Weekly School Summary - Canada (October 17-21)

I respectfully ask that you not pin pictures of my children to Pinterest. Thank you!

Observing at The Wild Center in Tupper Lake, NY

Another week flies by! We had 3 school days planned in order to head to the Adirondacks to visit my sister for a few days.

Here's what we did:
Math: Almost the same as usual. They each did 3 lessons this week to adjust the schedule for our mini fall break and trip.

Reading and Language Arts: Soprano had her final evaluation for Ira Sleeps Over (reading from 'Across the Centuries') and began her next book, Owl Moon. She completed a worksheet and did a word search based on the book. We had a couple of corrections on her already completed pages in her Phonics book, and we got through the first unit in her Rod and Staff English.

Since we're still waiting on Tenor's new Rod and Staff English and Spelling to arrive, we continued with 'A Reason for Handwriting C' and 'Writing Strands' this week. We also continued with his first reading selection from 'Across the Centuries C Level 1.' He read chapters 3-5 of "A Lion, A Witch, and A Wardrobe" with some vocab word study and worksheets.

Electives:
Typer Island for their typing instruction and continuing with SOS Elementary Spanish.

They did a health worksheet about spreading germs.

Phys Ed.: More bike and scooter riding and some leaf raking.

Raking leaves with Aunt Kim

I arranged our schedule this week to have 3 days of Language Arts, Math, and Electives because of our trip but we brought our books along so that we could still finish up Canada by the end of the week. We skipped the extra activity and the cooking but on our 7-hour car trip, we listened to Anne of Green Gables on CD and watched the DVD at my sister's house.

Bible: This week included:
Reading about Greenland
Reading Matthew 5:27-42
Memorizing Matthew 5:12
Reading about George Muller (His testimony of reliance on God's provision has fascinated me for years and is such an encouragement. I started to cry while reading the story about the breakfast at the orphanage.)

Our Canadian "feast": Timbits from Tim Horton's on our way home from NY

Geography: Another week in Canada. Discussion about the nature, farming, and industry of Canada and the French language. I tried to call up my 2 pitiful years of Junior High French to squeak out some pronunciation. Fortunately, the younglings looked suitably impressed and wouldn't know otherwise. We played the geography game again this time with candy corn for markers.

They also did their vocabulary card this week (continental divide.)

Science: This week we started talked about plant life, and showed how trees draw nutrients up their trunks by observing celery. Getting that celery was quite the expedition. I don't know if it's just the pre-Christmas retail slump, a sign on our declining economy, or a bigger population in our area, but the shelves are more and more empty lately. My desperate trip to the grocery store late Sunday night for celery was in vain. Bass had to run out to another store to find some. It wasn't a big deal but I'm finding more and more often that when I go shopping I can't get the items I'm looking for.

We observed our celery on a worksheet I made up. You can get one here: celery experiment sheet.

Another of my 'failed' science experiments. I can't even rig it to make it give us the intended results when I know what the results are supposed to be.

We did read the Animal Life section from Living World although I covered up the bottom of the left page and skipped over the reproduction section. We also read about Relationships Among Living Things. Soprano started the Insect sheets from The Complete Book of Animals. She loves doing them and was disappointed that I didn't assign any during our trip. I know MFW says that all sheets don't need to be completed but I think we'll try to fit them in because she enjoys them so much.

Other MFW: Wee sing: Going Over the Sea.
We were going to do the leaf print art activity but ran out of time this week. We had other activities planned for our trip to New York so I'm okay with skipping this one this week.


We didn't have a super exciting week of school work but our mini field trip made up for it. We've had great plans for mountain hikes, homemade pizza, and a trip to a natural science museum.
We spent Friday at The Wild Center in Tupper Lake, New York. It was a really cool and well designed natural museum. We watched several short films in their theater, spent some money in the gift shop, and had a few terrific hours exploring and learning. The best part were the 2 river otters, Louis and Remy. They were too fast for me to get any pictures of them though.

Touching the clouds

Meeting Stickley, a 20 lb porcupine

A Coral Mushroom (that pink thing)

Who Eats What activity

Walking in a peat moss bog

Brook Trout

On Saturday, we went horseback riding with some of my sister's friends and then had some awesome pancakes with real maple syrup. After an afternoon nap and yummy dinner of homemade pizza, we went to an itty-bitty theater and saw Dolphin Tale. It is a super sweet movie about Winter, a rescued dolphin with a prosthetic tail.
We enjoyed the Sunday service at Kim's church and lunch with some of her friends afterwards. Then the kids helped her rake leaves, and we carved pumpkins. After dinner, Soprano went to bed while Tenor played a game of War with Aunt Kim.
Unfortunately, he received a minor war wound. He had lost several of his best cards in a 'war' and in frustration threw his head backwards. He smacked it right on the edge of the wooden futon frame and gashed the back of his head pretty bad. Since it was a Sunday night and she lives more than an 1 hour from the nearest hospital, we decided to do our own first aid. A butterfly bandage or several stitches probably would have been better but it wasn't bleeding too much just continually. We applied pressure and then wrapped his head with gauze and tape.

His only comment was, "You're not going to put this on Facebook, are you, Mom?" HaHa
Of course, I am. :)

A pictorial "war" reenactment

 

 

Other than the rough ending to our trip, we had a great visit!

Linking up at at http://2ladybugsandalizard.blogspot.com/.

Disclaimer: I'm an Amazon affiliate now so clicking on links to Amazon and then purchasing items will put a few pennies into our piggy bank for future homeschool purchases. Thank you!