Busy but not forgotten

Wow time makes short work of itself when one is busy. I have been under the weather waiting for a surgery date to have my gall bladder removed. With that in mind school has been going full tilt for quite some time. I realize pictures of work have been lacking. So I intend to take more in the next few days and post here. We have been steadily crafting for the past few weeks for the first fundraising event for our association. One may ask why fundraise if you homeschool. Well as a more isolated community we felt it would be a great way to raise money for out of town field trips. Other then that...

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Check New Links

You may or may not have noticed we are featuring new links every week on the sidebar. These are sites I have found to be of higher quality. I hope also you are checking the links on our subject pages. I just added a few links to craft sites and hope to add more in the next few days. So be sure to come back and check out some pretty amazing sit...

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Life Goes On...

Bumps in the road of life aren't uncommon. When I face a bump, I face a choice, the choice to ride the bump out or to try to dig a way around it. I have found riding it out is usually the best policy. So that cryptic remark aside I have decided to delete my long winded and likely boring rant. Instead I would like to turn back to the real point of my blog. Sharing with all my friends and family parts of my life and our homeschooling journey. Today was a bad day. I found out I need surgery. I had a horrible night and life goes on. So I didn't miss the opportunity to school. Such freedom it...

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Fall Things

It's been busy. The kick off for our homeschool association went wonderfully despite the threat of rain. Our game of capture the flag in the woods was really enjoyed by all. The smaller kids made a pumpkin craft. When it was time to leave we handed out handmade treat boxes filled with goodies from the Oriental Trading Company. I wish I had taken more pictures of the event but mostly it slipped my mind. If there is ever a next time I think getting a person to photograph the event would be helpful. So often as a hostess we forget to take pictures of the minute details that make the party up. Hubby...

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Busy, Busier, Busiest.

Wow fall has me jumping loops. I have been schooling with kids, out canoeing with family, getting ready for the homeschool association annual kickoff event which I am heading, preparing pickles, jams and so on, sewing away the wee small hours, and in all of this trying to have some sense of normalcy. Ha! So I regret I can't post much new here as I just have to much on my plate right now. I will be sure to catch you all up in the beginning of next week after the kicko...

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Please Vote.

The Northern Ontario Homeschool Convention needs voters now that the logo contest has closed. They will accept entries up until Friday but voting is already underway. Take the time to hop over and place your vote. Voting closes Sept 16th 2011. www.northernontariohsconvention....

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Most Useful. And Update.

First quickly for those of you pondering whether or not you should take the Stanford Robotics Course, they have informed the over 100,000 students that they are breaking it into basic and advanced. The basic class will be multiple choice quizzes and the advanced will have assignments. We officially booked for the basic class and I can't wait for Oct 10th to get knee deep in studying with DS, 8. Both classes will earn you a certificate of accomplishment. I had a brainwave as I usually do with idle time. I am going to be adding to the side column a weekly link. I have been finding some wonderful...

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Two Weeks In.

We have started our school year. And two weeks in I am counting my lucky stars that I have such wonderful student's of course but also that I purchased some curriculum to speed things along. Last year's disorganization is proving to be a thing of the past. No more messy stacks of paper that I am shuffling around during school having implemented the use of a file folder for any subject sheets, lessons and so on. Its divided into subjects and students so I can easily pull them out. I just have to make sure I take the time each weekend to prepare for the following week. On my printed lesson plan/outline...

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Robotics

Well looking about online today I discovered that Stanford University is going to be offering a free yes free online introduction to AI course starting in Oct. It will run for 10 weeks online and includes assignments. When completed a certificate of completion will be issued but not from Stanford. What I find wonderful about this is that its free and it is hopefully a sign of things to come. I wanted to post it here to get the word out. Its not too late to sign up....

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Having found many other homeschool Moms in the same boat as I, sadly lacking for robotics material to teach young kids. I thought I would share my scribd find of the day. Well truthfully I have had my scribd account for awhile and found it last spring but forgot until now to check on scribd for material. I find that happens a lot with various accounts. This is the second very useful book I have found. I love scribd for it wealth of books you can download. This book was written to cover history, systems, nueral networks, evolutionary computation, and knowledge engineering and data mining....

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Back to School

In my youth we would say Back to the grind. Hmm. Doesn't seem fitting for such an eventful, fun year of exploration and learning. Well I am almost prepared for school this term. I am trying a few things differently. Of course with each year it's good to shake up your methods. Let go of things that didn't work, tweak some others that could have worked better and so on. So this year I have created a four day school week schedule. The fifth day is either a free day if the kids perform well in school the rest of the week. If they did not we will use the day to have fun school by playing learning...

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Raindrops.

The weather was nasty and cold. It had been raining all day. The last full day we would be at camp. The camp I had looked forward to all summer to relieve the stress that comes from the monotony of housework. I was really disappointed I didn’t get the time to fish that I had looked forward to that day. I love fishing. I don’t care if I eat them. I usually put them back but this was really getting to me that I was beside the water with a canoe, family, rods, and it was raining. We had finished dinner. Our friends had left earlier that evening and it was dusk. With the rain it positively grey....

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Time Is Moving Fast!

I am so busy as of late our poor blog is suffering. However things are picking up speed as we move through our midsummer here in Northern Ontario. I have finally gotten the kids computer fixed and ready for this new year. We have a better hard drive now so we can expect them to start a computer class. The first computer class we will be taking is typing. Nothing speeds up computer work then good typing skills. I also like for them to use the website Spelling City . I loaded DS's math, he is doing Teaching Textbooks 5. Realistically I hope he will move on from that by Christmas as a lot...

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Blog Hops.

Love them. If you know of any other homeschool blogs hops do share the link in the comments area. Right now we are linking up to the Hip Homeschool Moms H...

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Northern Ontario Homeschool Convention

Attention readers. I am organizing a group of homeschoolers in Northern Ontario to have a convention. At which we are hoping to have guest speakers, child friendly activites, teen workshops, a lunch served, curriculum fair and a good time by all. So with this in mind I have started a website to keep the public at large informed. We encourage all who are interested to pop on over for a look and to continue to check the updates on our website related to the convention of 2012. And yes we encourage all vendors of curriculum or educational products to come back and check our packages...

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Off For Adventures in the Berry Patch

Tomorrow we are heading to a lake with our canoe to visit friends. Its high time we start enjoying some of our summer as a family. Husband only has one week left at his current job and then we are back to the unemployment line. Its the first summer where I can say I am excited about it. I know its not fun being out of work. But I for one am going to enjoy the family time. After the lake we will be heading to a berry farm to load up on raspberries. I am really hoping to pick lots as we love raspberry jam and I want to use this as a lesson for the kids. When I was growing up my mother pickled,...

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Attention Links

You may be a regular or you may just have found this site. I am currently working on organizing our links with new pages for each topic. I will add the links as I can. Please check out the new pages via the little links at the top of our page or using the side bar for navigation. Thank you for your understanding in our reorganizati...

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Summer Heat Wave

The first major summer heat wave is here. And with it comes lethargy and lots of juice. The kids play most of the days in the downstairs with lego to beat the heat. I am trying to stay on top of the housework but it can be tough. Yesterday was the worst. I was melting. So much is going on all the time its hard to find time to come to my blog and post anything these days. I have the kids computer being looked at and hope to get it back soon so I can load their curriculums and get moving. But of course the classroom still desparately needs new paint. And hubbys hours are still incredibly long....

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So Behind Yet So Far Ahead.

If you are like me you are having a hard time getting organized for the upcoming year. I have ordered some curriculums for the first time and am pretty excited about using them. I ordered Teaching Textbooks math for DS and hope it will be enough to drum his multiplication and division into him before Christmas because thats holding us up from moving further in both algebra and geometry. And for both kids I ordered French Essentials. I am hoping this computer based curriculum will help me to teach them basic french this year. However on the downside I haven't got their computer set up. It likely...

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Canadian Blog Bash Giveaway Winners!

We have just drawn the winners for our first ever blog bash in honour of Canada Day! The winners are as follows. Winner of the gift card for Creationtwinne- Dayleb Winner of Norwex cloth- AJ Mizen Winner of Lalaloopsy outfit- Jen.S. Congratulations to all of our winners. I hope you will continue to visit our blog and are enjoying your Canada Day where ever you a...

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The Great Canadian Blog Bash is Here!

Please note that this is our first time attempting a giveaway. Should the entry boxes not work on the giveaway page just enter a comment with the name of the product you are entering for under this post. Thank you for you understanding as we learn to blog more effeciently :D We've been talking about the blog bash for awhile now. Well its finally here! In celebration of Canada Day we are hosting three giveaways. Please note the little linky at the top of the page to enter our giveaways. Canada is truly a great country to live in. I am proud to be a Canadian. Sure at times our humor is dry...

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Great Canadian Blog Bash

The Great Canadian Blog Bash is just days away. Don't forget to come back on the 24th to enter our great giveaways! And you will find a linky list with all the other great Canadian blogs out there as well. Its going to be big! Its going to be fun! Its Canada's birthday! Let's celebrate the only way we know how. By throwing a big party! I will be using the celebration to kick off  our new homeschool year. In which we will be studing our great nation, its people, history, geography and contributions to the world at lar...

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End of Year Party

Well the end of year party for our homeschool association was a success. More people came out last Sat and made it a wonderful time had by all. Our theme was a fun carnival. My husband and myself made up games to take. Its a dream of ours to open a party palace of sorts as a venue for kids partys they are just so much fun. So we made up a highstriker game, a ball toss, a squirt gun game, a fishing pond which caught fish bath toys for a little something different. And I painted up a couple of cutouts to have photos taken in.     For food we made it potluck and...

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Park Hop Play has started! Inspired by a Facebook friend in another city it's a summer long Park Hop. I decided to start a local 'chapter' if you will. The idea is to name a new park each week in the city where parents and kids will meet. A lot of people know other people who may want to play also so I left it as a nonhomeschooling idea. Last week we kicked it off with a picnic in the largest park in the city. We will likely finish our summer hop there again. It was a lot of fun to hang out with other Moms and let the kids play. It is also an excellent way of seeing some of long forgotten...

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Geology and Biomonitoring

Spring takes us outside. I want to teach the kids so many scientific things as it really is interesting for them right now. So with the end of April marking Save the Frogs Day we talked  about frogs and made lapbooks up about them. We then went for a drive the second week of May to see if the Northern Leopard Frogs had laid eggs yet. As it turned out the weather has been too cold. The water's edge was dredged by people disturbing some of their natural shoreline. But that didn't stop them from singing. As far as we could tell there were two distinct frog's at the shoreline one was croaking...

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Spring

Well spring is finally here. It never ceases to amaze me how we can go from cold and sleepy months into a complete about face. Our activity levels triple inside of one month yet our energy is always constant. With the gardens finally uncovered we can look forward to more time spent in our gardens learning, exploring, and playing. But with the increase in outdoor time we notice a signifigant decrease in our indoor time. I have spent little time focusing on my blog. But with the Canadian Blog Bash fast approaching I want to let my regular readers know you are in for some special giveaways. I...

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The Great Canadian Blog Bash is Coming!

There are giveaways galore so check some of these out. We will be having our own giveaway here as well. It will be our first one ever! So check back later to see what we have to giveaway. Open only to Canadians as per stipulation of Momvstheboys blogger who set this up. But we are hoping to start having giveaways here soon which will be open to all so check back often...

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April 29th is the 3rd Annual Save The Frog Day!

I just learned about this day. I think it is important because I have noticed in the past 20 years a sharp decline in the number of frog voices in the spring. Let's do something now before all the worlds frogs are go...

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April Showers.

April showers will likely bring May flowers. That's if they aren't super swamped from the sudden snow melt mixed with rain. Well there isn't much to do except wait for the strong winds we get to dry things up. And while we wait we have decided to undertake our 'Eggs-travaganza Eggs' month. It also includes Earth Day and Easter of course. I wanted a break for all of us from our heavy workbook work we had been doing for the past couple of months. So I put together some Easter related worksheets in booklets for the kids for the month. I thought surely there is enough work in these to...

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In Like A Lion, Out Like A Lamb.

To be truthful I have no idea what the weather is doing. But I know March came in with a vengeance at our home. DH was laid off from his regular job. I frantically looked online to find a new one for him. Being a home school family with a single income isn’t always the most financially sound decision. I found a perfect job it was a temporary job all that he needed to keep us on track. Then the third week in he had an accident at work that could have ended very badly. Thankfully he was spared. The downside was he was banned from returning to that work site. Which has left us again seeking employment....

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The Harder Row to Sow Often Reaps Greater Rewards.

  People seem to think that home school people are weird. They must be either really smart or stupid. That people who choose to home school their kids are weird. And you know what I am realizing? We are weird! We don’t fit the socially acceptable norms. And we are not alone they are millions of us weirdo’s. We may be separated by time and space but we number the millions. And we, by home schooling are allowing our kids to be socially different. Yay! We want them to buck that system of normalcy. Normal is boring. We don’t want them to be beholden to someone else’s preconceived ideas for...

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What a strange month.

February has been a strange month. Rushing to get things done for a friends shower, ordering gift and making cake. Cake was finished, order held up and then it was postponed. School has been getting tad monotonous for us all. So to shake it up I stopped our unit on Monarchy. We will likely touch back on that for the upcoming nuptials. In the meantime we head into March like a lion. And look at green science. Is it earth friendly? Or color related? We are doing it. School elective swimming starts again so I have a schedule that looks like this. Experiment day one, swim day two, experiment day...

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Winter School Blahs and Life.

Our Lego club was off and running this past week. We had two families come for a total of eight kids. The free play was nice. Next week though I have a questionnaire for the parents and will make more of a formal meeting out of it. An hour goes by fast when fiddling with Lego. One of my dear friends is having a baby shower next weekend. I had agreed to make the cake. My cakes seem to be popular around here with friends. I have plans to make a round tiered cake topped with buttercream icing. I am going to sculpt babies in pink, she's having a girl, out of fondant and place crawling all over the...

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Website Review.

It's amazing to me what I can glean from the net , the seemingly limitless information. I have no idea how I would be able to homeschool without it. I guess I would be forced to buy curriculum's. Right now though I am happy and content with gleaning for free. And I wanted to share with you a new link of interest. http://www.education.com/ sign up is free and means you can download their worksheets without being plagued with ads. I love the way you can input the grade level you are looking for and by subject to sort through the sheets. But don't take my word have a look for yourse...

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A Journey Into the Unknown

So as the winter lingers on I tend to think of new creative pursuits. For a long time now I have been pondering how to go about starting a homeschool Lego club. Still in it's infancy I have decided to host it weekly at home. It will be a good way for the kids to interact and have fun. We worked on cleaning out the downstairs which is the ideal location in our home since the Lego are already sorted in a six drawer dresser. My husband will have to put up a simple shelf above for projects that have to wait from week to week to be completed. I am thinking of the first Lego meeting consisting...

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Pay for websites.

As a homeschooler we are often on the Internet looking for resources. Trying to glean as much as will be useful to our lesson planning. Often I find myself looking for worksheets and coming up with pay for use websites. So I caved finally after having one continually coming up when I searched for items. I thought to myself perhaps they really do have all the worksheets I will need. The cost for a year to their website, a cool $50US. Hmm I thought that is a bit more then I would like to spend but hey I won't know until I try. I really should have thought about asking others on a forum. Let this...

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Education is more then the basics.

Title make you wonder. Well you aren't alone. It has come to my attention through friends and family that they seem to think I don't teach the 3 r's. I DO. I DO. I DO. Now that is off my chest let me clarify for the rest of my readers. I post here about the more interesting things we are studying or undertaking. I don't feel the need to chatter on and on about the hum drum. To me the everyday nitty gritty of uneaten lunches and dirty dishes makes for a dull read. I want to share here what is more interesting and creative about our homeschool. So forgive me if it seems like things are left...

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Flat Update!

I don't like to talk bad of people even if I didn't mention names. But earlier I had posted that one flat never came home and that my daughter was heartbroken. Well I think it is only fair to add that flat has returned albeit six months later. But what a trip Flat Cuddles had. Visiting more then one zoo, a birthday party, and a few meseums. And the hosts of the flat traveller went above and beyond to create a wonderful digital scrapbook of memories for her to return with. Thank you. If you read this you know who you are. My daughter was overjoyed to see one of her friends return. Her first flat...

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Well Here We Are.

Another Christmas is over and New Year begun. You may have noticed the change again in our design. Never to remain the same I like change. I picked this fresh face for our blog and hope you like it as much as I for the New Year. I will likely change the template up a little for holidays but will return to this design as the main look throughout the year. Currently I am downloading a free reading program for the month of January. For those who are interested in trying it out for themselves the site is Funnix as I understand it was created by the same man who made Teach Your Child To Read...

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