A Walk in the Fall

I used to do a link up (that bombed when I slacked on my blog) called Wilderness Wednesday. Every Wednesday I would post the link up with a post of the things we did in nature that week.

I should probably start that again. But with Canada going into winter, nature can be a little white and a little cold. Not to say that winter isn't beautiful! It's just cold. Last winter was amazing. Normal winter... the hair in your nostrils can feel like they're gonna break off.

So maybe come spring....

However FALL in Canada is incredible. We have all the beautiful colors and the perfect temps. The girls and I went for a walk along our local bike path (a gorgeous 40+ kilometer path along the St. Lawrence river). Now that the temperatures are better, we get out walking a lot. With the healthy lifestyle we're working on, it's perfect!

We found a swarm of super cool looking bugs on a tree. The 2nd pic is of the bottom of the trunk. We discovered a few different ages of the bugs. The youngest ones are red and as they get bigger they turn more and more black.

Research proved that they're Boxedler bugs, thankfully harmless.

In several areas along the bike path are crab apple trees.The girls like to pick them and toss them into the water for the seagulls (who happily scoop them up!). Olivia also just likes to demonstrate her monkey skills while Brianna paranoidly watches.

We found a turkey vulture in the park along the bike path. Seeing them closer to our house is pretty uncommon but I've never seen one in the park area which is just off our downtown.

The St. Lawrence river is a huge river system. There's load of different wildlife including the ducks, seagulls and a heron hanging out on this rock.

Weekly Wrap Up - 9/30/16

Olivia loves to curl up in our lawn chairs (since she's small enough she can actually curl up) and read books.

Olivia has been riding biking with the neighbour's children in the evenings. She became quite the pro at riding a 2 wheeler this summer and helped teach her year-younger friend how to as well.

Olivia was recently shown how to properly use a steak knife to cut. Joshua loves this as it means that she is willing to often cut up strawberries for him!

Brianna got a note from the local organizer of the Terry Fox Run thanking her for her continued fundraising and offered to make sure that her run is officially recorded (as Brianna was sick on the actual run day).

Olivia finished up her apple experiment with all sorts of gross success.

We recorded our "day in the life" post for iHomeschool Network.

Brianna has really taken a big change in responsibility in her school work this week. She went from needing more prompting (and arguing) to do schoolwork than Olivia, to really buckling down and getting it done. Her chores still take a lot more prompting, but I'll take it!

We all began working out again this week. Because of my surgeries in June, this summer was way too laid back. Brianna really fell short in the healthy dept. We have a dedicated workout room that we share with the neighbours (we have the equipment, they have the space) so no excuses!

If you've been reading my blog for a while (or just read back to a few years ago), you'll remember my niece Tanya used to homeschool with us. She went back to the public school route and is not working on dual credit courses at the college that Brianna plans to attend. Today was her Sweet 16.

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Hip Homeschool Moms

Day in the Life of Waterview Homeschool

This week, the final week, on iHomeschool Network's Annual Back to School Blog Hop is a "Day in the Life of" post. I love doing these. I haven't done one in forever though!

8am - alarm goes off. I am NOT a morning person and even 8am is way too early for me. Thankfully, Lee works nights and is home before Joshua wakes up, or, if I'm extra lucky, Joshua will wake me up at like 6am *grumble* I poked Olivia, who is not surprisingly in my bed. She doesn't even flinch. I come down stairs to find that Brianna's alarm has been going off for the last half an hour. I need an earthquake bed for her or something. Pour coffee and head outside to my porch to smoke and coffee in silence. My mom, Grandma, has already left for work.

8:30am - I come inside, Brianna's alarm is not still going but she's not up here. Olivia is also not out of bed. I send Lee upstairs to wake Olivia and head to the basement to drag Brianna out of bed. She fakes being dead. Dude, there is not enough coffee flowing through me yet to think that's funny.

8:50am - Breakfast is finally happening for the girls. Joshua on the other hand has been awake 2 hours and is happily "cooking" his sippy on the stove (placing it on the cold burner and calling it hot).

9:05am - Joshua's sippy might be "hot" but his toes are like icecubes and I refuse to turn on the furnace this early in the fall. Operation find-everyone's-slippers begins.

9:15am - veg fest before school. Since it's Monday, Lee didn't work last night (he works tonight though), so the little kids pile on Daddy in the living room. Brianna and I hang out on the porch, being kitten perches and discuss what's on the agenda for the day and I fill in chore lists for the week in their agendas.

9:45am - meltdown begins over the fact that it's not snack time yet. Cue Joshua's most pitiful look. He is temporarily soothed by a blanket fort to watch Brianna play her game.

10am - let the schoolwork commence! Nope, wait... let the hang out in the bathroom for long periods of time commence....

10:25am - school actually starts. Thomas starts on Netflix for Joshua. Lee hides in our bedroom to watch non-preschooler tv.

10:40 am - I cover Brianna's eyes to enter her laptop password while she's on her phone doing DuoLingo. "She chocolate eats" is now the French phrase of the day. Olivia is excited to see seasonal (fall) worksheets in her pile.

11:30 - Laundry on the line! Joshua loves to help Brianna with the clothes pins.

11:50am - Olivia is done her paper schoolwork. Since it's almost lunch break, she just breaks early. She is loving her newly allowed privilege of cutting with a steak knife, so cut up Joshua some strawberries for lunch

12pm - lunch break! Also, mail call! Brianna got a card from the local organizer of the Terry Fox Run with this year's pin.

12:30pm - back to work. Brianna starts with a load of dishes, Olivia starts with her Reading Eggs and I get to work with Joshua's schoolwork.

1:10 pm - Joshua's (and Lee's lol) nap time means my work time. While the girls work on schoolwork and chores, I head up to my office to sew zippers and necklines into car seat ponchos. Right now is my bust season in general but also the only time of year I really sell car seat ponchos. So add prepping for Christmas sales and shows to roughly 40-50 ponchos means I'm pretty busy!

2:50pm - read aloud time. Today we are reading from our biology unit on respiration and our novel "The Family Under The Bridge".

3:20pm - reading is done so I go to wake up Joshua. I find him napping under the bed, silly boy. Under-bed napping apparently makes a grumpy boy. Brianna tried to cheer him up some by making a train track for him.

3:40pm - Olivia and I finished her apple experiment. It was her first long term science experiment so she was excited for it to finally be done.

4pm - school work and most chores are done. Electronics time for the girls. Olivia hides in a blanket for to play Minecraft and Brianna plays a bunch of games for Joshua (who wasn't terribly impressed with Brianna's track building skills and went back to being grumpy). I do some tidying up so I can get some freezer cooking done. When Joshua is finally less cranky, Brianna joins me to make Sausage Breakfast Muffins.

6pm - Brianna got ready for Pathfinders and then researched how to tie her scarf properly. She was so proud to have figured it out! She noticed that the videos she found on youtube were using the older style scarf (uniforms changed recently), so once she perfects it, she plans to make a youtube video with the current uniform.

6:30pm - Brianna is dropped off at Pathfinders. I come home and finish making the gazillion muffins (and ate about 348765 of them!). I manage to get Olivia to consume something of nutrients other than cereal (extreme picky issues here) - homemade apple honey oatmeal!

8pm - Lee and I went to Brianna's Pathfinders meeting for parent planning. They announced the current planned international trip - ENGLAND! Mommy is massively jealous. In 2019, Brianna will be able to go to England for approximately a week with the Pathfinders and Rangers to the Pax Lodge. Brianna is insanely nervous as she hates sleeping away from home, but in the next 3 years she will have a zillion opportunities to sleep away with Guides.

8:50pm - back home. Joshua and Lee have gone to snuggle to bed. Olivia cleans the living room and Brianna started her garbage and dishes chores.

8:55pm - for some reason, Brianna's alarm started randomly sounding. Why on earth it would be set for this time, who knows....

9:30pm - bedtime! I tuck Olivia in, Joshua's still awake so I snuggle with him for a few. I send Brianna downstairs to write in her Pathfinders Journal and park my butt on the computer to veg out on facebook.

10pm - Tell Brianna it's lights out.

10:10pm - kick Lee off to work and hang out on my porch with the neighbour, talking about Brianna's England trip.

10:40pm - I packed all the sausage muffins into freezer bags and found room for them in the freezer. That's a lot of freaking muffins!

10:50pm - I feel sorry for my American friends after reading the aftermath of the Presidential Debate.

11pm - I work on some online stuff for work, talking to customers, organizing coop buys.

11:30pm - Well past my bedtime...

Thanks for reading our newest Day in the Life post. I can't wait to read everyone else's on iHomeschool!

Apple Experiment

For Fall Equinox, we started a cool apple experiment that I found here.

We filled jars with air, water, oil and vinegar, then placed a quarter of an apple in each.

Olivia made predictions of what would happen to each apple:

Air - I predict it will turn rotten
Water - I predict it will become soaked and mushy
Oil - I predict it will be all messy and yuck
Vinegar - I predict it will smell weird

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

I forgot to take Day 4's picture but it was equally gross.

Finally, Day 5. Olivia was excited to check out the final progress of her apples and see if her predictions were correct.

Her best EW face

Her predictions and results

Her drawings of the results

Linking up with Practical Mom

Weekly Wrap Up - 9/23/16

The girls got their Girl Guide uniforms in this week which they were super excited about. Brianna and Olivia are now "officially" a Pathfinder and a Brownie.

Both girls received Girl Guide cookies to start selling to raise funds for Guides activities. As they just came out of fundraising for Terry Fox, this is easy work for them! Their goal is to sell 7 cases each to get a crest for their badge sashes.

We're getting into more recent history in our history studies. We covered the beginnings of the written word. Which sent the girls to play a game that Brianna remembered included hieroglyphics. I'm waiting for Olivia to decide that learning to read is overrated and she'll just write in pictures lol

Also in this week's history was talk of rituals for seasonal celebrations. Which tied coincidentally into the fact that it was Autumn Equinox on Wednesday. We discussed this Pagan/Wiccan story of Mabon (the picture below is what we read. The previous linked words take you to a longer description of Mabon) and what happens to the world in the fall. We also watched a cool video on why there are so many different types of apples.

Joshua and I painted a fall handprint tree, Olivia started an apple experiment (more about this in a later post!) and Brianna made apple muffins.

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Hip Homeschool Moms

Weekly Wrap Up - 9/16/16

Monday was a day off for Daddy's birthday. We always take off family birthdays, but learning often still happens!

Brianna is loving getting back into CNN Student News. It teaches her current events and brings her around the world. It has serious stuff, and fun stuff (like Tuesday's llama jumping segment).

The beginning of fall has some great weather. Not too hot, not too cool and most of the humidity is gone. The girls took Poetry Tea Time onto the porch this week.

Brianna spend a lot of time this week busting her butt to hit her $500 fundraising goal for The Terry Fox Foundation. In the last 5 years she has raised almost $2000!

We have an outdoor cat who had kittens 5 weeks ago. Olivia is SUPER protective of them. She is a giant worry wart as they get bigger and more into exploring. Thankfully they love her and happy put up with her smothering.

I love freezer cooking. Brianna's helped me a few times, but it's always been "get me this" or "get me that". This time, I had her HELP. Figuring out what to make, what spices we needed, mixing (hamburger, by hand), forming hamburgers and meatballs. The whole shebang. She loved it! We made hamburgers, chili, meatloaf, sloppy joes, tator tot casserole, cheeseburger rice, sausage breakfast muffins and chocolate chip cookies.

In more "schooly" news, we finished up the Nervous System portion of our Biology course. Brianna chose to write about amnesia for her writing assignment. Olivia spent a lot of time poking and pinching herself to "send signals to her brain" so clearly that portion was well learned lol

Brianna had a bit of a meltdown over her French writing. She is a terrible speller, even in English, and Rosetta Stone won't mark the activity as complete unless you score 80% or more, which means in the writing portion, she has to spell at least 80% of the words correctly. I'm not sure how we will proceed in the next 4 years of the course. I WANT her to be completely fluent, including writing, but I don't want to make her hate it because she's a naturally poor speller.

See what Joshua did this week in my tot school post.

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Hip Homeschool Moms

Current Curriculum - September 2016

This post contains NO affiliate links

Previous post from last July here.

This post coincides with iHomeschool Network's Annual Blog Hop. This week (which I'm late on!) is Curriculum Week. Check next week for School Room Week.

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. Joshua started "Preschool" on Sept 6, 2016. We don't follow specific grades but Brianna is anywhere from Gr. 6-10, Olivia is anywhere from Gr. 1-3, Joshua is preschool/Kindy. 

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.

Joshua:

He's juuuust starting out so is mostly using left overs from Olivia as we see what he like/works well for him. Some of the more common printables that we're grabbing are from 1+1+1=1, Our Little Monkeys, Homeschool Creations, Confessions of a Homeschooler and Teachers Pay Teachers.

He's still working on speech with his speech therapist. At the time of this writing, he is approx 1 year "behind" in his speech for the typical 3 yr 3 mth old child. This is WAY better than his completely non verbal-ness from a few months ago, so we'll take it! We still make use of sign language. He still uses it for words he doesn't know and we'll use it when we are trying to figure out his gibberish.

Once he has a better grasp on constant language we'll start ABCMouse with him. Olivia really liked it and he loved watching her when she did her lessons so is already familiar with it.

Olivia:

English:

We're playing around in Brave Writer's "Jot it Down" program which focuses on dictation for Olivia's age group. We do dictations for Brave Writer's Friday Freewrite and to write her Brownie Journal (basically, what she did at Brownies on a given day).

We're almost done 1+1+1=1's You Can Read program. Olivia picked up a lot of the more "sight" words with that. 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. We have oodles of early readers that we share in reading and Olivia is reading more and more of the words in each book. 

In the spring started Reading Eggs, an online program like ABC Mouse, but instead of learning sounds, she's now using it to read. She loves it and asks to work on it even on the weekends.

Math:
Olivia is almost done Early Math on Khan Academy. Her main curriculum is Math Mammoth, in which she just started the Gr. 2 level. It worked well for her for Gr. 1, so I hope it continues to!

With our ReadingEggs subscription came a subscription to MathSeeds which is meant for 3-8 year olds. MathSeeds starts out really young (Olivia was being made to identify numbers), but she doesn't seem to care. I'm not sure (since she didn't care) if there is a test out area to start at a higher level.

Extra Curricular:
Olivia just finished her 2nd year of soccer. She has grown so much in it since last year. Last year she would pick grass and stare off into space. This year she actively took part in drills, actually went after the ball on the field and even scored 2 goals!

Olivia joined Brownies this year. I was a Brownie as a girl, so was super excited for her to start. For some reason, she's picking up on Brianna's "I can't sleep away" and is nervous about the possibility of camps. She's slept at a friend's house several times with no issue, so I don't think it'll be a problem, but she sure thinks it will be!

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. However, she's been struggling so much with math that we're trying something new altogether. We've started Time4Learning. She responds really well to "computer school work" so I'm hoping this helps with her math. We're also slowly working our way through Khan Academy. Brianna really likes the videos explaining new concepts. 

Brianna struggles a lot with math so she's "behind", only doing Gr. 6. But that's the beauty of homeschooling. She can be working on Gr. 10/11 science while being years behind in math. Math is something that we spend a lot of time trying out different things for.

English: 
We're semi-using Brave Writer's "Writer's Jungle" (bits and pieces, at least) Brianna especially enjoys their Poetry Teatimes. For spelling, as always, we don't do a lot of focus on spelling because of Brianna's Dysgraphia. Her spelling HAS improved on it's own through the use of texting, social media and using spell check on her typed work. We'll be doing NaNoWriMo for the 3rd time. The first year, she struggled to hit 12,000 words. Last year she did an impressive 20,000 and wasn't even done her story! We use CNN's Student News for daily writing (we watch the clip and she picks one topic to write a summary about).

French: 
Brianna is almost done her first year of Rosetta Stone. My grandma bought the kids the full 5 year lesson set, so she'll be good through high school. Duolingo has an app for her phone for extra, on-the-go practice. One of our neighbours tests 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. 

She wants to do some basic art lessons to improve her drawing, so I'm looking into some good lessons for that. She also wants to learn to sew. She took a crochet class in the winter and will hopefully look to improve further in that.

Phys Ed/Health: 
Brianna normally runs with the Cornwall MultiSport Club. This year I had back to back surgeries, one being major abdominal surgery, so her coach was out of commission for the summer. Brianna is very much not self-motivating, but we hope to get her back into basic training now that I'm almost 100%. She is still walking/running/biking 10k for Terry Fox this year. She does youth yoga classes a couple times a month and yoga videos at home. Because she is overly flexible, she loves it and it greatly improves her balance and fidgeting.

Civics:
We took part in our town's first Pride parade this year, so there will be a lot of diversity learning going on in the near future. 

Life Skills: 
Brianna babysits and does random jobs for neighbours. Because of the sudden influx of money, she's learning about comparing prices and smart spending. She's looking forward to being able to get a "real" job in a couple years. She's also becoming more responsible for getting her schoolwork and chores done with less interference from us. 

Extra Curriculars:
Like Olivia, Brianna is signed up for Girl Guides this year. For her age group, she will be in PathFinders. As she has anxieties about sleeping away from home, she is super nervous about camps, but we will be trying to get her to sleepover more in the coming months at various friends' so she can try to get used to it. She also joined a Teen Tuesday program through the library where she gets to hang out with kids her age and do various activities. 


Both Girls:

History/Geography: 
We're are going to start doing Country Studies again. The kids really enjoyed them. We read about the countries, find them on maps, watch videos about them and make a bunch of food from that country. 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. We'll be reading through History of the World and Geography of the World as our his/geo base outside of the Country Studies. 

Science:
We're currently finishing up on our Biology course. After that, we'll be taking a break from a set topic while I can put together a Weather unit. Since we live in Canada and winter is coming, it works lol Both girls went to science camp over the summer and had a blast. 

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.

Reading:
I made a post here about our reading plans for the year, with book titles and links.

Weekly *cough* Monthly Wrap Up - May

Ok, so this is kinda a Month of May Wrap Up, since I didn't really post much this month. It's been a little crazy around here prepping for my surgeries in June (15 teeth extractions and a hysterectomy). We've also been outside a LOT enjoying the totally awesome weather! Enjoy a boat load of pics!

The girls have found their new favorite schooly YouTuber - AsapSCIENCE. They have spent hours watching random videos. Some are silly (like Can You Actually Eat a Bus) but some are really cool (like What if You Stopped Going Outside). There ARE some mature videos that some may not want younger ones watching, so maybe preview before you set kids loose.

Olivia attempted to help Joshua learn how to peddle his bike. He is totally lost lol He never cared to learn to ride a tricycle so he has no idea what he's doing. Olivia is confused as to why he can't peddle. It's interesting to say the least! Olivia herself has some new bike learning to do as we took off her training wheels. She's really struggling with balance but I think that's because her training wheels were so crooked that she rode her bike off centered for so long, she has to learn how to ride upright.

Brianna had her first race of the year. Her training has MUCH improved since last year so here's hoping for a great season! Olivia had her first soccer game of the year too. She's on the red team this year which totally confused her (she was blue last year). We think we'll be signing Joshua up for soccer next year, speech depending.

We'll be starting summer schedule early, due to the aforementioned surgeries. I hope to be able to finish their biology course over the summer still. It was originally planned to be completed *before* summer schedule but life happens. Otherwise, they'll be slowly puttering their way through their various work in math and English (and in Brianna's case, French).

Olivia teaching Joshua to ride his bike

Lee helping Olivia learn to ride her bike without training wheels

Brianna's favorite school spot

Watching for our cat to give birth (sadly one was stillborn, the other we lost 5 days later)

Olivia planted her garden box by herself this year

Playing the "even/odd game" with Daddy

Open hydrants means loads of water fun!

Joshua helped plant the big garden this year

Soccer practice

Progress on my temperature blanket January-April 

Olivia's psoriasis is flaring up :(

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and The Practical Mom