A Glimpse Into Our Homeschooling Life ...

Today we started our new school year - we just did a half day .... kind of an orientation thing because I needed to go over a few things that we would be doing differently this year.

One of the main new things for this year is the kids agenda/planner - a friend (sorry, can't put a name here because I can't remember which one shared this with me) told me about a planner where the kids write down what they are doing for that day and then they write down what they are going to be doing the next day.  I made up some of these kinds of pages, complete with a spot for priorities (so if they have an essay with an actual due date - they can put it there and know when it needs to be completed by) and boxes to check off when they have completed what they wrote in their agenda/planner.  We (mostly me, lol) are quite excited about this new venture ... hopefully we can keep up with it - planning ahead is something that both the kids need to learn to do.

Tomorrow we will be doing actual bookwork - still doing just half days this week, next week we will be doing full days .... including homework, I'm sure, lol.

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Charlotte has been participating in the Summer Reading Program at our local Library (this is such a wonderful (and free) activity for kids to participate in).  Each day they do new and interesting things .... for example, on Tuesday they took the kids fingerprints and told them that on Wednesday (yesterday) they were going to blow them up so that they would be easier to see.  When Charlotte told me about this, I was figuring that they were going to somehow put them under a microscope so that the kids could see them enlarged.  Nope, that isn't what they did - they put the kids fingerprints on a white balloon (on Tuesday) and when the ink was dry (on Wednesday) they blew the balloons up so that the fingerprints were enlarged!!!!!!  How cool is that?????  The kids still had to be careful with the fingerprints because the ink still smeared a bit - but what a neat way for them to be able to see their fingerprints more clearly. 

Today, they are going to try putting a wooden skewer through a blown up balloon - not sure how that one will work for them, but they're going to give it a try. 

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Well, the kids finished their Digital Photography class this week.  They did learn some things - which is always good, right, lol.  Both of them weren't fond of the classroom time but thoroughly enjoyed being out and actually taking the pictures.  I still need to download some of them so I can share some more of their pictures.

Right now we are participating in the Summer Reading Program that is hosted by our local Library - Charlotte is attending and Josh is logging the books that he is reading (he didn't want to attend ... he would be the oldest one there.  So the lady in charge said that he could submit his reading log and that would count).  It is for three weeks, three days a week ... so we have one week down and only two more to go, lol.  Charlotte is really enjoying it this year, we didn't attend last year because we were on the go way to much and I didn't want to add that extra driving to my schedule - it was a nice break for us, though.

Today, the sun is finally shining .... looks like a wonderful day for the kids to spend outside, lol.

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Last week we signed the kids up to take a Digital Photography Course - one of the ladies in our small town is teaching it and we thought that it would be a great experience for the kids.  They get both classroom time and outdoor skill development time - they told Don and I that the classroom time is a bit boring (they are the youngest in the class) but the outdoor skill development time is really good.

Here are some of the pictures that Josh took:

Josh was trying out the different settings on his camera when he took this picture.
It's my favourite one of all the ones he took yesterday.

This is a picture of the instructors daughter - she was one of the models last night.

This one is part of a bridge.

This is a picture of the barn where they were taking their pictures yesterday.

This one was taken from the instructors vehicle - she took the class out into the country so they could get some shots.

Here are some that Charlotte took:

Trying out the different color settings on her camera.

Inside the barn.

The outside of the barn and a bit of fence.

Beautiful sky shot.

I love the simplicity of this picture.

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