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.

Dinner with the monks

(Or "monkeys" as they have been fondly termed.)

The girls were more in awe of them when they wore their red robes and travelled in a group of ten, but they still look in wonderment to these two men who barely speak their language but will sit down to a "picnic", and swing and hug them at a moment's notice.

Tsultrim and Lungtok also cooked dinner for us as the tradition (since Aunt Kristel's departure to China) has become mo mo's - which involves group effort in the actual creation of as it takes about 2 hours.


Tsultrim and Lungtok have mo mo's down to an art form. Jeff is catching up quickly, and mine well... maybe you can pick them out! :)

We also had a great time watching them fight over their first chance to use a power tool. Unfortunately their first introduction was a chainsaw as they helped Jeff and my Dad cut down a 30 foot tree in the yard. Luckily everyone still had all their appendages at the end of the afternoon.

Grandpa's Birthday present

When Jeff suggested making a collage as a birthday card for Grandpa, the girls were right on it. They decided on making Grandpa's truck.
After researching online, printing and transferring the truck image to cardboard, they were ready to go.

Finding orange in magazines proved easier than we first thought and the girls glued happily with some help from Dad in finding headlights and tires.

After adding their almost memorized "Happy Birthday" they were completed with drawings of themselves and Grandpa in the front seat.
A fun card! but it did make us an hour late! :)

Spring Planting

This spring we decided to focus on growing and planting, and learning the ins and outs of it all.

There are so many topics...

How plants grow.

What they need.

Where food comes from.

How to dig holes and remove the plants from there containers.

How they start from seed.

The water cycle.

Parts of a plant.

What compost is.

What animals are good for a garden and which aren't.

How much water a plant needs.

It's endless really, the number of conversations that have come up!

The girls have planted beans and transplanted them as Jack and the bean stocks. They have started their own parsley and viola's. They have visited a farm and seen the seed that winter wheat grows from. They have helped Grammie choose and plant her flowers. They have planted window boxes made by Grandad with flowers they chose themselves, and wandered through forests and gardens. and greenhouses.

And we still hope to grow our own cherry tomato's, enjoy an arboretum tour on trees, plant the front garden, and with any luck, harvest our vegetables!

Jumping ahead...

I have many more posts to catch up on, but I couldn't resist getting the pictures up from today's visit to Uncle Jay's parents farm.

So let's see... after the huge number of pictures I just made you look at, here are the highlights!

Obviously holding the very new and warm baby pigeon was amazing! The one week old calf (which we saw but remained illusive during the picture taking), the cuddly kittens, watching the pigeons doing their tricks and rolls in the sky, getting piggy backs rides from Larry on the way back from checking out the winter wheat, collecting rocks, feathers and egg shells to add to preexisting collections, chatting with a bull, being in the driver's seat of a tractor, and fresh banana bread!

What a great afternoon!

The lego creativity continues!

The girls have now moved into building houses, and it has become their main focus when the lego comes out. I hadn't quite expected the solar panelled roof or the accompanying windmill, but they were pretty proud.

(Jeff was obviously in the room at the time to encourage such details. He definitely missed his calling in life!)

What we've been up to...

We've been keeping very busy over the past two months, but I seem to have fallen away from blogging about it.

Here are a few updates...

These pictures were taken at the end of March, when we were still deeply entrenched in science experiments. Aislinn got the kit for her birthday, and we jumped into the first 5 experiments.

We played with acids, bases and neutrals, and had our first exposure to test tubes, litmus paper, and the science behind foods. The big hit was baking cupcakes with the expectation that some would rise and some would not. It worked! but the girls weren't too keen on eating the lumpy chewy half of the cupcake tray! (Should of had pictures of those!)

We still have a few experiments to finish, and I am looking forward to revisiting the terminology we learned on our first go and seeing how much remains. (Talk about a science experiment!)