Our Little Reader!

Zoe has always loved to hide away with books since she was able to walk. She still does and has become loud about reading aloud to herself. I snuck up on her to catch this picture of her reading a board book to herself. Of course she isn't reading the proper words and she is just making the story up, but that is just one step in the process of discovering words. I think she will be the reader in the family.

Just some of the books we have ordered

Here are just some of the books we've ordered. As said in older posts, it's a Well-Trained Mind/Charlotte Mason mix. We are still very relaxed and the kids do what they like most days. We all love to read so as long as we are learning though reading it works for us. I have had a couple of small orders since this one and have more books coming. I will likely learn just as much as the kids. I love learning right along with them.

Ice Cream Field Trip

Our homeschool group attended a free tour of a homemade ice cream store in our area. We were split into two groups. The first half of our field trip was in the back. We watched ice cream  being made and flavoured. We learned about the special freezers and what the mixer was for. After making the ice cream the machine had to be washed out. 

The second half we learned about the different flavours and how they mix up the ingredients by hand into the ice cream on a frozen block. One of the mom's got involved in mixing. We got to taste any flavour we wanted to. One interesting flavour I remember was Apple Spice. They also had white chocolate and many more. We got to eat a fresh cookie and a milk shake. Each child got their own cup of whatever flavour and mixed in ingredients they wanted.

At the end the kids sat together and ate and some of the parents ordered their own things. Kev got a chocolate malt and I got a blueberry milkshake.

An Organized Space

Over a year ago I had the urge to clear out the basement of storage items and make it into a still unfinished, but useful space. Well, as time goes on it got messier and messier. So, a few weeks ago I decided to start reorganizing the school area. We don't always do educational activities in this room. In fact, Austyn finds the room too distracting at times since the walls are bright pink insulation. It's just nice to have somewhere to put things. When I first started to move the room around the kids were so excited. They said, "Yay! Mommy! Now we have a library!" I take it that means we might just have too many books. Or is there ever too many? I did set up the kids to have their own work spaces on a short table, but they don't ever have to sit there if they don't want to. The table is nice sometimes when we are all working on something together. I labeled all of our containers until I ran out of labels. I would like to get more labels and finish it off by labeling the book shelves as well. I"m at a point with this room where it's much more functional again. There are still a few things to do but as I do little things everyday, we'll get there. I feel very proud of it. 

By the way, no homeschool area is complete without at least one pet. Our cats love this room. For the first little while as I sorted through the bins our one cat kept knocking them off of the shelves for fun. This is also the only room where I allow them to get right up there with us when we are working on things. The kids and the cats love it! When we leave and go back upstairs after spending some time in this room the cats meow for us to come back. They really do add to our experience.

Curiosity Club - Learning about birds

We are learning about birds right now in The Curiosity Club. We have been reading about birds in the book and in other books we've chosen. We've been watching the behaviour of birds in our own backyard. Austyn has a curiosity for humming birds so I downloaded a lap book that I'll post another time. I also downloaded another "My Favourite" lap book, which I'll also share later. For this post I'll focus on The Curiosity Club. I really love this book because it seems to be short interesting reads throughout. The activities include other subjects and are fun. There are many visuals in the book that help to explain what is being learned.

Here we did a mystery drawing. I gave the instructions on the white board. One instruction at a time, waiting for them to finish each step on their drawing pads. Then they guessed what they drew. This also helped to understand the make-up of feathers.

Here are their drawings. Austyn's is on the left and Zoe's is on the right. She restarted a couple of times on the first step so her final feather is at the bottom right of her page. 

We did an experiment with paper to learn how birds fly and after the kids decorated their piece of paper. 

We learned about different kinds of feathers. Feathers that come from different kinds of birds and feathers that are located on different parts of the bird and their special names. Then we looked closely at the feathers we had around the house including our craft feathers and discussed what bird they likely came from and what part of the bird the feathers were from. After that the kids experimented with the sound the feathers made when whooshed through the air. That lead into trying to use them to fly. So here is Austyn trying to fly with only one feather in each hand. Zoe is trying to fly with many feathers.

Picking Strawberries, Honey Farm, and making Jam

Excuse the quality of pictures. I forgot my camera. Last week we went strawberry picking and to a bee farm with friends of ours. 

We had a great time strawberry picking.

We picked up some honey at the honey farm and saw the bees behind the glass. Oh, we got some honey garlic sausages. Yum! We had them for lunch as soon as we got home!

Here the kids are having fun washing, cutting off the tops and eating the strawberries. I have a special tool to do it that Austyn  liked to use. Zoe just picked out the ones that had not leaves on them. She ate many of them. Look at how messy she got!

Then we made jam. It was not cooked. I just prepare much of our meals on our stove. It is easier in our kitchen. We made 7 batches of freezer jam and had strawberries left to eat and some to make freezer pops in the freezer. It was perfect!

Book Sharing Monday

No Trouble at All by Sally Grindley is a cute little tale about a Grandpa who has his grandchildren over to visit. He tucks them into bed and goes on to tell of the trouble he use to get into and how his grandchildren are no trouble at all. 

As you can see by the pictures I've added, the cubs are in much more trouble than their Grandpa knows. He thinks they are asleep in bed like good little cubs. He believes that "They are no trouble at all".