Extra second posting for October

Mary looking at our framed Sept 11th flag.

Mary's picture is New York scape.

Aidan

The Great Grey bridge and the Little Red Lighthouse.

The children jumped right into the New York subject..felling very knowledgable about different facts that they have heard over the years. Avidly excited to draw these building scapes from their imaginations.

Aidan's art

Mary

After looking up camels in our Kingfisher Nature Encyclopedia the children drew their ideas from reading Miss Rumphius

The innards of Mary's first official Reading 102 Test

Aidan's Quiz 1 for his Light Unit Reading 202.

Example of Aidan's spell test to go with his Language Arts 201 Light Unit Test.

Visiting one of our HS friends homes. The kids jumped to help. These playdates are precious and have developed over years of interaction.

Our view when we drive through the countryside. Sheep .. All we like Sheep.

October Learning

Aidan attracted a bizarre amount of attention at the mall. I am pretty sure mosthave seen team sport outfits before. But people seem to really like Football player outfits. We had teenage girls to bikers chatting and patting Aidan on the back .Oh dear! He is a bit embarrassed here.

We wne to visit a single Mum and her son from a difficult situation whom we have always kept in contact with . The children dressed up ..Mary as a princess and Aidan as a Football Player himself:) Mummy is from England and loathes the scary Halloween tradition here .. but as the children are in t he thick of all of the fun aspects of the week .. I thought it would be nice for them to dress up if they wished.

Aidan in his element being a leaf monster and letting the younger kids that were around pile leaves on him. He is most amiable. The helmet was from scootering.

On a trip to the local Park we played under this awesome tree. The children always making friends wherever they go. This was a sweet shy European girl.

WHile in AB Mar left her beloved new stuffy "biscuit" the story dog with them. Auntie gathered up some of the children's toys as they often do and sent them to Russia for needy families. Mary got the news with Lilly (her girl cousins) who had sent her own beloved stuffy in its place. A good learning moment. Mary cried but was happy to know that Biscuit is making a Russian child very happy and got to travel all that way.

Mary at work on her Language Arts.

Kids fetched a small jar from somewhere in the kitchen. We have put aside the press and cloth bag filled with our precious ground seeds and wait for the next session.

Putting our seeds into a coffee grinder. Assembling the press. This experiment is being taken in steps over months . Lots of anticipation as to which steps will be done next.Pulling out the sunflower press from the power house kit. The next stage in the process.

Carving some pumpkins ..but most of all time with Dad who ahs been very busy with work commitments and is very tired.

AIG World Of Plants Lesson 2 "WHat is a Kingdom?"

Here is our lovely classical book on Emily Carr's days of teaching art as a young artist. The children loved it. I love to inspire a love for art in them! Underneath is our Science book AIG The World of Plants. On the next couple of pictures you can see the chilren had to read cards with rather long science words on them and classify them. I was Impressed.

As we are just starting into more serious times tables 4's and 5's Aidan started to not be able to mentally know the facts from adding multiples of numbers together. As we need to order some multiplication cards and math helps for this. But I figured that what would really be cool would be for Aidan to be able to just fill in the 4 x's and 5 's times tables for himself on the board. We are now intot the 5's this week. He could get up from doing an equation and after figuring out the answer could fill in the times table on the board. He loves that. Him writing it out and remembering it that way will be in his head indelibly. Did I mention Aidan loves Math! Today he helped Mar with her addition math. 100's He did it mentally and then dropped the answer... Tut Tut you guys. Mary has to do it herself...cute moment. They thought it was grand.

Math in action.What happens when we pull out the multi link cubes for math. We need some more of these actually. These are a few years old now and quite a few less than the 10 sets of 10 that we bought.

Nanny drove out to see the kids and pick out pumpkins.

The kids captured me in a candid way:)

Mary's gymnastics class did up a class picture for them all.

I gethered up books Aidan had been reading for pleasure and finished and also Mary put in a fw to show what she had finished. SHe is currently a bit into CHarlottes web chapter book and planning on reading some historical mystery books . The children have many Great Illustrated CLassic books and a continous feed of llibrary books. Aidan is very interested in Science and Animal world facts and Mary in stories and chapter books.

We went outside in to the crisp Fall sunlight and tried getting some shots.

Mary decided to try experimenting with our grapes . She was seeking to create a grape perfume by using some oil (as she had made real parfume with oil at a VBS in WA a few months before) Lots of fun . Mary made some connections and my real perfume seemed to be heavily used in the concoction. The more she added the better the parfume got:)

We are doing an experiment with the garden. Trying to beat Old Man WInter and see how long we can keep that last Squash plant going. It is still alive and it is the beginning of Novemeber and very chilly at night. We have learned that Seasons are important and that plants are sensitive to their environment.

Kellen got in on it as well.

Mary gathered some also, but found the gourds wet and clammy with surprise slugs and other garden treasures.

Well in the last few weeks we a have been busy WInterizing the garden and gathering the last of the SUmmers bounty. We could label these first pics .."The gathering of the Gourds"

Fall is here and learning in full swing.

Mary is 7

Can't forget. Aunty took us out to the dugout out back of their property in AB. SHe let us pick some cat tails. She told the chidlren how the Native Americans used to use the fluff as batting to stem bleeding and wounds.Curious!

Kellen getting involved

ALl those secrets of the WOrld : American flags. WW2

Grande Cache..not even near halfway home:)Windy!!!

big, small ....in the middle of nowhere.. where's the bear? Quick run back to the car.

Mum and Kellen

and AB trees

glaciers of Blue River

Aidan trying to capture the snaking rivers as we sped along.

Beautiful harvested AB prairies

coal right on the HWY .. so cool!

Coal mine Hwy. Coal in our hands:)Brr COLD! Winter had already reached Peace River AB

AB seed saving. Precious wheat and pepper varieties.

helping Auntie make COwboy cookies

AVatar the horse tryin g to steal fresh beets.

AUnty is the GARDENER of the family!!!

Captain Jack the dog.

Still in High Level AB . A unique oppor. to see cousins doing their own individual lessons in different quiet spots in the house Such a great way to learn in harmony.

looking at Uncles river fossils in rock. As creationists we revel in seeing seashells in rock from river rock beds in the NW territories.

DOing Math in AB:)

Mary delicously happy getting to visit with her closest cousins. They HOmeschool with Wisdom in AB and share many of our daily routines.

We think we captured the NOrthern Lights. They were a creamy funnel shaped dancing lights outside our car all around us. :)

watching auntie milk the goat.

baby rabbits just born in High Level on the homestead

Jasper!!See the minerals in the mountain glow!

Mary's art

Aidan's art from art lesson in Mr.Gumpy's motor car.

Once the vounteers knew that the kids were HS'rs they got right into it. Instructing the kids on what to do , where to go, how to use the equipment and asked them to help alot ..treating them like they were a part of it. . It was wonderful.

www.mfan.ca

Mary at Twisters Gym. She loves it. It is something just for her . She sees some of her local community pals from Mission there as well. The more the merrier! This was a pleasant surprise.

Power house TOC. We are doing Lesson 6. It takes waiting, growing and many other delayed moments in the process. We grew the sunflowers harvested some heads and now are drying out the seeds in order to press them. See Report for details.

Aidan and Mary's AIG Lesson 1 worksheets. Scavenger hunt information.

Example of Lesson color coded. We read previous pages of a story and information and then read the red ,blue and yellow then doing the lesson worksheet which in this case was a Scavenger hunt. Living or non-living.

We rolled over our FIAR book "Beatric Potter" The tale of Peter Rabbit"into the next week. As you can see here. We are reading our own choices of the tale from our Beatrix Ptter books in the house and also then we opened our AIG plants book Lesson one on Living and nonliving things and fitted it nicely along with the subjects explored in the FIAR Volume. Nature, gardening and plants mentioned and depicted in the books. We did living and non-living scavenger hunt and wrote our finding on the Lesson 1 forms provided in the AIG Plants curriculum.

Walk, scooter and skate to the park is fun. A dry not to hot day. Kellen wanted in on the helmets.

The rest of our Curriculum came and the kids were excited to open it up and check out the books.