules to go along with it. 🙂

What else does he still do stuff with?

There’s the claw and the fuzzy minions. 🙂 (at least that’s what I call them). This made up a carnival type game where you have a claw and try to grab a stuffie. These fuzzy minions have been a lot of fun in our household.

The Fibre-optic Constellation he was quite pleased to have managed to figure out. It was quite complicated to build. Took him much longer than most build. You probably can’t see how the stars light up, but it looks very neat in a dark room. It’s another light he puts on while reading before bed.

Ah before I forget, I must not neglect to mention the Spy Case. This provided a lot of fun for the lad, sneaking around corners and peering into things. 🙂 And how doesn’t like writing in invisible ink?

Anyways, Tinker Crates have been a boon to our household, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this peak into some of the favourites of my lad.

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Don’t forget! SchoolhouseTeachers.com is on sale! WOOT WOOT!!! more than 350 courses, covering grades k-12, Good for the whole family. Classes to entertain, to educate, to inspire, and you get World Book online, and planners and you know.. I can’t list it all. Seriously.. CHECK IT OUT! If you need to know more reasons check out this post. Use the codes, get an excellent deal. Maintain this low fee status whenever you renew.

NotebookingPages is On Sale!!!

January 24, 2018 By Annette1 2 Comments

Guess what starts today?!?!?! From January 24 through to January 26, NotebookingPages is on sale! WOOT WOOT!!!!

Oh…you don’t know what notebookingpages.com is?
Well if you want you can read my review of them.

But seriously, notebookingpages.com is a fantastic resource for finding and making and using notebooking pages. Pages to help your children learn memory verses, or show what they know on a given topic. They are constantly making new pages, and many of their pages can be used.

Here’s a sample of just some of their pages. They have topics for little kids, and bigger kids. Science, history, geography, art, bible, character, and well…just about anything you can think of. They have blank sheets for when you just NEED something. It’s seriously a great resource… and you really should avail yourself of the opportunity to get their lifetime membership now. Take advantage of the sale eh?

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Springtime in Small-Town Ontario

Teens Build!

Springtime in Small-Town Ontario

Getting Out in the Gardens

Fun Games for your Family

Strategy Games

Quick Play Games

Games that make us laugh

Other Games Related Posts