Book Sharing Monday - Owl Moon

 I thought that I had already posted this book last year, but I don't see it. This is a great book for this time of year. This is when Owls mate and nest. At night you may hear them calling each other. This story is about a father who takes his little girl, who is finally old enough to stay quiet. 

They walk into the forest and the father calls to the owls and they wait for a response. 

This is something that can actually be done. Try it sometime! Some wildlife organizations or parks host nighttime owl walks. A night with a full moon is best, because you don't have to use a flashlight as much.

If you have an iPod or iPad download Audubon Bird Guide and there are many bird recordings on there. Find out what owls live in your area. Use the recordings to call out to the owls. They will answer back. If you are quiet enough you can keep calling and get closer to the owl. When you find what tree it is in you can look at the base of the tree to get an owl pellet. Pellets can be collected in a plastic bag and taken home to be dissected. There are books on how to dissect one and how to identify what the bird ate. Discover Nature at Sundown by Elizabeth P. Lawlor is a good one to use.

Zoe's 1st Hockey Tournament

Zoe attended her first hockey tournament and got a metal. She scored two goals for her team!

Found in the Front Yard!

Austyn found this fossil in the front yard! It is a brachiopod. The kids found another one in the drive way and other fossils. When visiting the local museum they took a look at this fossil and said that it's in excellent shape. They gave us a list of fossils that we can find in our area. 

Building a Home

One thing Austyn has is experience with how to move and how to go about building a house. We have moved many times and know what we should have looked for in the past and what we need to look for now when it comes to building houses and moving into new homes. Through our experiences and because our kids are at home with us and experience much of what we do, they learn the process. When we go and visit the house we are getting built, Austyn asks the contractors many questions. Yesterday he spent time with the electrician and last week he chatted with the painter. He was there through the process of choosing things. He is proud to say that he chose our wood floor that will be installed this week.

It's not always fun taking the kids everywhere, especially when there are behavioural problems. With all of the moving that we have done in the past year or so, it's made things hard for all of us.

Book Sharing Monday - Dragons and Unicorns

Over the past couple of years Austyn has been a bit obsessed with dragons. He has even created diagrams of how he believes they blow fire. He has invented/discovered many dragons and even started a visual manual/guide that is always growing.

While browsing the books at the library I came across this book. It turned out to be a great find for us. We didn't read the unicorn section yet, but the dragon section is spectacular. It is set up as a natural guide to learning just about everything you would want to know about dragons. One of the parts we particularly enjoyed was how they blew fire. We compared and contrasted the information in this book to what Austyn had put together and found it very interesting. 

The Count-Down is On!

The count-down is on! We will be moving at the end of March! This is how we have been sleeping since September. Yes! I guess this means we are staying in Ontario! The kids have their beds on the floor and the cats stay in the room with us all the time since they clash with the cat that lives here. Although we are lucky to have somewhere to stay and are very thankful, it will feel wonderful to have our own home again. The cats can roam free and we can settle in better. The strange thing is that time has flown by since we have moved here but now that we have somewhere to move soon, time seems to be crawling. So strange!

In the mean time I have been planning our meals, and some sort of schedule for our weeks in the new home. I guess I'll see how it goes once we move. We have things that have been in storage for over a year and have accumulated more in our recent moves. It will be time to purge things and I will need to be fast with it since our new community will have a large town-wide yard sale shortly after our move. It will feel refreshing to unpack and get rid of the things we don't need. We all can't wait!

Mystery Class

This picture was during the first week. We are now going on the third week. The class was set up so that the students can make a graph that kept track of the photo period of each area, but we are doing it like other homeschoolers that we follow online. The photo-period is still calculated and added to the chart provided but the graphs we did in a way that represent daylight and night time (darkness) for each mystery location over time. We have chosen to use a different colour for each mystery location. The most interesting one is location six which shows a very small portion of sunlight at the bottom of the graph. In this location it is summer and they only get a few hours of darkness. So they must be located close to the South Pole! How exciting!