Linking Verbs

Toviel has been working with linking verbs of late.

The linking verbs are am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been. The first 5 are the most common, so that is what we are concentrating on.

The white strips of paper have the verbs on them and the yellow strips of paper have nouns and adjectives on them that can be "linked together" with the linking verbs.

Here is a different activity for building short sentences with the use of linking verbs. Some of his sentences were hilarious and kept us laughing for a while.

Bethlehem Walk 2013

One of our holiday traditions is to go to the Bethlehem Walk put on by West Edmonton Christian Assembly.

It is always enjoyable, but there is usually a 1-2 hour wait to get in. This year we went with the school groups during the day and avoided all the waiting. It was nice to go with friends, but we missed not going with Cris and also the production was considerably dumbed down during the day time, presumably because people have jobs and school during the day.

We missed the usual Wise Men act at the beginning, there were a fraction of angels singing, no Herod outside the temple, and some of the market place stalls were unmanned for a short time. We also missed out on the choir at the end and the live orchestra at the beginning during the wait time, and there was no hot chocolate or hot apple cider. It was less congested though, which was nice. The boys each got their token piece of leather from the leather shop, which is tradition for them.

Here are all the kids we went with:

Here is Elijah trying to lift the uber long sword that is near impossible to lift unless you know the wrist-flick movement you have to make since it is so blade heavy. The same crazy guy is there every year.

Overlooking the marketplace:

After you wind through the shops and go past the inn, you arrive at the stables. It is quiet, the kids are thrilled with the horses, goats, cows, donkeys, and sheep. You could almost miss Mary and Joseph sitting there quietly with The King, just as most everyone missed that 2000+ years ago in the hustle and bustle of the census activity. One thing that amazes me is that every year (3 now) the babe is still, quietly sleeping in Mary's arms. How do people do that with their newborns? I'm pretty sure I remember having to MOVE all the time with my babes in my arms in order to keep them happy. Yet here they are, still as can be, with a little baby actually sleeping quietly, all 3 times.

I'm pretty sure Elijah wanted to take this bull home with him. He wasn't terribly interested in the horses, the sheep, the donkeys, or the goats, but give him a cow with horns and he is happy. I had to tear him away from this guy because the group was moving on.

Thank you to all the people who work so hard to bring this amazing and free event to Edmontonians in the few weeks before Christmas! See you next year!

Crafting and Reading

We spent an afternoon earlier this month making snowflakes by folding paper and cutting out shapes.

The results were sweet and we decorated our dining room window with them. We've done a couple other Christmas crafts without whining or complaining.

A lot of this has been happening lately:

Just finding a quiet spot and reading. Elijah is reading a novel, "Heart of a Samaurai."

Toviel has a chapter book on the go, too, but he often picks up whatever suits his fancy at the moment.

Advent 2013

The beginning of December starts off our advent traditions.

The boys each get a ribbon with stockings clipped to it, one for each day leading up to Christmas. Each morning the sock for the day has a little surprise waiting for them, usually a candy or small toy. As the month progresses, the socks disappear, bringing us closer to Christmas. It is a fun countdown.

We have also started another tradition for advent. 24 children's books are wrapped up and placed under the tree. Each night before bed, the boys pick a wrapped book and unwrap it. We read that book all snuggled in bed.

I must admit for this one, it was tricky to find Christmas books that were not $20 each. I relied on thrift stores so the selection is so-so, especially since I needed 24 of them! 

Artsy Fartsy

Last week we went on a field trip for a behind-the-scenes look at the Jubilee Auditorum. It was quite informative and neat to see all the backstage rooms. Our tour guide did an excellent job of showing us around. We saw the backstage prop area, the snack room, the main dressing room, laundry room, the star's dressing room, the conductor's lounge, the green room, and of course the huge stage.

We were there for an hour and a half and I found it very informative.

Later in the week we went to a performance at an Arts School herein Edmonton. We saw the musical "Beauty and the Beast". We talked about what we thought the backstage was like, how hot or cold the auditorium would be, what the stage floor was like, etc.

The play was done really well and we enjoyed it. I had seen the first 20 minutes of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" several times before, but got bored and moved on to something else, so I did not know what the middle or end of the play would be like.

The costumes and props were absolutely fantastic, and the performers did an excellent job.

(Musicals are serious business!)

So, we had an arts enrichment week, with some bookwork thrown in here and there. Hopefully we can squeeze in some more performances over the Christmas Season!

Winding Up For Christmas!

The last few weeks has been uneventful.

C was here for a week and basically that week the boys just played and played and played. Friendships are so important and they really missed each other.

Our homeschool facilitator came for our first meeting of the year to get the info on what our plans are for this year. Just more of the same.

Cris took the boys swimming twice. I'm pretty sure I am never going swimming in a public pool again, after having a conversation with a couple of people. I will spare you the details. But...they went twice in the past 2 1/2 weeks.

Last week we went to A's house and Elijah played outside for such a long time with his friends. They were running around in the snow for hours! Our book club got cancelled this week due to incredibly slippery roads at the community hall. 

We went to the Royal Alberta Museum today with B and her kids. It was an excellent afternoon!

We finished 2 read aloud books. "The Landry News", and "Socks" by Beverly Cleary. Our next book will be about Christopher Columbus.

We have discussed the Middle Ages in Africa and Spain / Portugal recently, which includes Christopher Columbus, so we are going to read a short biography about him. I would like to take the boys to West Edmonton Mall and go on the replica of the Santa Maria they have there.

With Christmas coming up, we have some plays / musicals / presentations to attend. The season is starting to get busy!

Week in Review - Nov. 3-9

Our week has been pretty quiet. We didn't have any outings and stayed close to home. Part of it is because we now have snow, and I feel like hibernating.

Elijah has been working on fractions, relating them to things like gallons, half-gallons, quarts, and whole notes, half-notes, and quarter notes in 4/4 time. He has been figuring out things such as how much it costs to buy a gallon of ice cream in a gallon bucket vs a gallon of ice-cream in quarts. We played the multiplication memory game and continued to practice addition and skip-counting.

Toviel finished the Book B math and will be moving onto Book C either next week or the week after. We have worked on grafts, geometry, and more practice in problem-solving, addition and subtraction.

This week I introduced Elijah to the dictionary. He learned how to look up words, how to read the phonetic spelling, how to read the abbreviations that tell what part of speech the word is, and he saw that many words have different meanings and usages. We also talked about verb tense.

Our dictations and narrations were taken from Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Fairy Tales. We looked at "The Valiant Tailor" and "Briar Rose".

Toviel and I talked more about the different types of sentences. Copywork and narration was taken from "Socks" by Beverly Cleary and "The Wind in the Willows". He is dying to read the entire book "Socks" and so I have it on hold at the library.

While Elijah is working on his books, Toviel usually busies himself with a little project or a game or activity he invents. This week he made up creatures by drawing different types of heads, bodies, arms, and legs on cards. He would select the parts to create individual creatures and then draw that creature on a card. He set himself up so that we could all select our own body parts to make a creature, then he gave us a copy of the creature we created.

Elijah finished two books this week that he was reading simultaneously. One was "Treasure Hunters" by James Patterson and the other was "Desmond Pucket" by Mark Tatulli. He has now started on "Heart of a Samurai" by Margi Preus. It's a Newberry Honor book, so it should be good.

The boys spent some time playing in the newly fallen snow.

I read from Story of the World to the boys. We skipped the activities because they seem burdensome. We read about the Hundred Years' War between France and England, Joan of Arc, the Wars of the Roses in England, a bit about Spain and Portugal, how Ferdinand and Isabella united Spain (we skipped the Spanish Inquisition until they are older), and began reading about Africa and how Ghana got wealthy from tolls required for all the salt and gold that passed through it.

We had some friends over Friday afternoon, but the rest of the week we just stuck to ourselves.

We are watching the Avatar: The Last Airbender series again, playing a bit of Minecraft, and looking at new word search apps. We also started a new read aloud book called "The Landry News" by Andrew Clements.

River City Roundup

Saturday, November 2, we made our way downtown to Churchill Square to take part in the River City Roundup activities. It is a festival celebrating Edmonton's agricultural and western heritage, and Saturday was their big kick-off.

Elijah went on a pony ride and tried out the mechanical bull, we went on a horse-drawn cart ride, ate bacon coated in fresh cinnamon, took part in some old penny arcade games, watched a blacksmith do some branding on wood, listened to live music, and ran into some friends. We only stayed for about an hour and a half because we got there pretty late. We had a very late night the previous night, and everyone enjoyed a big sleep-in, and then Cris made waffles and pancakes before we left.

It was neat to go, if only for a short while.

A Good End of October, A Good Start for November

October 31st started with Tove and I going to pick up pumpkins. He wanted two to paint.

It turns out, that while on October 30th there are thousands of pumpkins for sale at the store, on October 31st there are about 10 for sale, and they are either rotten or have big holes in them. We managed to pick out two that were not slimy or rotten.

Tove painted them and then we put them outside.

In the afternoon, my friend came over for lunch and a chat. She home educated her 5 children, who are all adults now. She was a great encouragement to me, and helped me define the difference between school-at-home and home education. 

When evening approached, the boys picked costumes that they already had. There was no excitement about new costumes, but that didn't matter.

I took them out to go door-to-door. We came back for a break and then went out again.

Elijah decided to write about the things he liked about the houses that were decorated. He made a list of the inflatables that he liked, and I was just happy he was going to write of his own accord. He didn't ask me to correct his spelling and so I didn't, although he did ask me how to spell several words. The more he reads, the better his spelling will get.

We did eat a lot of candy. I cannot lie. But before we called it a night, Toviel was asking for lettuce. He chowed down on a bundle of romaine lettuce after all that junk.

We left a big bowl of candy for the Sugar Sprites, and they took the candy and left two new light sabres for the boys to find in the morning!

The following day we had to rise and shine early as I was taking the kids to a friend's house for the entire day and Cris and I were going to work on a job together. We ended up not starting the job and needing to revise the contract because the amount of work that NEEDED to get done was not the amount on the estimate. The boys were having fun with their friends, so we were told to leave them there for the rest of the morning and afternoon. We went to pick them up around 3:30 or 4:00, were invited in for coffee, and you know how that goes. There was eventually talk of supper, some ordering of pizza, some games, lots of playing and talking, and at 11pm we finally pulled ourselves away and accepted the fact that it is possible that our hosts were tired, and we were starting to feel it too.

Thursday and Friday were filled with encouragement and love, exactly what I needed. It's a good start to November!

Wednesday, Oct.30

This morning I treated the boys to bacon.

They professed their love for me when I placed this on the table.

And, yes, he ate this all...plus 1 more piece that his brother gave to him off of his plate.

Our book work went smoothly. Copywork, narration, and dictation from King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as well as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Math focused on money for Elijah and reading scales and measuring for Toviel. He spent quite a long time with the water and beakers.

The boys made up their own game with a set of complex rules.

It was Awana tonight. After Awana and after Cris got home from his meeting, we convinced Tove to let Cris pull his VERY loose tooth out. Tooth #4. Toviel was nervous, worried, "creeped out" (his words), and it was hard for him to do this, but eventually he opened his mouth and let Cris yank his tooth out.

I love the way Tove talks now!

Tuesday - Moping At Home

Okay...so I wasn't moping all day at home, but I was at home all day, and there was a little moping.

I'm just feeling alone and disconnected. I feel as though I'm needing more meaningful connections but have no friendships that go deep enough to feel as though any real connections can be rooted. I'm hoping its just a matter of time.

This morning we got grammar and writing out of the way right away. Elijah worked on a thank you letter, got it addressed and ready to mail. We forgot to mail it though. He read a selection from King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and summarized the selection beautifully. Toviel did some copy work, and did a short summary as well, about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, then we talked about the different types of sentences....and more copywork.

Elijah is doing a lot of fraction work and today was how fractions relate to money (a dime is 1/10 of a dollar, etc.). Toviel and I played a longer game of Subtraction Corners than we played yesterday. By the end he was getting much quicker and grasping the concept of subtracting the tens first and then the ones from the minuend. He makes a lot of connections with numbers that confuse the heck out of. He moves them around in equations in what seems like a senseless way, but comes up with the right answers. Like 78+69...he takes 5 from the 8 and 5 from the 9 and makes a 10 out of those two 5's. then he is left with 3 and 4, which is the same as 2 and 5, which is 7. So the units are 17. He takes the 10 and adds it to the 70 to get 80. Then he takes 50 from the 80 and 50 from the 60, and those two 50's make 100. He is left with 30 and 10 which is 40, so he has 100, 40, and 7 which is 147. And he keeps track of it all in his head. I'm trying to teach him to just add it like 78+60=138. 138+9 is the same as 137+10, so it's 147. But, I also want to encourage what makes sense to him.

Here is the middle of our Corners game:

The boys also had a nice amount of time to play today. They are very loud!

We also read some history as a review, about the Turks invading Constantinople, now it's Istanbul not Constantinople...and we laughed about the song by They Might Be Giants while we listened to it several times. And we talked about the Bubonic Plague, and other icky Middle Ages things.

This evening I read them the story of Confucious, and they both dropped off to sleep with ease around 11pm. I'm hoping for earlier mornings and earlier bedtimes this winter.

Our Monday - Homeschool Club!

Yesterday was a nice day.

We started our morning with some book work and time at the table. Elijah reviewed some math concepts and then we played "Multiplication Memory" several times together.

Math games are definitely more effective for him than worksheets. 

Tove played "Subtraction Corners" with me as well.

We got to our writing and grammar stuff in the early evening because we had afternoon plans, and math games always take a lot of time.

Our afternoon was filled with our homeschool club. The group is so big that we are renting a community hall now! The fabulous moms who organize it had fun, silly games and several crafts to chose from. After the crowds around the craft tables died down, he happily immersed himself in creating something.

It caught on, because near the end of it, Elijah was ready to do the same, as was his best friend, D.

Up to this point, Elijah had been outside running around in the SNOW having light sabre duals with a few other boys.

After they had finished their crafting, the kids broke off into their book club groups. This group read "The Witches" by Roald Dahl, so here the group is discussing the book with our fabulous ever-energetic crazy mom friend, J.

The boys and I started to read "The Gammage Cup", but the way it is written is a bit confusing to them. So we are going to wait a couple more years for that one.

Wizard School

On Saturday we went to an event put on by the University of Alberta Science Department. It was called The School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I didn't know it was based on the world of Harry Potter. My boys have not yet been introduced to the story. There were parts that were a little awkward when the university students were trying to engage my boys with questions like, "Do you remember the kind of owl Harry Potter had?"

Or, "Who's wand do you think this belonged to?"

To which I replied, "We haven't read the books yet so we wouldn't know."

The student replied to Toviel, "Well, guess anyways."  (?????)

Um...haven't read the books yet, Genius.

Anyways, parts of the event were a hit, parts were a miss. 

The boys did enjoy making a fragment of DNA with jujubes and licorice.

There were some potions to mix.

There were a couple of rooms filled with bones, ancient tools, and other archeological interests.

We were there for about 4&1/2 hours. The highlight was the presentation from a chemist. He showed us all kinds of interesting things, from how oxygen speeds up reactions, to how awesome liquid nitrogen is. He set a lot of things on fire.

I wasn't at the top of my game today. I was tired, feeling deserted, disconnected, left out, and alone.

Today was quiet. A lot of Minecraft was played, some videos were watched, ice cream was eaten. We woke up to snow and ice on the ground, so the hibernating feeling was dominant today.