CD Weaving

For art last week we did weaving on a cd.  The idea came from this pinterest link.  It went over pretty well.  I prepared the cd's in advance by "warping" them so it was one less step for the kids.  The important part of this step is to make sure there's an odd number of warp threads.  I made less warp threads for the younger kids and more for the older ones - not sure if that was helpful or not.  Once that's done, the weaving begins.  I thought it was super helpful in the original instructions to make "needles" for the kids out of a plastic container.  That made the weaving so much easier.  I love how they all turned out so different.  Some of them were super thick with all the yarn piling up in the middle and some of them were more spread out and flat.  Overall I thought it was a successful art project.  Here are the results:

Fall Walk at the Stairs

We went for a nice fall walk on Friday with some friends.  We usually do art and phys ed together on Friday mornings but our usual location (our backyard) wasn't going to work this time so I suggested a walk.  The kids have been begging me to take them to the place where I walk with my mom early in the morning twice a week.  Well, actually, we don't just walk . . . we do "the stairs" up the escarpment.  So they were pretty excited when I told them we were going to the stairs.  I wasn't sure how well they would do but a couple of them went up and down (300 stairs) four times!  I was shocked.  

Lots of climbing, running, jumping and exploring went on.  It was definitely a great phys ed class!  

Denver thought this was a much easier way to go down!  Why walk when you can slide??  :)

CIBC Run for the Cure

The annual CIBC Run for the Cure took place again last Sunday all over Canada.  I've been participating in the 5K run for the past seven years and this is the second time Austin has run it with me.  I have to say, it's much more enjoyable running it with my boy than it is running alone!  Thanks for joining me Aust!  

Here's our faithful cheering team.  This year Victoria even made a sign.  

Here's a shot of the starting line.  There are so many people participating . . . it makes the beginning kind of challenging as you can hardly move for the first part of the run. 

Here we are coming in to the finish.  High fives to our cheering section!  

A total of $27 million was raised across the country in this year's run.  As long as I'm able, I will keep participating.  Next year Samara would like to join us so I may have two running buddies in 2014!  

Science

Austin and Samara are studying Astronomy this year.  I just love the Apologia Exploring Creation series.  In the past two years we've done Botany and Anatomy.  I’m enjoying the idea of focusing on one topic for the entire year.  It’s a detailed study and we learn so much.  The hands on activities are fun and simple and really bring the point home.  And they’re a nice break as we go along in the book. 

The kids’ favourite activity so far was when we were working on Unit 2 – the Sun.  It involved chocolate so Denver and Victoria also joined us for this one!  We talked about how hot and bright the sun is and how we can bend the rays of light with a magnifying glass to focus the light on a specific spot.  To show the kids how this works, we took a piece of chocolate on a plate and went outside with a magnifying glass.  Thankfully it was a nice sunny day so the experiment worked great.  The kids took their magnifying glass and place it so that the rays of the sun shone right through it, concentrating the energy of the sun's light onto a specific spot on the chocolate.  

  

 

In no time the chocolate had melted . . . in fact, Austin even burnt his!

 

Austin took it one step further and burned a hole through a leaf.  Fun stuff for a nine-year-old boy!  Don't worry, I made him promise he would never do this without supervision.  LOL!  

Victoria is also doing science this year from the Apologia series but hers is the jr. high General Science.  

She wasn't too overly excited to start it but now that she's into it, I think it's better than she thought it would be.  She's also done a few experiments and her favourite one was about density.  She had to pour equal amounts of vegetable oil, water and corn syrup into a glass - in that order. 

The corn syrup ended up at the bottom, the water on top of that and the oil at the very top.

She then gently dropped in a grape, an ice cube, a rock and a piece of cork.  It was pretty cool to see the liquids all separate and to see where each item settled to and stayed. The rock dropped right to the bottom, the grape floated on top of the corn syrup, the ice cube floated on top of the water and the cork floated on top of the vegetable oil.  

Again, it was another simple activity that made the lesson that much more interesting and memorable.  

Thank you Apologia for great curriculum written from a Christian perspective! 

The Fair

A couple of Fridays ago, we had an opportunity to attend one of the fall fairs in our area.  On this particular Friday, all teachers and students were admitted for free and that even included homeschoolers!  So off we went to the fair and met up with friends.  Unfortunately one of our friends got sick and they had to leave (we missed you MC, Y and S!)  But we had a great time walking around seeing all the different animals, crafts, shows, rides and games.  There was a lot to see and even a lot to learn about.  I appreciated some of the people there taking the time to talk to the kids about the animals and they were great at answering any questions the kids had. 

One of the highlights was holding and petting some of the little baby animals.  There were ducklings, chicks, bunnies, etc.  The kids were taught how to hold them properly and loved snuggling with them.  

Denver wasn't a big fan and didn't want to hold anything until the baby chicks were brought out.  And then he held one and was all smiles.  In fact, when everyone had a turn, he wanted to hold another one!  

Victoria's favourite part of the day was the dog show.  It was neat to see how high those dogs could jump and when we got home, Victoria started working on it with Frodo.  She had him jumping over a broomstick held up by two piles of books in no time.  

And what's a fair without a man juggling fire while walking barefoot on broken glass?

We spent a little bit of money (is that possible??) on the rides.  The kids (and me) each had a turn going down the giant slide which was a hit.  Victoria went down twice as she didn't want to ride the carousel.   

 

Denver didn't want to ride the giant slide.  He was 

determined to ride on the helicopter.  It didn't matter to him that no one else wanted to go on it . . . in fact he was the only kid on the whole ride!   As you can see from his face, he loved it!

We also enjoyed looking at all the crafts and things that kids had entered in the school fair building.  We were inspired to enter our own creations into the fair.  In fact we're working on them right now and we will enter them into another local fair on Thanksgiving weekend.