A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

Art

Reading, copywork and fun

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Today overall was a good homeschool day.
we did a lot of reading today, and some art, and played ‘rats’.

After doing morning devotions we started off our day reading about muskrats in the Ultimate Guide to wildlife in North America. 
the lad was quite surprised that they are more closely related to lemmings (one of his favourite creatures) than they are to beavers.

Then off to read from “the Lamb”. Today we did chapter six.

Then we read from our world history book.   We are learning about pirates. 


Today it was about the corsairs who were pirates of the Mediterranean Seas, and they mostly wanted to capture people to be slaves or to sell for ransom.

The lad had fun when we finished our knights section in doing a sticker book on them, so he asked if I could pretty please find a sticker book on Pirates.   I said I’d look around and see what I could come up with and voila!   two sticker books.   They have a different focus so it seemed right to do so.

this first one is from the same series as the knights one.  Dress the pirates.  See the differences in their outfits from area and time.    We’ll do one or two pages at a time in this book as we learn about different pirates.


This second one has it’s focus more on the life of a pirate, what the ship was like.   We did two pages in this book…getting ready to sail and life aboard the ship.   This is where the lad learned about rats that live on the ships.. and hence the game of rats we played later. 🙂


We have started to go through this book called “the big book of questions and answers about Jesus.”
I expect we’ll do one page at a time.
Each question is laid out over two pages.  It starts with reading material and introduces the topic and then has activities for the child to do.
Today we learned that Jesus’ name means “the Lord Saves” and it is similar to the name Joshua.   We talked about how Joshua was used of the Lord to save the people, and so Jesus saved the people of God from their sin.   One of the activities asked of us was to read through Exodus 3 and draw a picture of what we read there.   This fit in well with what I had hoped to accomplish today.. that of reading and then drawing a picture of what we got in our minds from it.   So we killed two birds with one stone. 🙂

the picture the lad came up with
 and what I did.  

It was interesting doing this with the lad.. I was going to put smoke above my burning bush but the lad said “but mommy, the bush didn’t burn…and if it didn’t burn there won’t be smoke!”   and it was like.. duh.. you’re right buddy.. there certainly wouldn’t be smoke!  (never EVER thought about that before).  AND I was just about to put boots on my Moses but the lad reminded me that God said TAKE OFF your shoes.   So, once again, the lad reminded me of important details.  🙂   Always good to have that.

I wanted to do some copy work of “I am who I am” but the lad was typical for a Tuesday.. reluctant to do what didn’t really interest him at all.. so I said okay.. what would you like to do for copywork?   “the names of the people I know from Seaquest”.   Okay I can do that.   He named name, I wrote them and we agreed that he’d put the 10 names into alphabetical order.  Since he often does copywork better if I make myself scarce I went to check on the laundry.   I came upstairs to find him in tears and all upset.

Why?  because there is no “E” name and needs for there to be a “e” name.   I don’t get this.

A tear-filled discussion followed…with the end result being that he decided he’d write out each name three times and NOT put them in alphabetical order and he would NOT get a sticker for doing so.  

We normally play a board game of some sort and we alternate who gets to pick the game.  Today we played Topple.   My sister gave this to the lad last year at Christmas I think.  We pull it out to play.

After lunch we played rats.   “cause every pirate needs to watch out for rats nibbling at your toes and stealing your stuff.  AND THEN every pirate knows you have to teach those rats to behave themselves!  🙂   It was good fun for an hour.

Cleaned the bathroom.  Not great…but better.  Toilets and countertops and tub ledges only.  The lad cleaned out all the recyclables.  AND hubby oh.. my dear hubby hung up my birthday present from last year.. a looped shower curtain hanger.  we have more room in the tub (or at least the feeling of more room!).  WOOT WOOT!

Out for a walk around the block.  Home for supper and caring for the bunnies, bedtime reading and whatnot.

A good day overall.  Better than many Tuesdays.  🙂

Reading, Writing and Drawing.

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Today we did chapter four in “the Lamb”.  I love the pictures in the book and the lad likes answering the questions at the end of each chapter.  They are simple.  It’s a good book thus far.
Also finished off our section on Knights And castles in our world history book.    Today we learned about how the knights divided up into orders and how other countries had knights as well.   Next up will be pirates.


Then we learned about the masked shew in The ultimate guide to North American Wildlife.

This was followed by going out for a walk in the field behind the church and picking up golf balls.  The lad will keep some and others he will sell at my annual yardsale.

We did some guided drawing using pastels.   Homeschool freebie of the day had a link to Pastels today.    Here is the lad’s first ever  drawing done using pastel’s.   It was a bit of challenge for him, he likes to draw using heavy lines but with pastels sometimes you need to use a lighter hand.  🙂   Did not half bad with the sun I thought, and a good effort with Darwin the dolphin.  🙂

In the mid-afternoon we decided to organize all this junk stuff.   That’s what hubby calls it.  You know all the toilet paper rolls, empty containers, styrofoam trays that people keep in order to have craft supplies for ones children?   Well we got it organized and out of the basement and main floor of the house.  This of course inspired the lad to do some more boat building.

Today’s Homeschooling

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 The lad and I have been working through various safety issues.

We’ve done fire safety, chemical safety, kitchen safety, and something else.  Today we’re doing animal safety.  We talked about safety around dogs, cats, wild animals.   The lad asked about “poisonous spiders and Poisonous snakes”.   So we talked about the rattlesnake which is the only poisonous snake in Ontario and how to be safe around them.  We did a variety of puzzles, learned the words yes/no, and counted.

I’m also starting to go through our bible materials box and today we have “the golden rule”.
I printed out this copywork sheet.    And went through a variety of pictures and we talked about what you should do in a given situation.  Sharing, caring, helping, and such like.   We’ll pick a package at least once a week and work on it.  🙂

We did a language lesson from First language lessons.   We learned about fables, and took the opportunity to do some art at the same time. 🙂   Drawing pictures of lions and mice and answering questions about how the story went.   It was interesting how this story tied in with learning about the golden rule.

we took the time to look up in 123 Draw how to draw a lion.  It was decided that mommy would learn to draw a lion and the lad would draw out the story (see above) complete with a few embellishments. 🙂  The hunters of course had to figure out HOW to net the lion and it was fairly complicated but they managed it.

 

Time for fun with smarties. 🙂  these are a favourite chocolate confection.

 

This was followed by playing chess with smarties.

 

We did a number of things with smarties first though.  We learned about consumer packaging.  How they can’t put less in the box than they say.. we learned that our smartie box calls for 50 g but we had 55 g.  So we practiced doing less than and greater than signs, we counted out how many of each colour there was and did less than/greater than signs.  Then played checkers.  it was a good thing that we have enough of two colours to play it well.  The lad beat me.

count by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. that was the theme of the day in our numbers and counting book.


I did something different for our animal of the day.  I pulled out my temperate zone books and gave the lad a choice.  He chose deserts.  And of the animal pages in the book he was intrigued by the fringe-toed sand lizard.  We looked it up and found them to be quite an interesting little animal.  They can swim in sand like a fish does in water!  Complete with nostrils that seal and jaws that can clamp shut to keep the sand out.   Quite fascinating the creatures that God creates.

Well.. I was going to show you a foot, but apparently it’s a copyright violation to show it to you.  So I’d suggest you go check out this site and check it out for yourself.  🙂  They have these are special scales that help the lizard move in the sand.

We had a hoot playing checkers using goldfish crackers.
We play modified checkers in that we have no forced jump and we only jump once, even if we can jump two or three times.  This makes it easier for the lad to grasp for some reason.  Over time we’ll start playing by the rules, but for now this is easier, and yet harder.  🙂  I was the smiling goldfish, he was the no smile ones.

When we finished with our bookwork the lad asked if I could hook him up with some thinking computer games, and I said most certainly. Not sure yet where I’ll put him but I’ll find something for him to play online. Cheers! 🙂

We had fun getting trounced at Playing History.   We played  a battle in England between the Vikings and the English and well.. as is true to life, we got trounced. 🙂   and then he did some logic games over at CoolMath4Kids.

Illness prevents talking so…

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homeschooling was put on hold for a bit.

I’ve been ill for the past 3-4 days with a sore throat, fever, coughing, and more.   NOT complaining, just explaining why homeschooling has been back burned a bit.  The lad was “off” yesterday morning as well but went out of the house to play at gramma’s for a bit.  Came back a cheerful lad.   Good for him to get out of the house for a bit I think.

Anyways, was thinking I feel somewhat less muddle-headed this morning so that I should do something schooling related so we played lego and listened to Adventures in Odyssey.   Later we will do some exploring of different websites – Clickschooling sends me almost daily emails so we’ll go through them and see what we can learn and explore from those.  🙂    I’ll link here what we go and look at and hopefully say what we thought about them.  🙂

we went to the national art gallery and the lad made this

It took some trial and error, but he learned abit about making a still life.   In this pic the monarchs flew in the window (behind the candle holder) and they are eating all the fruit that’s hidden behind them.    Rather a neat idea I think for a six year old.    We then had fun playing around with the 3D twirler.   Then we went to the jungle art page where he created this masterpiece.  I tried hard to save the image but couldn’t for the life of me figure that one out.  So.. anyways, then I totally petered out of energy and had a nice lay down.     I do dislike being ill.

I was awoken from a lovely nap by an apologizing boy child and found him making some physical art.  I’ll need to upload a picture for your enjoyment. 🙂



Friends and homeschool

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Today we plan to go visit a friend and just have some play time/learning time and what not. 🙂

But the youngest needs to see the doctor so we are waiting for them to return.

In the meantime we went over to simple schooling which is doing 12 days of giveaways right now. WOOT WOOT! they have a study on Penguins! We didn’t get all the way through it, but what we got through was quite interesting. hopefully we’ll return to it early next week. 🙂

We did our normal reading.

10 minute stories

He really liked today’s story. It was well written and inspired thought and brought a smile to his face.

World History

We are into Roman history now. We continue to learn about gladiators.

he played fable with dad for a while as a reward for doing good work. 🙂

Then some playtime for a bit while I set up studyladder for him. I had planned that we would do some science, english and math. But we ended up doing a craft instead and learned where quality in what you get makes a difference. NOT all crayons are created equal. I need to post pics yet.

then off to his friends house. 🙂 helped his mom out with a couple things, sat and chatted. It was a good visit. 🙂 The lad had a whole lot of fun playing games and just being a lad with a friend. Good stuff.

Today we….

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We started off with our normal daily readings out of

10 minute stories

The lad didn’t appear to be impressed… was off playing and chatting while he listened. Some stories keep him glued to the chair.

World History

We are into Roman history now. It’s just fascinating reading tidbits about ancient history. Today we learned what good builders and architects they were.

Then we went with reflexmath. The lad enjoys this program.

Then upstairs to do a snowman search and find. This gives us a chance to talk and read a page in a large floor puzzle book. We talk about different ways to hold a pencil crayon to get different effects, and the lad has fun searching out the hidden objects.

A fellow homeschooler over at Learning To Homeschool gave me this idea. To have a daily word to learn. I asked her how she came up with them and she said just words they come across as they read or talk. Since that’s too “iffy” for me I decided to use this

Children’s Illustrated Dictionary.

Today’s word was Abacus: a frame with beads that slide along wires, used for counting.

I read another chapter out of First Language Lessons, Levels 1&2

We read a few poems out of a book until we found one that made us both think of a picture in our heads, so we drew. This also gave us an opportunity to talk about the different ways one can hold a drawing implement in order to achieve different effects.

I’ll try to post pics of what we did later today.

now off to swimming lessons, and then the library afterwards if it’s still open upon our return. 🙂