Life Changes

I’m trying to change my life a bit at the moment. I think my life has somewhat become full of homeschooling and church debate. Gee, I sound interesting, eh? I’ve cleared out quite a few of my Christian blog subscriptions on my Google Reader, as I feel they were same old, same old; a bit like how I’ve been!

Many of you know that I knit, well, I’m about to learn how to crochet too! I have my birthday in a few weeks so I’ve got a teach yourself to crochet book coming! I’ve also got a photography book on the way. Here’s my confession, I own a Canon 350D EOS camera and I have no idea how to use it! I always have it on the manual setting! I love taking photos and want to be able to learn how to use the camera properly with the right exposure. I particularly like nature and landscape photography. Once I get more confident with using the camera on manual I’ll start posting some photos on here.

Another thing I want to be is to get more creative with the children. I’d like to try wet-on-wet painting with them and try to weave more arts throughout our day; be it marveling at the smell and touch of the apple blossom on a nature walk, to learning a new song or modeling with clay.

Some  blogs which I’ve enjoyed reading lately are:

The Pioneer Woman (if you enjoy cooking you are going to love this blog!)

Handmade Homeschool

Simple Mom

Soule Mama

Getting more relaxed

I don’t know if it’s the time of the year, or just the place we’ve arrived to on our homeschooling journey, but I’m looking to make our homeschooling more relaxed. I want to take the rigidness out of it. I think I keep pressurizing myself for the kids to have achieved x,y and z by a set time and this just ends up stressing all of us out. I’ve used the Charlotte Mason method alongside Sonlight for the past few years now. Well, I’m ready to throw the IG in the trash! I love the Sonlight cores but we need to do them our way. Over the past year I’ve dumped a few books that haven’t worked for us and replaced them with living books we appreciate. Going into this next school year we will be studying Canadian history, so I’m very much on my own, and I’m looking forward to the challenge of getting what we need together.  In these coming few months I’m going to start letting go of the reigns a bit more and we’ll see where this leads to ……

Cubs

Ben started Cubs last fall and I wasn’t really sure if he’d enjoy it. I must confess I lasted a few months in both Brownies and Guides when I was a child! Cubs has turned out to be a lot of fun though. I’ve been impressed with the activities his pack have done and he is also about to embark upon his second camp.

Ben has learned so much about the world around him through the different badges he has done. So far he has completed his cyclist, artist, disability, family helper, athlete, ice-skating, cooking, collectors, space exploration, recycling and naturalist badges. Currently, he is working on his international trade, Canadian heritage and Aboriginal culture badges.

It’s a lovely compliment to homeschooling!

Trying Again!

I really haven’t been good at keeping my blog since we’ve moved! I guess everything has still been a bit up in the air!

We are now living in the Kennebecasis Valley in New Brunswick. It’s a really beautiful place to live. There’s lots of opportunity for nature study etc. We have deer that visit our yard on what seems like a daily basis. We’ve marvelled at hummingbirds and enjoyed the chatter of chipmunks. All of these things are new to us. We’ve also had our trash raided by a racoon (who kindly left his prints as evidence!)

We’ve made some really good friends and have enjoyed trying new things from food to sports. Our kids fly around the ice rink whilst we still hobble along! This winter we are still looking forward to walking on the frozen river and trying out snow shoeing.

School wise we are studying American History, Canadian geography, space is our science course for the year and we are doing the obvious language arts, math etc. I’m learning to be more relaxed in my approach and I’m trying to follow some of their interest. For example Ben is really into space, hence the science curriculum. Grace is interested in photography so we’ve given her an old digital camera of ours and are encouraging her to take shots etc.

I’ve done a little knitting and have started to teach Grace how to. I’ve finally picked up some books to read again too. Mainly I’ve just been trying to make our home a home and get to know the area we live in. I feel like life has been on a bit of a hiatus, but it’s getting back on track

We’re back online!

Following our move to Canada we are now settled and back online! It’s been a busy few months but things should get back to normal in the next few weeks. The children have been on summer vacation and will be resuming “school” in two weeks (enough time for me to get my head around it a bit more!).

We’ve seen so much nature that is new to us here. I think we will have fun expploring in the coming weeks and months ahead. Just a few things to highlight. We’ve never seen hummingbirds before but now we have the Ruby Throated visiting our back yard! We have deers that come into our back yard and often you can drive down the street and see them wondering about! We’ve seen sand dollars! We’ve seen racoons and also fireflies! We’ve also seen many trees and flowers whose names I am not yet familiar with!

Creativity

I love making things and watching the creativity come together. Sometimes from the beginning you know how it’s going to end up, but generally it’s only when you get close to the end that you really get to see what you have made within all it’s glory. There’s comes a satisfaction from making things yourself, be it cooking a meal or baking, knitting, art, music, decorating, whatever. I get the same satisfaction when I grow things in the garden too. We had a great time growing vegetables in our garden last year. We haven’t planted any this year due to our in limbo circumstances.

Its nice to know where that creation comes from. A little bit of His has been imparted in me.

Of course, sometime you have to scrap what you are doing and start again!

I am alive!

….. really, I am! We’ve been really busy this past month or so getting all of our paperwork in to CIC. They received it yesterday so we are now praying that a way will be made.  On top of all of this my husband’s 98 year old Grandma died almost four weeks ago. She will be missed so much. At 98 she still had all of her faculties and was a great encouragement to us all.

When it looked like things were calming down a bit, my computer decided to die on me! I’ve had to grab Jonathan’s laptop for the odd ten minutes when he’s not been using it. Finally, two weeks later, the new one has arrived

I have so much to post about and will endeavor to over the next few days, along with the list of other things I need to do!

Outdoor Hour Challenge – Birds: Goldfinches

European Goldfinch

American Goldfinch

This weeks outdoor hour challenge has worked out nicely for us to be able to compare the American goldfinch with the European goldfinch.

First off we learned about the American Goldfinch. It is amazing at how much like a canary the goldfinch looks. The yellow spring/summer coat of the male is stunning and I’d personally love to see one in the wild. We read through the Handbook of Nature Study (pgs 50-53) and then followed this up with Backyard Birds. We visited All About Birds and learned some more about the American goldfinch and listened to their call and watched a video. The children then completed a coloring page from Cornell.

Next we learned about the European Goldfinch. We studied this at the RSPB website and also at Wikipedia. We listened to an audio of the European goldfinches call and watched a video. The children then completed a coloring sheet which I had drawn for them as I could not find any European Goldfinch coloring pages!

My neighbor tells me that goldfinches visit her garden. She, like us, has feeders in her garden. I have NEVER seen a goldfinch in our garden though. This surprises me as our gardens are quite close together and the birds generally flit from one to the other during the day. I’ve looked and looked for them to no avail! European goldfinches are attracted to gardens with niger seeds – I’ve even tried them with no success!

American and European goldfinches are from the same family. We were surprised at how similar their calls sounded. Both goldfinches have females which are more of an olive green color and the males are much brighter. The male European goldfinch has a red face and a brown, black and yellow body. Both also like seeds found in thistles. Both types of goldfinch lay six eggs in a brood. The European eggs are a creamy color with brownish spots whereas the American eggs are a blueish white.

European Goldfinch

American Goldfinch

Outdoor Hour Challenge – Birds: Blue Jay and Blue Tit

Blue Jay

Blue Tit

We spent some time studying the blue jay and also the European blue tit as part of the outdoor hour challenge. These birds are not related at all but the Blue Tit is the only blue bird that can be seen regularly withing the UK! Last year we spent some time in New Brunswick and stayed at a lovely house that was surrounded by it’s own private woodland. One day whilst looking out of the window I saw a blue jay and took a few photos of it. Due to my distance from him they are not great shots but I’ve pasted one below anyway.

We briefly read up in the Handbook of Nature Study about the bluebird (pgs 62-65). Following this we read about Blue Jays in Backyard Birds. Next we looked up blue jays on All About Birds and listened to their “jay, jay” call and watched a few videos about them. Finally the children completed the blue jay sheet from Cornell’s bird coloring book.

Next we learned about blue tit’s. We looked them up on the RSPB website, learned about them and listened to their call and watched an audio video. The children then completed a coloring page. Blue Tit’s are daily visitors to our garden, they are one of the childrens favorite birds. We often put nuts out for them as this is a food they enjoy. They have a beautiful call and kind of dart around when they are flying from tree to tree. They are members of the paridae family.

Following this we looked at a web page which showed bird beak adaptations. The children had fun guessing why some birds might have small beaks, long pointed ones or even spoon/shovel shaped ones.

Flowers

I’m way behind with posting on my blog! We took a two week spring break and I’m now playing catch up! Here are a few flowers which we have studied lately, unfortunately these posts as in depth as I’d like, but I thought I’d share some of what we’ve been up to.

The Crocus

We read about crocuses in the  Handbook of Nature Study (pages 547-549). We then completed the observations. Crocuses to us, where we live, are literally the first signs of winter ending. They start to follow within a week or two of Snowdrops and the barrenness of winter becomes colored with their beautiful purple, orange and white flowers. Our snowdrops flowered very late this year (end of March) and the crocuses also did the same. The children drew crocuses in their journals.

by dd aged 7

The Bluebell

I hadn’t planned on studying bluebells as there are none near where we lived. I stumbled across some when visiting my mother a few weeks ago, so we picked a few and brought them home with us.

The bluebell is a beautiful plant whose flowers look quite similar to the hyacinth. Bluebells actually have stems of 10-20 cms which bend over at the top. The bluebell has lavender blue flowers which are slightly fragrant. In the UK the common bluebell is a protected species under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981. During April and May some woodland area within the UK can become a carpet of blue flowers which makes them commonly known as “bluebell woods”. Bluebells can be found across much of western Europe.

The White Daisy

My children have loved learning about daisies. Our lawn is quite often covered with them during the summer (especially when my husband doesn’t mow it for a few weeks!). They will quite often pull the daisies up and make daisy chains or pick off the petals row by row.

For this study we used the Handbook of Nature Study pgs 522-523 and used the observation lesson in lesson 131. The children spent some time pulling the flower apart and looking at the shape of it’s thin petals and the unique way it’s yellow disc is made up. They then drew a daisy in their journals.

Hopefully I’ll catch up with our bird studies tomorrow, I must go to bed now as it’s quite late here!