Strawberry Picking and Nature Study

 We went strawberry picking with some homeschool friends. The kids had a great time! The weather was great for it and there were a ton of berries. Many of them weren't even rip enough to pick yet, but we did well.

While picking we noticed some interesting weeds. One was large and fluffy and the flowers were tall and similar to a dandelion. The name of this one is Goat's-Beard. 

Here is a better picture of the flower. 

"Goat's-Beard shoots are edible raw or cooked, the same way as asparagus, and the plant bases are sometimes cooked like artichokes. Also the fleshy roots of first-year plants have been roasted or boiled like parsnips." ~ Ontario Wildflowers by Linda Kershaw

 This weed is a Tufted Vetch. I know they are weeds but I think that these are so pretty and have even left them alone in my garden before.

 The kids looked for fossils when they needed a break from picking.

 This is a pretty cool one that Austyn found. It's scaly, round and has many circular markings on it. It may be a pleurodictyum. Most of the fossils found here are from the Devonian Period. If you don't know anything about that period, it was a time of large oceans and seas full of sea life. Much of that sea life settled to the bottom and their bodies were preserved in sediment. When the ice burgs were here during the ice age all of the upper layers of the earths crust was pushed aside and this is why we can't find dinosaurs here. The fossils here are much older than the dinosaurs.

 Austyn did some photography while there. Here is one creative attempt. I think it's great!

 He also took this picture of the two containers we brought to fill up.

 There is a story behind this picture that he took. All of the kids were wondering through the berries and Zoe spotted a fluffy thing that looked like a toy. She couldn't resist and picked it up. She started to scream and run with this poor little baby kill-deer. I told her that she shouldn't have touched it and instantly she dropped it in a strawberry patch. I went over and picked it up and it was a good thing one of the kids stayed in the spot where the baby was picked up. I took it over and placed it in the spot where the kids say it was found. The parents were not happy and were flying all around and making a good deal of noise. While I had the baby in my hand Austyn took this picture and it gives you an idea of just how small it was sitting on my two smallest fingers. The parents returned to it after we walked away.

We froze some of the strawberries and with some of them we always make some freezer jam. The best part is taste testing. Fingers always work best for this! LOL!

He is Writing!

I don't know if you can see it or not, but Austyn has been practicing script. This is his choice and not my suggestion. He has been practicing his name so that he can have a signature. This idea came from hockey cards. He has a couple of cards that have signatures on them. Deciding to write is a touchy thing for him, normally, because he is such a perfectionist. He doesn't like to see anything that isn't up to his own expected standards. He is covering up the writing that he doesn't like as much and trying to only show me the best one.

Creative Expression

Zoe loves to do her make-up and hair. This also includes creative expression made with face-paint. Here she is posing to show her look. I don't know where she learned to pose like this. I guess she is a natural model. LOL!

Book Sharing Monday - Play, Mozart, Play!

 Play, Mozart, Play! by Peter Sis is a quick book that gives your child an inside look at what Mozart's life was like during his childhood.

It has few words which is great for holding the interest of smaller children, but is fascinating enough that older children would enjoy it.

Graphics

Austyn has been interested in doing photography, graphics and maybe helping us with apps that we develop through our business. Here he is helping me post a Book Sharing Monday. He is editing a picture of a book.

Words

Zoe loves to make words. She does this on her own. Here she is making a word search (of sorts). After she was finished she asked me to do it. It's interesting how kids can be so different Austyn never really liked anything like this. He goes through little spurts of liking it, usually when there is a good reason (a strong interest).

Volunteering and Lacrosse

 We are pretty involved in Lacrosse. Both kids travel with their team. Daddy Volunteers as a coach for Lacrosse, I am the photographer, and Zoe shakes the coin tin and goes around to collect change for their end-of-season Party. We all have volunteered at a big game and plan on doing it again. It was fun!

 Austyn was so proud of himself this weekend. He got his first goal of the season. He was made Player of the Game and was given this hat to wear until the next game. He also was made Assistant Captain! He was SO HAPPY!

Beach Weather

 One thing we missed last year, while living in Alberta, were the beaches. I kept seeing Facebook posts with pictures of all of our friends on the beach and felt strange that we couldn't go to one. There are beaches in Alberta, but they aren't the same. Many of the lakes are not okay for swimming and aren't large. I loved Alberta, but this was one downfall. The upside was that the temperatures never felt hot enough to need the beach. 

 We visited the beach for the first time for our Co-Op end-of-year picnic. The weather was extremely hot. It was in the 30's and humid. This is strange for May weather.

 The water was still cold, but the kids enjoyed looking for interesting rocks and shells.

In the distance, over the lake, we could see other people enjoying the lakes and the early hot weather.

Our Garden

 We finally got grass for our yard and around the same time we built these raised beds. I'm trying a similar type of gardening to square foot gardening. I've been reading a bunch of gardening books and am taking ideas from each one and making it our own. We are using the potato technique from square foot gardening, where you plant the potatoes in only a couple of inches of soil and keep adding soil as the potatoes sprout to create a deep root that produces more potatoes in a smaller space. My potatoes are at the front of the middle box. I'm using natural wood trellises and have secured them with string to prevent them from blowing over. Many gardens have been devastated this spring due to the rabbits but although I've found some signs of rabbits near the garden, I've not had anything eaten yet. Maybe they are too lazy to jump a foot to get over these raised beds.

I started many of our plants indoors. The kids helped me plant them. We have a peanut plant and some artichoke plants to plant still. They grow too big for our gardens so we'll need to add them to the side garden when we finally get to it. We have carrots, sunflowers, beans, peas, tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, salad greens, broccoli, and much more. All of it fit into our three raised beds. It may be a flop or not, but it'll be interesting to see how things go, since this is my first year trying to garden this way. Experiments are always fun and educational!

Austyn's Photography

 I'm not so proud of this picture, due to my appearance, but this picture is a good example of Austyn's photography, when using my camera. After we moved here, I found my old camera and gave it to him. It's a nice size for him and takes good quality outdoor shots (the flash is broken), but sometimes he just can't resist using my camera. He likes to take candid shots, like above and when he uses my camera the shots are on a slight angle. I'm assuming the angle is due to the size and weight of my newer camera (Nikon D7000). He has taken pictures around the house, at lacrosse games, and homeschool events.

 This is his favourite plant in our garden because it is mint and he loves it when I make fresh mint tea.

 I think that some pictures I find on my camera are cute. This is Zoe with her usual forehead spot. She thinks that the women who wear the spots on their foreheads are beautiful and likes to imitate them sometimes.

 Some of his pictures are funny!

 Some pictures are a tiny bit odd, but I can see the creative thinking that is going on.

 Some are creative and have interesting focus.

I think it's really cool that he is interested in photography. He must be taking after his mom since I love to take pictures!

Book Sharing Monday - A Butterfly Is Patient

Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long did a wonderful job on this book about butterflies.

We thoroughly enjoyed this one!

With it's beautiful illustrations and descriptive wording, we learned what a butterfly's life is like. We learned things like how butterflies find flowers and how they help plants. What a great book to learn about butterflies!

New Neighbours!

We live in a new area and there is construction all around us. With construction, comes a great deal of dirt. There is dirt on the streets and piles of dirt everywhere. One day while on a walk I noticed some barn swallows start to dive for me and knew, from experience, that this meant that I was near a nest. So, after a quick chat with the birds and some observation, I figured out that they were digging  a hole in a pile of dirt to make a nest. 

A couple of days later, I noticed that there were many more birds. We took a walk over, after a rain storm, to take a closer look and realized that there were many barn swallows making this hill their home. Knowing that this isn't a good situation for the birds, because this is only a temporary hill that the builders will likely bulldoze soon, I decided that it was okay to get up close and disturb them. Maybe they will move to a more permanent residence.

Zoe was surprised and excited that she could get up close and look inside the holes. A couple of the adults were hiding inside and zoomed out, right by her head. They didn't come back to bother us so I am guessing that there still were no babies or eggs. Hopefully they moved out before they decided to lay their eggs so that their babies aren't harmed by the construction.

This is just a stark reminder of how humans affect the animals who live near us.

Hockey's Partner

Yes, Lacrosse can get rough. The kids eventually learn to check each other. Some days, I have to admit, I am a little mixed on what I think about it, but my kids enjoy it and it's a fun game to watch. I think I enjoy watching lacrosse more than hockey.  

 

 Even the little tiny kids, like my youngest, get to play it. Sometimes they are really amazingly good and seem to know what they are doing and yet, they still have those cute little kid moments like the one above, where Zoe decided to sit on the ball right when everyone was fighting to get it.

(as an aside... Austyn took this picture of her sitting on the ball with my camera)

Learning positions has proven to be tough, but the positions and many of the rules in lacrosse apply to hockey. Many kids who play both increase in ability dramatically. They also aren't afraid to be pushed around when the time comes that they are expected to do so. They gain, stamina. They learn to sweat and work hard. Even watching the older kids play can improve skill, especially when comparing what they learn about the rules and positions to what the players of the more professional teams do.

Book Sharing Monday - If You Find a Rock

If You Find a Rock what do you do with it? What do you imagine? What can you learn from it? This book by Peggy Christian is a perfect book for us right now. We have been collecting rocks and fossils for months. We have been reading about rocks, minerals, fossils, and meteorites. Both of my kids love to search for special stones. Imagination can run wild when looking at a stone. Imagine where they are from, what you can do with them, where they have been, what they were used for, how they can be played with...

It's very poetic in the word layout and the photographs are colour edited to create a gentle imaginative feeling. I see my children on every page and I'm sure they do too!

Making House Work Fun!

 One day, while cleaning up the house I thought of a creative way to get the kids involved. I made name tags! Yup... that's it! Name tags is ALL it took to get the kids doing house work. I'm serious!! It's true!! Not only that! They expanded it into reading, writing, and they also decided to do more than what the name tags implied they should do! 

Her name tag read "Official Duster Girl" and his was "Official Floor Boy". We redid his name tag to include other tasks. I can't remember what the final name tag said. 

They decided to grab the small clip boards that we bought recently at the dollar store and some recipe cards and started to make a check list. After each task was done they'd put a check to the side of each task they wrote down and would give me a verbal update of what is finished and what they still needed to do.

When Zoe cleaned the table and chairs, she made an "Out of Order" sign for each side, so that nobody would sit down and get wet. 

I was so impressed with how one simple thing brought about such an educational, imaginative, and fun day!

Lego Club

 Recently, I was able to get enough Lego to continue on with Lego Club. As soon as I had my hands on the pieces, I booked a club day the same week. I started to look in September for Lego, but it has taken THIS long to get enough to run it with our own Lego, because nobody wants to give up their Lego.

 I know I've said the benefits of Lego Club before, but it does the obvious, which is inspires creativity and fosters friendships. It is also physics, math, science, mechanics, co-operation, team building, public speaking, and so much more! We have the kids bring their Lego creations from home or a picture. At the end of our time together they share what they have done at home and also what they made at the club. It's like show-and-tell. 

Austyn brought his Titanic that he made at home. We have been displaying it on our fireplace mantle so, even though he made it a couple of weeks ago, it's still in great shape. He changed a couple of things on the boat since that earlier picture. He added a couple of tall stacks and put a string across between them.

 After a little while Zoe got bored of Lego and went to play on the computer in another room and two of her friends followed. 

It's great to have this club, finally, established and open to ALL homeschoolers in our area. Watching the kids together, having so much fun made it all worth it!

Book Sharing Monday - Let's Play

I don't usually choose books like this for my Book Sharing Monday posts. It just needed to be shared! This book is great for all of those homeschooling families who are looking for some fun traditional games that can be played with no items at all or things that are easy to find.

This book takes us back and puts a twist on all of the old games that were played when our parents were children. There was no technology and games were more social and interactive. What a great way to interact with friends and family. Put the board games and video games away. This book can be used in indoor, or outdoor play and with just about any age. There are different versions of tag, hide and seek, hop scotch and many more. The ideas in this book will show up in our homeschool park days, for sure!

Homeschool Skating Ends

 There were only a handful of us on the last day of skating, but this year went well. We had families who came from the surrounding towns to skate. Some of the children have NEVER been on the ice before in their lives!! They have come so far and many of them don't use any kind of support anymore.

 The winter this year didn't give us many days with ice or snow, so it was nice to have the local arena to use during the day when all of the other kids were in school. 

I can't believe how well Zoe is doing. She does cross-overs now and skates so professionally for her age. She wants to take figure skating and hockey in the fall.

Austyn has benefited from the extra ice time as well. While many kids are finished with hockey and put their skates away he was doing 3-on-3 and homeschool skating every week.

I think we will have to organize this again next year!

A Day In The Life Of A Pioneer Child

We attended a really cool field trip that was set up as a part of the homeschool Co-Op. One of the classes that Austyn is taking is Pioneer Life. It's nearing the end of the Co-Op so the teacher set up this trip. What a great experience! The kids first listened to stories from the women. They learned what it was like back in England compared to life in Canada. They talked about the trip here and why they moved to Canada.

Work never stopped. While telling stories, things still needed to get done.

Apparently boys had to do the jobs that required more lifting or muscle. Here the boys are moving and stacking the firewood.

The girls started off the day with a good rug beating.

The girls washed the clothes. They were EXTREMELY dirty. 

They carried the clothes over to the wooden fence and hung them on the fence and then they folded the dry blankets.

The boys carried the buckets. There was no water this time, but they would have hauled the water in the early days.

When they were busy or away the girls did their jobs as well. Boys rarely ever did the jobs that were considered for the girls.

Candle-making took up some of their time. The wicks needed to be dunked in the bees wax between 50 and 80 times.

It was a good deal of work, but the kids really enjoyed themselves.

Near the end they got to visit the schoolhouse. This was a good day for us. I think we will need to return to the museum to visit the rest of the exhibits another day.