Christmas Planning

I loooove Christmas. I also happen to love planning and lists and such. The Organizing Junkie wrote a great post that included a review on an awesome app that I love! Christmas Gift List is a super easy way to keep track of gifts you need to buy, which ones you've already bought and what's already wrapped and you've forgotten about *raises hand*

You can even password it so it's safe from prying eyes ;)

This is now my 2nd year using this app. I even used it for birthday shopping!

Taking Health Seriously Pt. 2

This is a follow up post to my March health post.

I am now at 42.6 pounds lost (!!!!), at least 4 clothing sizes and (going by bust+waist+hips) 10.5 inches smaller. All since January.

I am SUPER stoked. I haven't been this small since I was about 5 mths pregnant with Isaac (17 years ago,,,). I am only 12 (!!!) pounds from my ultimate goal (which is still technically "overweight", but I have a large frame and have no interest in being "skinny", just healthy).

January to the end of May I worked really hard. I've never done so well for so long and my new clothing sizes proves it. In June I had 2 surgeries 11 days apart, one of them major abdominal surgery. I was on restrictions for 6 weeks and even after that still felt like a zombie.

While I didn't get much exercise done over the summer, I still worked really hard to keep my eating good. 95% of the time I stayed below my calorie goal on MyFitnessPal. Even with the lack of exercise, I managed to lose 10lbs over the summer.

By the end of Sept, I was feeling 100% again. The temps were cooler. Workouts could happen again! We all love walking and have a great bike path that's only a block away. I put together a daily workout to try to tone, since losing all that weight has shrunk a lot of parts but also made a lot of parts floppy.

We joined AquaFit now that beach season is over. While AquaFit is MUCH harder than it looks, it is still fun. And it's something different than the usual sweaty reps. We walk there while the weather is still nice so we get a 2 mile walk in as well.

As winter comes, it'll be tempting to get lazy. I really hope I can keep the will power to keep going!

Weekly Wrap Up - March 25th

We had a fairly quiet week as we took an extended long weekend for Easter. (Ok, really, so I could catch up on some marking, planning and sewing projects ;) )

Math: Olivia finished her chapter in math and is now moving on to shapes and measurement.

English: Brianna has restarted watching CNN Student News for her daily writing. We watch the day's episode together and then she picks a topic from the news cast to write a paragraph about.

Olivia decided to make these mice cupcakes with Brianna for Poetry Teatime.

Science: Olivia and Brianna had a great time with Cornell's bird identifier app. Because Brianna has always been fond of identifying the local birds, she quizzed Olivia to remember distinctions to be able to look up the bird.

History/Geography: Brianna finished World War II in Color for her Holocaust study and is now watching through Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution.

Phys Ed: The weather is getting better so we'll hopefully be getting out for more walks and Brianna will be able to start running outdoors again. For this week's Homeschool Coop, we walked to and from the library, roughly a 5km route (just over 3 miles). Brianna also did a general workout once.

French: Brianna is really enjoying her DuoLingo and was tickled to pass me in progress (which wasn't hard, I keep forgetting to do it lol)

Other: The girls have been watching Signing Time with Joshua a lot lately and all 3 of them have picked up loads more sign language! The girls are even starting to put together sentences to show off their skills

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and The Practical Mom

Current Curriculum July 2015

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Previous post from last Sept here.

We school year round and don't really follow grades. Brianna started Nov 15, 2010 coming from 3rd grade in public school and will go until whenever of whatever year. Olivia started "Preschool" on Feb 6, 2012. We don't follow specific grades but Brianna is anywhere from Gr. 6-10 and Olivia is mostly Gr 1, a little Kindy and some Gr. 2. 

So, since we don't have set grades or set school years, I figure every 6 mths-ish I'll post what we are currently working on. We use a mishmash of traditional homeschool curriculum, workbooks bought at teacher supply stores, stuff made up completely in my head and most subjects are supplemented by printed worksheets from various sites and of course, library books. In a nut shell, we're eclectic homeschoolers.

Olivia:

We have a subscription to ABCMouse.com and Olivia really likes it! It has all the way from Toddlers to the end of Kindergarten. This program added on a couple more levels, but only lists levels not grades, so I don't know where the program ends after Kindergarten. Olivia is still learning to control the computer so she's a little slower going here than in her paper school work.

For printables we mostly use 1+1+1=1 (there's also great tot school and preschool printables here!). Confessions of a Homeschooler also has great printables. I love 1+1+1=1 as they have a lot of themed units. They cover a wide variety of skills but under one theme (Olivia has done cats, pizza, Octonauts and more). Even though most of them are below her skill levels, she really enjoys them so we keep doing them. 1+1+1=1 now has literature units as well.

English:

We'll start dabbling in Brave Writer's "Jot it Down" program which focuses on dictation for Olivia's age group. We'll start up 1+1+1=1's You Can Read program once Olivia is more comfortable in phonics. We feel that phonetic learning is highly important over memorizing sight words so we're spending a lot of effort on letter sounds, blending sounds and sounding out short words.


Math:
Olivia has started Early Math on Khan Academy. She is super proud to be doing Khan just like Brianna. Her computer skills are still lacking, so Khan is definitely something that we do together, though she is getting better at navigating. 

Olivia loves to help take care of Joshua, cooking and household chores. We, of course, encourage her as much as possible!

Phys Ed./Health:
Olivia has started running like Brianna. This year, like last, she ran in the fun run this month and will be taking part in the Cornwall Triathlon, doing a duathlon, next month. She's also in U7 Soccer this year. The kids play weekly and Olivia seems to really enjoy it.

Brianna: 

Math: 
We really like Math Mammoth. It's almost self-teaching once a kid can read. It breaks the new concepts down into step by step instructions in a way that really gets through to Brianna. Math Mammoth goes only to Gr. 7, so once she's done that, I'll be looking for a new curriculum for Algebra and the like. We're also slowly working our way through Khan Academy. Brianna really likes the videos explaining new concepts. 

English: 
We're using Brave Writer's "Writer's Jungle" again this year. Brianna's especially enjoys their Poetry Teatimes, which we'll be starting again in the fall. For spelling, I keep track of words she has spelled wrong in her general school work and base spelling practice off of that. We'll be doing NaNoWriMo again this year. She took part last year and wrote an impressive 12,000+ words. Amazing who someone who often struggles with writing a few pages. This year, we'll be starting early with NaNoWriMo's educator's lesson plans.

French: 
We will be doing Rosetta Stone now that Brianna has her own laptop to install it on. Brianna already knows more French than I do, so thankfully Rosetta Stone is a self-teaching course! We'll be using Living Languages for extra activities. Duolingo has an app for her phone for extra, on-the-go practice. One of our neighbours has offered to test Brianna's French periodically.

Arts: 
Brianna wants to learn guitar and we have a child's guitar and a great book - The Complete Guitar Manual, hopefully we can get around to that. She also wants to get back into playing the flute (which is currently under repairs). Hopefully she can be encouraged to put in a stronger, more frequent effort this time.

She has expressed interest in learning about some Shakespeare, so we'll  learn about him and read/watch some plays. 

Phys Ed/Health: 
Brianna runs with a local MultiSport club. Her last run of the year is her Terry Fox run on Sept 14th. She actually bikes the Terry Fox run, but as she chooses to do the biggest route (10km), it's certainly nothing to laugh at! Once that is done, she's done until May. She'll spend that time doing training at least twice a week (running, yoga, strength training, cardio) and of course, we live in Canada, so there's always snow to shovel! 

Computer: 
Brianna and Olivia both have Minecraft accounts. I'm currently looking for cool educational ideas for it as I know many are out there. But for now, both girls are just working on computer skills and building. Brianna is learning to use the MinecraftWiki to research how to do or use various aspects of the game.

Civics:
This fall we're doing a study on Canadian government and our Prime Ministers from Confederation to present. We have a federal election this fall and will be tracking the candidates and their platforms. We're using various books and sites like Canada Votes, Exploring Canada and a cool Prime Ministers of Canada set that I got from the Library and Archives of Canada

Life Skills: 
Brianna has taken on babysitting and dog poop scooping jobs from our neighbours. This is teaching her a great deal about responsibility and money. Because of the sudden influx of money, she's learning about comparing prices and smart spending. She's also becoming more responsible for getting her schoolwork and chores done with less interference from us. 


Both:

History/Geography: 
Lee and I are driving across country at the end of August and the girls will be tracking us and learning about various places as we go.

We're continuing to do Country Studies. The kids have really enjoyed them so far. We read about the countries, find them on maps, watch videos about them and make a bunch of food from that country. We'll be using History of the World and Geography of the World at home and whatever oodles of books we can snag from the library. World Atlas is fantastic for maps and National Geographic Kids has a bunch of videos and articles I made both Brianna and Olivia's country reports on Microsoft Word because I couldn't find anything I liked that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg. If I can figure out how to share them here, I will.

Science:
For the most part, science is done through day to day life with no set curriculum. We'll be doing a lot of interest based topics. Both girls want to do the human body. We'll have to do a refresher in a few years for Olivia, but with the random stuff she picks up on of Brianna's school work, I'm not worried about doing a joint class with them. Brianna got an ant farm for her birthday and the girls are fascinated with watching it.  

Arts:
I want to work on art some more. Brianna loves it but is fairly terrible lol So she wants to learn little ways to make her art better. Olivia on the other hand, has this idea that her drawings aren't good enough. No telling her otherwise changes her mind :( So for both girls, we'll be doing some basic art lessons, using a variety of mediums and styles.

Joshua:

He will to continue to be cute and get into stuff and steal school work *wink*


Linking up with the iHomeschool Network

Weekly Wrap Up

Brianna's Brain Pop videos were:
- Oceans
-  Energy Sources (Brain Pop Jr)
- Horses
- Miranda Rights

Olivia likes to write random letters that tickle her fancy while doing her school work.

This week (and last) we did our country study on France.

Brianna started on Geometry (final chapter for Gr. 5!!!) in math and is over the moon to finally be able to play with her math set.

Olivia grabbed her workbooks and begged to do them. I was in the middle of something but she said "I can do them by myself!"

Brianna makes loom bracelets to raise money for the Terry Fox Foundation. This week she has an order of 10 bracelets to complete.

Olivia continued with her You Can Read program, still on the words: the, a, and, see

She really enjoys these puzzle words

We searched for this unit's sight words

Linked up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Weekly Wrap Up

This was a slow week as we dealt with upset tummies and more drama with Lee's chemical burns from work (a blog post all on it's own!).

Brianna's Brain Pop videos were:
- Penguins
- Fish (Brain Pop Jr)
- Basketball

We started on our new country study, this week on France. We'll finish it next week.

Brianna did ratios in math and, again, couldn't believe how easy they were. I'm glad that's she's found the last few units easy after the struggles she had previously. Now that she's done her English curriculum, we'll be doubling up on math until we drop to our lighter summer schedule. (After a mixture of not understanding {but refusing to ask for help} and some very shoddy work ethic, she repeated her entire Gr. 5 math curriculum. She's almost done now, but will finish that up and work on Gr. 6 over the summer)

I finally got Brianna reading age appropriate books. She has a very high reading level but kept choosing to read books in the Gr. 1-3 range. We finally found some young adult books that still covered the interests that she kept gravitating to in the lower level books. I also showed her that the library had a large selection of Lurlene McDaniel books (she found some of mine from when I was a teen and loves them! The ones that the library and I have are all about teens with cancer and such, so they are a little morbid, but they're well written).

We're going back to writing weekly book reports, but in a different manner than before. Previously, Brianna did a form style fill-in-the-blanks book report. She could have easily gotten the information by skimming the book quickly, which she started doing. Now, we're going to do more classic review style book reports. Since she has a lot of issues with putting her thoughts to paper, we'll be doing it dictation style with me typing on the computer while she speaks. This week she chose The Wide-Awake Princess by E.D. Baker.

My own homeschooling for the week was learning how to sew a ring sling and travel pouch with this great fabric!

Olivia mostly played on ABC Mouse this week and did a few things in her You Can Read program

Testing out our new M&D stamp set

Doing her puzzle words with her rice cakes

These ones were more difficult but she got them!

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Weekly Wrap Up

Brianna's Brain Pop app vocabulary was on:

- Bridges

- Asthma (Brain Pop Jr. app)

- Customary Measurement
- Submarines

In finishing up our mapping from last week, Brianna drew a floor plan of our first floor to scale

Brianna is flying through dividing fractions. She asked me "is it supposed to be this easy?!" Works for me!!

Yay! Last week of our English curriculum!

We started our Country Studies, this week was the USA. 

Olivia finished up her Octonauts unit

She refused to color on any Octonauts that were on the dotted lines lol

Still having issues identifying some letters, on this page it was K

Two plus two is four!

Identifying letters (we did left to right so they were more mixed up). She did better than I thought! We'll be working on "Q", "U", "Y", "R", "G" for capitals and "q", "u", "y", "b", "f", "n", "r", "g", "d", "p" and "t" for lowercase.

                                             

We've started Olivia in with 1+1+1=1's You Can Read program. So now she has declared herself "big enough to read" lol

"Reading" The Velveteen Rabbit and the Boy

Adding picture to her You Can Read page

Olivia loved this dice and graph game!

I printed these pages 2 to a page so she can have a book with all of her words that she learns

Joshua decided to do his own nature study

Linked up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Weekly Wrap Up

On Monday we had a busy day. It was beautiful so Brianna parked herself outside for her regular school work.

After lunch we (mostly she) built a gate for our front porch.

Later, Brianna helped place plants in our garden when a headache prevented me from bending over

Again, she worked with my Brain Pop app for her vocabulary words. This week's videos were:
- Dams
- Comparing Prices (which led into a 30 minute chat on various ways to compare prices lol)
- Great Wall of China
- Graphs
- International Space Station

In geography, we again worked on review, this time on Canada in general. Brianna is excited to start our country of the week soon, but I figured a quick review on our home country was needed first!

Brianna's working on a unit of fractions and as much as she claims to suck at them, she's actually very good at them!

Olivia finished up her Pizza unit from 1+1+1=1 from last week.

Olivia was fantastic at putting the story strips in the right order after only reading the story twice

She loved making this graph of the family members favorite pizza toppings

Olivia's never done greater than/less than yet she picked it up no problem!

New color by letter page that 1+1+1=1 posted today

As usual, we're linked up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers