Thanksgiving with Family

 We had a wonderful warm Thanksgiving meal with family.  The weather was so wonderful that we had our meal outside! The kids had a great deal of fun playing. 

 Zoe met a new friend. She has already been asking when we'll see her next.

 The Great Dane was so much fun and taking it for a walk was odd since it usually took people for walks instead.

I am amazed at how great the weather was and even into the night. It was so warm. What a great time!

Secret Princess Diary

At Toys R Us we found a Secret Disney Princess Diary that was on sale. I bought it for Zoe and she has almost finished filling all of it in in only a couple of days. What a great way to get her to practice spelling, printing, drawing, and imagination. We took the diary to hockey so she could work on it when Austyn was playing. She has been hiding the key and she calls it her "Homework Book". What fun!!!!

Dance Lessons with family

The same day as Track and Field I let the kids play as long as they possibly could at the park and then we went to Zoe's dance lesson. We had to drive hours and who knew what type of traffic we would encounter since it was a different direction compared to going home. So, we ate on the way and I got Zoe dressed at dance. It was funny because she had sand falling out everywhere. I wondered if the teacher would notice. Here is a picture of her with my cousin's daughter. They are both in the same class now. They just met a week ago and I think they will become good friends.

It's so nice to have some familiar people around. We are so use to moving around to places where we don't know anyone. Who would have guessed that we would choose the same dance studio as family?!

Track and Field - Where we use to live

On Friday we drove a long way to join in with our old homeschool group. We haven't seen our old homeschool friends for almost a year. The kids are growing so fast! There are two groups that get together and they are open to homeschoolers from their groups and surrounding areas to come out and join in on the fun. We all gather at a large park in the far South of Ontario and use items that families bring to set up track and field activities. This year was a huge turn-out. It was so much fun and something that we needed for a long time. It has been a while since we have been around that many familiar homeschoolers and having that much fun.

The weather was unusually warm. I think the temperature got up to 25 degrees Celsius! What a treat to be able to be out with friends in this weather and having this much fun while all of the school kids are in school. Who ever heard of playing in the water at the beach in October!! This sure isn't common here in Ontario!! I think the pictures speak for themselves, but where needed I'll add more information.

If you are wondering what they are doing here... it's a rolling race.

 This was a crab race.

 This is racing with a partner. Austyn picked a friend he has missed and talks about often.

 There is a Blue Heron in the top left corner of the picture. They usually share the beach with us when we come here.

The kids can sometimes get close to the Egret and a ferry is running not far away.

  There was a sand castle contest.

 It was a wonderful fall day that seemed more like summer. What a treat for us since we have been in Alberta all summer and missing the beaches. This was our beach time and we savored every minute of it. It was a refreshing day in many ways!

Physical Education for Homeschoolers

 Do your kids go to school? Do they do phys-ed? We do! We have joined in with another local homeschool group for gymnastics. Zoe and Austyn love it! Zoe was too advanced for the younger level so they moved her up to the higher level with Austyn.

 We started Power Skating and Hockey with one of the local groups. It's extra ice time for Austyn and Zoe loved it so much that she decided that she wants to do hockey now. 

 I went out and got her some hockey gear. This is her first time trying out hockey with the group.

She really didn't know what to do and skated around everywhere, but it was cute and she had fun.

We plan on doing some swimming soon. There is an indoor pool near us and they have a good deal of public swim time during school hours. 

Some days I feel a little bad because I feel like my kids have an advantage over other kids because my children can choose an activity and do extra classes of it during the day to get good really fast or they can choose many activities and do some at night and others in the day. I see that other children are restricted to only night time and that limits their time on these types of things. But then I think about the fact that kids in school do phys-ed and my kids don't, other than running around outside and whatever they do on their own. So, for us, this is our phys-ed class.  And yes, in some ways my kids do have an advantage. They could choose to dedicate more of their time on a subject or activity that they are interested in. They have a bit more freedom. It's wonderful!

Book Sharing Monday - Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich

We borrowed the audio version of this book from our library. My kids loved it!! It's a fun, creepy mix of poems, stories, and songs.

The pictures are extra scary and the voices on the cd are perfect. There are many different monsters throughout the book. When we finished Austyn said "Wow! We have to get Daddy to listen to this one!"

Park Day

 After much thought I have decided that instead of doing a weekly wrap-up, I will just do posts on the things we are doing. It seems to work better for us and makes more sense right now. 

I may have already mentioned that I took over the secular group. I think that it is very important for all areas of Canada to have public homeschool groups that are accessible for anyone moving to the area or just starting to homeschool. So, the moms who were in charge passed the group off to me so that I could get it going again. There has been no activity for a very long time. The first thing I started was Park Day. Our family and one other family seem to be the regular attendants so far and we have met two other families at park days. 

This week Austyn drew some pictures inspired by Dragon books and this book by Emily Gravett called The Rabbit Problem. He made a little booklet called the Dragon Problem and a picture to give to a friend at park day on the same subject.

 I didn't get as many pictures this week but we did find something interesting at the base of this tree. We couldn't determine if it was a type of fungus or if this was something a person put here. It was kind of hard but reminded me of spray foam. It was much more metallic looking than this image shows.

Zoe brought her camera to take pictures. They played around this tree and on the ball diamond a good deal this week. It is nice to feel like we have a bit of a schedule even though I have booked more activities than normal right now. We want to get out and meet other homeschool families in this area and then we expect to slow down by December. For this reason we haven't done as much academic (at home) this week. Next week we will have two less activity and the week after that one more less. So, we will be home a little bit more. It's important to get out and meet some regular friends.