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Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Pinterest Ideas

I recently caved to the invitations to join Pinterest. I had been resisting because most of the posts I had seen via Facebook were of clothes, wedding dresses, hair, and dream homes. I'm not so interested in those things. But after I obliged my sisters invitation, I came to realize that there were also a lot of great teaching ideas on there. Pinterest has become a new search engine for me- a visual search engine. Rather than search google, and have a bunch of links to follow, I can now SEE the unit, or project idea that I am searching for, and therefore only click on the ones that interest me. It's wonderful. It can be time consuming at first, as you set up your own interests, but once you are set up, and find a bunch of interesting people to follow, then you are good to go. You can search your friends or you can search everyone. You can follow people, or just a few of their boards. Through Pinterest, I have found several great blogs by teachers, and also happened upon the website Teachers Pay Teachers- where there are more great units, activities, and worksheets.
Here is a little sampling of some of the activities that we done since joining Pinterest...

First they went on a scavenger hunt to find words.
Then they had to write them down on their list of either OU or OW words.


Then they pasted the words onto the correct injured animal.





 I got the idea from this blog.

Here are some other random projects that we discovered through Pinterest.
The thing I loved about this project / Pinterest/ my iphone / Pinterest App, is that I remembered  I wanted to do this project while I was at the grocery store. So I pulled it up on my phone, saw what I needed and headed straight to the bulk food area, to pick just the right noodles! 

If you want me to send you an invitation leave a message. The one quirk, is that you have to either be linked to a facebook or twitter account. So if you aren't- you'll have to set one up first.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Legoland- or so they thought!

Friday was a "not so productive" homeschooling morning. It was filled with resistance to any sort of school-work related request. The day before had been a great success, I had planned a scavenger hunt and they were all very excited about it. So when there were no over the top activities planned this particular morning- they flat out refused to co-operate. So rather than fight all day, I managed to squeeze just enough effort out of them to justify a trip to the new Lego store at Oakridge-
and boy was I glad I did. It turned out to be "the best day of my life!" - Theo.
A picture from the line-up. 



 I actually didn't get any photos from inside the store because it was so packed in there. I went straight to the check-out line up, because there were only a few t-shirts left, and I was darn well going to get one! After we got our free (with purchase T-shirt), we went to the R2D2 building area.

The kids got to build a block...

by following a direction sheet...

(The block)

that then got put into piles, to contribute to the 8ft tall R2D2 that was being constructed right before our eyes.

Here you can see the example one, sitting on top of the 8ft one in progress.
After they contributed to the R2D2, they received certificates.





Then as soon as we arrived home, they ripped open the "special" obligatory Lego set and cooperatively assembled it. This moment - right here- was worth the hour long line-up!
The kids were so appreciative- which is not always the case so it will definitely be a day I remember. They were so cute how they thought it was Legoland- even when I explained that it wasn't. It may just be the closest they ever get to Legoland- so we'll take what we can get ; )

Deas Island Park

Several weekends ago- we took a trip to a nearby provincial park- that I didn't even know existed! I think Colin had been there once with his class. Anyways, it felt like a mini camping trip. We brought some food to nibble on, a few balls of different sorts, and our walking shoes. It was a well needed, most enjoyable afternoon!