A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

HOPE

End of HOPE days and glow jars

By Leave a Comment

A while ago on Pinterest I ran across this glow jar. 

So,.. tonight we made two of them.   The lad was ecstatic!  🙂
 The jars before lights out
 The jars after lights out
I got some spilled on my shirt, made the lad laugh at the dancing lights every time I moved.

Over the last six weeks we’ve been having spring HOPE days.  This is a time when we get together as a HOPE group and teach our children collectively.  Some of the classes are rigourous, others are more laid back.   The lad took classes in Phys Ed, Bugs, and African animals.  he thoroughly enjoyed himself.
I taught a class of looking at the news from a christian perspective.

HOPE Days

By Leave a Comment

my homeschool group had their spring hope days start today. 

Each week a whole lot of us get together to teach a variety of subjects and to help out as best we can.

This year I’m teaching current events to the teens.
My son is taking African animals, Phys ed and Bugs.

There are a whole lot of other classes being taught from sign language to art classes to geo caching to sewing and kind of everything in between.

When we returned home we had some folks stop in to play with bunnies and to learn a bit about them.  It was a good visit.  While they were here a rabbity friend stopped by as well.  Always fun to show off my bunnies.  The children were cautious but curious.

Gramma came over for a bit as she and Jim are going to a Christian meeting tonight out in Cambridge.  But she took the time to play with the lad for a bit.

We learned abit about kaleidoscopes.    I learned about this site through Clickschooling.

Swimming and more

By Leave a Comment

10 minute stories

I cannot say I much liked the story we read today. It was WAY too wordy.

World History

Did you know that mummies aren’t just found in Egypt and England? I didn’t either! They are found in England, Greenland, Peru, Egypt, China, Germany, Russia and so on. It is fascinating to read how different methods were used to preserve bodies. It was very sad to read how some people, in their false belief of their god, choose to kill their children in a way to please those gods. Oh that more of the world might know the true and living God. Many folks were preserved because they thought it would help them in the afterlife. Some were preserved naturally by the effects of ice and sand and salt. Quite interesting to be reading through this book with the lad.

This afternoon we go swimming with the HOPE group from Stratford.

We’ll be doing some science later this afternoon I hope.

HOPE days returns

By Leave a Comment

Yesterday HOPE days started again.

It was fun. The lad learned about dinosaurs, had gym time (played a game called lemonade that made a big impression on him) and did some science. I enjoyed teaching the children science. NOW.. I have learned that even with two helpers that 14 children ages 6-8 in one classroom is a HUGE number of children to try to teach science to so I need to try to arrange that a bit better. smaller groups doing different things.

Then afterwards we went to the Western Fair. We had an enjoyable day. Hubby’s knee has been bugging him a bit so that slowed us down a bit.

It was rather cool… they have this free children’s play area. Tractors to drive, straw to jump into, a duck race, sunflower seed planting, tractor pull and a variety of other events. So the lad had a great deal of fun. We partially watched a cow calving, petted some pigs, ate cotton candy and caramel corn and corn dogs. Typical fair food. 🙂

We did miss the horse show, and the extreme canine show this year. We watched reptile ray. Man NOT a good show if you don’t believe in evolution, but the information just about the reptiles he showed was quite interesting. I would rather he just talk about the reptiles and leave the evolutionary stuff at home.. cause what’s the point? Is it to give a history (in his eyes) lesson or to talk about creatures he really enjoys being around?

Week update

By Leave a Comment

Tuesday we tried to pick up our new car. That didn’t work so we spent some time with oma and papa, building with a new to the lad toy, having lunch and just spending family time. It was a good time all-round. 🙂

Wednesday and Thursday this week we’ve spent a good portion of our days outside. did some gardening, went for a nature walk at Wildwood conservation area. I have tons of pics but its late so I can add those another day. The lad had a hoot and even learned a thing or two. 🙂 We did this walk as part of our time with HOPE. Took about two hours and was just a good learning and spending time with each other time. Played at the park for 10 minutes afterwards.

Thursday (that was today!) we um… what did we do.. the lad played out his time at Mad Science last week. Had a hoot with some bunnies…taught one that screaming when caught was just silliness… Dusty is a very easily started bunny and certainly likes to tell the world about it. played soccer this afternoon…mommy was the coach this week so that was different. and then when we got home to pulled rhubarb, played for a while, put bunnies back in cages. Came inside had snack and went to bed. (at least the lad did). Mommy was tired so just kept herself busy tonight.

Anyways, goodnight all!

Review: Chocolate Challenge

By 2 Comments






Chocolate Challenge

Today am doing our official review of the downloadngo unit study/lapbook. on CHOCOLATE! The lad’s reaction when I told him what we were going to study was “YEAH!!” This study is done by Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett.

The outline of this study is as follows.
Day 1: Chocolate – What Is It?
Day 2: The Story of Chocolate
Day 3: The Types of Chocolate
Day 4: The Science of Chocolate
Day 5: Let’s Have a Chocolate Party!

We did day 1-2 here, and days 3-5 here. Our jobs and chocolatier continued for a few days. After soccer on Thursday we went to the local bulk barn store and purchased just a wee little bit of the varieties of chocolate they had available, and then stopped at the dollarama to check out what unique chocolate bars they might have. it’s been fun.

For the chocolatier part of things we’ve been smelling, examining, cutting in half, checking out textures, and first tastes and last tastes of all sorts of chocolate. Because I like a five year old to sleep at night I’m only letting him do 5-7 samples at a time.

This has been a fun study to do. We’ve gone country hunting, learned about the rainforest and why … for the sake of chocolate.. that cutting down the big trees in the rainforest is NOT a good idea. Chocolate trees need the right type of shade and sun and humidity to grow. If they don’t have it, then they don’t grow the pods, and no pods = no chocolate. This would be “a bad thing, Mommy. I like chocolate!” We learned some history and saw how many machines have been made to help with the art of making chocolate. The making chocolate into art was quite interesting…. that chocolate can be like playdoh! “Wow, mommy! That’s playdoh I can eat right mommy?”

These units contain LOTS of on-line links. Which is great! and I love how responsive they are when things don’t work well. I imagine it is difficult to find links that will consistently work. And this is one thing I would like to change about these units…that the answers to some questions could be actually put into the unit for those times when links don’t work and one really doesn’t know the answer to the question or problem posed. Testing to see if links work world-wide is also something that would be nice to see done (though I suppose that’s the job of us reviewers right?) 🙂 But 99% of the time, all links work and well.

The videos are interesting and embedded to help control the amount of ads that can be seen by watchful eyes. It was good to be able to experiment with chocolate.. I even got up the nerve to make chocolate pretzels…thoroughly enjoyed by all the people attending our HOPE days today. We had hoped to make fudge but I think that will need to wait for another day…perhaps this coming week sometime. 🙂

The lad really enjoyed this study, he had fun making a map of Brazil. using a puzzle map book that we just picked up.
We made chocolate Chip cookies, and chocolate pretzels, and eyed some chocolate cake. Chocolate milk of course had to be enjoyed…after all…it’s what the Mayans and Aztecs drank.

Track and Field

By Leave a Comment

hurdles

Today was track and field day for our homeschool group.

The lad had a great deal of fun. I am hopeful that one day the lad will learn that when I say he’ll enjoy something because it has lots of running around and jumping and what not that he’ll believe me first before whining and complaining about it.

But once that aspect of our day was over, the lad enjoyed himself. So did I. It was nice to spend the day with like-minded people and children. 🙂

Obstacle Course

The lad ran hard, jumped hard, played hard. He was a strong encourager of others. “go Micah go!” He asked good questions when he learned that one of his teammates suffers from bad asthma. For the most part he listened well. And he tried to do events even if they were hard.

They tried the high jump. Humour was provided to us. 🙂
The highest they got was five cms beyond the height of the mat.

No day would be complete without some running.
This was the start to the 100 m dash. They also had a 50 m one.

ball free throw

The day was for the part good weather wise. The ground was rather quite wet. There was an area of water saturation that led to the lad going through a complete clothing change.

I thought it funny, every chance these five year olds got
they started to make sand castles. 🙂

At lunch time the children had fun with the parts to the obstacle course.