Day at the Museum

After packing a picnic lunch, we drove up and spent the day at a great little museum on the shores of Lake Huron. I had heard good things about it, and after acquiring free passes from a generous neighbour, decided to spend our rainy day indoors enjoying what it had to offer.
Posing with the woodland animal display.
Getting a feel for a glacier (literally -brrrr).

Being silly with the robotic dinosaur exhibit. Of course the robotics were as much if not more intriguing then the dinosaurs themselves, which may launch us in a completely different direction of learning than I had accounted for! :)

The moving "hatching" baby Protoceratops. (left)
Tara trying on the horn for the build your own dinosaur

My hopes for this visit, was that the girls would come away with a bit more knowledge on history -pre-man.

There was mention of the presentation of three theories of creation (the Anishnabe/Odawa, Judeo-Christian and Big Bang theory.), which I was hoping would be laid out together in some way, but that was not really the case. With creation, and religion for that matter, we are hoping to present the girls with enough information, that they will feel knowledgeable in creating their own opinion about how the earth was formed and how they would like to live their life upon it.

The other exhibits we enjoyed included the outdoor log cabin and schoolhouse, the DNA sculpture made from a chain (try explaining DNA and genes to a 5 and 6 year old over lunch!), and the rug hooking exhibit.

In all we spent about 5 hours exploring, and let me tell you how fantastic it is to be the only ones in a museum on a rainy Monday, free to explore at will!

Of course we had to spend a bit of time in the car being silly with Dad and munching on snacks, and get a quick glimpse of the waves on the lake before heading home.

Sugar Cube Pyramids

To continue our Story of the World exploration, our friends and us split up to do the reading individually, but then got the girls together to extend our pyramid understanding by making our own sugar cube pyramids.
We first discussed how the Egyptian used the stars to map out where the pyramids would sit, and laid out our own grids. The girls then layered their sugar cubes using glue (while I madly manned the glue gun after realizing that the layers were in need of extra support).
When we finally reached the top, the girls announced their pyramids, and brushed cocoa powder over then to give them some enhanced colour. Then out came the gold glitter to finish off the capstone. Names like the Great Pyramid, the pyramid of Giza, and King Tut's tomb were thrown around.

The girls then worked together to answer some fill in the blank questions on sheets (pics to come) for their history binders, and we left room for some pictures of their own completed pyramids.
Tomorrow they are off to try their hand at time lines... all to be cumulated in an Egypt Day at a friends house who's family is also following the story of the world timeline.

Great things to come including making papyrus, mummifying teddy bears, making paper beads, trying their hand at hieroglyphs, and role playing with Egyptian masks.

It really is such an interesting time period with so many great books and fun activities to try... I think we will be exploring it for a while!

(Not to mention that Egypt will be our country for our home school groups annual around the world expo.)

Workbooks!

Yes, contrary to opinion, we do occasionally pull out the workbooks in our house. Usually when the girls request them, and they only ever do as much as they feel like. Usually about 5 or 6 pages at a time. My only request to them is that they don't skip pages, as then they get considered "done" before they are, and end up ignored in a bottom of a drawer. (I always find it hard to donate partially used workbooks, and they end up as garbage/recycling.)

The one thing I do find curious, is the levels of workbook. Both girls are working on a book around the 1st grade mark, yet both are vastly different in terms of difficulty level.
Oh well, Tara is enjoying hers; it is colourful and entertaining and for the most part, easy for her.

Aislinn is working through this book, and the one thing I really like is that it is encouraging her to write (in spaces).

A good portion of Aislinn's personal writing is done on pictures and cards, usually on blank paper, where the freedom to fill the page takes over.

She often gets very fancy, but the explanation of readability vs fancy has not caught on yet.

Luckily Aislinn seems pretty ok with repetition, but for most of these pages, she just fills in the blanks, and then goes back to read it.

What we are reading right now

We are currently reading this book (halfway) as a read aloud before bed. It is by far the hardest book we have tried so far, with lots and lots of descriptive language and new vocabulary.
It is a bit slow going as we often pause to chat about the characters, and give explanations of the new words we are encountering, but right now we are hooked!

The story itself has an interesting plot line, and the descriptions in the book offer enough detail that the girls get the general gist even if they don't understand every word.

I have also promised the girls that we will watch the movie when we are done, but at this point I am thinking it won't get close to doing justice to the images the words leave in our heads.

But, that will be a discussion in itself I suppose...

I will give a movie review after we have watched it.

a look back...

One of the reasons for starting this blog was to journal the
things the girls and I encounter on our homeschooling journey,
so even though some of these events took place a few months ago,
I feel it helpful to touch on them here... for future perusal and
possible compilation for some university application in our future - lol.

Soccer skills program at the local public school

We have been reading Story of the World as a jumping point for studying history and we are up to the story of King Narmer and the fight over upper and lower Egypt and the control of the Nile delta.

The girls had an absolute blast learning this chapter with their friends. We read the story, then proceeded to create individual King Narmer crowns for the girls.

We then made our way to the beach to create our own Nile delta, and act out the epic battle.

I can promise, that moment in history will not be soon forgotten in their minds.

(Of course, some pictures and basic story details have made it into their history binders for future perusal -- not to mention when we visit our blog.

And finally, we also had the opportunity to visit with the ever so kind ladies from the trout farm we visited in 2008, when they came down to restock our friends lake. The ladies let the girls try their hand at releasing the fish into the water, holding their breath as their new fish friends floundered their way into the depths.

Aislinn's first tooth

Her excitement was pretty hard to contain. Aislinn's long awaited loss of her wiggly tooth finally happened today!

What will the "Tooth Fare" bring?

Our summer...

Tara turns 5!

The birthday present! Hours and hours of jumping fun, plus one sleep out under the stars.

A camping trip and a couple of beach days!

Two vacation bible school programs...

Two weeks at Grandma and Grandpa's house...

A week of an Arts daycamp....

Too many campfires to count! (and smores)

Sparklers, pony rides, bouncy castles...

Bike riding, swinging, swimming...

Backyard movies and campfire popcorn!