Thursday, November 29, 2012

Building a doggy bootroom.

Daddy is building a backdoor boot room. Aiden helped him move around some boards, and with measuring and marking where to drill.




Arts and crafts.

We made Christmas crafts! This year we decide to paint ornaments.

 
Christmas craft day. 

 
Aiden paints a golden star. 

 
Keiran too. 

 
Drying our decorations.

 
Supplies: Mod Podge, paint, and glitter. 

 
Gemma painting a red sparkly star. 

 
The finished product!


A little of this, a little of that.

Some pics from the last week or so:
 
Aiden's Soviet Poster that goes along with his English reading.

 
Gemma's smelly marker art.

 
Keiran's smelly marker art. 

 
Aiden's art pick.

 
Aiden's printing practice. 

 
Oi/oy worksheets- hearing sounds.  

 
Copying. 

 
Books that Aiden has been reading before bed. 

 
And some more nighttime reading. 

Aiden found this interesting.

He read this book many times.

Mom loves these library picks that solidify what we are learning in Socials.

This book has great aerial views of the landscapes of Canada.

Atlantic Canada. 

Aiden's rendering of the Appalachians. 

Addition of tens.


Thursday, November 8, 2012

Journalling for life.

 
The story. 

 
Free writing- what he learned.

 
And what he thought about what he learned.


A sample of math

 
Vertical addition. 

 
No problem here. 

Socials

Aiden has mapped his way across the provinces and back through the territories:

 
On his last one to color in- Nunavut. The great lakes, oceans, and St.Lawrence River are also colored on this map. 

 
Learning the spelling of each province as he goes along.

 
We did not read these books word for word on each page, but more age appropriately, looked through for important and interesting points.  

 
We found some reinforcing resources at the library. We watched the train travel across the provinces on the trans-Canadian railway, from Toronto to Vancouver. Tonight we will start watching "Wings Over Canada" and see what Canada looks like from the sky!


Gemma's First School Book

Here it is:
 
This book is great so far. It reinforces colors, shapes, words/picture recognition, and teaches her how to trace, which leads into letter and number tracing. 

 
Coloring the bees, ants, and ladybugs and then tracing their paths. 

 
Coloring red and green objects and their shapes.

  The green page done.

 
Today's pages were blue and orange. 

Learning to Read in 100 Easy Lessons with Gemma.

Gemma is now learning to read. She can read six letters.

 
Gemma's reading books. 

 
It looks a little boring but in ten minutes a day, it works! First she learns a letter sound, then reviews it, and adds on. She also practices rhyming and hearing the sounds by saying words fast and slow. She gets so excited when she reads each letter, and smiles a big smile. It is so cute!  

 
A sample of Gemma's first letters. I am doing it a little different than I did with Aiden. I am showing her how to write the letter and then having her copy it- with Aiden he traced over my letters, but this technique will be covered in her printing book...

Saturday, November 3, 2012

2nd and Seymour

In the basement of Kamloops Museum there is a kids portion of museum artifacts and activities. There are giant blocks, painting, dinosaur digging, puzzles, dress-up, puppet shows, etc

 
Aiden and Gemma putting on a puppet show. 

 
Gemma spinning the color wheel, with an old fashioned hat in hand.

 
A ship.

 
Keiran running by an old log home. 

 
A dinosaur dig in an eroded river bed. (You can turn on the water and see the river flow.)

 
A wolf. 

 
Old portraits. 

 
More old portraits- these ones are some of our relatives on Daddy's side. 

   Our relatives are the McLeans. They owned Hat Creek ranch as well and we plan to go there on a field trip in the spring :)

 
A fishing exhibit. The boys checking if this is real water and fish- it is plastic. 

 
Planets on the wall. 

 
And some more planets.  


There was so much to see! We want to go back another time and explore some more.