So Sorry!

We've had a bit of a family emergency with my sister's family over the last couple weeks. I didn't mean to just drop off the map! Things are settling down now and I promise to resume regular programing :)

Wilderness Wednesday

Brianna did bird watching this week. She was thrilled to use my binoculars. Unfortunately no pics. Here's her report:

Crows - are black and they caw
Red Winged Black Birds - have red, yellow and black bodies
Purple Martins - have blue necks and black bodies
Seagulls - have white bodies with some gray
Robins - have orange tummies and black bodies (mom's note, more dark brown than black, but this was totally HER report)
Pigeons - have blue and gray spots

These are all common birds in our area, but Brianna loved being able to look at them "up close" whenever they landed. She's already asked (several times) to do bird watching with the binoculars again.

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

Fossils!

This week's Science chapter was on Fossils. Brianna loved it! We read about how fossils are formed and the different types of fossils and different types of areas they can be found. As usual I had Brianna record her vocabulary for the week. We discovered this week that she's able to copy the vocabulary better if I print the page off on to paper rather than having her copy it from the e-book on the computer screen.

Next up was making out own fossils! Brianna chose to fossilize sea shells instead of things like leaves.

Picking out the best shells

Adding the shells to the clay (which, not on purpose, ended up looking like natural sediment and such from the mixing of the colors)

Pulling the shells back out

Brianna was amazed how well all the ridges and points came out in the clay!

Tot School - Week 5

Our Focus:

- Letter D

- Number 4

- Color Purple

- Oval Shape

Olivia is 22.5 mths

D is for Sticker Dino!

Showing Brianna colors

So peaceful doing her school work she's chilling, sucking her thumb lol

We're working on getting her to actually color stuff rather than just scribbling across the page... it only works sometimes lol

She's loving these Nemo color cards!

Instead of patterning with her color bugs, they crawl up her arms

Olivia's version of pouring LOL!

Coloring on her D page

She just loved the Dora pages! Here she's pointing out shapes

Stickers and Dora! Life is good!

Coloring her alphabet page

Fine motor - eating oatmeal. She's getting much better at feeding herself *with* silverware. She even asks for forks and spoons now!

So happy with her new big girl desk!

Olivia's very own work space!

I got my printables from:
1+1+1=1
Confessions of a Homeschooler
Printer Projects
Daycare Resource 
Homemade

Find other Tot Schools at 1+1+1=1

Day in the Life....

I like to do these once and a while....

7:05am - Woke up to my 2nd alarm (that was actually set for Lee and not me) and figured I might as well get up. Got down stairs and Lee's already gone (he went to the bank, but figured he'd sit for a coffee waiting for it to open)

7:15am - Coffeeeeeeeeee

8am - I hear Olivia up, but playing quietly, so I leave her while I have some uninterrupted computer time.

8:20am - I go upstairs to get the girls up. Olivia's sitting in Brianna's bed shushing her (cause she's still sleeping).

8:30am - Oatmeal for Olivia, which she won't allow me to feed her. She steals the bowl and spoon outta my hands and starts shoveling it in!

8:45am - Kick the girls outside for a bit. Brianna's towel from swimming yesterday is still outside and they race to see who can get to it first to "go ni-nights". Olivia loves having Brianna wrap her up like a burrito and pretends to snore.

9:30am - back inside, vegging in front of the tv (a morning habit Daddy started *sigh*). Brianna finally makes herself some cereal while I work to catch up on my blogroll. Daddy gets home.

10am - toss a loaf of bread on to be made in the breadmaker... gotta buy more butter....

10:10am - Waiting for Brianna's "favorite show" to be over so we can get outside to time her running.

10:25am - Out to time running! Looking to beat her record for her triathlon training.

10:26am - Neighbour is our cutting the hedge and Brianna HAS to watch

10:30am - Finally get to running. Brianna knocked 6 seconds off her best time for a current record of 1 minute 20 second around our .18mile block.

10:45am - taught Brianna how to do the stretches she knew properly and a couple new ones

11:05am - laminating time! I got about 1/2 of it done. Still have to cut it and hopefully get the other half done today too

11:55am - put lunch together... pita pizza for Brianna, banana and yogurt for Olivia and fruit smoothie for me. Lee's on his own.

12:20pm - Olivia down for nap. Argued with Brianna over her incomplete French work. She says I am done! Yeah, no. She finished half of one page and 1 question of another. Nothing on the other 2 pages. She seems to think I don't check her work.

12:30pm - I plugged my smoothie into my calorie counting site... I need some low cal yogurt. My supposedly healthy smoothie has over 400 cals in it! And did you know that a medium banana has over 100 cals? Boooo!

12:35pm - Brianna's singing her way through her school work....

1pm - spelling test... Brianna got 100%!

1:10pm - I start oogling recipes... always a bad idea. I've got a list a mile long of recipes I want to try!

1:45pm - Finished cutting out the first half of the laminated papers!

1:50pm - While reading up on New Bruswick for Geography, Brianna starts asking about the ice age... hmmm... will need to make sure we study that.

1:55pm - "Newfoundland joined Canada in 1943. You were alive then! How old were you Mommy?" Gee thanks.....

2:40pm - Olivia is up. Now curled up with Daddy watching Thomas while Brianna and I finish school.

2:50pm - Forgot all about the bread raising in the oven! Now it's all stick to the waxed paper and over risen.... *sigh* Oh well, we'll eat it anyways.

2:55pm - Snack time!

3:15pm - Snack time over, which translates into Olivia wanting to color all over Brianna's school work. Brianna tries to appease her by sitting her on her lap to watch her work, but no. Olivia wants to scribble or pitch a fit.

3:20pm - Daddy to the rescue! Off to the living room behind a locked gate so Brianna can work. Olivia seems happier snuggling again.

3:25pm - Bread is done... The crust looks a little funny. Hopefully it's ok inside!

3:50 - Math is done. To give me time to correct it to see if she got her 85% (if she gets 85% or more on half her problems, she doesn't have to do the other half, when it's just a sheet of problems), I read her her science for the day and send her off to copy her vocabulary words.

3:55pm - Olivia is appeased by putting on her "baby movie" (Baby Einstein)

4pm - Uh oh.... Math came back with only a 78%. Brianna's not happy with herself. I sympathize but tell her once she's done her vocabulary and math, we can do a fun part of science. I can still see school taking a loooooon time now as she complains at herself in her head for a while.

4:25pm - Typed up and printed Brianna's work list for next week. Now to print up her actual work from what's on the computer.

4:30pm - Cut into the bread. It's about half the height a slice of bread is supposed to be, but it still tastes ok!

4:40pm - Swept the walkway of dirt and grass seed for the 24,649th time since re-doing the lawn.

4:55pm - Math is finally done! Off to creating fossils (post to folow)

5:25pm - Olivia decides she hasn't had a facial bruise in a long enough time, so bashes her face of the kitchen table *sigh*

6pm - finally got the potatoes on for supper. I guess I should notice I need to make supper BEFORE supper needs to be well on it's way....

6:45pm - not bad, supper's only 15 minutes late. Ham steaks and mashed potatoes. Not exactly diet friendly lol

6:55pm - Brianna, as usual, has inhaled her food and now started on her good copy of her penpal letter. Olivia looks for more ham. When I refuse, she goes to hide with Daddy in the bedroom for bedtime snuggles.

7:25pm - pj time for Olivia! Brianna insists on giving me a running commentary of why she wrote what. While normally I love hearing about what she writes her penpals, this is at least the 2nd time she's given me great detail of it, had me read the letter several times and I corrected the spelling on the rough copy *sigh*

7:40pm - Brianna and I head out for our walk (on her triathlon route). While out we discuss getting married and weddings, true friends, silk worms and her friend's upcoming birthday party.

8:50pm - Brianna has a surprise bedtime snack of banana laced Jello.

9:20pm - Brianna's off to bed! I get to read my blogs in silence!

9:25pm - Olivia wakes up, sweating like crazy, but complaining that she doesn't have her blanket. Toddlers are so fun!

9:40pm - get notice from my WAHM friend that she's making Brianna's special birthday necklace tonight!

10:20pm - Lee comes downstairs and reminds me that I have an open bag of chips and ruins my diet. Thankfully Brianna and I did almost 4 miles tonight!

10:55pm - Vancouver wins! Only one more win to go until Canada brings the Stanley Cup home!!!

11:50pm - This mama is off to bed!

Homeschool Mother's Journal

Haven't done one of these in a while....

       In my life this week…  I finally got some ink and have been just printing up a storm!   Now I've got to put aside some time to get laminating Olivia's Tot School stuff.
 

In our homeschool this week… This week was blazingly hot, hitting over 100F.

Brianna lived in the pool from about 9am til supper. We did school after Olivia went to bed once it was cooler.

My favorite thing this week was… Watching the garden grow

 

What’s working/not working for us… Our new schedule is definitely working for us. I print up all of Brianna's work over the weekend and she has the week to finish it. She's been doing really well with this.

 

Questions/thoughts I have… For those who school year round... do you have a lighter schedule? Or do you just plug on through? *Because* we school year round I know we have a lighter schedule than most on a daily basis. We'll be going a touch lighter over the summer, but still continuing all of our subjects.

Things I’m working on… I made up garden tracking sheets. Brianna and I are going to closely follow our veggie garden and track anything interesting. Brianna loves the garden, so will hopefully like this too.

 

I’m cooking… I'm trying to stick with a meal plan (see the sidebar). For the most part, it's working. I already have a quite low grocery bill, but with Lee laid off still, I'd like it to be lower.

 

A photo, video, link, or quote to share…

My new kitchen helper

 Linking up with Homeschool Chick

Wilderness Wednesday

Another bike ride/nature study with Grandma....

An unidentified weasel type animal

Yellow/Canary Finch

Posing Chipmunk lol

A double date while about 15 goslings got babysat by another group of geese

We've gotten loads of growth in our garden, so that'll probably be the focus of next week's Wilderness Wednesday!

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

Homeschooling Flexibility

Today it was 34C (93F) with the humidex. Tomorrow and Thurs are supposed to hit 45C (113F). Needless to say, Brianna is living in our kiddie pool from about 9am til supper time. And right about now, I'm wishing it was bigger than about 3ft across so I could live in it with her!

On to homeschooling flexibility.... because of the heat, there's no way I can expect Brianna's brain to work when it's hot enough to fry an egg on the walkway (which Brianna is desperate to try!). So today we did school at 8pm while waiting for Olivia to go to sleep.

School still gets done, but at a time it'll actually get *done*

Tot School - Week 4

Our Focus:

Review Week

- Letter A, B, C

- Number 1, 2, 3

- Color Red, Blue, Green

- Circle, Square, Triangle Shapes

Olivia is 22 mths 

 Our version of spooning lol She decided herself that she needed to scoop gravel into this bowl

She loves these sticker pages. Sometimes she really concentrates on trying to get the stickers in the circles, other times she just wants to sticker all over the page!

I think the A pages are her favorites cause they have apples on most of them and she's madly in love with apples.

This was more meant for a tracing/coloring page, but she had fun stickering the apples

LOL! "Eating" the cake on a C page

We found these great alphabet cookies and she has me name all the letters to her before she eats them. And she's been able to pick out A and B for me. She almost got M too, but she insisted the N was and M.

These are patterning cards that came with out bug set. She's doing pretty well at the simple ones, but usually after she puts a couple down in their places she starts just putting whatever colored bug where ever. And the orange and red bugs in this set are pretty close so I was pretty surprised when she picked out both orange bugs for this pattern

We introduced her to the Nemo color cards here. She picked out Pink, Purple and Yellow for me before she gathered them up and said bye-bye

She's still not too sure about these Thomas shape cards. She does love the Thomas trains on them though!

 Like the A for Apple, she loves the C pages cause most have cats on them

 This was a new amazing (to us at least) trick of hers. I bought some colored button magnets for her, however, they're small enough to slide under the fridge. So she grabbed the fly swatter and tried to fish them out! I know she's seen us grab things to get toys out from under the couch and such, but I was pretty surprised to see her think to grab a small thing to get under the fridge.

 More sticker pages

Concentrating closely on her C

I got my printables from:
1+1+1=1
Confessions of a Homeschooler
Printer Projects
Daycare Resource 
Homemade

Find other Tot Schools at 1+1+1=1

Weekly Wrap-Up

This was our third week on the new schedule. I'm quite impressed so far. Brianna has set herself into doing lots of work Mon-Wed and having light/off days on Thurs-Fri. As long as she gets the work for the week done I'm happy and she feels like she's sneaking time off. Win-win in my opinion!


Monday - Brianna finished her Gr. 2 math workbook. She has some final worksheets to do and the final review and we'll be able to move into Gr. 3! She's very excited.

We also implemented an idea given to us from Jessy over at Our Side of the Mountain. Brianna hates worksheets full of nothing but problems, but I think repetition for basic math (adding/subtracting/ect...) is important. Jessy said what she does with her daughter is have her do just the even problems and if she gets 85% or more she doesn't have to do the odds. Brianna likes this idea. She did get less than the 85% the first time cause she did her usual rush through. However, when she had to then complete the odd problems *because* she rushed through the evens, she got slowed down and took her time and got every single problem correct! Thanks Jessy!

Tuesday - We started another new book that I picked up for over the summer work. It's a basic writing skills book to help her with writing things like letters, paragraphs, short stories, ect...

Wednesday - We're moving right along in her French book. She's still finding it quite easy. I think part of it is that it's a bilingual book. The questions are written in both French and English. As long as she answers them in French all is good. I think this is a bit of a "good easy" though to build back up her confidence in French. It was starting to be lacking by the end of our last all French book. Where as now she's laughing saying "I know this!"

Thursday - We discovered that there appears to be more to the Canadian Census unit than we thought. Apparently the work that you order through the mail is different from the pdf version available on the gov website. So now I'm kinda glad I've been lacking on posting about her "complete" Census unit. I asked her if she wanted to do more Census work and you shoulda seen her jumping around lol This was a very good unit to have done as she's enjoyed it a LOT.

Otherwise, she had an off day as there was only a couple things left from her schedule and she wanted to do them Friday.

Friday - We did Rule #2 from Spell by Color. She again was trying to skip over reading instructions and just do what she thought she should do (a big problem here), but once I made her go over it again, she found all the words that went with the rules. Again, I'm really glad we started this over again!

She's really enjoying making things with this clay (which make mommy much happier than playdoh)

An interesting dude made of Q-tips

Check out other weekly wrap ups at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

Supply Score!

I went to Walmart this afternoon to pick up coffee creamer. I wandered past the stationary dept to see if they still had any of the colored dots Olivia loves on Clearance. Did they ever! I originally bought them marked down to $1. Now they were marked down to $0.50! I also found a whole bunch of other great supplies! 2 packs of tape for $0.10. Binder dividers for $0.18. Zipper binders for $2. Fancy double sided markers for $1. Mechanical pencils for $1. Dry erase posters for $1. Push pins for $0.50. Crazy mark downs on loads of stuff! I picked up close to $300 worth of supplies for under $30! I'm going back next week to see if there's new stuff

Wilderness Wednesday

Sorry for the late in the day post!

We didn't get outside much this week other than to jump in the kiddie pool cause it was so hot and humid. Over the weekend we saw a female ruby-throated humming bird in our garden. It actually stuck around for several minutes twittering around our bleeding heart, but I was to afraid of scaring it away to go grab the camera.

We did get some pics though!

This is a HUGE (over 2 inches) bug. Apparently it's a Giant Water Bug. I didn't think we grew bugs this big in Canada!

In the center of the pic is a little frog, but of course it hopped away too quickly for us to figure out what kind.

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

Tot School - Week 3

I'm late posting this one, but we're here!!

Our Focus:

- Letter C

- Number 3

- Color Green

- Triangle Shape

Olivia is 22 mths

Triangles. She's making more of a star shape though lol

Coloring Cake

She loved the Thomas pictures on these shape cards, but it seemed to be too much with the pictures on the shapes. I think I'll find some plain shape cards for her too.

She loves her sticker pages. She's been trying to color match the stickers too (not even something I've been trying to work on!)

More triangles. I'm still amazed how close too correct she holds her crayons!

Color matching bugs

She was actually trying to follow the outline of the C for a minute.

I got my printables from:
1+1+1=1
Confessions of a Homeschooler
Printer Projects
Daycare Resource 
Homemade

Come check out other Tot Schools at 1+1+1=1