And now for November… another month in a rather long nutshell!!! I have to admit… with all the Christmas stitching, school, swim lessons (cooking for the twins) and actual sales and commissions… my blog has languished a little.

Of course November is the month of AMERICAN Thanksgiving… ever confusing on a THURSDAY no less. This was an unusual one for us as Nana and Baba headed off to Florida to spend it with the other grandkids… but we persevered.

Thankful hands tree

We had leaves to bag up still… great exercise for the boys and they were even relatively willing. Of course you can see the amazing colours better on a previous entry where we had the whole family out there dealing with the leaves on the ground HERE.

We did leave time for some mini fashion. Trinity is already able to wear some of the rather funky and fun clothing left to her by her cousin Gabriella when they left for Florida!

Of course we had to take advantage of the week of free online books through Bookit this month as well. Each one narrated with terrific pictures.

We had a blast learning about and building our own volcano. Science has always been the one thing we have struggled with in our homeschool life. Getting enough in, being organized but the whole family is quick to jump on board with a good craft and activity… add in chemicals (even ones as benign as vinegar and baking soda) and a little explosion and even Echo was there for the fun. This was the first time I sat down and talked to them about things like earthquakes and really looked into what damage a volcano can do to the land and the people around it.

Our November was full of visits with our favourite baby and his brothers… Jeffrey is definitely growing like a weed!

We also made it outside to enjoy the snow. What a difference from last year’s excessive cold and snow!!!

At the end of the month we pulled out the tree and fixings which of course is one of my favourite backdrops for photos. It always feels like the season is coming when we bring out the stockings. I am very proud of how they turned out. Though Ken STILL does not have a special stocking. You can check out the full blog post of family photos HERE.

A few helpful Thanksgiving books:

• Gobble Gobble CRASH! A Barnyard Counting Bash by Julie Stiegmeyer
• Turkeys on the Family Farm by Chana Stiefel
• Thanksgiving by Natalie M. Rosinsky
• Arthur’s Thanksgiving by Marc Brown (a fun read with a good lesson)
• Thanksgiving Is… by Gail Gibbons

Our Thanksgiving was spent with Aunty Judy, Uncle Jim and Cousin Robbie. It was quiet and fun and full of delicious food! We were so thankful they could make it to the meal that the kids planned and shopped for! The twins were real troopers making up the grocery list and doing the choosing at Sam’s Club themselves!

Zander and the twins’ Thanksgiving grocery list

I snuck in a ladies outing with Nana over at Renee’s. We made woven fabric baskets and played with Mystro. Not the simplest craft but not impossible. You can find the instructions HERE thanks to Terry Atkinson. 

School wise we have seen an influx in art interest. Art for Kids is win win with us!

Echo’s more free style work using photopaper and sharpie

Add in some completions and workbook interest…

And some rather amazing Halloween lapbook completions! 

I think we accomplished much of what we had hoped to this November. Add in swimming and scouts, Sunday School and choir and we have become way more busy than we expected! Thank goodness the arctic chill has not appeared! Do enjoy the overflow images for the LONG belated month of November HERE.

Emanuel swimming with a noodle!

So Discovery’s Shark Week has come and we got all caught up in the madness. I was liberal with my choices in taping for the kids and prewatched a few first (Submarine the massively huge shark special was deleted quickly) but we certainly got our fill on some excellent and not so excellent shows. I will include our watched list including one lucky Dirty Jobs find on Animal Planet that week. Just remember, some are more… ratings grabbers than truly educational pieces… though we found ANYTHING narrated by Mike Rowe was a goldmine for the kids. Of course, we fell in love with him on Dirty Jobs and the kids want to watch anything with him or his voice on it!

We watched quite a few shows

• Bull Shark: World’s Deadliest Shark
• Shark City
• Monster Hammerhead
• Shark Feeding Frenzy
• Great White Highway
• Lair of the Mega Shark
• Great White Invasion
• Return of Jaws
• Dirty Jobs, Season 4 Episode 18: Greenland Shark Quest
• Zombie Sharks
• Deadly Stripes: Tiger Sharks
• Sharkzilla (with people off Mythbusters)
• Jaws Strikes Back
• Alien Sharks
• Alien Sharks: Return of the Abyss
• Deadly Waters

We also branched out with some very brief reading on some lesser known sharks to write on the back of some shark images we printed from one of our saved files. I am including these sharks here:

• The Thresher Shark thanks to Shark Sider HERE. Gavin was especially interested in this shark due to its unusual tail that we later found out it uses to hunt! 
• The Whale Shark is one of Zander’s favourites. We found facts thanks to Animals Time HERE.
• The Nurse Shark thanks to National Geographic HERE. A rather interesting LARGE shark who really only eats microscopic items!
• The White Tip Shark thanks to The Telegraph HERE.
• The Lemon Shark thanks to Sharks-World HERE.
• There was a print out error in the square pictures and we did not have one for the Mako shark even though it was featured in other lists in the same print out. So we made our own slightly larger paper with a hand drawing and information we found at the EnchantedLearning site HERE.

Of course we went to our usual sources for Shark print outs etc and while we did not DO  a lot of crafts and settled instead for drawing our own pictures and having fun “what if” discussions we do have some links to help you out on your shark themed learning!

• Activity Village has a little bit of everything. Though we did not use their how to draw a shark instructions. You can find their general list of resources HERE.
• We used Art for Kids’ shark how to draw instructions for sharks  HERE. The kids loved the expression on this shark’s face! They also have Hammerhead instructions HERE. I do wish there was a print out page for this one as we love including the instructions in our finished folders and adding them to our overflowing binder of Art for Kids print outs.

For spelling words we started out the week with 10 general shark words:

1. shark 
2. swim
3. carnivore
4. eggs
5. fish
6. ocean
7. fin
8. gill
9. pup
10. teeth

For the second week I took the list of 10 most dangerous sharks from Angel Fire site HERE. For Trinity and Emanuel I just did two random shark related words a day. Emanuel’s favourite was hammer and head… the moment he said the two together he just lit up!

With some of the worksheets there were questions about shark anatomy. I found a decent list of fin information on the site KidCyber.com HERE.

We looked up two different terms for our studies… breaching where we  took the definition off the top of our good search HERE. Out second term was opportunistic feeders. We found our definition on the Merriam Webster site HERE.

We also did a quick animal report on the Remora. We figured we wanted to know more about this fish we continually saw in almost all of our Discovery channel shows. Sadly not much is known about certain aspects of the fish, BUT the site Animal Diversity Web had some interesting (if not complicated) information for us to use on our report HERE.

Emanuel has had an interest in the Cookiecutter Sharks since he saw them on Octonauts (HERE). So we did up a colouring page thanks to KidsPlayColor.com HERE. We used the information on EnchantedLearning HERE to do a quick write up on the back of our colouring page to include in our shark book. With over 200 species I am figure we will continue finding sharks of interest over the years!

We didn’t do much in the way of books as there was SO MUCH Discovery Channel content, but I did pull what we had on sharks out of our personal collection:

• Incredible Sea Creatures by Reading Discovery (a level 2 reader)
• Amazing Sharks by Melvin Berger
• Life in the Water – A Child’s First Library of Learning

I certainly hope all of this information can be of some help! Good luck! 

September 20-25

I have been playing with favourite patterns and thinner yarn or different needles.. these two Cthulhu came out of that play. BABIES!!! Using light Caron Simply Soft. You can find the pattern HERE… or purchase a completed (and slightly larger) version on my Etsy site HERE. I plan on putting some wee ones up eventually… after the Christmas present rush.

Over the weekend we took a little time and finally got our act together to assemble our Shark unit book… the duotang was almost too small! You can check out our resources used, etc on our resource entry on the blog HERE. It was quite the unit.

On Sunday (AFTER Sunday School of course) we had a lovely visit with the Novaks. We were supposed to leave around dinner time for a coffee date but it fell through so it was a relaxing afternoon with good friends.

Snoopy was a willing subject for the camera as usual.

And we came home with some new reading material! Thank you so much Aidan for letting these gems go!

On Monday we had princesses at school… in MITTENS (super garage sale find for a quarter I think).

Gavin created an amazing FALL tree we later entered in the Art for Kids (link on right) fall art contest. I love it when they just go without instructions and really work with the Lego! We actually have the 3 boys enrolled in a once monthly class online with Currclick that is free for Legos. They are really enjoying it. They have multiple free and for pay classes through their site now!

Tuesday was so lovely we drug our new desks outside for craft time before they get placed in the school area inside.

Nature came out to share with our crafty time as well! Though after the scare elsewhere in the country with a fuzzy caterpillar that caused burn like rashes we kept our hands well away!

With a new school year we have also pulled down our previous year’s posters… so it was time to create a new fall scene for our walls. Can you believe it is fall already? Where did the time go???

We have had a jump with our learning as well. Emanuel suddenly WANTS to try and write out his own words in his journal and in letters. So be prepared… I correct the spelling above but you will get to see his creative management of letters in his words!!

We have taken to doing work in areas… videos on the DVD player for volcanoes.

One of 3 desks inside for an independent learner.

The table for the avid crafter. It seems to be working!

We are most certainly keeping busy!