Oct.3-13 ~ EBUS Culture Day, Girl's Hockey Jamboree, Thanksgiving, Paper Mache

Fall is here!  Outdoor 'recess' means building forts in the forrest 

Ellar loves his quad! Soon a snow machine will replace it!

When I need something and I can't find it...it's usually in one of their many forts!  

Connor & Astrid <3 What a pair!  This is a 3rd fort 

These 2 weeks included a 5 day trip to Prince George, which is a 9 hour drive typically without stops.  Considering that, we crammed a lot of work into the days!!  Where to begin....

I'll start by re-introducing our fur-family members the kids are responsible for taking care of.  Our guinea pigs, Eckhart and Tolle, which we got from Whitehorse August 2015 before our 2nd homeschool year as a way of teaching the kids about living vs non-living things.  Also, our golden lab, June, who is a mild tempered, friendly, hard-working pup!  The piggies are given fresh water and food every day, timothy hay or dandelion, as well as an apple, bell pepper, or carrot, and lettuce.  They LOVE their veggies!  Their cage is cleaned weekly, the kids are learning to take on this responsibility.  June is our bear protection ~ she is the caretaker of our property <3 She also runs, plays, and hikes with us.  She's a very loyal companion! Each of the kids take turns feeding June ~ and she's a very patient animal!

Ellar and Astrid enjoyed the books Ms. Toll sent them in the mail.  Here's their work:

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Hot tub, tea, shower vs sprinkler and rain 

I'll throw in some Math here...Connor has great questions and wants to know about literally everything to do with Math.  It's difficult (but not impossible) for me to keep him engaged.  Their work has their names on it <3 Just a super brief snapshot of the fews days of work they completed because of our out-of-town field trip to Prince George!!

Ellar & Astrid are still using various methods to get straight in their heads addition & subtraction.  I often bring out the number line and a dry erase marker and let them do their math equations on it.

Ellar doing a subtraction equation

As part of Guiding, the girls are obligated to sell cookies.  Fundraising is a wonderful way to learn skills like goal setting and meeting that goal, hard work ethic, $counting money$, marketing, safety awareness, communication and sales, time management, door-to-door courtesy and kindness, customer service, teamwork, problem solving and decision making, and responsibility.  

Greta set herself a goal of selling 4 cases.  The girls have sold 12 cases each!  There are ~Cookie All Star~ reward incentives and the girls have been involved in placing flyers, door-to-door, Cookie Blitz power-hour sales, and will participate October 22nd & 23rd in a group "cookie drive thru" as well as sitting at our local grocery store to sell boxes.  

Greta's Sales Goal for Cookies

  

One of the girls' favourite parts of guiding is earning badges.  The Sparks and Guides programs are developed to help the girls build skills, friendships, and get involved in their community. 

 Volunteer work is a huge part of our family creed.  

Community service helps us by helping others ~ we get a lot out of it so it's not entirely giving, but very much receiving in value that cannot be quantified in terms of monetary value but in happiness and 'bucket filling'.  And the girl's earn cool badges. And I give them out.  I love giving, and they love receiving.  Win-win!

I'm very proud of the work ethic they are learning through guiding.  Way to go, Greta & Astrid!

The kids all continue to work with music.  Greta is enjoying the piano as well as the recorder and cello.  Ellar & Astrid are playing the recorder and the piano.  Connor is playing the saxophone, piano and cello.  They take weekly piano lessons from Mrs. Ohlmann.  Connor will soon begin guitar lessons with his Grade 4 teacher, Mr. Bradley.  Connor can play songs by ear and is a quick learner on an instrument.  I'm happy to include Music Theory once a week to Connor's routine with Mrs. Theobolt.

Something the kids do at least once a month is a self assessment.  Greta had a particular difficult time as a new class I enrolled her in, Royal Conservatory Music Theory.  After one class she was quite upset because everyone else seemed to understand and follow easily, but her.  SO, I asked her to consider a self-assessment and here's what she came up with...

 ✊ I'm so proud of her Growth Mindset and using the Power of Yet. ✊

Journey to Prince George to the EBUS Culture Day and meet our online teachers, Bonnie Toll & Geneva Standbridge!!  We made the 9 hour drive in one day.  We had a few stops along the way.  We talked more about Site C and we also stopped to do some stretches and play in Hudson's Hope!  We checked into Esther's Inn ~ a hotel both Trevor and I stayed at as kids!  Today it has partnered with Super 8, so there's a waterslide, too!

We decided to do a paper mâché art project ~ Connor was working on the brain in Science so he took a lot of time layering and drying his paper mâché!  Greta was working on the earth and habitats so she worked on the globe!  She learned a lot about continents.

Here's the process ~ we used OPTION 3 and it worked beautifully!

Connor and Greta started with a balloon!

The Paper Mâché 

Working 4 layers (max) and letting it dry completely before adding more layering.  The more layers, the stronger the finished product.  I knew Connor would take longer because of the brain folds 😎

Greta learned to easily identify the oceans, northern, southern, western, and eastern hemispheres, the equator, and relate it to the tropical & temperate rainforest.  She learned about topography and where the tallest mountains are and deepest caverns & canyons.



Her finished product :)  I have video clips on our Facebook page ~ I haven't figured out yet how to add them to the blog ha!



Connor decided his brain will be part of his halloween costume as it fits on his head 😜 We'll have to glue some foam to make it comfortable, I'm thinking!