Project-Based Homeschooling

In an effort to shift our homeschooling dynamic from 'student-teacher' to 'learner-facilitator' I am currently enrolled in a Beta Master Class for Project-Based Homeschooling. No curriculum; student projects ONLY!

 

(Can you say Type A+ perfectionist control freak twinges?! YIKES!!! I was worried he might not learn anything, but figured summer was the time to give it a try...)

 

I think it's going to be okay though! Just today he's worked on his arts & crafts projects, made a battery operated electrical circuit with a switch that runs a fan and/or light (for camp emergencies) and read a chapter about veterinarians in 'We Work with Horses' by Patrice Clay. All this in addition to driving our extremely patient mechanic batty with non-stop questions regarding sway bars, bushings, etc.

 

 

 

 

  

Relax Homeschool Mamas - the kids are definately all right!

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!

Long Tailed Weasel

 

WARNING! GRAPHIC PHOTOS

 

CKW went out to the back hay barn this morning to feed the ponies and immediately came running back to the house, shouting at the top of his lungs! My first thought was that something had happened to one of the ponies overnight, or perhaps one of our barn cats, but nope - he had found a dead animal in the hay barn. Not wanting to trudge out through four plus feet of snow, I gave him the camera and told him to take a few pics and then we'd have a look at them.  This is what he came back with:

 

 

Obviously our barn cats are doing a great job! We weren't quite sure what type of weasel this was, so onto the internet we went. Turns out it was a Long Tailed Weasel showing it's winter colouration. Such a beautiful animal in life; we both shed a few tears over this little one... 

 





Science Fun!

Moving Beyond the Page 7-9
Concept 3: Cycles
Unit 2: The Water Cycle
Making Water

 



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! 

Not Back to School 2012

CKW's 'Not Back to School' Third Grade photo. He's getting so tall...  My baby is growing up!

 
His new school year calendar is courtesy of Scholastic, and who could possibly fall asleep without the Basher Science Solar System and Periodic Table posters to study bedside? LOL

Giant Panda Poster

I am a panda bear

My heart is going to tear

I'm almost extinct!

Don't you care?

Fungi Experiment

As part of the Diversity unit in MPH Science 3/4, CKW has started a mold experiment.  Yuck! 

Day One:

Homeschool Day at the Science Centre

Our local science centre offers once monthly homeschool days, with activities based upon our provincial science curriculum.  Of course CKW was excited eager to attend, so I couldn't let a little thing like the fact that I felt like death warmed over keep us away...

The morning session included several laboratory demonstrations of Changes in Matter, followed by a self guided tour of the centre's current Biodiversity Exhibit.  This exhibit included a model veterinary clinic and I must admit that I was quite pleased to see CKW enjoying himself while viewing radiographs, auscultating hearts, and repeatedly watching several wildlife surgery films.  Perhaps I'll make a vet out of him yet!

The afternoon was a laboratory session for the students:  Measuring Air and Water.  Each student had their own computer and lab equipment, but CKW's age group did their experiments with lab partners.  They had to measure the weight of air in a balloon, test an hypothesis regarding the mixing of water at two different temperatures, and finally, test an hypothesis regarding the mixing of salt with ice water.

With his lab partner.

 

 

Trying to blow up the balloon!

 

 

Water at different temperatures.

 

 

CKW had a ball!  October Homeschool day cannot come soon enough for him!

'Baby' Science or Confessions of a Curriculum Junkie

I purchased two Singapore Science programs to use in conjuction with our Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding (BFSU) curriculum.  What can I say?  CKW likes science workbooks! 

We had already started with the BFSU K-2 curriculum, so I purchased Singapore's Earlybird Start Up Science 1,2,3,4 for him to do this year, planning to move onto their My Pals Are Here! (MPH) program for 3/4 (one set) the next two years, and then continue onto 5/6 (one set) afterwards.  I thought I had it all figured out...  Yeah Me!

Whoa!  Not so fast...  The Earlybird program states that it is for grade one/two students, and because I had read numerous times how challenging the Singapore math program was, I felt safe buying it sight unseen.  Live and learn I guess... 

The booklets are cute, colourful and well illustrated, but I'm finding this program to be more suited to a Kindergarten/grade one level and they would probably be more interesting to students who are not very strong and/or interested in science.  I'm expecting CKW to finish them up well before Christmas (we are going to finish them before starting into MPH 3/4), but I have had nothing but complaints from the peanut gallery about the 'baby' science books that I bought him.  I think these booklets would be great for children as an introductory science curriculum, but for a science fiend like CKW, who's spent the last three years reading everything about science that he could get his hands on, it's more then just a little bit light.

 

Back From Vacation!

We very much enjoyed our week at the cottage but now we are back home, not enjoying this heat or humidity!  Thank goodness for central A/C!!

We have finished up our Prehistory unit, comprised primarily of Intellego's K-2 World History: Volume 1 - In The Beginning and the documentary series Walking With Cavemen.  We also watched a few episodes of Walking With Dinosaurs and Walking With Beasts - seven year old boys love that stuff!  Great online resources we used were Becoming Human and PBS' Human Evolution webpage. 

I came up from doing the laundry one afternoon to find Homo habilis on our back deck!  Nice crocs 'person with abilities'...

And did you notice something?  I finally played around with Blogger enough to use links in my posts...  Yeah Me!

   

"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...