FAVORITE HOMESCHOOL PHOTOS

This is a photo essay inspired by the collage I put together in the school room earlier this week The pics range from January 2010 to January 2011. There are also some links. They will either take you to a PDF we used or to a blog post containing several PDF's on the subject and other links.
First up we have Ko-Ko and SW playing outside during our recess time. I love how well they get along now. Ko-Ko's worker at the Native center told me that Ko-Ko was talking about how her siblings are all friends now and that makes her happy.


The kids studied Volcanoes last spring and so we did the classic volcano science experiment. The unit included a section on the Icelandic volcano that was in the news at the time.
This is just last month with our snowflake unit. The kids really enjoyed this one. I remember when I wrote it hoping we would have snow. It was a strange start to winter, but now it looks like Canada outside, with more snow then needed.
We did a unit on the Rideau Canal which starts in Kingston and goes to the Canada's capitol city of Ottawa. Living by this system it would be wrong no to learn about it. We took a field trip with my Dad to several of the locks in late August.
Our city is the prison capitol. So of course we took a trip to the prison museum and learned about prisons locally and in Canada. It is a tragic history.

We also took a trip to Sir John A's house (well the one that became a museum, you know the one in the nice part of town). This is SW picking his nose (LOL). He is best known as Canada's first Prime Minister. To Native people he is the one responsible for the Red River and Northwest rebellions, and the one who ruined our way of life with his dream of a railroad.
These are our neolithic sculptures from our history study of this time period.


This is our Moon box from Science week. When you look in each hole you see a different phase of the moon. And this is one of the views from the moon box.
Also from science week was our study of Thomas Edison and his many inventions. We read a book about him inventing the future, and he really did! We built our own light bulb.
This is from our recent trip to the conservation area with our homeschool group. Here some of the kids all have their hands raised to feed the chickadees. It was amazing to watch. that is Runners back you are looking at.

During our Study of Egypt the kids did many projects. This is a comic Ko-Ko made telling of the mummification process. We also mummified a chicken, made canopic jars (SW's shown below), made a travel pamphlet of many great sites, made Lego models and much more.

This is Ko-Ko's Egyptian Statue. The people are sitting around the bottom looking at their hard work.

Here is my Dad with Runner and Indy down on the limestone flats searching for fossils. While we came up with many maybes we did find two good fossils. First we looked on the surface of a rock.. then we smashed it open in hopes that it would split in just the right place to reveal a fossil. The kids were fascinated by the thought that these smashed rocks were exposing rock that had not been exposed for millions of years!

Here is our family trip to the capitol (Ottawa-Haul). We saw many sites and visited the museum of civilizations. Below is a pic of Ko-Ko that Sunny Not took, what a photographer that girl is!Also from Science week is our earth layers project. The kids made the layers of the Earth with deserts and candies. Then they had to label their layers to get a spoon to eat it. Indy got his spoon just for participating :)
This is the kids on the bus. We take the bus many places for homeschool trips. And in the process my kids know how to use the bus. I can now tell them where we are going and they can tell me what buses and transfers we need to take. Now that is an education!
This is Indy on one of our homeschool gymnastics trips, It is a great photo I think. I have so many from these trips, but this photo essay is long enough :)
And that has been our past year. Looking at these pics makes me happy due to the memories but also seeing all the things my children are learning!