A little experience

Last week, I decided it was time for my children to eat some popcorn. No, they had never before eaten any. Call me paranoid, call me over protective but I did not want them to eat popcorn. When I was young, popcorn always got stuck in my throat and that scared me.

Anyway, last week, I thought it was time to try it again. My kids LOVED it and they followed my rules without a problem. After a few minutes, I decided to try a little experience with our popcorn, something I had read in a Little House book. Take one cup of popcorn and add one cup of milk, it still adds up to one cup.



I am not really sure it worked like it was supposed to but it sure was good to eat, lol.

Beginning Geography - How To Use A Map

Today, I started this activity book with my oldest three. They loved it so much that we ended up doing half of it!!



I got our beautiful globe out along with everything else we would need and just started doing one page after an another. It was exciting to see the kids try to answer correctly. They found it easy and said they wanted to finish the book first thing tomorrow morning. Good thing I got all three. At this rate, we will start the other program by the end of next week.

Wondering what we will do next? Keep on reading :)

Sequential Spelling 1

Yesterday, Catherine started this new program. She said she wanted to learn more how to spell words. So, I got the first book out and it went great. She loved it. When I told her that she would be correcting her own mistakes, she responded with *Is that mean that you will not use your red pen?* lol Yes, it means exactly that, honey.

I took a few pictures of some pages, to show how it works.

















And now, I am going to transcript what it says on the back of the book:

Your children get immediate results with Sequential Spelling. (...)

Through six progressive levels of difficulty, Sequential Spelling never askd your students to *study* more words, only to spell them. As students recognize more and more patterns and begin to spell words correctly that they've never seen before - all without *studying* - their confidence and spelling skills soar!

Volume 1 is a great starting point for most students because, while students might be eady to spell a complex word (like frightened), they will learn best by mastering the patterns words follow throughout English spelling. Note that volume levels do not necessaraly correlate with grade levels.

Some of the patterns covered in Sequential Spelling, Volume 1: -in, -et, -et, -ot, -ay, -ime, -and, -ight. Reprensatative words your children can expect to learn: beginning, disagreeing, permitted.

Learning about the human body

The kids have been constantly asking me questions about the human bosy lately, questions that I do not always have the answer to. So, I decided to get a little help. Two dvds on the human body:





They have answers from why we get the hickups to why we cry or fart or burp or why our blood is read or why we like sugar. Many questions answered.

I just ordered it yesterday so hopefully, it will arrive sometime next week and the kids can finally get all the answers they are looking for.

Taking the day off

Or are we?

This morning, the kids wanted to just relax and watch tv. So, I said yes and they watch several episodes of *Les Découvreurs*. They love this series and want the last two. I said we would get them later on. Right now, I want them to enjoy and listen to these two new ones.

After Mathieu went down for his nap, the kids got the monopoly game out and played for a few hours. I have been cleaning the basement and found the game yesterday. They had fun playing and learning the rules, although William often challenged them, lol.

As soon as Mathieu was up from his nap, the kids went to play outside in the snow. They took Mathieu with them. He hated it. Cried and yelled the whole time. By the whole time, I mean about 3 minutes, lol. He was scaring the hald dozen cats we have that hang around the house all the time, hoping to get leftovers. The older kids were very disappointed, they were hoping that he would love playing with the snow with them and could have him go down the little *hill* they made. No such luck, after two slides down, he was done. Zachary and Alexandra were not happy since they had not had a chance to go down the slope with him. Oh well, maybe next time.

Soon, the kids will help me prepare dinner: chicken with mushroom, spinach potatoes, green beans with sesame seeds and cupcakes that the kids will get to frost.

All in all, a good day of learning and having fun. Kids do not have to have books to learn. There really is nothing like hands on learning.

The homeschool Christmas tree

I know, another picture I should have shared some time ago. Oh well, better late than never, right?



All the ornaments and such were made by the kids. They were so proud of each one they made.

Our new bookcases

I just realised that I never did share a picture of our new bookcases, the ones a friend built for us.



Look at how beautiful and sturdy they are. Yes, they are already filled and guess what? I still have a few boxes of books still filled. AND I have a lot more books I want to get, lol. Not surprising, right? I know we need more bookcases but since we are moving the kitchen into the school room and vise-versa, we are not having anymore build for now. I am not sure how much room I will have then.

A gift from the grandparents

When Patrick's parents asked the kids what they wanted for Christmas, the kids said a dvd boxset, like the previous year. We had a great time watching the series of Les Mystérieuses Citées d'Or all year long. I had gotten the kids two boxsets too; one on life and the other on the human. They watched a few episodes almost every single day. Patrick too. Anyway, when it came time to decide which boxsets they wanted, they asked for more of those. We should get these two sometime this week:



I saved 20$ because I ordered two. And since I was ordering anyway (I get free shipping on orders over 75$), I decided to get two dvds on space:



There are 27 dvds in this series, all about space. It goes into details on a variety of subjects, all related to space. I know the kids (and us) will enjoy watching them and learning. Now, I will need to start putting together a unit on space. For Christmas, I got these for the kids, as their 24th of December gifts:

The rainbow for the girls:



The moon for Zachary:



And the Star Theatre for William:



Mathieu got a toy that makes music and a little light show but I cannot find a picture of it.

They loved going to sleep looking at their new gifts. And I think we can use them to learn too.

Christmas gifts for homeschooling

This year, we got an artificial tree for the school room. I suggested that the kids make their own ornaments and decorations for that tree. They promtly got started and within a day or so, the tree was happily decorated. From top to bottom. I got the homeschool gifts wrapped and put them under that tree. The kids thought it was the most beautiful tree ever. A few days before Christmas, I had them open those gifts and they were so happy.

This is a picture of the tree. I took it today, before taking it down:

And these are some of the things I got for them:

















I had ordered a few more but they did not arrive yet. Some I could simply not get because of my location. I really wanted a wooden puzzle of the USA and the See & Spell set from M&D. Maybe I will look on E-Bay...

A few pictures of the kids enjoying opening their gifts:

ARTistic Pursuits

When I first got this art program, I thought only Catherine would be interested. From the first lesson, the boys enjoyed learning and coming up with their very own drawings.

The first lesson was *Artists Compose: To Place Together. They had to look at composition and discuss what they saw. They also answered several questions I asked them about that particular painting. They did really good. So, we moved on to:

Project - You Compose!

The kids had to draw a picture of something they had seen in our home. Zachary was the only one to draw a scenery. Catherine and William both drew objects they had seen.

Zachary:

William:

Catherine:

The dinosaur period

I am going to try and update my blog a little.

When we started our dinosaur study, I had the kids look at this book:



The kids love all our Usborne books but all from this series are favorites. When it is time for a story before bed, they will often pull out of of them and want to look and find the images instead of reading a book.

I also pulled out several books that helps kids to learn how to draw dinosaurs and prehistoric life:







May seem like a lot of books (and I did not post them all) but some were gifts and some were bought in garage sales and used books stores. Yes, some were bought brand new too. Anyway, the kids had much fun drawing several pages each of dinosaurs:

Catherine's work:

William's work:

Zachary's work:

Everyday, we sat all together and read a fun book:



This one sure was long to read. I remember us cuddling all together on my bed, reading a few pages, taking a one minute nap then read a few more pages then nap another minute. The kids thought it was so fun.



This one was a fast read and Ali reminded us that it was *her* book:



This was the biggest, most successful project of our dinosaur study:



It was very long to cut every little piece but it was fun to put it together. I would cut a few items everday and we would put them together. We saw the scenery come together, little by little. This was the result:



Of course, we had more books to read and so many things to learn too. I even found a few sites for the kids to explore and play on.



This site is full of info on dinosaurs and has some fun games to play:

http://nature.ca/discover/exf/index_f.cfm