Trip to the Sugar Bush

Spring has finally arrived! With the running of the sap, our homeschool groupdecided to take a trip to the sugar bush to see how maple syrup is made. We had a great time and, as you can see, all wore our very best clothes!

The owner of the sugar bush very kindly sent us home with a 20L pail of sap.  After boiling it down for a couple of days (Yes! DAYS!!) we were rewarded with 500ml of maple syrup. Yummy! And so much better than store bought; I don't even like maple syrup and yet still thought our pancakes that Sunday morning were the best I had ever had!

Happy Thanksgiving Eh!

It's our Canadian Thanksgiving today, so I have a bit of free time to update.  We've been busy, busy, busy!

After getting up at 0630 and leaving camp every Saturday morning to drive into the city for 3on3 hockey, CKW decided that riding competitively was more important to him than playing rep (competitive) hockey, so a few weeks ago a new member of our family arrived:  Top Notch Tuppence, a large, Welsh cross pony who has shown hunters, jumpers and evented - just what CKW needs!

They hit it off immediately and CKW has been riding almost every day since his arrival!

We've been 'doing school' four days per week, approximately 3.5 hours each day and then heading out to the barn for the afternoon.  CKW attends an after school group for a couple of hours every afternoon and then continues on to sports and/or piano in the evenings.  During the day on Wednesdays, we get together with our local homeschool group and socialise.  Great for him to have kids to run around with and really great for me to have other homeschooling parents to talk to.  Seriously, I need the socialisation waaaaay more than he does!

Moving Beyond the Page (MBtP) continues to be our main curriculum spine for language arts and social science.  I continue to be impressed by this curriculum!  Maths is covered with Teaching Textbooks, Singapore Math, Life of Fred, and various iPad apps - CKW is a maths lover!  We are also enjoying My Pals Are Here!  for science and supplement with the Homeschool Science Program at our local city science centre.  Our Canadian social science content is from Donna Ward but I plan to purchase CBC's Canada: A People's History as CKW finds Donna Ward a bit dry, and I have to admit that I concur!  We are slogging though Easy Grammar and Daily Grams but I'm not impressed with teaching grammar based entirely upon prepositions and plan to invest in Michael Clay Thompson's curriculum next year, as long as we have the time to fit it in along with MBtP.  CKW enjoys all the 'Detective' workbooks from The Critical Thinking Company and on days that I am not feeling well, I am very thankful for workbooks and computer based curriculum! 

Fall is my favourite season - hope you are enjoying it as much as we are! 

Track and Field Meet

A few of our local homeschool groups got together to have a track and field meet.  CKW competed in the 80m, 200m, 400m, 800m, broad jump, long jump, triple jump and the ball put (shot put was for the older students).  He was victorious in the long jump and did very well in the remainder of the events, finishing in second place overall in Boys 7-9 Group.

Ball Put

End of the 800 Metre Race!

I meant to write weekly updates... Honest!

I don't know how she does it... 

And no, I don't mean Kate Reddy or Sarah Jessica Parker.  I mean all the homeschool bloggers who manage to both homeschool their children and update their blogs! 

I meant to write weekly updates, so that I would have them to refer to in later years, but time seems to get away from me every single day.  Our days have been going well, we've just been super busy with at home lessons, out of home extras, and sports - oh my doG the sports!  Swimming, karate, riding, zumba, skating, and hockey, hockey, hockey.  Seems CKW has found his religion...

However I will be back - I promise!  With an actual homeschooling update...  Tomorrow?

Horsepower!

"Real Homeschooling"

Today was our first day of 'real homeschooling', according to CKW.  I've scheduled his independent DEAR reading and journal writing for early morning, while I am making breakfast.  Then, after breakfast, we sit down to an hour of language arts, followed by an hour of social science - or thereabouts, we have to leave time for a couple of small snack & dance sessions!  CKW then does a maths lesson via Teaching Textbooks, as well as his Read, Write & Type Keyboarding practice while I rest my brain - oops!  I mean get our dinner ready.  He also uses this time to look at the movies on BrainPop Jr that correlate with what we have been studying that day. 

For the summer, he will be spending afternoons at our local library's reading program on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.  I thought that science might have to wait until September, but CKW loves science so very much, that he's asked if we can consider science as an elective course for the summer, as we have two electives periods scheduled for both Saturdays and Sundays.  Truthfully, these were to make up for any horrible health weekdays where I wasn't up to helping him with his most intensive teaching subjects, but if he wants science on the weekends, then I am all in!  Being a veterinarian, I love the sciences (well, except organic chemistry, but I'm hoping that won't come up for some time yet!), although CKW has made sure to explain to me in very great detail that chemistry, not biology, is his favourite science.  I guess I can deal with that.  Today, being Monday, we had our afternoon free and took advantage of this by starting off our science study with the first two lessons in Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding (very basic) and then watching a couple of BrainPop Jr movies about matter and it's different states.

After we finished up and CKW was doing some fancy Lego project while I rested, he came into my room and asked me what 'real homeschooling' was like.  I told him that it was like what we had done today, that today was very much like what our homeschooling days were going to be like.  He ruminated on that for a bit and then came back in to let me know that he was very excited about grade two - apparently he found 'real homeschooling' to be a bit harder then regular school, but so very much more interesting! 

Good day, if I do say so myself...