Building co-op

One of the mom's of a family we are close friends with organized a building co-op that is to run once a month with some families in our local home school group. She had invited us, and at first I wasn't sure about whether it was something we should try to fit into our schedule, but after attending the first event, I have decided it is! It was such a nice group of families, and even having so many kids in one space, the atmosphere felt calm and relaxed. The girls stayed relatively nearby, but jumped into the offered activities at once. Spread around the area were all kids of building toys: straws and connectors, duplo, magnetix, a marble run, clickits, wooden blocks, etc. and the kids were able to move among them trying out new material and new building partners.

Some outdoor play time was available as well, and the girls enjoyed participating in parachute games and running around in the yard.

Next month is Lego, and we are really looking forward to it.

The weekend...

Well, the renovations continue, and so far we have spent every evening after Jeff gets home and all day on the weekends working on something.

So for yesterday and today, we spent our time working on plumbing (Jeff), putting up the play center, finishing the front garden, mowing the lawn, caulking the garage roof, and keeping the girls entertained.

Before _______________________________________________________________ After

It's definitely not all we have planned for the front, but for this fall, it's a start. Someday, the porch will be extended, the house will have shutters, the new shingles will be on, a new bay window, a new front to the garage and maybe a finish of some kind over the brick. But for today, I am pleased.

Pictures of the play center will come, but it was too dark by the time we finished.

Science

This year, we are hoping to enjoy science by trying out multiple experiments on different topics. We choose colour as our first attempt, and the girls worked toward answering questions like "Why is the sky blue", "Is black really black?" and Colour changing milk." Ok, the last one was mostly just fun, and to be honest I have no idea what they came away with, but they had a great time.
In the process of our Why is the sky blue experiment, Aislinn did give a great rendition of how the earth turns around the sun creating night and day on earth which if nothing else was worth hearing -- as she was able to articulate the process so incredibly well!
The experiment itself consisted of shining light through water mixed with a tiny amount of milk (atmosphere) to see which colour is filtered first. In this case - Blue (yeah it worked!) and then seeing how the colour slowly turned yellow, the orange the farther away from the light = sunset.
(Hard to get pictures and stay in the moment!)

The second experiment they tried, was seeing what colour come out of markers when you let water draw up though them. See pics above. The girls greatly enjoyed this one, and at least got to watch if black is really black on you-tube as black was the only marker of that style I did not have!


And the last one, for fun, was playing with food colouring in milk and seeing how it reacted with a drop of soap. The girls quickly moved to full out mixing, but we did enjoy the marbling effect while it lasted!

I was hoping to acquire a couple of prism's as well, but didn't have the chance to locate any soon enough. We will look forward to revisiting colour when I do gets my hands on some-- and you never know -- I may find out how much they did absorb in the future.

First field trip of the year!

I postponed our official start of homeschooling this year to correspond with our first scheduled field trip with friends to the apple orchard. We had a great day! The weather was perfect for a fall day, and the girls enjoyed both the physical activity and the time with their friends. I myself am blown away by the comparison to last year. It's little things really, like their Independence on the gigantic slides, the infrequent trips to the bathroom, their increased strength in carrying bags of apples. compared to this time last year, they have already grown and developed so much! Especially Tara... she is no longer my baby- in that sense. I guess she would have already been spending her days away from me had we not chosen to home school. It just seems to have happened so fast. :)

Ok, enough of my gushy moment! The girls enjoyed all aspects of the orchard, from picking ( and tasting) the apples, to the petting farm, rope swing, hayride, and tepee trail.

Chapter 1 -The House.

As this will be an ongoing post as things around our new house change literally -daily -- I decided to block it into chapters.

So, many still ask us how we got around to buying a house so out of the blue, and to be honest, I am not quite sure! I think it started by spying a half burned down house on an mls listing that sparked our interest in major renovation projects -- which I have been desperately missing since selling our first house.

After realizing that a half missing house is maybe not the particularly best place to raise children, we moved on, but turned our eye north to the surrounding communities. We first fell upon a small house and set on course to throw in an offer, but looking back now, it luckily sold before we could grab it.

Well, then there was no turning back. We had come too close, so our agent turned our eye to a very rundown opportunity which had been sitting for sale for many months while the listing agent tried to convince us it wasn't worth buying!

We now call it home!! Nothing like the feeling of a dare - lol.

Here are some of the original pics. Prior to our taking possession!! (Not for the faint of heart!)

Future instalments will hopefully be more inspiring, but for now, we are enjoying home ownership once again. With a little TLC (ok a lot) we hope our 135 year old home will once again be a feature of the neighbourhood.

And --regardless of its quirks, it already feel so much like home!

We are back!!

After a very long sebatical... I have finally notched out some time for journalling our lives on our blog once again.

After a highly enjoyable but extremely hectic spring and summer, we are settling back into our homeschooling groove for 2008-2009. --Official this week :)

There is of course, so much to catch up on! Fabulous field trips, vacationing with friends, a new house and a new community!

I hope in the next week or two to look back on the past few months and blog about some of the highlights.
I hadn't realized how important this blog is too me, not only for letting our friends and family have a glimpse into our daily life, but for me to look back and enjoy again and again the wonderful moments I get to have as the girls explore their world and draw me into it with them.