Wilderness Wednesday

This week we have Garden Friends! We've had some nice sunny weather recently and our garden has been a-buzz with assorted friends.

This here is a late addition to the garden that we assume sprouted from the compost that we add each year. It looks like a melon of sort, but since we've never *planted* melons, we're not sure what kind.

Be sure to check out our guidelines and grab a button! Join in with any plant/animal based blog post :)

Wilderness Wednesday

I'm sneaking this post in 8hrs late!

This week we spent a lot of harvesting time in the garden. Plucked about 80 tomatoes, load of peppers, cucumbers galore and another HUGE zucchini. In this are of the world we don't have a large span of time for gardening, typically end of May until mid October.

We did however get a huge stash of compost this year and everything in the gardens have been supersized!

Yes those are thigh high impatients. Impatients (at least in our area, and I grow them every year) typically grow to be 4 to maybe 6 inches high. Brianna is a tall 9 year old too. And all of them are this big!

Be sure to check out our guidelines and grab a button! Join in with any plant/animal based blog post :)

Weekly Wrap-Up

Monday - No school for Brianna and my niece Tanya's first 5K. The group they ran with is the Cornwall Multisport Club and we're tempted to join for the 2012 year as the family rate is amazing and all the races that we would have to pay for are free if you're a member. Brianna's time was 52 minutes 1 second and Tanya's was 53 minutes 5 seconds.

Tuesday - This morning we had our Not Back to School picnic with our local HS group. Brianna loved seeing the group kids again as we didn't have any meet ups during the summer. We met a a local conservation area and went for a hike on the trails there. Brianna found loads of different mushrooms/fungus along the way. We had never gone hiking there before and it's about half the distance of the place we normally hike, so I can see going there often!

Wednesday - In science we did an evaporation experiment. This showed me just how much further than Gr. 3 Brianna is in science. We had to half fill a bottle with water, mark the water line, put the cap on and place it in the sun to watch the evaporation process. Brianna knew from the get go that the water level wouldn't change because the lid was on thus keeping the water in the bottle. However, she loves the little experiments so much that we're still going with the Gr. 3 level. We start the Gr. 4 level of the series next month and I'm wondering if even that will be far enough ahead for her.

Thursday - Brianna finished up her flag/bird/flower pages for her Canada book, now it's just a matter of putting it together. She also started the multiplication supplement book I got for her. OMG, waaaay too simple. She'll be through it in less than 2 weeks at this pace *sigh*

Friday - Brianna finished her Gr. 4 French book today. I have yet to mark her final review (bad teacher!), but by just flipping through it, it looks pretty good. I do have to mark it soon though so i know if she needs some more Gr. 4 review or if I should go buy the Gr. 5 book.

Over the weekend my mom started teaching Brianna how to do plastic canvas. Brianna's making a treasure box for her trinkets.

We're linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

10 Years

I slept through the actual event though dreamed of it. I woke up to horror in the real world. It played out like a movie, but CNN doesn't play movies. I went to my sister's house where my poor newly 4 yr old nephew thought it was his fault because it was his birthday (it took several years to have a happy birthday again). We watched in disbelief of what was unfolding in front of us.

Even here in Canada, all government buildings were evacuated just in case the next plane came here. My then-fiance worked as a janitor in one of those buildings and his boss would not let them leave. Threatened to fire them if they did. I was livid. Thankfully he made it home safely unlike so many others.

This morning I watched the "live" footage of that day with Brianna. It was like seeing a movie I've seen before with someone who's never seen it. Through her questions and comments, all I could say was "keep watching". I watched in as much awe and silence as I did 10 years ago.

In my thoughts are the people who lost their lives that day and the many since who have lost their lives fighting in the subsequent war.

Wilderness Wednesday

Welcome back to Wilderness Wednesday! It kinda died off during the summer *sorry!* but we're back!

Yesterday we went to our Not Back to School picnic and had a nature walk afterwards. Brianna was thrilled to find a bunch of different mushrooms and fungus. Now to work on identifying them!

We also picked up a few grove snails from the same place and re-homed them to an old fish tank.

Be sure to check out our guidelines and grab a button! Join in with any plant/animal based blog post :)

Happy Not Back to School!

We had loads of fun at our local homeschool group's Not Back to School picnic. Brianna was especially happy to hear that since we can't do homeschool soccer anymore that we'll be going swimming instead!

Olivia loved helping with the calendar and Brianna is ok with the new vocabulary work. We'll do journaling tonight, but I'm sure she'll enjoy that.

I bought a bunch of new ebooks through Currclick and can't wait to check them out!!!

Here is our *very flexible* schedule:
10am - Calendar time
10:10am - Choose and organize work for the day/vocabulary
10:30am - Brianna's independent work while I work with Olivia
11am - Continued independent work or move onto together work
12pm - lunch
1pm - Olivia down for nap, Brianna finishes any school work then co-operative reading and math quiz
2pm - Olivia's up/free time
8pm - Olivia bed/Brianna journal

Our Calendar Board

Last year I had bought this Calendar set

On Brianna's first day of homeschool

It worked great. Until Olivia was tall/smart enough to reach up and grab the date clings or stand on stuff to pull them down. It's been completely out of commission since May when we lost a couple pieces that Olivia tore off *sigh*

So I saw an idea for mounting Calendar Time stuff on a cork board (sorry for the lack of credit, I can't remember where I saw it and now I've seen it in several places!). I thought, great idea. I can put what I want on it and it can be tucked away and pulled out everyday if I end up needing the wall space it's on.


And so, it was born....

A check-offable chore chart

100 Days of School

Tot School weekly stuff for Olivia

Brianna's vocabulary word of the day

A weather set taken from 1+1+1=1

And a calendar