Science and Math

This year in Science we are learning about the human body, as well as our nature studies. It is purposefully picked as our text as we are talking about health and body workings regarding Daddy. Understanding always helps us work through life situations.
We are a Math-U-See family for life I think! Working on though or cyclical workbooks.

Gemma's bone facts. 

Aiden's bone facts. 

Keiran's bone facts. 

 Aiden's skeleton. 

Gemma's skeleton. 

Keiran's skeleton. 

Finn's body puzzle. This serious little man is building the muscular system. 

Finn's bone drawing. He was magnificent explaining it all too. Too cute!

Math! Finn has begun Math-See-U Primer. 

Gemma is continuing in Gamma this year. Multiplying by seven here. 

Keiran is in Beta, working through multiple digit subtraction. 

Aiden has started Epsilon and is doing awesome adding and subtracting fractions. 

Family Science, Tech, Art, PE

 

Science

 

We are immensely enjoying Exploring Creation; Zoology 2, Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day. This is feeling like a large growth year for our family and this curriculum adds to that.

Aiden, Gemma, and Keiran are richly learning from this text. We have begun to collect our sea animals to build an ocean, as we work through

each unit...

 

 Gemma colored a seal scripture page.

 

 Aiden recorded some facts about walruses.

 

 Gemma's walrus and manatee fact page.

 

 Keiran's walrus and manatee write up.

 

 

Applied Skills, Design, and Technology

 

Gemma and Keiran have been helping Aiden create some short movies. 

Keiran recently had a birthday and everyone joined to build a Lego Train and Station.

 

 

Arts Education

 

The Lokstet kids make homemade Christmas ornaments for the tree every year. This year they got learned a new skill, doing some cross-stitch needlework.

 

 

 

PE

 

This past season has consisted of bike riding, sledding, then back to bike riding, parkour, and soccer.

 

 Sledding at Grandma's property.

 

Getting ready for soccer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our First Day, 2017/18.

Last week I spent some time organizing our school books, and letting the kids pick readers and play with their journals. Today we jumped into our first real day of routine. It's always a bit of a balancing act but went well. I am getting a feel for what this year looks like and I think it will be a growth year (last year being a restorative and resting one). Here are some visuals of our day!

 First of all, you have to get the littlest sibling working on something, right? They love to be included and feel like they are doing something similar. Math blocks are a special thing that is allowed out during school time and Finn loves creating with them. Roads are the fave thing right now. 

 

Bible

I tried hard to find some bible curriculum for some time and I picked up some various books. This year I wanted to give the kids more choice so that they are excited and take initiative in what they are learning. I found this coloring bible at Chapters recently for Keiran. He can read and color the whole entire bible essentially, even the cover. I love that there is a visual aspect to his learning each story.

 

 This is the book that Aiden picked for bible. I love that he has to use his bible to look up the verses and then doodle his thoughts about it. I am seeing and hoping for tons of growth in the kids' knowledge of scripture this year, as the older two especially are more thoughtful about things and maturing.

 

 Gemma's book is similar. She can doodle and color, and also look up her verses. I am adding these to their morning English routine.

 

Mom's planner has a weekly bible plan and fighter verse and this was the one written in so we read this together this morning too. 

 

Language Arts

 Aiden chose this for his first reader. I had so much fun at the homeschool convention picking up all sorts of reading subjects, knowing my kids interests and preferences. Aiden loves the WW2 stuff.

 

Aiden's "Grammar and Punctuation Six," Evan Moor workbook.



 My house read-aholic, Gemma, has already finished her first book and is on to the second. Here is her first picks for readers.

 

Gemma did a little write-up after her first book. I did not help her correct it as it was on her own initiative. I still need to photocopy some graphic organizers for the kids to fill out when they are reading, but she got ahead of me, haha. Love her enthusiasm.  

 

Gemma's "A Reason for Spelling, Level D" wordlist. 

 My good friend had the idea to encourage Keiran's reading with an audio book. It is so great to discuss ideas and challenges with other homeschool moms. He wanted a funny book and I found this at Chapters. So far so good. It also frees me up from sitting with him as this is a busy time of the school morn with lots of instruction at different times. He has also picked some readers that we will balance him and mom reading together. His confidence is coming!

 

 Keiran's "Skill Sharpeners, Spell and Write 3," by Evan Moor. He did awesome at this.

 

Keiran was brave this morn with his journal and didn't want mom's help at all. This is a perfect example of how and why we do journaling. I let the kids create and write whatever they want and keep it to just a couple of corrections. They usually copy around two words which helps them build spelling skills and this time around Keiran got some review phonics lessons too.



Science 

I ended up changing my mind when I picked up our science curriculum this year. They didn't have my intended pick and when I saw this I remembered that Keiran has been saying he wants to be an underwater animal rescuer. What better way to engage his already big love for science? It is a nice change from our usual science picks.



Also, this science comes with a Junior Notebooking Journal. This was Gemma's activity that she was working on (Keiran had the same). And....

 

 Aiden has a regular notebooking journal that requires more older thought from him. It was our first taste of the curriculum today. Mom read a lot of text, and the kids worked on their journals at the same time as they listened to a ton of information. Today's lesson was about nekton, benthos, and plankton; or the types of aquatic animals.

 

 

We kept it to those three subjects today and got our regular day sorted out into routine. More to come this week.

 

A Day in the Life of Keiran

We have discovered that Keiran is a tactile learner, and this differs from his older brother and sister. We have had to veer off course from our previous books and dive into some new programs for him and it seems to be working well. This boy excels at science and math, and can figure out how any single thing works mechanically. He is the one who retains information well too. Here are some samples of the resources he is currently working through....

 

 

Morning Work:

 

 

Language Arts

 

 Keiran switched to a program called Reading Eggs and it is his cup of tea. He was having a lot of anxiety when doing daily readings and so this has replaced that for now. He has excelled in this program and worked himself through lesson 90. It is hard to take pictures as when he answers they pop off the screen, but hopefully this is a show of the words he is working with and the ability he has now. He has also been journaling and working through Explode the Code 4. He is building words and recognizing syllables. 

 

 

Math

 

Keiran is working though Math-U-See Alpha. He is excellent at math. He too watches his instructional video on Mondays and works through his workbook the rest of the week, often using the color coded math blocks.

 

 

 

 

Social Studies

 

Keiran is learning about Canada's provinces alongside his brother and sister. Mom reads about each province, the geography of the land, the industries, and the symbols. Keiran takes part in coloring each symbol and learning about the meaning of them too. He fills in his information as copywork.

 

 

 

 

 

Science

 

Keiran has finished off a year long study, experiments and observations included, on plants. He recently learned about moss, algae, and fungi; the last unit about unusual plants. His final experiment was growing mold on bread/a bagel. He made a hypothesis, spread some spit and germs on certain bagels (gross I know), and then left them for a week in specific places to see what would occur. Here is the evidence of what happened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Afternoons:

 

 

Career Education

 

Keiran has been learning about daily life, such as preparing a meal and doing chores. He, along with his brother and sister, work on a chore list everyday (except Sunday) and take initiative to pick and complete a chore of their choosing and ability. These chores have been previously taught and the list is made depending on what mom needs accomplished, such as vacuuming upstairs or downstairs, laundry folding, emptying and filling the dishwasher, sweeping the kitchen, window washing, garbage (which includes emptying the garbage, recycling, and compost), bathroom garbage, cleaning the bathroom counter and mirror, or washing the kitchen chairs. There are many chores to pick from during the week but the usual ones are dishes, laundry, garbages.  

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Arts Education

 

Keiran made a panda planter out of clay at 4Cats Art Studio this term. He also painted a bird house for the front tree. I love how each child in the family painted one and they turned out so differently to match with their personalities.

 

 

 

Physical and Health Education

 

Keiran blew us away at the last part of his swim lessons. He was a little unsure to begin with and I think has very perfectionist tendencies, and then one class he dove under and kept going! It was a breakthrough and his fear left. I am sure it had something to do with praying about this on the way to swim lessons. Keiran also participated in Soccer Quest soccer, and TCC gymnastics this year.

At home he is biking, skateboarding, and jumping rope.