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November 2024 Photos

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One afternoon, Esther and Elijah walked around the block and took their little sisters, who rode their bicycles.

Esther watched this starling building a nest in the garage roof. She was amused by the size of its load! Apparently, it didn’t get much of that load to its destination.

Esther also took this picture of a sunset. We got some smoke from Australian bushfires, so that’s probably part of why the colors were so vivid.

Miss Joy is learning to read! That’s slightly bittersweet, because it means my baby is no longer a baby. I love watching her learn, though. I took this video sometime in November, when she had just started to read stories. She was delighted with her new skill and wanted Grandma to hear her.

I found the girls having a picnic in the garden one day.

Miss Joy wanted me to take a picture of her with foxgloves on her fingers and her crinkle-cutter in her hand!

October 2024 Photos

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Here are the rest of my pictures from October! I took this first picture one rainy day near the beginning of the month when we were in Greymouth. The annual Bookarama opened that day, and we were waiting in line when the doors opened. An hour and a half later we walked out with around 80 books between six of us, and went out to the breakwall to eat our lunch. The waves were quite impressive as they rolled in in front of us!

A picture of Miss Joy taking a picture!

This was our third lot of chicks for the year. For this hatch, I bought two dozen Barred Rock eggs, and then filled the incubator with about a dozen Black Orpington eggs from our pair of those chickens and a couple of dozen of our mongrels. During the night about three days before hatching, Gayle found the incubator unplugged! He quickly plugged it in again and within minutes it was back up to only about 5*C below what it should have been. We wondered if we would get any babies. The next day, we left for the weekend, and arrived home that Sunday afternoon to find no chicks yet, on the day they were due to hatch. We wondered…. and an hour or so later the first chick emerged! We ended up with 32 babies out of 39 or 40 that had candled fertile, and only lost 1 or 2 that died just before hatching–one of our best hatches yet! (Only one of the 13 Black Orpington eggs was fertile.)

I came into the kitchen one morning to find my monthly meal plan in tatters. It looked like a mouse had gotten it, but no mouse could have clung to the glass backsplash to nibble on that! Then, I saw a bit of snail poo behind it. A few days later, I found an enormous snail in the vicinity. The chickens enjoyed eating our culprit!

We spent several evenings in October observing the sky. We tried to find the comet that should have been visible, but couldn’t find it. There is a mountain range only a few miles to the west of us, behind which the sun sets early but the sky stays light for a long time. I took this picture of the moon one of those nights. We did get to see the International Space Station go over one night!

We did a couple of interesting demonstrations for science in October. One day, we made a scale model of the distances between the planets by marking them out on a roll of toilet paper. To see the whole distance, we took it outside so we could see the whole length at once.

Another day, we made a model of the relative sizes of the planets. Elijah was home that week, unable to work because he had bursitis in his knee, so I assigned him to help the girls make the clay balls and blow up the balloons to the proper sizes.

Sunday afternoon naps! Simon asleep on one couch, Elijah reading something…

…and James asleep on the couch on the other side of the room! This boy has two speeds: either full-steam ahead, or crashed.

ArtVenture

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This is not a sponsored post–just so you know. A month or so ago, I heard about a special that was being offered by ArtVenture, and signed up for a free trial. The little girls loved the lessons so much that I went ahead and bought a subscription for a year. They haven’t used it for awhile, but I know they’ll enjoy it when I suggest it again! I took these pictures the day they did several lessons. I highly recommend these lessons for children who love to draw and color and paint.

When they were finished for the day and had hung up their handiwork, I asked Little Miss to get a picture of everything the three of them had come up with over a couple of days.

The Conking Donkey

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Mr. Imagination was assigned to write and perform a puppet show as part of his Language Arts program. He chose to adapt one of Aesop’s Fables from a book we have, and got his older brother to help perform it. This video was taken during a practice run, and then they performed it for our homeschool group the next day. The first few seconds are blurry, and then the camera got focused, so hold on till you can see what is happening.

This is the story he was inspired by:

Cross Country

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On the first Thursday of December, one of the moms in our homeschool group organized a cross country meet. Quite a few families from the region came, some driving 45 minutes from one direction and others coming an hour from the opposite direction. The children were divided into age groups; the youngest ran one kilometer, the middles (including Little Miss) ran two, and the older ones (including my two school-age boys) ran three kilometers. Part of their route ran through the bush, and I was stationed, with Miss Joy, at a fork in the trail just at the bottom of these steps, at the end of the swing bridge. Miss Joy was quite bored for awhile as we waited for the runners to reach us.

Then they came! Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination stuck together through the race.

I had given my camera to a friend who stayed at the finish line, and she got pictures of my children completing the race.

After the races there were athletic events. The only one I got a picture of was the shot-put, but they also got to throw a discus, do a long jump, and do sprints. This is Little Miss doing the shot-put. All the children had great fun that day!

Palio

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Sometimes a book we read aloud together really strikes a chord with the children. We’re studying the Middle Ages right now, working our way through the TruthQuest History guide to the Middle Ages. One historical fiction suggestion was Palio, by Marguerite Henry. This book isn’t set in the Middle Ages, but it describes a race that has been happening twice every year for over 700 years, following the same rituals as at its beginning in the Middle Ages. I happen to love Marguerite Henry’s books, so it was a great excuse to reread one of them!

All of us thoroughly enjoyed reading Palio. By the time we reached the last half dozen chapters, I was getting questions about whether the Palio is still being run, so I promised that we would look it up online after finishing the book. We did, and sure enough, it is still being held every July and August. In fact, we finished reading the book on August 14, and the next running of the Palio was only two days away! Esther found us a video online that showed the event through the eyes of a Sienese native, and then we watched one about the horse lottery that happened that week. The day the race was run, we searched for another about the day’s race, and got to watch that. It was a lot of fun to be able to see the continuation of a tradition we had just read an engrossing story about. Having read the book, we were somewhat familiar with the various neighborhoods of Siena and were able to recognize them even though the broadcasts were in Italian.

Reading aloud is so much fun! It is definitely the favorite part of the school day for both the children and their teacher. I read to them for 30-45 minutes every morning while the breakfast dishes are being done before we start our school day, another 40-45 minutes in the afternoon while lunch dishes are being washed, and also to each of the little girls separately, for 15-20 minutes each, some time during the day. Winter is great for being able to do that! Summer is more challenging; I still read during dishwashing time, but it’s harder to fit in the little girls’ reading (although by now Miss Joy makes sure I don’t forget her–if she realizes in the evening that I haven’t yet, she announces, with great drama as if it is a catastrophe, “You haven’t read to me yet!”).

Pumpkin Seeds

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Several days ago, I cut open a pumpkin to cook. Little Miss wanted to dig the seeds out of it, and we were talking about how many seeds there were. I got curious, so we divided all the seeds into three groups and I had the three school children each count a group. First, we all guessed how many. I was closest; I guessed 500 and there ended up being 518! That’s a lot of seeds.

Science

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Several months ago, we were sent a box of Covid tests by the government, because we live more than 20 km from the nearest testing station. They expired in December, and we had never so much as opened the box, so I let the school children experiment with them. They tested all sorts of things… lemon juice, kombucha, whey, broth, mud, cow poo, the cow’s nostrils (the milk cows were right outside our windows that day). Much to their disgust, nothing tested positive! I enjoyed watching them write down their predictions and the results they got.

Cross Country

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One day last week, a friend of ours organized a cross-country race for the local homeschool children. It was very low-key; no prizes for the winners. It was just a time to have fun together! We held it at the Nelson Creek campground. The littlest children ran a 250-meter course, the older ones could choose to go 2 or 3 km, and the middle-age ones ran 1 km.

This is Mr. Sweetie about 2/3 of the way through his 3 km run. Mr. Imagination was right behind him.

Both my school boys nearing the finish line!

After the races and our picnic lunch, we took Grandma on a walk around the loop through the bush. A friend’s three children wanted to stay and spend more time, so we took them home with us later; their 4-year-old is leading Esther and Miss Joy in this picture.

Product Review–Brilliant

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Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Well, this is my very last review for the Homeschool Review Crew. Due to various circumstances, the Crew will be closing. I’m going to miss this! And, surprisingly, my children will, too. When I told the school children that we would no longer be getting things to review for school, they were all unhappy about it, which surprised me because they griped so much about “things to do for review!” When it was no longer an option, they all admitted that they enjoyed the variety.

We were given one year of access to the Premium Subscription to Brilliant, an interactive web- and mobile-based learning platform. Because the courses that were featured were not ones I thought my children could use right now, and because we were at the end of our school year, I opted not have my children actually use this program. Then, I was given access and started using it myself—and regretted that decision! I had a lot of fun with it myself, and could see how it would have benefitted Mr. Sweetie (age 13) and even Mr. Imagination (age 10). 

One of the courses I tried out was Geometry Fundamentals. It began with the very simple concept of area, and how to compute and compare areas. Only one tiny concept is presented at a time, in the form of an exercise with a multiple-choice answer. Next is a section about angles. I got started working through it this afternoon to refresh my memory about how the program works, and got distracted, going through a lot more questions than I had planned on! As soon as one question is answered, a “continue” button comes up and you move on to the next question. There is a “hint” button with each problem. If the wrong answer is selected, a button comes up to show the solution, or else you can just choose the “continue” button. A progress bar along the top of the screen shows how far you have progressed through the lesson.

I also tried out the pre-algebra course. This begins with an explanation of variables, has a section on understanding equations and expressions, and then has a review lesson. It looks like there are some games/puzzles next, and then more about equations.These are followed by a number of lessons on factoring, simplification, and problem solving, for a total of 28 interactive lessons. It took me 10-15 minutes to complete each lesson I did, and each one was presented clearly and thoroughly. 

There are more than 70 course available on Brilliant. Some look very interesting, like the ones about scientific thinking. There are also computer science courses and a lot of different math courses. These are all arranged in “pathways,” so that you follow a logical progression. For example, as  you finish pre-algebra, you are directed to begin Geometry Fundamentals. I am quite impressed with the layout of these programs, and if we weren’t just finishing the school year and wanting to take a break, I would have at least Mr. Sweetie work through some courses. 

I worked on the two courses I mentioned already using my laptop. That worked great, but I decided to check out the app for the iPad, as well. It was easy to install, and the login synced with what I had been doing on the laptop instantly. I tried the logic course there, and had a lot of fun playing around with it. I think I’ll make this app available to anyone in the family who wants to use it, and see what happens. This is a “computer game” that I don’t mind them spending time on! If you want something to do online or on an app that will keep your mind sharp and keep you learning, or you have children 10 years old or older who need a fun way to practice math, logic, or science skills, definitely have a look at Brilliant. It may be just the thing for you. 

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