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!

August 18-24

The girls are over the moon with their mini fashion shows. We are so spoiled that Gammie can and does send us so many outfits.

In celebration of Jeff being here AND he and Daddy being busy in the sub basement we had an outside lunch on the front stoop.

Right after that I realized that We had missed a rather special LARGE present that had been mailed previously from Texas. I think she got the most excited opening this one. The way it was rigged up the large caterpillar sort of popped out for her. Instant favourite.

That evening we had special plans. Jeff headed out with Chris for beers and visiting and the rest of us were off to Aunty Judy and Uncle Jim’s for a special family celebration of Echo’s 4th birthday complete with a cake made especially for her by Uncle Jim! He works for the Pilsbury company and makes an AMAZING cake!

I really can’t think of a place the kids get more excited about visiting than “Robbie’s House” and he wasn’t even there that visit!

In the morning the kids pitched in and worked on Echo’s birthday present from Jim and Judy – a Barbie lego set! With a little blue pool.

We continued our learning… mostly shark related…

And then we paid each of the kids and extra dollar of allowance to spend the week pulling weeds! What an efficient crew we had out there from the biggest to the smallest.

And the guys continued their gaming… interspersed with cleaning out of the sub basement. This all went SUPER well until they were at the tail end and found… a leak. Sigh. I am so proud of Ken for jumping in an working so hard to create space and organization in our world. This new and improved healthy Kenny is AMAZING.

We had company on Wednesday, well additional company. Robbie and Alicia came over for dinner and gaming. The kids are in love with these two, rightfully so. And it is doubly amazing that they can enjoy boardgames with us.

I found a spare moment and finished up a special wallet for my Renaissance Festival outfit. It will loop around my handle so that I won’t lose my ID etc. I love it, I altered a basic billfold style wallet pattern to fit what I needed and there you go – no lost nothings when I go out this year!

There was time for playing outside AND checking out the garden with our guests.

All this while Ken and Jeff made us dinner – Curry and a yummy sort of pudding pie. SPOILED US!!!

On the 21st you can check back and see our Treasure Box we got in the mail from Grandma and Grandpa Mike HERE. We evened that day out with Munchkin (game) and time outside.

All the weed pulling led us to tweezers and patience as we removed burrs that attacked everyone pretty equally.

The kids have been loving another adult in the house. Especially one that knows all about Canada. Eases the homesickness a little, just like Grandma’s Canadian Treasure Box.

What a week!!!

Really… can we keep Jeff forever? Because Ken has been so positive and the kids and I have enjoyed the company so much! We had all of Saturday and half of Sunday to enjoy with him and some lovely weather.

But then it was time to say good bye! Definitely a hard one… I don’t think anyone who visits us down here really realizes how much their visits and packages mean to us. A taste, touch, sound of home… thank you so much everyone for remembering us!