Lego Quest - Coral Reef

Although it was a bit rushed for him to get this finished in time to submit to Lego Quest, he did well. Here is Austyn's description.

 

“There is a red octopus, a white anemone, white coral (block in the middle), gray sand, a baby blue whale, yellow eggs with a clown fish, and a gray angel fish (at the back)."

 

If you'd like to join the fun at Lego Quest here is the link:

http://legoquestkids.blogspot.com/

 

this moment - my first one!

{this moment}

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{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

 I missed this last week, so here it is this week. I assume it can be anything we see in our lives, not just our kids.This is the day before our snow storm. These men were cleaning the snow off the roof just in time to get 20 cm more. We think he had a belt holding him on the roof, but couldn't be sure. As far as I know, nobody was harmed in the taking of this photo. LOL!

If you would like to see what others have posted or if you would like to join in here is the link to SouleMama's Blog:
http://www.soulemama.com/soulemama/2011/01/this-moment.html

Homeschool Pottery Class

 We attended a pottery class with one of the local homeschool groups. The teacher was wonderfully flexible. The class was suppose to be creating a plaque with their hand print and while she was giving instructions one of the children put up his hand and asked if they could make something else. She hesitated but said yes. I'm not sure anyone made a hand print. :)

 Zoe made a circle plaque and decorated it.

Austyn made a square plaque and added hockey sticks and stamps.

Children's Library

 We took the train downtown to the Children's Library. In the process I got lost underground twice and found local people to be overly helpful and friendly. People I asked for direction went out of their way to make sure that I was going where I wanted to go. Once there the kids gravitated to the computers.

 The library wasn't as large as I had imagined but it was still very impressive.Walking up you see the book shelves with the windows and a fish tank. You can see this in the background of the picture above.

 There are child sized tables and chairs. There is a toddler area that is a bit more private and has couches. 

We spent most of our day here because there was so much to do.

 There are many puzzles, a puppet theater for the kids and one that the librarians use to do puppet shows. Here Zoe is learning how to lace a shoe.

 Austyn spent much of his time playing a computer game on history and then he played with this wall puzzle and right beside him (forgot to get a picture of it) there is a glass, magnetic, boat table. He really enjoyed that.

This train is in the toddler section. Once the babies left Zoe went right to the train and spent a long time arranging and moving the trains around. We attended a drop-in story time. The kids really enjoyed that. There were less children than I expected to be there.

It was the first time that we've been to the library and the kids spent hardly any time looking at books.

Levitation Magic

 Austyn has been very interested in magic recently. He has some child magic kits and has been imitating the magic tricks he saw on New Years, but he just loves Chris Angel. He learned a trick of Chris Angel's by watching his shows on NetFlix. We decided to splurge on more professional kits that we saw at the mall. Here he is learning how to levitate a card after practicing with a crumpled piece of paper.

With more practice he has learned to spin the card in the air and make it move around him. He is still perfecting it but it looks great, especially considering the fact that he is only seven years old.

Dance Class

 Here Zoe waits for the first class to start. 

 She sat with me to feel more comfortable about being there. We cuddled and she moved close for a minute or so and then farther away as we waited. This is us sitting together on the floor by the dance bar. I took this picture in the mirror across the room.

 When I first started to leave her there were almost tears but I just stayed for a couple of minutes and once she got in the circle with the other kids she didn't look at me anymore and I asked her if it was okay for me to leave. She nodded. I think the cuddling helped.

When the class was finished they invited the parents back in to see what the kids learned. It was their first routine and they had so much fun showing us.

Hockey

 Austyn started attending his new hockey team practices and games. These pictures were taken while the kids waited for their pictures to be taken. Austyn made friends right away. Everyone is so friendly (parents and kids). It seems like a very good team so far. 

 The hockey here in Edmonton seems so different than the small town Ontario hockey that we are use to.In Ontario there are over 50 kids and 3 or 4 coaches. Here there are 13 kids, 5 coaches, and 1 manager. It seems so professional here and the skill level seems higher. I guess that could be expected with a ratio like that. He has played one game so far and they played him just as much as anyone else. They placed him on forward most of the time and they won 11 to 4. 

With less kids there are less parents and less siblings to play with. Luckily there is this one little girl that Zoe has been playing with. They get along very well. It's nice to see our kids making friends. It can feel very lonely and strange moving to a big city across the country, but friends help us to feel a bit more comfortable and at home.

New Friends

 We visited some new friends in our new city. They had a surprise when we arrived. They purchased two gingerbread kits and wanted us to decorate ginger bread trains with them. 

 Zoe had another idea for what to do with some of the icing.

 Austyn enjoyed himself.

 By the time we left the trains looked much different because of the snacking going on.

 Austyn seemed proud of what we made.

Here is our final train and we even got to bring it home. We had a great visit.

Booksharing Monday - Beethoven Lives Upstairs

For this week, I've decided to share a CD instead of a book. It's very much like a book anyway since it's the story of Beethoven through the eyes of the boy who lives downstairs from him. Beethoven Lives Upstairs by Classical Kids (The Children's Group) is the story of Beethoven through the conversation, in letters, between this boy and his uncle. Beethoven's music is playing in the background as these two chat back and forth. We learned so much about Bethoven. He was a very strange and interesting man who believed that music could change the world. I highly recommend this CD for all ages. Here is the website found on the back of the case: http://www.childrensgroup.com/

To join in on the fun of Book Sharing Monday or to read other entries visit http://canadianhomelearning.blogspot.com/

Second Try at Triops

We tried it again. This time there were at least 9 of them. After a few days the smaller ones started to get sluggish and the day after that there were less of them alive. Because of the strange sluggishness I assume they died of some unknown causes and not because they were consumed by the larger fish. Now we have two. The shells have hardened since this picture and they are a bit darker now (more brown). We are hopeful that one is a boy and the other is a girl and they'll reproduce.