Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Wordless Wednesday - New Baby Girl

Almost wordless. Merle Jude was born December 14, 2010, weighed 8 lbs 4 oz.



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Friday, December 10, 2010

Weekly Report and Still Pregnant

Another week down and still another week pregnant. Still no sure signs of labor, or a date yet for the c-section. To top it all off, it has been super cold this week and I don't have a winter coat I can do up of the ginormous belly. Blah. School this week went well although Roo was fighting a cold, it didn't really slow us down at all. If anything she was quite attentive and well behaved. She did help me to get the crib bedding cleaned and put in the bed though. She even tucked in some of her own toys for the baby.

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There are some threads currently on the WTM forums regarding eating habits of kids and families. I am currently sitting here typing with a bowl of chips on one side of me and a bowl of blueberries and raspberries on the other, happily alternating between the two. How bad it that;)

It's funny how kids pick things up and you have no idea where. Roo has an invisible friend called Nina Petrina and she is the one that is usually to blame when she does something naughty. The other day Roo told me that Nina Petrina was Jewish (we are not) and that she was celebrating Hanukkah right now. When she went to bed that night, she proceeded to sing the Dreidle song for 45 minutes before she fell asleep. I don't have a clue where she learned the words to the Dreidle song, but what I heard sounded pretty accurate. She also insisted on schooling in her footy pajamas (which she never wants to take off because we finally found her a pair in her size) and her Halloween costume this week.

And on to what we accomplished this week:

Memory work - We began a new poem from FLL and are still working on getting the provinces memorized and placed on a map.

Phonics - Three syllable words and the suffixes er and est

Grammar (First Language Lessons) - Common/Proper nouns and a new poem to memorize

Writing (Writing with Ease) - Finished week 12 focused on songs/nursery rhymes

Latin (Song School Latin) - Review of last week and began the addition of please, thank you and excuse me.

Math (Singapore) - Working slowly through the subtraction chapter keeping our focus on recognizing of facts and number bonds. I added some new subtraction facts to our flash card review.

French - A lot of review and objects in/from a house. She then noticed how similar window and door were in both French and Latin.

Science (Elemental) - We still studied birds this week, chickens, ducks and penguins and then turkeys for fun because she likes the sounds they make.



Anansi the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti (An Owlet Book)

History (Story of the World) - We entered Ancient Africa and read some books on the African folk tale of Anansi the Spider. She hates spiders, but for some reason really enjoyed this character. She then made a "African" hand print mobile and a paper plate, rice shaker, tambourine thing.


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Art - She made a oil pastel of a landscape drawing. It was supposed to be some place she can see or has been and it started off as a landscape and ended up being some weird abstracty village.

Everytime I put together or build an apparatus for the baby, Roo insists on testing it out with her baby doll that looks like a real baby. My husband calls it the creepy baby because every time you walk by it you do a double take because it looks so real.


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The creepy baby doll

Hopefully you won't hear from me next week due to having a baby. But at this rate you probably will.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Monchhichi and Me - Weekly Report

Monchhichi will be discussed down further. This is probably my second last week before we break for baby day. My due date is the 21st, but because I didn't attempt get the doctor to turn the baby and honestly I don't want to try for a regular breech birth, I am having a c-section. The date isn't set yet as they are trying to get a time in the o/r to do it so chances are I will go into labor first which sucks. Have I mentioned that after my ultrasound last week to see the baby's position we found out it was a girl? It inspired me to get down to business and buy some new baby clothes. I gave a lot of my old stuff to my new niece and some of the stuff I kept is worn and old so I thought she deserved some new things. It's way too fun shopping for kids clothes. This is the end result.

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I also promised topost a picture of her fully done up Build-a-Bear birthday present from last week. This is the horrifying picture of the wolf. Poor wolf.
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This week we accomplished a fair amount. Although after last weeks break it was hard to get her motivated at first.

Memory Work - I added the Canadian provinces and territories to our daily work.

Phonics - We have moved into 3 syllable words and are getting closer to the end of the book. I think we probably should slow down though until these are in right solid.

First Language Lesson (FLL) - We are still working on nouns, proper and common but I am seeing an understanding of the difference between the two. I like the slow pace of this book, I find it really solidifies and understanding without overwhelming the student.

Writing With Ease (WWE) - We finished week 11 (I think, I am too lazy to go verify).

Song School Latin (SSL) - This week we learned the commands listen, quiet, open your book and raise your hand in both singular and plural.

Math (Singapore) - We moved onto subtraction finally. We are still doing our daily drills and I added the first group of basic subtraction to the list. I have also purchased the games Sum Swamp and Zeus on the Loose for Christmas to have a fun way to work on math facts (without realizing she is working on math facts).

History (SOTW) - We have now entered Ancient China and finally got to read The Story of Ping.
The Story About Ping


Science (Elemental Science) - We began studying birds this week and were going to do the bird feeder activity but we live in an apartment and don't have a spot to hang one. We did go down and feed the ducks though:)

French - We constantly review the previous weeks lessons and we added new vocabulary this week, things around the house.

Do you remember Monchhichi? We were shopping this week and Roo was perusing the toys and came running over telling me to look at the cute monkey. When I looked it took me back many, many years. Obviously that is why they remake toys, because they know we will buy it because it reminds of of our youth. So here is our new Monchhichi.
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We had our first big snowfall of the season this week. It was the big, heavy, really wet flakes that get you soaked within minutes. We walked down to the corner store and by the time we were home all of our clothes had to be placed in front of the heater to dry. But it was fun.
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We finally built the baby crib this week! Yay! Next on my agenda is to pack those darn hospital bags that are beside me right now staring at me.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Six Years Ago Today.............

Six years ago today I realized I could love beyond any thought or reason. It feels like yesterday you were a baby. Happy Birthday my Heart.



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Friday, November 19, 2010

Birthdays, and Childbirth and Christmas Oh My!

What did we accomplish this week? That is is the million dollar question. Quick answer is not as much as I wanted to, but enough to get by. School wasn't included in that question. We did school, it was the other 9,000 things I wanted to get done. Then I blinked and the moment of motivation quickly disappeared as quick as it arrived. Roo's 6th birthday is next week and we promised her she could go to Build-a-Bear and pick out any doll and any outfit/accessory she wants. I am trying to talk her into this doll with this outfit or this one, but I don't think I have convinced her entirely. Today is my husbands birthday, in a few weeks the baby will be born and then we have Christmas. November and December are going to be expensive months for us for the rest of our lives, yikes.

Drumroll please, for what we did in school this week:

Memory Work - We worked on the poem from FLL, and Egyptian Pharaohs and Dynasties and for some reason she doesn't like to say Queen Hapshetsut.

Phonics - We learned about the apostrophe and plural words adding es and ies.

First Language Lessons (FLL) - We learned about the nouns of our address and postal code. She already knew the address, but postal code was a new concept for her.

Writing With Ease (WWE) - This week was split into two different stories. Davy Crockett and Sacagewea. The improvement of  her handwriting is getting quite noticeable but you have to remind her to slow down and take her time doing it otherwise is looks a mess and her letters float.

Latin (SSL) - We still focused on the sit, stand, write and repeat commands and today and yesterday were complete review days from the start of the book to where we are currently.

Math - Flash cards and drill sheets, flash cards and drill sheets.

French - Days, months and weather terms. We review these everyday and she can now answer basic questions about "What day is it?" or "What is the weather today?". I also picked up the French/English library book we had on hold. It is form the language learning storybook series and she loves these. Each page has the English part at the top with the french translation at the bottom. There is a pronunciation guide at the back and after a few weeks she generally has the whole thing memorized.



Bonne Nuit a Tous: Goodnight Everyone (I Can Read FrenchLanguage Learning Story Books) Hurry Up, Molly/Depeche-Toi, Molly (I Can Read French)


History - In history we studied The First Cities of India and The Mystery of the Mohenjo-Daro.





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She calls this look her turtle neck smile. The turtle neck while doing map work.

Science - Barn/farm animals was our focus this week. We studied the pig, cow/bull and the goat.





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Our farm diagram.

Art - For art we skipped the actual art lesson planned and she ventured out on her own and made a pirate ship for her dad for his birthday.





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Notice how Abu is sitting in the "crows nest" and Cinderella is minding the cannon.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Can Zombies Homeschool?

This baby is kicking my butt this week. It's like it has superhuman powers that are draining my energy into itself. I swear those women that talk about how much they love being pregnant and how easy it is must be lying. I am mostly living in automatic robot mode, doing things mechanically until I get my energy and my brain back. I bet if you asked me my name right now, it would take at least 7 seconds of me staring at you blankly to finally be able to answer. We also had 10 billion doctor appointments this week as well for various things, follow ups etc. The one we had today was at a medical center a little over a mile away from home so we decided because it was actually a beautiful day today to walk home. My motive behind this was that Roo may potentially be quite tired after walking home and combined with getting up super early this morning and she may want to nap....I may have been able to finally have a nap (I don't think I have napped once during this pregnancy). So she decided to skip.the.whole.way.home and then proceeded to feed off this energy buzz for the rest of the day. So we achieved the opposite of my desired outcome and now I am hoping for a nice and easy transition into bed for her tonight. One can only hope. We did manage to school 5 days this week, even after all the appointments messing up our routine and attending the Remembrance day parade (pregnancy hormones and Remembrance Day parades don't mix well) It was a good thing I was wearing sunglasses.

What we achieved this week:

Memory Work - We worked on a new poem from FLL, and added in Egyptian Pharaohs. I had to search them all to verify the pronunciation though. I can't be giving incorrect information no matter how tired I am;)

Phonics - We have reached the 200's in the lessons of The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. We started learning contractions and apostrophes she grasped the concept very quick. I thought it was going to be more of a struggle than that.

First Language Lessons (FLL) - We are still learning about nouns and she began to memorize a new poem from there. I added it to our daily memory work.

Writing With Ease (WWE) - We started week (I think) the Charlottes Web Focused week. I am very happy with how her handwriting it becoming so much neater. I was even watching her deliberately going slow to ensure that her writing was as neat as she could do it.
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Latin (Song School Latin) - We worked through the review chapter and then began a new chapter that focused on the commands sit, stand, write and repeat.



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Math - The addition math facts up to 10 are coming along and we worked on a few drills and math work books that I had around. I think that maybe next week we will begin Singapore again at a slower pace and still keep up the facts and drills.



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French - I introduced the months and now we are constant rotation of the days of the week, weather and months with one day a week being a full on review. She likes to lay out all of the flash cards and turn them into a game. This weeks game involved Polly Pockets and dice.


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Notice the Polly Pockets? They made an appearance in the above photo as well.

History (SOTW) - We studied Gilgamesh. She is loving it, and I checked out the Ludmila Zeman versions of the Gilgamesh trilogy. On her Etch A Sketch she was drawing fast snapshot pictures of the story as I read it aloud to her. She loves the character Enkidu.


Gilgamesh the King (Gilgamesh Trilogy, The)The Revenge of Ishtar (Gilgamesh Trilogy, The)The Last Quest of Gilgamesh (Gilgamesh Trilogy, The)


Science (Elemental Science) - We focused on water animals this week, walrus, dolphins and whales. We also did a quick experiment on how the plastic rings from drink packages get stuck on animals and the results.


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This is from our science. The top photo is our habitat posters (we didn't do a diorama). The second photo is our food chart. 

Music - We worked on week 2 of Arcangelo Corelli and listened to several pieces while completing the are project.

On a personal level we finally installed her princess canopy thing over her bed. It only took a 2 months of daily reminders to accomplish this goal. Next thing, assemble the crib.


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This is her "finally you finished it" face.





Friday, November 5, 2010

Weekly Report

How is it that when I cook, I always seem to have a reasonable amount of dishes that need to be cleaned. But when my husband cooks (even just for himself) the sink is completely full. How does one accomplish that? It's annoying and probably intensified due to pregnancy hormones, but annoying never the less. I am sitting here, drinking chocolate milk (to remedy severe heartburn) and listening to my daughter singing and making horse noises in bed not even close to sleeping. She is so going to be Mrs. Crankypants in the morning when I wake her for dance class. We had a successful week this week, even the day after Halloween which shocked me. It was a slow start on Monday and she stayed in her pajamas all day, but we got all our work done even though she wanted to do her work under the dining room table where she set up a house. It actually worked out quite well and she seemed to get through things much faster. Speaking of Halloween she chose to be a witch this year. The concept was based around the broom. She really wanted to carry the broom and wanted to know what her options were for costumes to go with it. Witch was the quick and easy one.


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Doing work under the dining room table in her pj's.

I am just going to list below what we accomplished since it is late and I want to watch something I recorded on tv before I finish my book and attempt to sleep.

Memory Work -  Invertebrates and Oceans are memorized and we are still working on Periods of Egyptian History.

Phonics - In the OPTGR we have officially entered into the word contractions stage. Today I just gave an overview of that as well as  reviewed two syllable words.

Writing with Ease and First Language Lessons - We finished Week 9 in WWE in which I have noticed a huge jump in the neatness of her printing. In FLL we continued with different nouns, this week we focused on places and things.

Latin (Song School Latin)- The focus was on the latin words for house, door, wall and window as well as what first declensions are.

Math - Still fact review. We have changed it up a bit and played fact games using dice and "fishing" type games with magnets and fishing for facts. I can still see her counting the answer out in her head, but she is getting quicker. I also pulled out some unused fact worksheets from our Saxon 1 workbook to use (we switched from Saxon to Singapore this year). I refuse to move onto subtraction until we have got the addition down.

French - Counting, days of the week and weather terms were our focus. Each day we start with what day is it and what is it like outside.

Science - Our focus was on studying rabbits, armadillos and beavers. I think her favorite part is deciding what habitat each one lives in and gluing it to the correct poster as well as the eating chart. We also did an experiment from her science experiment box. It was to grow they coloured crystals which turned out well. they actually look like fancy drinks with lots of ice in the picture.


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History - We learned about Hammurabi and his his code. She was a little shocked that some of the laws could end in maiming or a death sentence and I had to explain how is was back then.

Composer Study - We introduced Arcangelo Corelli, mapped where he was from, read his biography and listened to a few pieces from him.

Art - Has been postponed until this weekend because honestly we forgot and there isn't much planned this weekend anyway.


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A nice fall day outing to collect leaves and feed the ducks.

The week was good and went by fast. I am still trying to get the house ready for the new baby which seems to be a extremely slow work in progress. Hopefully I will accomplish more this weekend.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Just Finish Something Already - Blog Hop

Not Inadequate Blog Hop


I would say better late than never, but since this is a blog hop about completing things I think I should feel slightly ashamed.
Small accomplishments count don't they? In that case my list is compiled of several small things that I actually didn't count as things finished until I sat and thought about it.

1. I finally tried out a ham, cheese and zucchini savory muffin recipe that I have been wanting to. I actually went out of the way to pick up the ingredients this weekend and cooked them Sunday morning.
2. I went through a pile of things that I no longer want and made a donate pile (just need to get hubby to drop it off) and pulled out a bunch of things I have started to list on Ebay to sell.
3. Put in several inter-library requests for books that I have been wanting to read.
4. I have slowly been starting to put myself to bed a little earlier. I wake up crabby regardless but I am hoping the slow increase will actually start to help me catch up on lost sleep. I don't sleep well. It seems that my deepest sleep happens to fall just before I get out of bed, so I wake up feeling completely unrested. I am much more of a night person, I just wish the rest of the world ran on the same schedule as me. Maybe someday they will;)

That's all I have this week. I promise to try harder next time. Good thing I didn't attempt to do NaNoWriMo this month. But yet I know better than that since I am missing the creative gene, it would take me forever to even write a Haiku.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

I've Been Tagged and So Have You

I'm not an overly exciting person. I enjoy quiet and solitude to the point of being called a hermit and I am introverted. Something to this day my husband still doesn't understand. I was doing my daily Blog stalking and saw that Michelle from whimsyway has tagged me for a question game. The rules are for me to answer the 5 questions she has come up with and come up with my own 5 questions and tag 5 other bloggers to answer. My answers may be boring as I stated above about my lack of being exciting. The questions are as follows:


1) What is your favourite book of all time? That's a tough one. I read....alot, pretty much any spare time I have I am reading. I love a lot of different books more many different reasons, each one meaning something to me in a different way. I love Medieval Mystery novels, but I also like SciFi (sometimes one needs a vampire/fairy/werewolf fix). Depending on my mood and what day it is my favorite will change. I will say that The Clan of the Cave Bear novel is the one book that I have re-read the most. Ayla is my favorite heroine....so far.

2)
What is your idea of the perfect day? Am I allowed to have this day occur in a different location? If so, then the perfect day would entail travelling. Staying in a fantastic hotel where we (family) can wake up and have real authentic eggs benedict (my fave). The day would be spent going to a museum, sight seeing, people watching and getting lost in the history of a city. Ending with a quiet dinner in the hotel room wearing pajamas and winding down with a book.

3)
If you weren’t homeschooling, what sort of career would you have? Realistically I would still be the manager of a store dealing with not so pleasant people daily (with a forced, but genuine looking smile). But if I am allowed to rewind time to finish my Museum Studies degree, I would be working in a museum somewhere living and breathing history.

4)
If you had the chance, what one famous person would you meet and why?As of right now, I would like to meet Queen Elizabeth 1. I recently read a biography on her and found her a fascinating character. There are many people from history I would love to spend and afternoon with. Even if it is just to see if the stories about them are true. I don't really have any desire to meet modern (alive) famous people though.

5)
If you could possess one talent (singing, painting, writing, etc) and be truly proficient in it, what would it be? I am not very creative, I am more literal if that makes any sense. So it would be a big change for me to have an interest to have a talent in any of the creative fields. BuI think I would like to be a writer if I could. I could see myself getting lost in researching and creating stories. I know how much a good book means to me, I would love to be able to give that gift to others.

Now for my five questions, which honestly I will probably have to use Google to come up with some ideas.

1) What type of music to you enjoy the most? Please provide examples.
2) What is the thing you cook that gets the most compliments? Recipe please.
3) What subject do you find the most difficult to teach or learn and why?
4) What city/country would you most like to live and why?
5) If you could have unlimited funds to feed one of your addictions what would it be? (I'm talking, shoes, books etc.)

I'm going to be a party pooper and not tag anyone in particular........but it would be so much fun if any of you ladies that read this choose to participate. No pressure, but you know who you are.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Monday, October 25, 2010

Just Finish Something Already! Blog Hop

Not Inadequate Blog Hop


I will be the first to admit that I fall into the "I'll do it tomorrow" catagory. I won't deny it, there are just so many more things I would rather be doing that what I should be doing. So today I am officially 32 weeks pregnant. That's 8 months, and when I say that out loud it kind of freaks me out. So this past weekend I kicked it into semi prepare for the baby mode.

Things completed:

1. I got our crib back from the friend that borrowed it. It has not been assembled yet and we still need to buy a mattress (which isn't too urgent because we have a bassinet as well). But part one of three is done.

2. I went through Roo's old baby clothes. Cleaned them and separated them into girl and gender neutral piles. I then put the GN clothes into the baby dresser.

3. I took all of the girl stuff and neatly stored it into a an easy access bin, so it is there and ready to use if the baby is a girl.

I feel good, positive and I even have photo proof. I also cleaned the dining room/homeschool room today if that scores me extra points;)





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Friday, October 22, 2010

Weekly Report and Funny Hats

This week was a short one due to an out of town opthamologist appointment that took up a huge chunk of the day and the rest was spent with our friend who lives in the city and it was her birthday. We did do a bunch of  Mondays work the week before (and on the weekend) in order to not throw our week off to much.  We have an early ballet class in the morning and I should be sleeping, but I am determined to finish this before I go. I might make it brief though;)

This weeks accomplishments

Memory Work: Invertebrates and the FLL poem Work have been memorized.

Phonics: We are still working on two syllable words and are on lesson 189 in The Ordinary Parents Guide to teaching reading. I have noticed that each time she reads to me she seems to be able to read words that I thought she wouldn't be able to. I don't know if this is a flicker before the light bulb goes on or if it is really good guessing within context. Time will tell.

Spelling: Still working on short vowel words.

First Language Lessons: We learned about proper nouns that are places. Rooms, our city, province and country.

Writing with Ease: This week was excerpts from Mary Poppins. She LOVES that movie and enjoyed the book. I am finding that her copywork is getting neater and she is starting to stay within the line boundaries better than before.

Math: We are still focusing on math facts up to 10 as well as did drill sheets and pages from the Evan Moor Skills Sharpener series. I think one more week on facts will do before we move onto subtraction in Singapore Math.

Latin: We focused on people in a family as well as boy, girl, man, and women. I am thinking of using the Song School Latin cutouts to make flashcards because for some reason she seems to love flashcards. The problem with SSL is that the songs really do get stuck in your head. I was humming one while brushing my teeth and no matter how hard I tried (believe me I tried). It would not go away.

French: Weather words and how to ask about the weather.

History: We read two DK Eyewitness books, one on ancient Egypt and one on mummies. We did a chapter from Story of the World on Sumerians and well as map work and a narration.

Science: This week we studied Chimps, Pandas and Polar Bears. She loves to learn about animals, but I believe she can't wait until we move onto the body section of Science. I found two really great diagrams of the skeletal system and the digestive system at the dollar store. She thinks these are great.

We skipped art this week because she wanted to go out for a walk at that time. We went and ran some errands while we were out. She fell, I'm not to sure what she fell over, but in the process both her hat and boot fell off. She scraped her hand, wrapped a kleenex around it and put on a brave face. So I took her out for hot chocolate and a treat after.

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Here she is "reading" the paper and drinking her hot chocolate, not looking like she is going to cry like she did 5 minutes before.

We went out tonight and her while I was perusing other isles her father let her pick out a winter hat. The hat makes her look like a mountain man but she loves it. Below is front view and side view. At least she will be warm.

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