February 11-12

Time to finish off Chinese New Year… Zander and Gavin each finished up their studies with writing out some of the things they learned about the celebration on pages with year of the snake themed borders. They also each drew their own special cobra… the instructions were found on Art for Kids as a special Chinese New Year offering. Added to each picture is the Chinese characters for Snake. Not a bad finishing touch.

Gavin and his snake

I lucked out and came across TWO shows for the boys to watch the night before. The movie Mulan (which they then drew something in their journals about) and a FoodNetwork special on making a full out Chinese New Year meal. We learned a few interesting things from that second show:

1. fish in Mandarin is the same words as abundance
2. dumplings symbolize wealth
3. roast chicken symbolizes togetherness and prosperity
4. long noodles symbolize longevity

Emanuel got creative with the Legos… He made his very own McDonald’s counter… giant M and all.

“M”

The counter

I attempted the heart shaped cupcakes with a less than amazing result… still yummy but NOT heart shaped. With lovely whipped icing everyone was content with them anyway.

Gavin and his snack

The weather has worked in our favour BOTH days what with the storm warning over and all the lovely snow that resulted from it. So the kids have been out enjoying, shoveling, getting wet… I had to throw all the gear into the dryer after Tuesday’s fun in the sun… so much melt off from the roof!

First

Putting them to work

It was a nice day out and they all got a little damp

I have to share a sort of dinosaur related video that Trinity and Emanuel assure me is AWESOME!

Tuesday was right into Valentines Day with all the worksheets and hearts and colouring.

Dot to Dot

We also made our monthly poster – I am having the kids make one a month for the whole year. I write out the name of  the month and then each kid draws something they see or do that month!

February

Since it was Shrove Tuesday I gave pancakes a try again on the gas stove with much better results! At least the kids were pleased.

Chowing down

Not a bad work up to Valentine’s Day… and a completing of something special from Chinese New Year.

We also pulled out the micro remote control cars from Alan and Xinny.

In light of a VERY persistent cold in the house, Ken undergoing some last minute interviews and the horrible tragedy in Connecticut today is a just a filler. We wish to extend our prayers, love and sympathy to the families involved in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Tragedies are never easy to face and when young innocent lives are ended we doubly question why. December 14, 2012

Talk about a lengthy name for a massive African dinosaur! This carnivore is believed to be bigger than the Tyrannosaurus Rex and from a completely different family. Being potentially the largest carnivore ever this dinosaur had to require a rather massive hunting area and from the markings on skulls found it is believed it fought its own kind for hunting grounds. 

This Cretaceous period dinosaur was quite the fearsome hunter. We found THREE videos to share about it. Though I have to warn you, the I’m a Dinosaur one has some random thing about a loose tooth that really comes to nothing… be sure to check them out!

BBC has one that Emanuel really enjoyed…

Our third video is from a youTube account by DinosaurRyan. He even has some fossil examples and seems to enjoy his dinosaurs greatly!

Now for the promised links and printables… two in fact! I will start with those! Education.com has a Carcharodontosaurus themed dot to dot HERE. Our colouring page came from deviantArt HERE. Paleodirect had information and apparently a place to PURCHASE teeth (!!) HERE. BBC Nature has a page HERE about the carnivore. DinosaurWikia has a great article HERE. Dinosaurs.about.com has their page HERE. Kidsdinos.com has their usual charts and maps and all HERE. DSC.discovery has an article about the dinosaur HERE. And the EnchantedLearning site has their page HERE. Oh and we cannot forget Wiki with its information filled article HERE.

Carchardontosaurus… quite the mouthful!

So today marks out unofficial official start to the twins’ 2nd registered year of homeschooling which we are now calling GRADE 2. Nothing special really… as we HAVE been schooling year round BUT since today is a new start we started with everyone drawing their favourite part of summer. Quite the variety of remembrances. Emanuel drew his time in the hot springs, Zander trips to the park with Nana and Baba and Gavin the completed swing set in our backyard. 

As we start Gr 2 and K!

A close up of the pictures

Emanuel is well into his Kindergarten fun so today wasn’t a big deal to him. BUT he is back to work on his dot-to-dot book, moving from ABC’s to counting. Since the workbook was used a little it has been fun for him to have permission to tear out the pages that he CAN do and for each one write his own name (as some were only completed on one side of the paper). 

Dot-to-dotting while a brother does his math

I am still on the hunt for the school desk for Emanuel. It is the one thing (beyond his workbook) that he has requested for this year that we don’t already have. I made up a Kijiji WANTED ad as there really were NO options in our price range (20.00). So fingers crossed! 

It is sunny days like today that really test the family though… we have 5 VERY stubborn kids after all. Trinity was a basket case all morning for some unknown reason… lots of time outs and explaining to her that NO everyone WON’T clean up those toys she just dumped out, that is HER job… Emanuel is still testing his limits but less and less over time. I am just hoping the twins’ focus eventually moves off of solely math and into more variety. 

Trinity with her picture of people with hats and tummies

We didn’t do a massive amount of work today and focused mainly on doing the twins’ “My All About Me Back to School Book.” There was quite a bit of  fuss over the amount of writing to be done but we managed. Tomorrow we will assemble the whole thing. Sadly I  could not hunt down the file on Currclick to share with everyone BUT check out their site anyway for an amazing variety of schooling products! 

Awaiting assembly

Tomorrow the plan is to get done our Maligne Canyon poster. There is some writing to be done by yours truly to share some of the more wordy facts we learned. I do love a good poster though and our wall is rather lonely with just the VBS masterpiece up there. I have to find a printout that we can either pretty up ourselves or already is colourful of the 12 months to add to our 7 days of the week on the wall as well. 

Now I just need to get my crafting mojo back. A lovely stack of photos are sitting in my crafting corner waiting to be put on papers and I have no ideas that just jump to life. I did manage to coordinate two more 12X12 pages with some contrasting paper so if I can find pictures to suit I am half way there… 

Coordinated papers

Now if only I could get the last of the clutter… well de-cluttered. Time to get back to work… 

Creeping along the furniture