A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

HOPE

St. Mary’s Museum

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Yesterday we went to the St. Mary’s Museum with a part of our homeschool group HOPE.

We learned about the toys that children used to play with.

We learned they played with marbles “Ring Taw”, slappers (metal toys that made noise), corn husks dolls, wooden dogs, thumatrope, and zoetropes. Hoops and graces were another game. These games often had the side benefit of teaching important skills of hand-eye coordination, body-eye coordination and so forth. Skills important to survival. Tops was also a game they used to play.

They also had these really neat wind-up toys that were a big hit with the children.

The children all had a chance to make their own thumatrope.

Yesterday and Today

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This week we’re going to work on lesson two of this kindergarten curriculum book. I’m starting to teach him the “I’m a little teapot” song which actions. It’s a good “T” letter song and the focus this week in the letter “T”, the Number “0” and something else I can’t recall at the moment.

and we did another five pages in this book on Tuesday. Matching of upper and lower case. We did this in the basement as that’s where our alphabet chart is. he pretended he was a little rabbit learning the alphabet and that I was the teacher rabbit. Made it fun for him. 🙂

Yesterday for exercise we did Cardio Fit by Billy Blanks Jr.

I’m doing two things with Cardio Fit. I’m trying to teach the lad that through perseverance that he can master any skill he sets his mind to, and get us exercising and using our bodies. After we finished exercising…which involved moving and twisting our bodies and stuff…hard work, The lad played with some building toys while I did my back and stretching exercises.

Then it was time to go to a funeral.

Today I have bible study in the morning, so the lad will go to story hour where he will play, hear a bible story, and make a craft. I can’t recall what we’re doing for bible study.

This afternoon we are going to be busy! We have time at a museum in St. Mary’s with the homeschool group, and then off to London so I can get my shears and then go the children’s museum there for an hour or so. Busy day, but tomorrow is a stay at home day so it will all be good. 🙂

Kitchener’s Children Museum

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Kitchener’s Children Museum organized by H.O.P.E. (my homeschool group)

We had fun today.

The lad had a hoot. We went because of the Titanic display. The lad loved the iceberg! Did you know that salt water icebergs are colder than freshwater ones? Me neither.. it was just one of the interesting facts given to us at this display.

We toured the rest of the museum, even laying of bed of nails. The water table was a place of fun and observations. But the heat sensor was the highlight. It was a machine of some sort that showed the temperature of your body. It was interesting to see.

What We Learned this week – Oct 25-29.

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Well this week has been a good week thus far. Having a general outline/schedule is very helpful. 🙂

We did day three of of the unit study from Download N Go on Terrific Tigers.
We learned that Sumatran tigers have webbed feet, watched good videos, and just had fun learning about tigers. Justin made a mural of tigers on a mountain.

We started to work on Expedition Australia, we just got to the first part of day one. This is a harder study for a five year old lad. He’s currently working on colouring in the world map. There is a whole whack of information in it, he was fascinated by the giant clam in one of the first videos that we watched. This is also a DownloadnGo product.

We volunteered at the Rummage Sale for the local hospital. We were there for two hours and the lad helped with putting price tags on items and helping me sort out the cutlery.

He did gymnastics on Monday.

He did gym on Tuesday with the homeschool group. This was held at the Startford YMCA and costs $6 for 8 weeks. He had a hoot learning some kickboxing moves and playing hockey with the big boys.

On Wednesday he was part of Story Club while I was at bible study at the local Christian Reformed Church. We are studying the Psalms, they are working through creation (as far as I can tell). He made a great craft and learned more about Adam and Eve, how God made each one of us in his own image.

Today we’ll be making hallowe’en cupcakes and doing a study on Hallowe’en. The study called Happy halloween that we are doing is good for a variety of ages, and comes from the Simple Homeschool. It has a maze, copy work, listen and remember exercises and so forth. I like it, and the lad is looking forward to doing it.

I have to interject this.
My boyo sometimes makes me laugh. The maze had two friends looking for a path to the candy corn. So he drew two paths. One friend kept on going the wrong way (complete with “uh, wrong way” being muttered under his breath) and had to retrace his steps and then mommy had to help the other friend show the first friend which way to go (with comments of — yea!, see, this is how you go, see he’s helping my friend find the candy! YEA!! you helped me!!! (this last being the lost friend talking)). He just makes me chuckle. 🙂

we will also be doing this unit from Ingles on Hallowe’en. Oops…not this exact one, but one similar that has a game in it. Spooktacular letters that’s the one we are doing. 🙂

Pics of what we did today.
First you start with some muffins 🙂
then you make the icing, you start with a basic white icing and add food colouring… it looks like a lollipop as you mix it in. Much to the delight and interest of a five year old. we were aiming for black, but he thought grey was good too. 🙂

You add some smarties (sorry trick or treaters, you won’t be getting them).

the finished product, they all ended up with three “friend” smarties sitting with each other on top.
We brought two to our very nice neighbours who live next door to us. They are so kind to us that this was just a small thing for us to do for them, and they were simply delighted. 🙂

AND tomorrow he’ll be doing the last HOPE day with dad for the fall season.

HOPE meeting

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Tonight Hubby and I went to our first HOPE meeting. (group that we’re involved in)

Here’s the blurb I got

The topic for the evening is “Choosing the Better Thing”. John Gould will be speaking on how to keep Christ the centre of our homeschooling journey. Come out for a positive and encouraging evening designed to help us keep our focus on the priority of Christ in the middle of the busyness of life.

I thought it was a good message.

It was a good reminder of one of the biggest advantages we have as Christian homeschoolers….we have the whole day to point out God to our children. To show our children how we can bring glory to God in all that we do in our lives. 🙂