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Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Box Day 2012
What on earth is Box Day, you ask???
Box Day is the day that your "boxed" homeschool curriculum arrives.
Since accepting my new position as an Individualized Homeschool Support Teacher for HCOS, we decided to switch the children to HCOS as well. HCOS is a Christian School, therefore I am allowed to use my government funding to purchase Christian curriculum.
Ever since I started homeschooling almost 2 years ago, I have been researching the plethora of homeschool curriculums that are out there. One that has always caught my eye is Sonlight. Their program is literature based and includes many, many books! The core curriculums that you can order include history, language arts, and bible. Canadian Prescribed Learning Outcomes don't include history until the intermediate grades, but I think if you can get the kids interested in it earlier than that- GO FOR IT! Thankfully, for the grades that my kids are in, Sonlight is covering World History so I felt it was appropriate for us to try it out. (Later on they study American History, so we will likely not use Sonlight for those years).
This is the ginormous binder that is used to hold all the lesson plans for the year! It makes me so happy to have this. Each week, I will take out the corresponding lessons and worksheets so that I am working from a smaller binder. Then when I am finished, I will place them back in here so that they are ready to go for Kezia when she is old enough to use this curriculum.
One of my favourite things to do after opening the box and seeing all the beautiful books, was to label them all. Sonlights sends along stickers for you to put on the spines of all the books so that you know which ones came with the Core that you are currently using. I am an organizational junky, so this was just pure heaven to me!
Box Day is the day that your "boxed" homeschool curriculum arrives.
Since accepting my new position as an Individualized Homeschool Support Teacher for HCOS, we decided to switch the children to HCOS as well. HCOS is a Christian School, therefore I am allowed to use my government funding to purchase Christian curriculum.
Ever since I started homeschooling almost 2 years ago, I have been researching the plethora of homeschool curriculums that are out there. One that has always caught my eye is Sonlight. Their program is literature based and includes many, many books! The core curriculums that you can order include history, language arts, and bible. Canadian Prescribed Learning Outcomes don't include history until the intermediate grades, but I think if you can get the kids interested in it earlier than that- GO FOR IT! Thankfully, for the grades that my kids are in, Sonlight is covering World History so I felt it was appropriate for us to try it out. (Later on they study American History, so we will likely not use Sonlight for those years).
Here they are opening up the box for the first time. I had clearly, already gone through it and organized them neatly. It was like Christmas in July for our family.
Here is a picture of some of the books that we will get to read and learn about this year. Before purchasing the Core, I looked up every book on Amazon to read the reviews and even compare prices. I was pleased to see that every book received 4 or more stars out of 5, and that all the prices were the same or cheaper than Amazon was selling them for. I am SO excited!!!
I realize that you can't really see the photo above, but it is a week at a glance for the Core. It tells you the books and chapters you will be reading, as well as any extra materials you might need. This is followed by a detailed plan for each day and subject- a dream come true for me!
While researching the different "boxed" curriculums, Sonlight appealed to me the most because of the rave reviews. One of the things that really struck a cord for me was the movement from the table to the sofa. We need that in our homeschool this year. I think it will be much easier to invite the kids to join me on the sofa to read with me, or to me. I look forward to the guided discussions, and the preplanned lessons that all coordinate with books and topics of history that we will be covering. Obviously, this is just a couple of subjects and there will be lots of science experiments and math problems to solve. But the core of our little homeschool this year will be learning about world history together!
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Pet Caterpillar
Every spring, our homeschool program arranges for the kids to purchase butterfly larva kits to grow some butterflies at home. And each year, my school budget money has run out, so we don't get to participate. (The kids don't really know that others are getting them, so it's not the end of the world.)
Anyways, this year, the kids didn't even need a kit. For some reason, there were caterpillars galore around our neighbourhood! Seriously, at one point Theo and Eva had collected 10 caterpillars. They built a nice little habitat for them in a bankers box and they were always making sure that there were no escapees through the handles. They fed them leaves, and watch the leaves get eaten. We even watched them build their cocoons! It was a wonderful learning opportunity that I literally had nothing to do with. Here are some photos of their pet caterpillars.
Anyways, this year, the kids didn't even need a kit. For some reason, there were caterpillars galore around our neighbourhood! Seriously, at one point Theo and Eva had collected 10 caterpillars. They built a nice little habitat for them in a bankers box and they were always making sure that there were no escapees through the handles. They fed them leaves, and watch the leaves get eaten. We even watched them build their cocoons! It was a wonderful learning opportunity that I literally had nothing to do with. Here are some photos of their pet caterpillars.
Monday, June 18, 2012
A Saturday Stroll Right into a Book!
On Saturday, we invited the Dad's (and their spouses) in our family to come and watch our kids play soccer in the POURING rain, and then back to our place to dry out and eat soup and buns.
After dinner, when it had finally stopped raining, we loaded the kids and bikes and drove to the foot of 1 Road, and walked/biked east. I had never walked here before and was taken on a new adventure. There were some beautiful apartment complexes, then a pond with a bridge, and then some old heritage canning buildings. My favourite part though, was the wooden walkway along the river bank where we spotted:
a mommy Mute Swan sitting on her eggs. Not only was it beautiful to see the swan, but it was serendipitous for Theo and I, as we have just started reading the Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White. We had just read the chapter about how the female swan carefully built her nest- so to be able to see one in real life, so large, and so beautiful, and practically in our own back yard was very exciting. This image is exactly what I had envisioned while reading E.B. White's written words. Amazing!
We met a couple walking by, with a fancy camera in hand, they also stopped to photograph the water bird. They clearly knew that she was here. They had been keeping track of her. They told us that there were four eggs (even showed us a picture of them on his camera) in her nest and that she had now been sitting on them for a little over 4 weeks. The fear with the locals, is that it is too late. That they won't hatch. We will have to visit again soon just in case.
A little further down the path, we came across a chicken coop. It had one rooster and a few hens. We enjoyed calling to them, and copying their walk, complete with head pecking! The last stop on our little after dinner journey was the ship.
After dinner, when it had finally stopped raining, we loaded the kids and bikes and drove to the foot of 1 Road, and walked/biked east. I had never walked here before and was taken on a new adventure. There were some beautiful apartment complexes, then a pond with a bridge, and then some old heritage canning buildings. My favourite part though, was the wooden walkway along the river bank where we spotted:
We met a couple walking by, with a fancy camera in hand, they also stopped to photograph the water bird. They clearly knew that she was here. They had been keeping track of her. They told us that there were four eggs (even showed us a picture of them on his camera) in her nest and that she had now been sitting on them for a little over 4 weeks. The fear with the locals, is that it is too late. That they won't hatch. We will have to visit again soon just in case.
A little further down the path, we came across a chicken coop. It had one rooster and a few hens. We enjoyed calling to them, and copying their walk, complete with head pecking! The last stop on our little after dinner journey was the ship.
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