I know where the fishes are now...but hold up..there's praying mantis now??

Well hello all you blog readers and followers, I just returned from a couple days away at a homeschool conference this weekend, feeling encouraged with our decision to continue to homeschool even with the dynamics of our family changing in the next few months with baby #3 heading our way. It's always fun to thinking about the possibilities of what next year will bring, this year has been a rich investment in our family.

We are feeling spring fever here like crazy, the smell of the fresh breeze, flowers popping up everywhere, the green grass and visions of bountiful veggie filled gardens fill my head, with all that it's hard to stay focused and do any type of "book" work.
We are using our mini agriculture experience to learn about taking care of our environment, learning what organic and non-organic foods are, why we don't use chemicals on our food, understanding the first sense of accomplishment when you see the very first unveiling of squash pop up out of no where while the plants are still in our green house. I love that my children are able to see my passion for gardening and actually be engaged with bigger visions than just themselves.

THEIR HERE!!!

Our praying mantis egg case showed up this week, as did the butterfly larvae so our house is turning into a bug refuge.
You tube is a wonderful resource for educational videos, animal planet and discovery channel usually have the topic we are studying, we watched several on the praying mantis which is always helpful if you don't have a book to read. We started our very first lap book on praying mantis, we learnt about the anatomy, life cycles, where they live, predators, what they eat, and more. The boys were so very proud of all their hard work and really cherish their books, asking to add more to it every day.




















My approach to school has relaxed in the last month however we are continuing to work on our math, printing and reading at least 3-4 times a week and focusing more on our science which Mr. I likes.

Math: My ds working on money partitioning and reviewing odd and even numbers.

Have a great week everyone, we are going to get to know more about our praying mantis and butterflies larvae this week.

Fishy...Fishy where are you??

This week we started off with a field trip, I don't know about my fellow homeschool friends but I love field trips, something about getting out in your community, meeting new people, watching others in their occupations, learning with a hands on approach, being involved... it fills me with joy. 

I see so much opportunity to teach when we are out in a new atmosphere, it's all new and exciting. This week we drove to the little town of Clearwater to visit their local fish hatchery. 
We went on a tour of the facility, learnt about the three different species of fish they had at their hatchery, rainbow and brook trout plus Kokanee salmon. 

We saw pictures of the eggs and we were taught of the process that it takes to reproduce these little fish from live eggs. We saw how they feed them, how they knocked them out for tagging, how they are weighed and where the fish are kept. 

I planned this tour to coincide with the stocking of a local lake near our home town. At the end of our week we got a call to meet the guides and we watch them unload 30,000 brook trout into this lake in a mere few minutes. 

The boys "saved" some fish that were stuck on the shore, watched them settle in, helped check the PH and temp of the water and also saw two loons fill their bellies with the fish 
:( 

These experiences take time, flexibility, dedication and I hope I will be able to always see the benefits in giving my children new things to see and experiences to grow in. 

The second exciting thing we did this week was Mr. I started baseball, a new adventure for him. He's learning some valuable lessons with his Dad being the coach! 
We look forward to the new schedule and hustle and bustle of this baseball season.  

We have been working on our language arts program learning lots of consonant blends, practicing long and short vowel sounds as well as reading short stories. 

As for homeschool co-op, we are without a doubt enjoying it. It's tiring to be around that many people when your not use to it and it makes me appreciate our little school that we do at home so much, yet it adds to our experience as homeschooler's. Meeting, interacting, learning with like minded people is encouraging and helpful. 

The last but not least activity or thing I would like share of our week was the Young People Concert/show we attended this week at a local theatre. The show was marvelous, John Kaplan the Magician/illusionist from Vancouver. It opened my son's eyes up to the world of magic! What fun, stimulating possibilities that I get to watch him enjoying! 

I guess this week has brought me back to realize the reasons I choose to homeschool this year. I get to watch my children grow up (slowly), I get to experience different things with them that only grow our relationship, I get to show them things I want them to learn and then show them what I don't want them to learn as well. I get to hand pick what we do and what influences them, what weaves into their character and souls. 
I have some new obstacles ahead with a new little baby coming but I do hope this upcoming year can be similar to our last with greater memories! 

Man, I LOVE this dude!!

Spring time week of April 8th

The Vancouver Aqua-bus came through town this past weekend. The boys enjoyed looking and learning about all different crustaceans, fish, cucumbers, starfish, amphibians, sharks, and sea anemones.
The staff had some really great puppets that taught us how anemones and starfish eat their prey.
We saw what krill looked like, we touched a whales bristle, felt the skin of a shark, and saw what the rows of teeth look like in a sharks month.
There was so much hands on learning I couldn't even use my camera as I was touching and learning as well.
A little fact for you, a sea anemone mouth is actually it's bum too.

They brought the little critters out for a "feeling" show. 

The staff member is showing my ds how a starfish eats it's prey. Drinks it up like soup after patiently waiting possibly up to 7 days to open the clam. 

Wow, that is some patiences! 

We had to visit the rest of the park as well as the two grizzle cubs that we saw when they were first brought to the wildlife park around 2 years ago. Neat to see that the boys actually remembered the little cubs and to watch how big they have gotten is such a short period of time. 

Working on half shapes. taking our shapes cutting in "half", finding the line of symmetry and comparing our halves.

This week we took a little more practical approach to science, looking inside the belly of a pregnant woman, showing them what mommy's organs are doing now that there is a growing baby in there. 

They found it funny that my bladder is squished so much..something I am not fond of. 

We took a trip to the chiropractor this week and both boys had a chance to lay on the bed, get adjusted, and ask questions. Wow, my boys are growing up! 

Come to think of it, we did alot of fun things this week, we were in week two of homeschool co-op. Karate is going well as well as the drumming classes. Much to my surprise my ds loves his plant study class just as much, maybe even more. The kids were able to use a high powered microscope to look at the plants more closely.

Last but not least, Mr. I starts baseball this week too. 

Can't believe we are starting to plan our 2nd year of homeschooling already, this year flew by. There were challenges, struggles, giggles, times full of joy, cherished moments, and growing little boys. I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. 

Wow that was two weeks!

We had our second visit with our support teacher last week which has informed us that my ds has officially completely kindergarden (phew ;) I did it...insert feeling of accomplishment). 

I thought I would want to ease off of school once I heard this lovely news however I feel compelled to continue to do school and work on things we had the most struggles with this year and try and prepare him for grade 1. 

 Spring has sprung and we definitely take every chance we get to get outside, go for bike rides with friends, explore the parks, and play in the dirt.

We met some lovely little hens this past week at a local hobby farm. 

Math has brought us to working on symmetry, reflections, estimating amounts of objects and money value.

Making reflections with tinker toys.

We played a bit with gravity experiments, we explored what our colour splatters would look like when we dropped them from 6 inches, 12 inches, 24 inches...and more. It turned out to be a neat colour mixing experiment too. We watched as the colour splats grew and grew as we increased the height.

Hard working farm helpers.

This is learning at it's finest :)

Every tried to tie water into a knot?? 

We did. 

Great little experiment about water cohesion and water taking different forms. 

We started our first ever homeschool co-op this week. Mr. I started Karate, drumming, and a plant study, plus we participated in the Little Big Science centers chemical reaction show. It was a busy and fun week. 

We are looking forward to some very fun things that will be coming up very soon this spring, like a field trip to a fish Hatchery, the arrival of our butterflies and praying mantis. 

See you all next week.