Friday, May 25, 2012

Homeschooling Highlights - May

What is there not to love about homeschooling in May?
Beautiful sunny, perfectly happy days where you spend more of them OUTSide than inside.

We planted our gardens together. Here's the before of the veggie gardens, stayed tuned for June's post to see the progress.
 And our flower boxes.
 Then we went to the Niagara Children's Museum











We spent a day with friends at Heartland Forest exploring...

Fishing
 Hunting Frogs
 and hanging out. (just watch out for ticks!)
 We enjoyed all of our friends trampolines and the sunshine.
 We played as much as possible, avoiding the books, but nevertheless, almost finishing up all our core courses.
 We enjoyed the park and beach at Port Dalhousie with friends.

 We got our passes to Marineland after at 2 year hiatus. Much more affordable with the home schooling group rate.


 Beluga's were especially friendly that day.
 We played in the sprinkler.
 and usually conked out like this, after our busy days.
 We battled the flu, and won.
 We celebrated a cousins birthday on the Holiday Weekend.
 and enjoyed the Fireworks at the Virgil Stampede with friends again.




And the month still isn't over!!!

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Home Schooling Highlights - April


This photo is all I have from the entire month of April.

My dear son developed an affinity for my camera and deleted all the photos on it. I had not saved them to my computer yet. (sigh and grrr). So this month, the highlights will all by written.

At the end of March, we welcomed Maria to our home for a month. She is from Columbia. We enjoyed the month with her and I'm unhappy to have lost all my pics of her but hopefully someone, somewhere will have a few of her with us.

We celebrated Easter with family and friends. Our homeschooling friends The McEwens came over for an Easter Egg Hunt. It was a riot.

The next week, we went to gym day and I was in charge of the craft room. We made tissue paper flowers and pet rocks. I have the pet rocks so will take some pics of them again soon.

The following week the boys had their Awana year end banquet. They did very well, each completing their books for this year. That's a lot of bible memorizing.

Lucas spent a weekend in Simcoe with his Grandpa Jim and Nana Jo. The younger two are eagerly awaiting their turn for a weekend at grandpa's. Meanwhile, the younger two boys got to visit the Early Years Center with big brother away.

The week after that, we said farewell to Maria. The boys came to the "fancy dinner" with just mom (dad is in busy season). They were REALLY GOOD. Napkins on laps, using manners, not fighting or being too squirmy. I was so proud of them!

We had a profitable month in school work and are almost finished with Grammar and Reading Comprehension. We will have writing and spelling left, as well as Math. I'd like to concentrate on Carter's phonics a bit more in May and June too. This summer we'll do a unit on Canadian geography as we hopefully head to the east coast. We'll do some nature studies on our camping trips and make the most of the seasons outdoors.

We had a lot of rain at the end of the month, so in between showers we've been trying to get the garden ready for planting. It's been slow going. We also didn't sign up for any sports because I knew we'd be getting our passes for Safari Niagara and this year, Marineland in May and begin visiting often through May and June. July is shaping up to be pretty busy for our family and in August it will be grounded in Niagara with houseguests coming from Korea and Soccer starting up again.

I'm glad that we've kept to the basics this year as we've tried to adjust to home schooling. There's lots for us to learn together (especially me) but I'm still so happy we followed this path and am grateful that we've been able to make it work so far :)  Happy May everyone!



Home Schooling Highlights - March

March was unseasonably warm so after completing our school work each day, the boys all took off outside for hours. Mom especially loved this! We started some work pages on our Story of the World History course as we've listened to it about 5 times now in totality. The boys each finished up the Handwriting Without Tears books and an Explode the Code book each. I'm hoping that by mid-May the main thing they work on each day is their Math U See. We went to a couple of gym days and had a spring break for a week during which we went on some field trips and play dates. 

Other highlights...
Our trip to Agape Valley Sugarbush








 Forcing Pussy Willows we picked up on a hike.

Our first bonfire of the year. 


Home Schooling Highlights - February 2012

February was a good month


We went skating at the Rink at the Brink, as well as in Ridgeway.


We got lot's of cuddle time.

ies
We celebrated Valentine's with a Valentine Lunch with some other homeschoolers.







We played lots and lots of games.

Daddy was away for a good week so I didn't plan a whole lot of extra activities, we stuck around the house and our neighbourhood. The boys played a lot of Basketball with Upward sports, their final games were in the beginning of March. We are looking forward to starting soccer in August with Upward.


the boys had a sleep over with their cousins.


 Carter had several play date with his buddy.


The boys went to an indoor waterpark with their aunt.
and on Family Day weekend, we went toboganning.