A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

English

Independence at Work

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 This has over all been a pretty good week for us schooling.  It had it’s ups and down with health issues and hubby needed to work through a disappointment.   We had a funeral at the end of the week for a dearly loved member of our former church.   With a new schedule made for his schooling it has furthered the lad’s independence. 
 
Monday
Introduced chore chart and new schedule.
Started learning about Saturn and how it is the only planet that would float, it is gaseous, has storms, Galileo thought the rings looked like handles because of the poor quality of his telescope.
Weekly visit to Gramma
Hubby and I had a lovely walk on this warmish winter day in the park…we caught some pokemon and just enjoyed the quiet of the park together.
I sold a rabbit who didn’t seem to be able to have babies, she’s gone to the kind of home I wanted for her.  A rabbit experienced home.  Their first rabbit is dying and they wanted to have a new bun to love on when their first passed away.  BrightSparrow should be a good girlie for them.

Tuesday
Big job today!   The lad is going to cook his first meal for the family!!!

POUTINE!!!  The lad wants to try poutine for the first time ever and it’s an easy meal for a lad to make so off we went.  We bought the poutine gravy, fries and cheese curds.

Wednesday
Foodbank this morning.
The lad wrote his first ever research paper… did it on the blog, also learned how to embed video, copy and paste from a website and is learning about citing sources.   Writing in his own words yet…that is still to come…though he’s starting.  🙂
Started our human body experiment.  Have to admit, I don’t have high hopes for this working well….

 

Struggle to do multipliers and division in word problems apparent.
Played Sabateur as a family.

Thursday
Oh.. what did we do today?   I finished  cleaning up the book room.
The lad did his normal schooling… got done 20 minutes early.
The lad wrote a letter for his Waodani assignment today. He was supposed to write for 15 minutes but liked his assignment so much he kept going til it was done.  This is a review product from Home School Adventure Co., you’ll need to stay tuned for a review.
Worked on making his helmet better for his Knight’s outfit.

Started to learn how to play the “game of life”.

We’ve been learning about Canada’s woodlands and seaways this week, today it was the St. Lawrence Seaway.   Did you know it would take 8 days of sailing to cover it all?

Friday
Funeral today with a luncheon.
I had planned to do a Rocket Experiment and testing his improvement of his story grammar, but that didn’t happen.  He did do his veritas history and bible and got his reading done.
 
Saturday
Karate and board games along with a movie day.   Just a nice day together.

 Reviews
 Art Series: One Last Word.   A great book based on Harlem renaissance.  Poetry, Art.
 Silver Soldiers.   Christian comic book
 

Faith and Life
 Showers of Blessing.  Devotion on Ezekiel 34:25-31
 Thoughts on Being … Safe.   Word prompt post. A poem.
 The Lord Seeks his own.   Devotion on Ezekiel 34:11-24
The Prayer Saturated family, a book study, chapter one. 
 Should Shepherds not feed the sheep?   Devotion on Ezekiel 34:1-10
 Recipe: Seasoned Teriyaki Chicken.
 Come and Hear.   Devotion on Ezekiel 33:21-33
 
Homeschooling
 The Building of DaVinci’s Clock.
 The Raven.   The Lad’s first written report ever.  Much learned, much to learn yet.
 D is Dogsledding in Canada.   Blogging alphabet series.
 Hymn Study: For the Beauty of the Earth.  

  Linking up at the following Places:
 
Homeschool Highlights.
Family Friday Link Ups:
Weird Unsocialized homeschoolers: Weekly Wraps Up.
Homeschool blog and tell.

Working through our Smart Books

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Do you have things that you like your children to do everyday?   Most homeschool families that I know have regular things they have their children commit to do on a daily basis with their schooling, some don’t but many do.

For me it’s ‘do your chores’ and do your dailies.   What are dailies you ask?   Dailies in our house consist of “do your smarts, your reading, math and Veritas Press materials”.   These are done every day except for Fridays when we change things up.

I was talking with a mom the other day and she asked “What are those smarts you talk about?”

I like these smart books.  ESPECIALLY these made in Canada ones.  Just love them.

  • They keep my lad practicing skills daily especially his math and English.
  • They keep him humbled as sometimes he runs into things that he doesn’t know and therefore has to ask questions.
  • They provide Canada content and context for him.  So instead of learning about some American figure in the States, he’ll read about Wayne Gretzky and the Canadian Hockey hall of fame, or about Banting and his medical research right here in London and so forth.
  • Since they cover the expected Canadian Curriculum I don’t have to wonder if I am missing something that he’s expected to know.
  • There is sufficient practice of new skills.  With ample room to write the answers. 
  • They are short enough that my son has no issues completing them daily.

Most of the books, like the English and Science are workbooks that my lad works through one day at a time.   Clear easy to do pages with pictures that add to the lesson rather than detract.

My son likes this ScienceSmart book, he occasionally he complains that
1. they are too easy – after all he has mastered some concepts already, or

2. they aren’t done right.

For instance, today he was doing the food web, and instead of having the arrows go from the predator down to the prey, they reversed the arrows which goes against what he’s learned about the food web previously.    I actually don’t mind them doing this as it shows how different people can have a different perspective on how the food web works (or any concept for that matter).  It’s a good way for him to think things through and figure out why he agrees or disagrees with something.

Other times I’ll hear a “MOM!   Did you know ______________” sometimes followed by.. can you show me more about that on YouTube?   And so we look it up.  Lately though I find he’s looking more things up independently on YouTube.  Which is good for his independent learning, but not good for my learning something with him.  🙂

Here’s one we watched:

When we started the Grade 6 English Smart book my son noticed they expected more reading of him this year.   I can’t say he was a huge fan of that aspect, but as the year goes on I find that what he is learning comes through in what he talks about, and he’s learning a great deal about Canada.

The Math Smart Guide book is quite different from the other two dailies of English and Science.
It comes with a Parent Guide along with a Student Work Book.

Now these two books are rather neat.   Each of the 11 sections is colour coded, and they match those sections up between the student and teacher work books.

They are easy to teach lessons, with plenty of practice for the student in the workbook.   The teachers guide is 72 pages, the workbook 168.    They are meant to go together, though my son admit that he would like the teaching to be part of the student workbook.  Having it separate makes him feel obligated to come to me to teaching, when in reality, the lessons are clear enough, that if I am busy he doesn’t NEED to come to me for help.     I can see the purpose in having it separate, but can see my son’s point of view as well.  “Just let me learn mom!!!”

For the purpose of the review I received these three books for free, you can learn more about that them through Popular books.   The MathSmart Guides are only available at Scholar’s Choice.
 Math Smart Guide.
Complete ScienceSmart.

All the other smart books we get, we like.  They give an great over view of the curriculum students are supposed to cover in grade six.   They are fully Canadian and I love that my lad is learning about Canada in a world so heavily influenced by American curricula companies.

We use also use: Complete English Smart 6 and Complete Math Smart 6 also published by Popular books.

Amazon links can be found below.  These are affiliate links, which only serve to bless my family.
Complete MathSmart 6 (Revised & Updated): Comp MathSmart 6)
Complete EnglishSmart 6 (Revised & Updated): Comp EnglishSmart 6)

Complete ScienceSmart 6

Final Verdict…should you use the smart books in your home?  
Yes, if you like having children have easy to access learn and practice skills books.  
Yes, if you want your children to start working independently.
Yes, if you want to help your children master particular skills they may be struggling with.

Smart books work in this household, they just might work in yours as well.  🙂

The library and more

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Today overall was a good homeschool day.
we did a lot of reading today, and played ‘rats’ and went to the library to do some book work.

After doing morning devotions we started off our day playing rats upstairs.  Today the rats (who somehow became mice overnight) were GOOD mice and had to learn to ask for things and to trade for what they wanted.  🙂  they wanted a soft bed made of paper and to be able to play drawing games so they traded back all the things they took without asking (because mice see something and it Immediately belongs to them).  and so they became better mice.

We then moved on to reading about black-tailed prairie dogs in the Ultimate Guide to wildlife in North America. 

Mommy?   Why are they called dogs?  shouldn’t they be called gophers?
and the very next sentence I read said that they barked and that’s why they are called prairie dogs.   Interesting that.  🙂   I like having an observant boy child.

Then off to read from “the Lamb”. Today we did chapter seven.   Both of us are enjoying this book but we find the questions very simple.

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


T
This sticker book has it’s focus more on the life of a pirate, what the ship was like.   The lad wanted to do  two pages again today, but we were at the library, the weather was looking very grey and I had bunnies on the lawn and was feeling nervous about that.  So ended up only doing one.


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’s lesson was on where Jesus lived.

While at the library we did some bookwork.
But first we returned some books.  it was a bit nerve-wracking because I knew we had 27 books out, but I counted 26 and simply couldn’t find the last one.   It was like ACK!!!  I don’t want to pay for this book!!!   but somehow between home and the library it showed up in the library bag.
 

Spiders on the case Lasky, Kathryn. – this book we are still reading.
Diary of a spider Cronin, Doreen. the lad LOVED this book 
Spiders of North America Squire, Ann. factual, interesting book
Minerals Miller-Schroeder, Patricia. didn’t actually get to this one
Tell me about the world. — we like this book , we renewed it as we’re still going through it
Math for fun projects King, Andrew,
1961- ditto on this.  
Science and technology Winnick, Nick. never got to this book.
A million dots Clements, Andrew, 1949- Can we get this again mommy!?!?   Sure lad.
Life cycle of a spider Fridell, Ron. factual book, helpful  
The life cycle of a spider Kalman,
Bobbie, 1947- ditto 
Daddylonglegs Anderson, Catherine,
1974- NOT accurate.  Daddy longlegs are NOT spiders, though they are somewhat related.
The garden spider / Jan Ethelberg
Ethelberg, Jan. factual, interesting  
Spiders Gibbons, Gail. it was okay, not great 
Black widow spider Harris, Monica,
1964- this one intrigued the lad
Tarantula Harris, Monica, 1964- never actually looked at this one
The magic school bus spins a web : a
book about spiders West, Tracey, 1965- a hit this one 
The last loon Upjohn, Rebecca, 1962- took it out, never really got to it 
The Snow Blew Inn Regan, Dian Curtis. good story book
The long white scarf Trottier, Maxine. semi-historical, it was interesting.  the boy thought it great how the girl got her scarf back
My cat, the silliest cat in the world
Bachelet, Gilles. What a HOOT!   Get this book, laugh with your child.
Dolphins on the sand Arnosky, Jim.  We liked this one, the little dolphin was a tease at the end of it. 
A winter walk Barasch, Lynne. Just a simple book.  
Big bear hug Oldland, Nicholas, 1972- MOMMY!  YOU CAN”T BRING IT BACK!!!  (complete with tears)…but buddy.. we can get it out again.. Oh, okay then.
Madeline and the cats of Rome Marciano,
John Bemelmans. Enjoyed this book.  
A bumblebee sweater Waterton, Betty,
1923- Caused smiles to appear on the face of one six year old boy.  Surprised me as I thought it more a girl book, but he liked it.
The sabre-toothed tiger Solomon, Evan,
1968- Liked it the first two times we read it, but didn’t ask for it again. 
Time to get out Testa, Fulvio. – This book was just so so.  Got one thumb up and one thumb very down.
We did book work in: 

First grade fundamentals: we focused on reading stories and answering questions.
 

Numbers and counting: Practiced greater than and less than. 
 

Daily Smart:  he continued to practice putting word puzzles into equation form.  Learned today that sometimes you can’t just write the numbers in as you see them.  That was tricky!


We have learned that we thoroughly enjoy going to the library to do our book work.
it means we have to focus.   We have to be quiet.  We can’t argue about what we get to work on.  AND if if a certain young lad is good and smart he can earn extra stickers for thinking of new things he can work on with his mommy.  🙂  Always a good thing that!

Back to Homeschooling

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“but mommy! I want to play in the snow first! Do we have to homeschool first???”
Me: Yes.
“BUT I DON”T WANT TO!”

So.. we talked and worked things out. I told him how we’re doing things different this year. That mommy is writing out a schedule of what we are doing and we’ll work from the list. When the list is done.. homeschool is done for the day.

We read from our world history book and story book over breakfast

10 minute stories

He liked the story at breakfast and thought it funny how the dad didn’t get what he wanted because the fish helped the girl.

World History

Over the holidays we got into the history of vikings. He’s really enjoying learning about them.

and then I fascinated him with this.

Always good to intrigue a child. 🙂 Found using homeschool freebie of the day.

Then off to do reflex math. I like how they emphasize speed in proficiency and they have excellent customer service. The lad is finding it difficult to maintain the required focus though and there are times when I want to make it easier for him, but that’s just the mommy rescuer part of me. He got up to 8620 feet today…not a bad score. he quit because bathroom breaks were required. 🙂 He got back into it and did better this time round. He did a variety of games and its good to see how he is improving in his math skills. 🙂 He likes ninja stars, balloon race and the egyptian conniption.

We were going to do some exercises from the super science book but we reworked those plans. One lad was PROFOUNDLY disappointed at the thought of doing science and art together. he wanted to do some hands on science. So I wracked my brain trying to figure something out that we’ve studied recently and came up on gems digging kit I got a while back. So we dug up gems. There were supposed to be 8 in the kit.. we got about 13 stones/gems all told. We talked about gems and how they are made, but mostly we dug stones up and had a good time talking and working together.



Sight words: yes, you, are, please. it was quite pleasing to me to see him sounding out the word please. He studied it and worked it out. he did the same for “are”. Very neat!

We did lesson seven out of First Language Lessons, Levels 1&2

We learned about common nouns and proper nouns. 🙂

Word of the day “abandon”. Sentence he came up with “the jail in fable was abandoned once the guards are beaten.”

We did listening skills Pg 3. he had to pay close attention to where each of the drivers had to go to get the answers correct.

The Complete book of Numbers and Counting, pp 164-165.

A dot to dot 1-50 and learning the place values of 50-59. Once he figured out the code for doing place values he said “mommy, this is easy!”.

Our animal of the day was the ermine.
in case you want to know about the picture. Ermines eat insects in some areas of the world. The lad “This brown ermine is hunting in the summer time. He is sneaking up on a centipede who is going home to his family. Then the ermine will gobble all of them up.”

I asked him if he liked working from a list.
the answer was a resounding YES! So a list we’ll continue to do. 🙂

This week

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Has gone somewhat differently than expected BUT… we’ve done some good homeschooling.

Each day we read from

10 minute stories

World History

And we’ve added some new routines.

Scripture memory. This week John 14:6

And we read from First Language Lessons, Levels 1&2

though this cover looks different than mine. 🙂 It’s been good to add a bit more routine.

We continue to work on phonics by going through the alphabet.

We also do Studyladder at least twice a week…Did I tell you that I won a year’s subscription to it courtesy of The Old Schoolhouse.. they were doing giveaways during their birthday bash and I lucked out! 🙂 Pretty cool eh? Today the lad did some art, math, English, and some French. (he was totally unimpressed doing the French).

And the lad continues to thoroughly enjoy doing ReflexMath.

Otherwise what have we filled our time with?

Monday is Gymnastics.

Tuesdays the lad goes swimming with our HOPE group. It’s a lot of fun. We do stuff in the morning at home, mostly just our standard fair, plus reflexmath and chores.

On Wednesday he does book work with his dad since I attend bible study Wednesday mornings. This week he did Three pages in each book.

My heavenly Helper

The Complete book of Numbers and Counting

Complete Canadian Curriculum 1

My Book of Numbers 1-120.

When I got home I said Come on buddy, let’s get out of the house (it was such a lovely day) so we headed off to the dam to collect leaves and do some tree rubbings. We used chalk and hair spray to stabilize the chalk. Collected samples and once we did five trees we went bug hunting. When you are six.. bug hunting is important. We brought home one spider, one black bug, and one leaf with a nest on it. We talked about birch trees and how the wood was once used for writing on.

Then off to the dentist where we received the news that due to some odd fluke one of the lad’s teeth had no roots to it, which led to a lad going back to the dentist today to get that tooth removed and infection out. The lad was super scared but the dentist was marvellous with him and talked him through everything. So today we mostly played lego this afternoon and watched a video on rehabilitating orangutangs. It was quite interesting.

Anyways, we needed to do some problem solving for Wednesday night as I needed to be out of town, hubby had a meeting and the lad had kid’s club which he definitively did NOT want to miss. We managed to find an acquaintance that he would accept picking him up and taking him to his dad’s meeting and then I picked him up at the meeting when I got back. Meant a late night for one six year old but everything worked out well for all concerned.

We’ve read books, listened to books, talked and laughed and kept busy. Thus far a good week.

Tomorrow is Friday and we are shopping in the a.m. with family, having lunch out, and then heading to the London Children’s Museum for the afternoon.

Tuesday – book work today

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Since we are going out this afternoon, we decided to do some book work this morning.
I asked the lad to pick a number between 3 and 8 and that’s how many pages we would do in each book. He waffled between 4 and 5 and settled on four. 🙂

These are the books that we did

Capital and lowercase letters.

After this book we read two poems, one of those poems mentioned wind and weather maps which we want to look up sometime.

Letter Play

After this book we read a story.

Number Fun

We read a poem called “wagons west”. It was a fairly long poem, and lad asked questions which I always like.

Then we did Fisher Price, preschool book, I can learn. This book had number and letter sound concepts in it. He had a great deal of fun teaching one of his baby(correction little child) stuffies about matching and letter sounds. On one page he made up stories about why different stuffies didn’t like different shapes.

Then we read a poem about Indian children. Can’t say it went over very well. 🙂

The complete book of numbers and counting

Once again doing this book the stuffies played an important role in helping him count and to teach. We had a lot of fun using his stuffies to reinforce learning. 🙂

We followed this book by reading the Little Red Hen where the lad helped read the “not I” and the “I will” parts. by the end of the story he was also filling in the animal parts.

My Heavenly Helper, k-2

This book has lots of dot to dots in it. It’s interesting seeing him learning well his letters and numbers even though I don’t focus on this information a lot in our schooling. But through reading and copywork he’s doing good at picking it up. After this book we read a story about a tiger called “Kattor”. He was a rather silly young tiger who had to learn a lot growing up.

This afternoon we need to take dad to the eye doctor so we’re going to go see a movie called “African Cats”.
African Cat
Documentary

An epic true story set against the backdrop of one of the wildest places on Earth, “African Cats” captures the real-life love, humor and determination of the majestic kings of the savanna. The story features Mara, an endearing lion cub who strives to grow up with her mother’s strength, spirit and wisdom; Sita, a fearless cheetah and single mother of five mischievous newborns; and Fang, a proud leader of the pride who must defend his family from a once banished lion. Disneynature brings “The Lion King” to life on the big screen in this True Life Adventure directed by Keith Scholey and Alastair Fothergill (“Earth”). An awe-inspiring adventure blending family bonds with the power and cunning of the wild, “African Cats” leaps into theatres on Earth Day, April 22, 2011.

Director: Alastair Fothergill, Keith Scholey

Here’s the official site.

Sites I would like to look at again

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Story Sites

The Story Home.

Here you will find original and classic children’s audio stories. Every other week, The Story Home will offer a brand new story read to you by a very special storyteller named Alan, for FREE!

Kids Audio

We have over 200 audio stories in MP3 format for you to download and enjoy with your family and friends

Why not try our Reading Books? Or if you enjoy Colouring, choose from the Colouring Books section

teaching sites

Illuminations

I got the above site through Teach-nology.

Family Life

Families with purpose.

From the joyful celebrations of family nights to the wild and wacky fun of science experiments, our family fun section offers a host of great ideas for every family.