We decided to hire a moving man to help us move to our new house - he was short but he worked hard!
Our new baby neighbour.
For some reason our family seems to love playing games with big maps. We like to dream that one day we’ll get to travel to all places we visit on the boards.
Catan Histories: Struggle for Rome
This is our new favourite game inspired of course by Cassius’ interest in Rome. This is one of those games that you could leave out (if you didn’t have a Paris) and play for days.
Paris was a little disappointed in our choice for his birthday present. He would have preferred something more like this:
The University of California Berkeley has put entire course lectures
on YouTube. You can watch all of the lectures from several different
courses for free. They are also planning on expanding the available
courses.
Cassius and I have really been enjoying listening to these audio books from the University of Florida. They have stories for ages kindergarten to grade twelve. Cassius transfers the stories onto his little mp3 player and listens to them has he builds Lego and before he falls asleep. He really enjoyed the Invisible Man by H.G.Wells and is looking forward to Dracula and Frankenstien (a little light summer listening).
go to http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/
or if you have iTunes:
- Open iTunes program
- Click to go to the iTunes Store
- Click on iTunes U on the left sidebar
- On the lower left sidebar is a list entitled, “Universities”.
- Find and click University of South Florida
- Click on the icon of the little boy, “College of Education”.
- In the center bar, find Lit2Go:Audio Files for k12
- It automatically opens the Spanish language resources. Click the
grade above.
Robert Louis Stevenson, Longfellow, Bronte, Austin, Dickens, Twain,
Frances Hodges Burnett, Bram Stoker, Aesop–it’s quite an extensive
collection. Plus lectures on mathematics and logic for high school
students. There are 24 universities listed, so if it’s a lecture on
Science, Technology and Society from MIT you’re wanting, this is the
place to go.
Mandala Area & Position in Learning Cycle
(Spiral): Seed > Root > Plant > Flower >
Languaging: Flower / Accomplished
Humanities: Flower / Accomplished
Math: Plant / Developing Proficiency
Science: Flower / Accomplished
Wellness: Flower / Accomplished
Creativity: Flower / Accomplished
LANGUAGING (LANGUAGE ARTS) Flower / Accomplished
Learning Successes:
Cassius joyfully and successfully surpassed all of the Learning Plan goals and completed many of the recommended Languaging skills and concepts for his age and beyond. He possesses strong communication skills. When speaking to Cassius over the phone and in person, it was a pleasure, he is very communicative and quite funny and friendly, he presented himself confidently, comfortably, and articulately. Read the rest of this entry »
Paris’ Train Party at the Burnaby Central Railway was a big deal to him. He woke up every day for about two months saying “Train party today?” When I asked him what he wanted for a present he would say “Cake!” Then when he was opening his present from Cassius (a little train engine Cassius has picked out and paid for all on his own) he asked, “Cake inside?” Not surprisingly most of his attention at the party was split between watching the trains and looking at his beautiful train cake from Aunty Lana. He sat on the bench most of the time, just watching - but I could tell he was thrilled!
My sister recently interviewed my friend Sandy, who is the mother of two grown unschooled boys. (She also plays a wicked violin!)
Q: How did you first become interested in homeschooling?
Sandy: That goes back a long way. I was working in Toronto in the 70’s and I read this book called “And the children played” by Patricia Loudry, she’s from England, she’s a comic and a playwright. She was living in England and she was raising her kids and she decided she would make a little school in their house in the country anyway the kids just played. It was an inspiring book. And I thought well it’s a great idea, but? … they had this manor in the country with theatre and interesting people visiting, all very rich, cultural, stuff going on. And um a young woman who was student at a college in London…came to this daycare that I was working at the was a bit alternative and she was doing something about alternative education and she looked very familiar but I couldn’t place her and it turns out, this about two weeks after I just finished reading the book and it was still in the kitchen of the daycare, and so it turned out she was the second to youngest daughter of Patricia Loudry and I had seen her picture when she was 12 or 13 in the book. She was just so articulate and self-posed and aware and I thought okay the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So I actually met someone back in the late 70’s who had actually grown-up without school and seemed to be doing very fine thank-you very much. …. So that is sortive where it started. Way back when, even before I met Michael.
Cassius had a lot of fun doing this money quiz game
