A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

math

A slow day, yet study accomplished

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At breakfast we did our normal reading

10 minute stories

Today’s story was about A fellow with a really big nose and all that happened with him. It was just an odd story. It did point out the value in not believing all that you are told though.

World History

We have started a section on Knights and Castles. The lad is captivated..and all he wants to do is build a castle for one of his toys. Made schooling a bit of a challenge. 🙂

We then moved on to working with math using reflex. He continues to gain in fluency. While he did this, I got the dishes done. 🙂
Link
We continued work on our spider study

We learned there are three suborders.
We built a spider using a laminated one we had.
We talked about all the different parts to a spider.
We learned about spider eyes, moulting, etc.
We reviewed what we did previously.

The lad played with Lego building something for the castle that was needed.

We then worked on our animal of the day. Leopards. 🙂 We did the snow leopard to be precise.

we watched part of this series of videos.

we laughed at this

Fact that the lad liked: they live up high in the mountains.
Sad fact: they are highly endangered.

Word of the day: abbey – a place where monks and nuns live, work, and pray. Usually connected to a church.

We will play for a while and then hopefully make some cookies. 🙂 We had planned a walk to the library but we have buckets of cats and dogs falling from the sky and being hit by a falling cat is not our idea of fun. 🙂 Even if a boy child says “can I have one of those falling cats?” 🙂

we made these cookies

Oatmeal chocolate Chip cookies

1 c. butter
1 c. white sugar
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. peanut butter
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. salt
1 & 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 c. milk
4 cups instant oatmeal
6 oz. chocolate chips

Mix all together well.
Drop by spoonfuls on cookie sheet.
bake 10-12 minutes at 350.

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. 🙂

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 a good day

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Today was a good day.

Didn’t exactly go homeschooling wise as I thought it might.

On Wednesday mornings I have bible study so hubby dear usually gets the lad busy with book work. but this morning hubby’s brain was fried so that didn’t go over.

Over lunch therefore, we did our normal reading.

10 minute stories

He liked today’s story. I shortened it here and there as it was quite wordy and that NEVER goes over well with the lad. But it was a good story about a firebird, a grey wolf and a boy who had to learn how to listen well.

World History

We are into Roman history now. We are learning about gladiators.

I had gotten the lad onto reflexmath before I headed out to bible study. The lad enjoys this program.

So after I got back from my stuff I got the lad busy with Studyladder. We did math, music, and something else that right now I can’t remember.

This afternoon we played a game with dad. Catopoly
We had a lot of fun playing it. So much nicer playing games with a lad who is willing to follow the rules of the game.

oh..I’m trying to work home-making skills into our week… today it was cleaning the upstairs bathroom. I set the boy at the task of cleaning the bathtub. He did a decent job for a six year old doing a job for the first time. he did an EXCELLENT job of having a bath so he could clean his toys up really really well. 🙂

Then peter rabbit videos were the thing to watch, followed by supper and children’s club at the baptist church. They are learning the fruits of the spirit there. What I know most is how much the lad enjoys attending. 🙂

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. 🙂

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.

reading, listening, experimenting, and learning

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10 minute stories

The story today was about Pinnochio finding his father inside the dogfish. It was a fun story to read and caused the lad to ask questions. And just so you know, YES a dogfish is a real fish! 🙂

not quite as fearsome looking in real-life
as it was in the story.

World History

Today we finished off looking at mummies, we covered the Canary Islands, Siberia, Japan and Papua New Guinea. We learned about Buddhist monks and animal mummies as well.

Our overall plan for the day is to make a rocket car, cookies, do some computer work, listen to books on CD “the treasury of Storybook classics”, play reflex math, and pack what we need for our weekend away. I’ll update as we go along. 🙂

we engaged in an impromptu science experiment. We put took an egg that we emptied of its internals. Sealed up the holes with tape and mac-tack. We thought it would explode but… all it did was crack. Much to the disappointment of a boy child.

we did some work on Studyladder. We learned about animal classifaction, gas/solid/liquid, ecosystems and more. and then of course played some games. We also tried out a new program called mathletics. We got this as part of the TOS birthday bash for being members. Not the most inspiring program but the lad was indeed willing to try it out. Comes from Australia.