A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

field trips

Cactus and A Play

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 It’s been a pretty good week with some up and downs…. but when I reflect back.. mostly up!   AND THAT is a very good thing.  🙂

Monday: 
Started out like a typical day though everyone was act
ing tired and math was a frustration, and then English grammar was a frustration and… well let’s just say that we tossed English out the window and planned things out a bit differently to make the rest of the day a success.    We ran out to Gramma’s where the lad finished his schooling and then indulged his latest love.. CACTI!!!

Check out what he picked up with Gramma: 

If you see that little red nub on the side of the cactus…he’s already trying to graft it on to another cactus.  He’s been reading, researching and sussing out all the things he wants to try with his cacti and apparently next week we are going to go cacti hunting in Kitchener.  🙂

I have to admit… I love hearing his enthusiasm for his cacti… it gives one a break from minecraft and pokemon talk I must say.  🙂

Tuesday:
A stay at home day… we had plans to go out Wednesday to a play so stayed home to get some work done at home.   One of the things we worked on was our Art Achieve Lesson.  We are working on making a totem pole.   You’ll have to wait for the review though… coming up in a couple of weeks.

The lad also worked on his Digital Savvy course (also a review coming up).   

OH!!!   And we made a brain!  I know that sounds weird, but the lad and I have been learning about the central nervous system and I thought it would be good to make a plasticine model of the brain and then we’d label it another day.

I can’t say today was the easiest day… I actually disappeared for a needed few hours in afternoon to take a break from the angst of the morning.  We did some good things together, but it took working through angst to get there.  🙂   I managed to power through three reviews though, had a couple of conversations with friends, and got my mind back in order again.   Good to do that eh?

Wednesday we did minimal schooling.. writing a story, working on math, Canada history and Veritas Press lessons… then off to London.   We went to see the Musical “Little Women”.  I enjoyed myself!

Thursday:
A good day today.   Working through schooling, having fun relaxing in the afternoon, and at night…the success of Bridge Busting night at Cadets!  The lad came in first for best looking bridge, and came in fourth of the boys for bridge weight holding.  His bridge held 150 lbs.

Friday: 
We had co-op in the morning with lots of YAY!!   The children like the class I am teaching, and woot woot.. they love how Hubby is teaching gym.   AND I brought a bunch of books down with me and ended up selling some of it.  Would have loved to have sold more but hey.. a wee bit here and there .. it all works eh?  I’ll slowly winnow it down.  

I came home completely tired so I napped off and on in the afternoon sitting in my comfy chair.  So here it is 1030 and I’m feeling tiredly awake.  🙂   

Saturday:
I’m supposed to go to a rabbit club meeting but currently am feeling like I don’t wanna go.   We’ll see what happens in the morning. 

Reviews: 
God’s Easter Miracles.  Miracles about Easter, a picture book.
Shepherd, Potter, Spy–And Star Namer.  Biblical history in creative story telling

Homeschooling and everything else:  
Art Book Series: 1-2-3 Draw: 5 in 1 how to draw books. 
Sacred Moments:  Prayer as a unit is a good thing to plan.
Tuna Noodle Salad: A recipe. 🙂
The Temple’s Chambers: Devotion Ezekiel 42
God will dwell in Their Midst Forever: Devotion on Ezekiel 43:1-12
God Alone is enough: word prompt post
Books Read in March.  Word prompt. book list

Loonies and Toonies, an alphabet blogging post.

Linking up at the following places:

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Field Trip: Bird Kingdom

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On January 5, the lads and I took in the Bird Kingdom.   I managed to find a fantastic deal through groupon plus had an additional 10$ off coupon which…. WOOT WOOT  saved us the price of parking (which by the by.. tad expensive).

BUT the Bird Kingdom was a lovely place to visit and I am so glad we were able to go.

The Bird Kingdom is divided into different sections. Each area with it’s own speciality.

The first area was devoted to the daredevils of the Niagara Falls.   We had fun posing in a barrel.

We had a chance to read various exploits, and learned about one lady who went over the falls in a barrel with her pet toy dog.   The dog survived, the lady sadly did not.

The reptile area.

My son was able to have a bird sit on his arm.  A nice big parrot.   We weren’t allowed to take pictures of him with the bird.  It was a money grab, but what the lad wanted was to hold the bird and he could.  He said it was neat!

The finch room (or at least what I call the finch room… better name probably the small bird room)….oh my… the fun we had watching the finches!   They move so fast and they made us laugh.

We moved from here past the talking bird (none of the pictures good enough to show).
Through the noctural area.

Off this took us to the main aviary… WOW… the birds we saw.  It was rather interesting to see.  The room was divided into multiple levels, starting us at the top so we could work our way down.  Feeding stations were placed throughout the room.   It was great to just take one’s time and slowly walk through, checking for hidden spots where birds might be hiding.

  

I hope you enjoyed the tour through the Bird Kingdom.  It was an excellent place to see a variety of different birds and other critters too.  🙂


The Bird Kingdom!
Open 9:30AM – 5:00PM Daily
 5651 River Road
Niagara Falls, Ontario
L2E 7M7

Field Trip: Ontario Science Centre

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One of our favourite places to go is the Ontario Science Centre.  We don’t go as often as we’d like, but we do go and have fun.   Our most recent trip we brought along our International Student.

Highlights of our Time

Our competitions against each other with the row boats.   We all competed against each other in different formations.   It was a hoot.  🙂   I had video, but it turned out blurry.

We discovered this beautiful picnic spot.   AND while we were picnicing and relaxing in this green spot we were able to listen to “the maple leaf forever”. 

the music area:

We saw a variety of wildlife.

Two joys.

One: seeing two boys take sheer delight in creating music with touch panels.   This area is a basically a large box with white panels with colour sections.  As you touch the colours different noises at different levels and tones would play.   The boys laugh and bounced around like a couple of young fiends   Good to see them having fun.

Two:
This quiet, unsure of himself yet lad, wasn’t sure about doing much anything else.   I caught him though, playing this drum.  Checking out the different sounds depending on where he tapped it.
This is taken just after I caught a first glimpse of his marvellous smile. 🙂  I regretted moving so that I could get a better picture of what he was doing.

Let’s see what else can I pull out from this trip to the Science Centre…..
I thought this was neat:  Seeing this image of multiple babies in the womb…  🙂

Anyways, we saw and did so many things, I can’t list it all.  
Suffice it to say, we had a great day.

Field Trip: Cantarra Park

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Canatara Park is located in Sarnia, Ontario.   The lad and I went there in the spring after going to the Stones and Bones Museum.   

This is a park of trails and beaches and an animal park.  We spent the bulk of our time at the Animal Park.  We also drove along some of the roads around the park.

 We met another lady there with her family from the group of homeschoolers we went to the museum with.  There was supposed to be a whole group of us, but most of them didn’t make it to where we were which was just odd.   But hey, the lad and I and the other family had a nice time while we were there.

What did we see?

Chickens (my fav) but they were locked up in pens.   I did manage to get a nice picture of this pretty lady though.

 
We saw a variety of other animals as well.   


 We followed our trip to the Animal Park with a drive around the park before heading home again.  It’s a nice park and worth a visit again another time.  I would like to take the bikes and bike around the paths for a while. 

Field Trip: Welland Canal

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When we had our trip to Niagara Falls we prefaced in it with a camping trip and a stop at the Welland Canal.   I couldn’t make it work to see a boat go through, but we did see the Canal and had a chance to go through the Museum they have at lock 7.

We had a good time at this museum, learning a lot, enjoying the air conditioning provided, and just moseying around together.

Here are some of the things we saw:


We had a good time and were glad that we went.   It was too bad I couldn’t coordinate the trip with a boat passing through, but perhaps next year.  🙂

Field Trip: Children’s Messiah

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It was recently our delight to attend the Children’s Messiah at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Ontario.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

One of the singers directed her solos at the children, holding out her hands, bringing out scarves for them to twirl around, smiling at them.   It was such a pleasure to see her delight in them.

The program was about an hour,  and was a joint social outreach programme of St Paul’s Cathedral Music Department
and Magisterra Soloists.   They did not perform the whole Messiah, but rather select portions with the conductor explaining different pieces to the children.  

They also had some congregational singing: Joy to the World and Silent Night.

The video below taken with my cell phone, so excuse the quality.

We had a nice sized crowd and they served hot chocolate and cookies afterwards

They will be doing this again next year, so if interested book Dec 2 to hear the Children’s Messiah.

Field Trip: Niagara Falls

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In the Summer we took our international student to see Niagara Falls.  It was one of those sites that he mentioned that he wanted to see while in Canada.  He was from France and was a nice young man.  We were quite pleased to host him.

We walked up and down and took quite a few pictures, I’ll have to show you a few of them.  Here’s one where I made the boys line up for a photo to show that YES we were there.  🙂

As promised, our view of the falls

The day was hot, and we had seen the Hornblower go up and down a few times, one 16 year smiled and nodded yes please, and one 11 year begged to on the boat.  I wasn’t keen on it, but hey… if you are there you might as well right?   It was a long walk up but off we went.

It was so much fun watching the boys.  They both went to the front of the boat and leaned over and got splashed and just filled with grins.  SO WORTH IT!!!   🙂

I suspect we’ll go again next summer with a student if the Lord so wills.  Depends on where we are and what we’ll be doing at that time.   Perhaps we’ll do the zipline (at least the boys and dad) when we go.  🙂