Easter style Math

 Although the 1st term in over for the centre, we've carried on with some work.  Today we matched fractions using plastic Easter eggs.  It was a good visual to see how 10/15 is the same and 2/3 or 2/4 is the same as 1/2  - for example. 

On our advent activity for the day it was to write a Christmas story so we used that to do some Language Arts.  He printed it first then typed it and self corrected.  It's pretty basic and could use a bit of embellishing. 
He also spent some time biking and finished up his last swim lesson.

He's been continuing his chapter reports for the book Stranded by Jeff Probst as well as continuing to research adaptability traits for a living thing in each of these categories: land, air, water.   A little bit of Math Whizz thrown in and I had him use his family tree project to see who was alive between 1920-1930, listing them chronologically.  We're taking a field trip on Friday and it will be interesting to make those family connections with the time period. 

For physical activity he's been busy with his paper route, swimming, and biking.  And he's continuing his 'fun' free reading with the 4th Percy Jackson book.  I swear he just started the 3rd. 

Family Tree Project

Mckenzie and I worked together on this family tree and finished it a while ago now but we hadn't put up pictures of the completed project.  Not only did he make the traditional family tree, he also used a world map to trace where 3 family lines came from up until him.  He used coloured string to do that and also wrote out the movements along the bottom of the map (not pictured). 

He then did profiles on certain family members.  Those with stars beside their names were profiled.  Above are a couple of those profiles.  They include stories, a 5 page short story from his great great grandma retelling her life beginning in Austria at the age of 4 throughout her life as a Canadian pioneer in the early 1900's, an interview with his grandpa who became a paraplegic while still a teenager and stories of his grandfather who was a paratrooper during the war, became a POW and managed to escape the firing squad. 

He feels a great deal of pride in this project and of course we couldn't have done it without help from family members sharing information and photos with us, especially his maternal grandpa who has done extensive genealogy work. 

We'll soon be taking a field trip to the Burnaby Village Museum which is set in the 1920's.  Today he began the task of finding out who in his family tree lived during that time period and how old they were between 1920-1930.  We'll keep that in mind when we visit the museum.  Although we've been there before, we'll be looking at it differently this time, and it will all be decorated up in Christmas glory.  Should be fun. 

Can You Tell What This Is?

What about now?

 Now?

 Sour Cream overtaken by millions of little micro-organisms to create mould. 

 Micro-organism:  meaning 'small' or 'tiny' .  A micro-organism is 'tiny life' that can only be seen through a microscope.  They can do everything that other organisms do.  They are made of cells, grow and develop, reproduce and respond to their environment. 

Most micro-organisms are helpful and can be found everywhere, the air we breathe, in the soil, the food we eat and even in our bodies.  However some are harmful - like this mould we're looking at. 

It's pretty interesting actually looking at it and not just being grossed out by it and tossing it in the garbage as fast as possible.  The appearance and texture of the mould in a tiny area is so vastly different, and that's just from looking at it through a magnifying glass, imagine how interesting it would be through a microscope. 

 While the mould just happened to be an accidental lesson our actual lesson for today was 'adaptations' of animals and how these adaptations and behaviours help them survive in the world. 
That is yet another highly interesting subject once you dive in and take a closer look.  Seeing how all things were created with such intricate skills and systems and the ability to all connect together with the world around them to work together for their survival. 

I've asked Mckenzie to pick one living thing from each of the following categories:  water, land, air.  He is working on learning what features/adaptations they have in order to benefit their survival.  I believe he's picked Komodo Dragon to start with. 

This might be a good place to pull out the Planet Earth DVD's.

Microscopes

 We've moved into the area of microscopes.  Here Mckenzie is testing what happens when you place a drop of water on a clear piece of tape.  The result:  magnification.  And the bigger the drop, the more magnified the image is.  We talked about what a microscope is, how it's benefited our society, what it's used for, and 3 different kinds; simple, compound and electron. 

Today on his own he made his own version of a compound microscope by taping together 3 magnifying glasses.  It worked.  Everything in it was magnified even more than usual. 

And on a different note, the flowers, celery and coloured water experiment didn't yield too much.  The celery changed a little bit, the tips and/or leaves turned colours on the edges but not really along the stem.  And the daisies showed no difference at all.  At least not with roughly 36 hours.  I expect it would take much longer than we were willing to wait.  I needed my cups and counter space back. 

Plant Kingdom

 As we try to finish up our Unit on The Diversity of Life before the New Year we took a look at the plant kingdom.  We made note of several important details about the plant kingdom and then decided to do an impromptu experiment to see how plants would react when placed in coloured water for 24 hours.  We'll find out tomorrow.  I hope it works as planned.  The science text book just suggests using celery but we decided to also use white daisies.

Books Books and More Books

 

This is how we keep track of the books Mckenzie has read.  Or listened to since September.  He's still currently working on Percy Jackson The Titan's Curse (for fun) and Stranded (for chapter reports).  He has finished the first two Percy Jackson books as well as listened to the audio book How To Train Your Dragon and part of The Hobbit.  The Hobbit only lasted a few chapters.  He's read the book but the audio version was a bit challenging to pay full attention to in our home and the chapters were very long so it was easy to lose our spot if we weren't able to devote a very lengthy period of time to listening. 

Each coloured dot sticker represents a chapter he's completed.  On the yellow one you can see where he stacked his dots on top of each other.  I like how he changes it up every single time.  It's fun seeing the designs that come out. 

The other day I brought home C.S. Lewis  - The Magicians Nephew and The Horse and His Boy.  I'm looking forward to starting those.

Building Thinking Skills

 We bought this book at the resource center and it's got some fun and interesting exercises.  Here are a few of the pages we've done. 

The Animal Kingdom: Classes of Vertebrates

 First Mckenzie made write ups about the 5 classes of vertebrates: Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Fish, Amphibians.  That included examples for each class and also a list of characteristics for each.  We then searched through our collection of National Geographics to find examples of each. 

He began this project yesterday and finished today.  Great job Mckenzie!!

The 5 Kingdoms

 100 Brownie points!  Well, actually 101 points.  The other day he wrote so neatly (a huge feat which took a lot of time) that he got himself two brownie cards.  Today he was inspired all on his own to mimic this behaviour again.  And it worked.  His effort did not go unnoticed and he bumped himself up over the 100 mark.  He decided to make a marble cake and it sure does taste good. 

Our school days in the first part of November were a little scattered.  I had a large fundraiser that I was organising for my daughters school and it took up a lot of time.  So I enlisted Mckenzie's help in community service.  He was a great help to me. 
We still did a lot of work but not a great variety of work.  Mostly Social Studies (the big family tree project).  But we also did a bit of math and reading with chapter reports.  But it didn't feel like we did a lot, probably because our routine was off.  However, we are now back to routine.

More work on Science, specifically the 5 Kingdoms (Fungi, Monera, Protista, Plantae, and Animalia).  We often do a quick pop quiz of material covered right back from September and he's retaining it!!!  Victory! 
We're covering the Animal Kingdom right now and using a bit of family tree style work to solidify the classes within that kingdom.  First it's divided into Vertebrates and Invertebrates and then it branches off from there.  He wants to do another big project for it so we will be diving a little more in depth into the 5 classes of the Animal Kingdom (fish, reptiles, mammals, amphibians and birds) and we'll finally be able to dig into some of the very large selection of old National Geographic magazines my parents gave us.
Once we make our little info package for each class in the animal kingdom, including examples and characteristics, we will hunt for photos to support each class by using the characteristics given to determine which class they belong to. 

Family Tree

 For Social Studies we were given a theme to work with and this month the kids will be showcasing their work on families.  It could be anything they want.  Mckenzie chose to do a family tree.  He's done a lot of work.  And he still has lots to do.  Thankfully his grampa has done a LOT of work before him so we had a lot of great resources to go to.  We looked a lots of different ways to display his family tree and he decided on the fan style.  My paternal side goes all the way back to the 1720's which of course Mckenzie thought was pretty cool. 

As well as just charting the names of our ancestors he is in the process of deciding who to profile - or tell a bit of their story.  Those people are marked with a star.  He's got a fantastically descriptive and detailed story written by his Great Grandmother of her life starting in the late 1800's.  It's a wonderful glimpse into the pioneer life for new immigrants. 

And as well as the names and profiles he wants to chart their movements from Country to Country - Indiana Jones Style. 

I think the final project may not be fully complete by Tuesday but we'll keep working on it and in the end it will be a real work of art.  Below you can see that he's done lots of the fan however we're just waiting on some info for the other side.  Very interesting and inspiring to hear the stories of our heritage. 

 The early stages of work.

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Working on an art/painting project.  We used toilet paper rolls cut in half and flattened to create the shape.  He then painted to edge and stamped the paper, later filling in the colour. 

 We use these brownie points as a reward.  They can be for exceptional work, or even just a great effort.  They could be just for completing a full day of work.  Once we hit 100 points he'll get to make brownies. 

Below, in the blurry pictures we use paint swatch cards as book marks.  After each chapter he adds a sticky dot.  It's a fun way to mark progress although he doesn't need it as an incentive - he enjoys reading just for the sake of reading.  When he's done we put them on the wall and our goal by the year end is to have a whole rainbow of colours up there.  He's got 2 more in the works right now. 

Ant Colony

This was not part of our lesson plan but I wanted to keep it somewhere we could access it easily if the time comes.

Cells

Today one of our subjects was Science.  In particular, CELLS.   We just took a bite sized piece of the new material and then we did a pop quiz on some old work.  Characteristics and Needs of living things and he got 8/8.  For me, that is the real test.  Retaining the information we cover.  So who knows, maybe we are moving slow (maybe not), but what good is going fast if it's all for not?

We also watched a DVD of the ocean from the Planet Earth series.  We discussed how all of the living things are connected in one way or another.  All designed to work together and help one another which I know is a very broad statement.  He was going to write a paragraph about the connections but he had to head off to PE and we ran out of time.

Mckenzie did his Math Whizz again. 

He went to his PE class at the college

He read and did another chapter report for the book Stranded. 

We'll need to get him a new book since last night he finished Percy Jackson (the 2nd book)

Art

With Halloween around the corner we took on a day of the dead art project.  Really it's just a decorated skull.  He's not quite done.  Nothing says scary like the colour pink.

Science World Field Trip

We finally managed to get away for a field trip of our own.  Kalea had a pro-d day and the whole day was wide open so off we went.  We took in an Electricity show - again, since I know we'll be covering electricity a bit later in our Science curriculum. 

 Mckenzie wasn't quite himself yesterday so we took it easy on the lessons.  Having had memberships for a while we've seen it all many times and one of the great things about Science World is that even the things we've seen over and over can teach us or remind us of principles we use every day without even knowing it.

Above:  we spent a fair bit of time working on the brain teasers they have on the main level.  We never did figure this one out.  But he did figure one out that seemed particularly challenging - until you change your way of approach.  Maybe that's the key to most things we often find challenging - change our point of view.  It's fun to watch the kids working things out in their minds and with their hands.  We can easily underestimate their ability to solve tricky 'puzzles' when sometimes it's the kids who have the easiest time solving them because of their fresh minds that haven't been programmed to only look at things in one way. 

Elaborate costumes made entirely from plastic bags. 
Checking out the new Amped exhibit

Queens Park Greenhouse Field Trip

 We've lived very close to these greenhouses for years and we know the previous caretakers but we've never actually been to the greenhouses.  On Thursday we finally got to see all the goodness inside.  I'm a huge fan of succulents so I was in for a real wonderful surprise.  I think Mckenzie felt a bit more casual about it.  But aside from it being so fun to see all the gorgeous succulents it was a great field trip for more than just his Architectural Landscape class; it was great for us because as you know we've been doing lots about the diversity of life.  Seeing so many different plants and flowers (not so many flowers because of the season), was a good conversation starter to discuss the many ways we could classify all the amazing creation around us. 

 Each child was able to plant their own succulent to take home (and the parents too!!!).  What a nice way to end the tour.  All the kids did a great job of planting, they all looked so great.