Weekly Wrap-Up

 Week 2 with our new schedule. So far so good. We've hit a couple snags but nothing that can't be fixed.

Monday - We started a new book today, Fact or Opinion, Cause and Effect. The first section has to do with understanding wording so you know whether something is a fact or an opinion and how to figure out if it is actually a fact. The first page we did dealt with how to verify a fact. Brianna, being a child of this day and age, said google it. *sigh* Rule of the day was NO GOOGLE. Also learning to be specific. The first one was about a specific French scientist who made lots of medical discoveries. Brianna wanted to look up discoveries. When I showed how that would never work she went to French scientists. Well that's a little closer, but I'm sure there's still LOTS of those. It took an amazingly long time to figure out that she should look up the exact scientist to find out the facts about him.

We went back to the beginning of our spelling program, Spell by Color. 5 lessons in, she couldn't remember older rules. And since she was still spelling words covered by the beginning of the program wrong, she obviously wasn't retaining them. Thankfully we were only 5 weeks in!

Olivia likes to "help" Brianna with her schoolwork

Tuesday - We started back into her big curriculum book to finish up the English section. She's done pretty well in this level of English, so I don't see it being a problem to fly through it.

She does have a problem with skimming reading comprehension stories though. I mean, if it's a book that she's picked out and wants to read, she can tell you in great detail what everything's about. So I KNOW the reading comprehension is there. If anything she's well above the 3rd grade level. However, it's an important life skill to be able to pick out details of boring stuff (ya know, reading the fine print of contracts, ect...)

Wednesday - Brianna just loved today. For science we identified different types of leaves. We went around the neigbourhood and gathered all the different kinds we could find. Then divided them between palmate, pinnate and needle types. Brianna sketched and labeled each one. A couple we had to look up because we weren't sure. Once we were done we prepped them to be pressed so we can keep them.

Thursday - Today was a no school day cause we put the garden in! Well, I did most of it, but Brianna helped weed and designed signs (we'll be making smaller and laminated ones later, but she couldn't wait!)

Friday - Brianna saved 3 of her 4 math sheets today. This is one of the problems I warned her would come up with our new schedule if she left all her unliked stuff til Friday. Math Meltdown!!!! After about 6 hours, we got the 90 minutes of work done. *sigh*

Clay fun!

Check out other weekly wrap-ups at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

Bare Hand and Foot Gardening

Welcome to my bare foot and hand gardening! I hate both shoes and gloves so this is the only way to go!

It took a while to get clean lol

The flower bed, before

The veggie garden, before (yes we still have spring perennials in)

The veggies all set up where they'll be planted

Brianna's handprint plate with her favorite colored flowers

Veggie garden, after

Flower bed, after

 I am soooo excited for my garden this year! Since we expanded the garden some we had room to add zucchini and spinach this year. And I discovered that zucchini doesn't take up as much room as I always thought it did. I can't wait for things to grow! Especially the lettuce. It'll start being ready to pick around the same time as the green onions (also known as scallions, I believe) and radishes are ready... can you say salad?!

So in total we have:
2 new perennials
2 flats of annuals
3 potato plants
2 rows green onions
2 rows radishes
4 cucumber
1 zucchini
3 rows carrots
2 rows peas
1 row lettuce
1 row spinach
1 jalapeno
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
6 green peppers
2 cherry tomatoes
6 beef steak tomatoes

Oh YUM!

Check out other garden updates at The Homeschool Village

Brianna's First Job!

My sister hired Brianna to deliver her Avon brochures to potential new customers. Brianna is *beyond* thrilled! And the best part is, she doesn't even know she's gonna get paid. She's just over the moon to drop books in people's mailboxes lol

I think it's great too since it's really hard for an 8 yr old to even volunteer let alone get a paying job. She's a real good helper so I'm glad she'll be seeing something from it. Plus! This homeschool teacher can sneak some geography and math into it LOL

Wilderness Wednesday

For once, we've had fairly decent weather! I dare say, it even got hot on Monday!

Brianna was super excited to find this triple fused dandelion!

Three separate heads! (Pardon the bodies in the background, everyone wanted to check it out!)

What my husband calls a Mud Duck. Not sure if that's the real name though

The ducklings have hatched!

Papa duck

Science/Nature Study... our science lesson today included identifying leaves. These are the ones we found around our neighbourhood!

And we're pressing them so we can keep them as a memento

 
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Weekly Wrap-Up

This week we started a new schedule so it took a little more effort to keep track. We're about to go into week 2 with it, it's working out so far!

Monday - She started her new French book today. This book is meant for an English child who goes to an all English school, learning French. Brianna was in Immersion (half her schooling) in PS since she was 4. This book is Grade 4. Brianna complains it's too easy. Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a workbook for Immersion kids. So I told her, sure, we may zoom through this book, but thankfully the series goes up to Gr. 8 and does get harder.

We also started our Canadian Census unit. There'll be a separate blog post for that.

Tuesday - Today Brianna chose to have a LOT of school work, but she got it all done! We worked on some soil worksheets, read about the Arctic Lowland region, did more French, a reading comprehension chapter, all of her spelling work for the week and more Census work.

Wednesday - Today was all about science. She finished her science book of the year (we still have a fun experiment book to play with over the summer that reinforces a lot of what was in her workbook) and did her final test. She got 76%. Not enough mastery IMO so we'll be working on plant parts and magnets over the summer too and do a mini review.

Thursday - Today she worked on various math worksheets, time, money, turning written numbers into regular numbers, ect...

Friday - All she had to do today (since she got most of her work done on Mon and Tues), was the final part of her Census unit! Nice short day. We'll see how week 2 goes now!

Check out other weekly wrap-ups at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

Tot School - Week 2

Our focus for the week:

- Letter B

- Number 2

- Color Blue

- Square Shape

Olivia is 22 mths 

Very concentrated on her coloring!

She was super excited when I brought out these Discovery Toys Bugs. She was even able to pick out a yellow one when asked!

Being silly while counting blocks. She's trying very hard to say the numbers while we're counting and gets a great thrill out of holding my finger and making it move to each block while we're counting.

She wasn't too sure about the 3 piece puzzle. She kept just picking them all up.

She's a big fan of the color yellow.

This time she was pointing out each block herself while I counted them!

She was really into this sticker letter page. I think it's meant for those dot painters, but she loves the stickers and actually did pretty darn good!

Some gross motor work. She lets got of the ball above her head sometimes causing the ball to go behind her, but for the most part it's thrown forward.

More gross motor. She did pretty well zooming the dump truck around the driveway for a good 5 minutes. Even bent over like this, she only tripped twice. (Pardon the crappy lawn, we're in the middle of landscaping right now)

She likes to get up close and personal to her work!

She's really enjoying these lacing cards. She does keep looking for her apple one though lol

Gross motor - This is quite a steep sand hill. She didn't make it to the top, but she made it almost half way up, a lot farther than I thought she would!

Coloring with outside crayons (sidewalk chalk). She was a little weirded out by the side of them compared to her crayons.

Coloring her name

Purple! (She insists these are like her Mr. Wormy from the Baby Einstein videos lol)

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

Roasted Carrots with Garlic and Thyme

Found this awesome recipe through a fellow homeschooling blogger and HAD to make it! OMG it was sooooo yummy! I don't know the calorie count for my diet, but I bet it's better than the roasted potatoes I normally make! I forgot the thyme and used dill instead but it was still great.

2 lbs. baby carrots (or regular carrots, cut into chunks; baby carrots were cheaper at my store)
2 tbsp. olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
10ish little garlic cloves, unpeeled
generous tsp. dried thyme

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Put the carrots in a 13x9 casserole and toss with oil and season with salt and pepper.  Stick the garlic here and there in the pan.  Sprinkle with thyme.  Add 2 tbsp. water and cover tightly with foil.  Bake under they are as tender as you like, 25-45 minutes.  Check them a couple times to make sure they aren't drying out.  Uncover for the last 5-10 minutes so they can brown a bit, if you want.