What Makes Our Book Club Special

What comes to your mind when you hear Book Club? Most people think about a group of people reading the same book together and getting together to discuss the book they are reading.

Well, that's not how our book club works. The photo above of the notice I posted on Facebook about our group before our first meeting gives an idea of how our group works. We do not have a set book to read. We all read whatever we want, and when we get together we take turns sharing a bit about whatever we are presently reading, or have recently read.

One of our members recently posted the following quote from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society to our Facebook Group Page saying that this sounds like our group, and it really does!

None of us had heard about the Guernsey book when we started our group but it has become a very special book to our group.

I read the book in November and shared it to the group. Since then it has been making the rounds in our group. Some of us enjoyed it more than others, but we can all see how certain quotes from the book apply to us.

I posted the following quote to our FaceBook Group page from the book while I was still reading it because it reminded me so much of what happens in our meetings:

When someone talks about a book at our meeting it makes others think of other books and by the end of the evening we have talked about a lot of books!

We call our group "Let's Talk Books!" because that's what we do.

Another really neat thing about our group is that we all have such different taste in books. We end up talking about historical fiction, science fiction, romance, non-fiction, etc. Every night a great variety of genres end up being discussed. You may see that more clearly in future posts as I am considering posting a list of the books we discuss each week.

While this type of book club may not be for everyone, it is perfect for us. We all love to read, and we don't want to be told what to read. We want to read whatever we want whenever we want, and this way we can.

That's what makes our book club special.

My First Juices and Smoothies by Amanda Cross

My fourth book for 2017 was My First Juices and Smoothies by Amanda Cross.

This book caught my attention when I was looking through the juvenile shelves of our local library looking for books for my daughter. My daughter gave me a blender for Christmas and we had been looking for smoothie recipes to try out so I decided to check it out.

In reality this book was mostly about juicing, with a small section on smoothies, but it did succeed in getting me interested in juicing. I did get some ideas for smoothies from this book, but not as much as I was hoping.

Do you have any favourite smoothie recipes?

Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda

My third book read in 2017 was Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda. I listened to an audio version using the OverDrive app. The book was published April 2016. The hardcover of the book has 288 pages and the audio is a little over 6 hours of listening. It tells the behind the scenes story of the creation and production of the Broadway Musical Hamilton.

I learned about this book from Trudy Morgan-Cole's Top Ten Books of 2016. I have obviously lived with my head in the sands because I had not heard anything about the musical, but I decided to check the book out anyway.

I'm sure that if I knew more about the show and the people involved in the production, and even about the historical people and events the play is inspired by, I would have enjoyed the book even more than I already did, because I did enjoy it.

Part of the thing that I enjoyed was getting a look at the creative process play writers go through. I think this interested me so much because my youngest daughter joined a youth theatre group a couple of years ago and has acted in a few plays so I had some experience with some of the behind the scenes of plays but nothing of this magnitude.

Reading the book has made me want to learn more about the present day and the historical people connected to the play. I'd love to be able to see the show, but I know that is an impossibility. I have, however, recently discovered that our library system has the CD's of the play and I'm anxiously awaiting listening to those, though I know it will be nothing like seeing the play in person.

Thanks, Trudy Morgan-Cole, for exposing me to this book. By the way, if you haven't read anything by Trudy, you are missing out. I have gushed about Trudy Morgan-Cole many times in the past. Do yourself a favour - go check out her blog and her books.

The Right to be Cold by Sheila Watt Cloutier

My second read for 2017 is The Right to be Cold by Sheila Watt-Cloutier. I actually started reading it Christmas Eve, but didn't finish it until January 8. I read an ebook version on the OverDrive app.

I heard about this book from the Canada Read 2017 longlist. I didn't realize that it was non-fiction, really a memoir, when I started it, but it didn't take long to figure that out.

I took loads of notes while reading this. Loads. I learned a lot, and I'm left with a lot to think about.

The first quote I took was from the introduction:

To live in a boundless landscape and a close-knit culture in which everything matters and everything is connected is a kind of magic.

In the book Sheila explains a little about the magic of their way of life, until others came into the picture and things changed.

The following quote, also from the introduction, is the most succinct statement about the changes:

...while many of the changes are positive, the journey into the modern world was not an easy one - and it has let it's scars.

Sheila shares about how these changes affected her family. So many different factors that affected them in so many different ways.

Another quote from the introduction sums up another prominent topic in the book:

The land that is such an important part of our spirit, our culture, and our physical and economical well being is becoming a precarious place for us.

Sheila shares information about the roles she played in different organizations to help make people aware of the affects of global warming and climate change on the Arctic and trying to come up with plans to help protect it.

The following quote sums up the history and present day struggles of the Inuit in the Arctic:

Missionaries, fur traders and governments had fought over the Arctic for decades to further their own self-interest: converting us to their religion, pressuring us to build their trade or using us to establish their sovereignty. In the  process, our well-being and our way of life were sacrificed. Here again, scientists, consultants and lawyers were busy pushing forward their own agenda.

While I did find the book a bit tedious at times with all the detail and all the acronyms of all the different organization, I also found it interesting and informative. There are many more quotes I'd love to share, but I'll leave it at that for now.

I would love to see this as one of the books on the short list for Canada Reads this year because I'd love to hear some discussion about it.  I guess we'll have to wait and see if it makes it or not.

January Mindcraft Challenge Calendar

I have a girl obsessed with MindCraft. If I let her alone she would spend all day and night on it.

I can't make head nor tails out of it! It makes absolutely no sense to me.

Thanks to Pam Barnhill's Homeschool Solutions FaceBook page, I recently discovered a January Mindcraft challenge calendar created by Colleen, the blogger at RaisingLifelongLearners.com/. It is a printable list of challenges of things to create in mindcraft.

I'm using it as a bribe to get my daughter to finish her school work. She's allowed to work on the challenge for the day when she's finished her work. It's working like a charm.  😀

How I Came to be Part of an Amazing Local Book Club

Have you ever been a part of a book club? I never have, but I've always wanted to be. Listening to the Canada Reads debates and the What Should I Read Next postcast made me want it even more. I really wanted a group of people to talk books with.

I tried to find information about a local book club but couldn't find any, so for a long time I just dreamed of being a part book club.

Then, one day, I decided to do something about it. August 24, 2016 I posted this to my FaceBook page:

Before the night was out I had 9 people express interest! I was so excited! Most of the people interested were from our community or a community close by, but some were further away. I quickly set up a Facebook group page for those that were interested to discuss and make plans for how we wanted to do things and told them about it in a comment on my first post.

Two days later I had set the date for our first in-person meeting at our local library. Our librarian had seen my post and messaged me to offer up the library as a place for us to meet. I decided to post to my page again sharing my excitement about the response and inviting anyone else that might be interested to join, either in person, or online, or both. A few more people did join us.

Our first meeting took place on a Tuesday night, but the next meeting was on a Thursday night and we've been meeting faithfully on Thursday nights every since. I think there have only been a few Thursday nights that we didn't meet.

Thursday became my favourite day of the week! 😀

Along with our in-person meetings, we also still make use of our FaceBook Group page. I'll share more about how we use that in another post.

If you carefully read the notice I posted to my FaceBook page about our first meeting, you'll see that our bookclub is not like what most people think of when they think of a book club.

I'll tell you more about that in another post too. For now, I'm off to enjoy my bookclub night!

Canada Reads 2017 Longlist

The longlist for the 2017 Canada Reads was announced December 23, 2016.  Here's a screenshot of the list from the Canada Reads website.

Fifteen books and I hadn't read one of them.

I was surprised by the variety of genres of books on the long list. They include fiction, memoirs, a poetry book, dystopian science fiction, fantasy, and a comedy.

I checked which ones were available from our library system on the OverDrive app. Only 5 available, and some of them were already wait listed. The five on OverDrive are:

The Break by Katherena Vermette

Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis

The Right to be Cold by Sheila Watt-Cloutier

Today I learned it Was You by Edward Riche

Waiting For First Light by Romeo Dallaire

My plan is to at least read those five, but I won't get them all done before the short list is announced so we'll see what happens. So far I've read The Right to be Cold and I am presently reading The Break. I'll tell you more about both of those books, and any others I read, in future posts.

With the wide variety of genres on the list, it will be interesting to see which ones make the cut. Hopefully it will be some of the ones that I manage to read before the short list is announced. The short list will be announced January 31.

Have you read any of these books? Which ones do you think will make it?

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

My first book read in 2017 is Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

One of my friends listed this book as one of her favourite books read in 2016, so I decided to check it out. I listened to an audio version on the OverDrive app. The book alternates its point of view between the three main characters. The audio version is read by Audra McDonald, Cassandra  Campbell, and Ari Fliakos, each providing a voice for one of the main characters. There were lots of twists to kept my interest. This was my first experience with this author and I really enjoyed it.

The language, especially when told from the viewpoint of Turk, was a bit jarring at times, but I'm pretty sensitive to language.

If I had been reading, instead of listening to, the book I'm sure I would have had quotes to share. I thought there were lots of "quotable moments". I tend to not take notes as thoroughly, and sometimes don't take notes at all, when I'm listening to a book. The book gave me lots to think about regarding racism, right and wrong, and justice.

When I shared about the book at my recent Let's Talk Books bookclub meeting (you will learn more about the bookclub in a future post) I was surprised that many of the people present expressed a negative opinion of the author. My first experience with her has been great.

If you have read Small Great Things, or anything else by Jodi Picoult, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

What was your first read for 2017?

How I listen to the What Should I Read Next Podcasts

A few days ago in my post How a Podcast Got Me Excited About Reading Again I told you about my love for the What Should I Read Next podcast and I promised to tell you about how I listen to, and take notes from, the podcasts. Here's the scoop.

In that post I explained a bit about the podcasts. Here's what I said:

Each week on the podcast Anne talks about books and reading with a guest. Most of the podcasts follow the same format. The guests tell Anne about three books they loved, one book they hated and what they are presently reading. Anne then recommends three books she thinks they might enjoy. That's at least eight books talked about in each episode, but they usually end up talking about way more than eight books.

I listen to the podcasts with my notebook and pencil in hand and record the books mentioned. I put a little heart with either the number 1, 2, or 3 inside it next to the guests 3 favourites. I put on x next to the one they hate, or dislike. I put RN next to the titles they are reading now. I put a circle with either the number 1, 2, or 3 inside it next to the books Anne recommends to them.

Once I have made note of the books mentioned in the podcast I check to see which of the books are available through our public library system and make note of that.

As I am mostly an ebook reader, I first of all check to see which titles mentioned are available through the library on the OverDrive app. (I share more about the app in my post How An App Helped Me Read More) I put an OD by the titles that are available as ebooks, and an "OD+a" if a title is available as an audio book.

Then I check to see which of the remaining books are available at our library or in our provincial library system. I note beside the title which library it is available from.

Whenever I need a new book to read I check through my What Should I Read Next podcast notes for suggestions. Many, many of the books I've read this past year have come from these notes.

I was debating punching all the info I recorded while listening to last year's podcast into a spreadsheet of some sort for easy reference. Then I thought maybe I'd just start doing that with this year's podcasts and not bother with going back to add in last year's podcast info. Then, when I settled in to listen to the first What Should I Read Next Podcast of 2017, I had another idea and I've completely changed how I do things! I'll tell you more about that soon.

Canada Reads, another factor in my revived interest in reading

Have you heard about Canada Reads? Have you taken the time to check it out?

WikiPedia says:
Canada Reads is an annual "battle of the books" competition organized and broadcast by Canada's public broadcaster, the CBC. 

It's been going on since 2002!

I'm not sure when I first heard about Canada Reads, but the last couple of years, especially, I have made it a point to check it out. Listening to the debaters talk about the books makes me want to read more, so I can talk about books like they do.

I know I watched the 2012 Canada Reads because I remember the debaters. I knew of Alan Thicke and Arlene Dickson before the debate started and enjoyed seeing them talk about books. I hadn't heard of Shad before but was really impressed with him in the debate.

I think the only Canada Reads book I read that year was Prisoner of Tehran, and it was the first book voted off.

It appears I first posted about Canada Reads on Facebook in 2014

I didn't know any of the defenders in the 2014 Canada Reads and I don't remember any of the debates, but I guess I listened to at least some of them because I posted that I was listening to them - unless I lied. 😀

The only Canada Reads book I read that year was Annabel. I chose to read that one because the author was a Newfoundlander, like myself.

In 2015, this was my only post on FaceBook about Canada Reads:

I remember watching at least some of the debates that year. Once again I hadn't heard of any of the 2015 Canada Read Defenders.

I read one of the Canada Reads books that year, Ru, and started to read The Inconvenient Indian but didn't finish it.

And then last year I was really trying to drum up some interest in Canada Reads amongst my FaceBook friends. I posted this the day the Canada Reads 2016 short list came out.

Once again I didn't know any of the debaters and hadn't read any of the books but I set to work.

I posted this after the first day of the debate:

And then this at the end of the debate:

I was really trying hard to get people interested!

I'll tell you more about the books I read for Canada Reads 2016 in another post as this one is getting really long.

The short list for the 2017 Canada Reads hasn't been announced yet, but they did post a Canada Reads 2017 long list on December 23, 2016. I finished one book from that list tonight. I'll tell you about it in another post.

So, have I stirred up any interest in Canada Reads? I promise you that you will here about it again on my blog because I love it! It has inspired me to get reading.

How an App Helped me Read More

Have you heard about OverDrive? If you are a reader and haven't check it out, you are missing out. It's a great way to read, and/or listen to, books for free!

Did you see that? Enjoy books for FREE!

I do most of my reading on Overdrive. I love it!

Read on to learn more.

From the OverDrive site:

OverDrive is a free service offered by your library or school that lets you borrow eBooks, audiobooks, and more from their digital collections. Every OverDrive collection is slightly different because each library or school staff picks the digital content they want for their collection.
All you need to get started with free digital titles from OverDrive is an internet connection and a library card or student ID.

Did you notice that very exciting part? Let me repeat it -

All you need to get started with free digital titles from OverDrive is an internet connection and a library card

While I use the OverDrive app, you don't have to download an app to enjoy OverDrive. You can just use the website on your computer, as explained in this quote from their site:

For many eBooks, audiobooks, and videos, you won't need to install any extra software to start reading, listening, or watching what you've borrowed. With OverDrive Read, OverDrive Listen, and OverDrive's streaming video, you can just open and enjoy these titles in your browser.

As I said, I use the OverDrive App. It's a free app that can be installed on most handheld devices.
Another quote from their site:

Install the free OverDrive app to find, borrow, and enjoy titles on popular devices, including:

• Android (including Kobo, NOOK, and Samsung tablets)

• Chromebook

• iOS (iPhone/iPad/iPod touch)

• Kindle Fire tablets

• Windows Phone

• Windows 8 (compatible with Windows 8, RT, and 10)

I've been using the OverDrive app for over a year now and I seriously love it! I can get all kinds of books on all kinds of topics without leaving my house, and for free! As soon as I finish one book I can download another to start right away.

Now, if you're not a fan of ebooks, you might think that OverDrive is not for you, but wait!

One of my favourite ways to use OverDrive is to listen to audio books. I'm in the process of trying to figure how many of the books I enjoyed this year were actually audio books. I didn't always specify the format when I added them to my list of books read. And, yes, I do count audio books as books read. Some people don't, but I do.

I listen to books while I'm cooking, housecleaning, driving, etc. I love it! I think sometimes listening to an audio book is even better than reading the book. I'll probably share more about that in another post sometime, but for now just know that even if you don't like ebooks, you still might enjoy OverDrive.

I would never have been able to read all the books I did this year without OverDrive.

If you haven't already, go check it out. Let me know what you think.

French Fun on Friday!

I absolutely adore alliteration. 😀

We had so much fun today learning French! Actually, with this new way that we've been doing some French learning lately, we have fun almost every time we do French.

Let me explain.

I live in Canada. Canada has two official languages - English and French. I would love to be fluent in both languages, but I'm not.

Recently I came up with a fun idea to include some French learning into our day. And it's so simple!

We borrow a French children's book from our library and use Google "French to English Translation", pictured below, to translate the book from French to English one sentence at a time.

It might sound a bit tedious and boring, but we are loving it. First we try to guess what the sentence might say before we type it in to find out what the translation actually is. We are slowly starting to recognize more and more words.

When you type in a word, phrase, or sentence, you are also given the option to listen to it spoken. We listen to it and then try to repeat it. We have to listen many times and often break a longer sentence down into single words or phrases to make it easier to pick out, but we are really enjoying it!

This is the book we are presently working on translating. It's a book of poems. We haven't made it all the way through our first poem yet but we have picked up words and phrases from it that we are trying to incorporate into our day.

It's a slow and steady progress, but we are enjoying it, and as we learn to recognize more and more words it will get faster and easier.

Plus, it gets us reading more books, and French books at that! 😀

How a podcast got me excited about reading again

Have you heard about the What Should I Read Next podcast? If not, you are missing out.

I was lucky enough to discover the What Should I Read Next podcast just when it started, and I have been a faithful listener from the beginning.

The first episode of the What Should I Read next podcast was broadcast January 12, 2016. I debated waiting to post this post on the one year anniversary date, but I couldn't wait.

This was my FaceBook post on January 13, 2016

This was my post a few weeks later:

Clearly, I was hooked.

Each week on the podcast Anne talks about books and reading with a guest. Most of the podcasts follow the same format. The guests tell Anne about three books they loved, one book they hated and what they are presently reading. Anne then recommends three books she thinks they might enjoy. That's at least eight books talked about in each episode, but they usually end up talking about way more than eight books.

Occasionally there is a special episode that follows a different format. Every once in a while she does an episode that features feedback from past guests about what they thought of the books Anne suggested.

Listening to the discussions about the guests reading habits and the books they read got me excited about reading, and also gave me ideas of books to read. Many of the books that I read last year I learned about on the What Should I Read Next podcasts.

If you are looking to kick start your reading and get some ideas of what to read, check it out. I'd love to hear what you think.

I haven't missed an episode of the podcast, and I have notes from most, if not all, of them. Be watching for a future post where I outline just how I listen to, and take notes from,  the What Should I Read Next podcasts.

Edit: As promised, here's my post about How I Listen to the What Should I Read Next Podcast

Today's Library Loot

We went to the library today. This is what I came home with.

Get Well Wishes by June Cotner - we try to do some poetry reading every day, that's the reason for this book.

365 Stories and Rhymes for Girls - another book to use for poetry reading time.

My First Juices and Smoothies by Amanda Cross - I got a blender for Christmas so I'm on the lookout for smoothie recipes.

Haunted Canada 3 by Pat Hancock - Anna wanted to get this one but I wanted to check it out first.

Poemes des Villes and Poemes Des Champs by Edith Bourget - yes, that is a french book. We've been having some fun adding some french to our days by getting a french book and using google to help us translate it. It's also a poetry book so it serves double purposes.

I may share more about these books individually after I've read them. Then again, I may not.  :-)



(Way back in January of 2010 I started doing Library Loot posts inspired by a meme another blogger had started encouraging bloggers to share books they'd checked out from the library. Back then the majority of the books I checked out were children's books to read to my youngest, but occasionally I'd get a book or two for me. My youngest now checks out her own books, but the books I check out are still often ones I'm checking out for her. I did the meme fairly faithfully for 2010 but that was it. Preparing for this post I researched to see if the meme was still going and found it is, though it now has different hosts. You can find the Library Loot meme by clicking on the words. I've decided not to participate in the meme but I will borrow the phrase as a title for my posts occasionally.)

How getting riled up led me to my best year of reading

Exactly a year ago today I posted this to my FaceBook timeline:

Shortly afterwards a FaceBook friend posted this:

I have no idea if this post was a reaction to my post or not, but I took it that way.

Being the sensitive soul that I am, I felt a little snubbed by this reaction.

When I read the comments to the FaceBook friend's post I felt even worse.
Someone responded:

Someone else responded:

And someone responded to that response with:

Now, in all fairness to the commenters, none of these remarks were directed at me, but they stirred up a fire in me. It's amazing how off-handed remarks can do that.

I was tempted to respond, but I restrained myself. The funny thing is that I really think that that whole thing helped me to have one of the best years every in regard to number of books read.

There were other factors that led to my great year of reading, and I'll share more about them in other posts, but for now, I just needed to get this off my chest.

I know that there are people that read a lot more than me, and there are people that read a lot less than me. It doesn't bother me one way or the other. I would never belittle someone for their reading goals. I think it is important to encourage everyone to simply read. It doesn't matter what you read or how much you read. Just read.

I looked on the challenge I posted not so much as a challenge to read 12 books but as a challenge to read a variety of books. 

I have always loved to read. I have seldom set reading goals, last year, however, I decided to set a goal. I reactivated my GoodReads account and set a goal for the 2016 Reading Challenge. I think I did originally set my goal at 12 books, but I kept changing the goal as I surpassed it, until I finally decided I didn't care about the goal, I just wanted to read, so I stopped changing my goal and just read. In the end I ended up reading 104 books! And I read a wide variety of books.

So, having such a great year of reading is great, but here's the important lesson in all of this - If you are riled up about something, put the energy into accomplishing something rather than responding in a negative way. You'll be so much better off for it.

And another thing, why not consider setting a reading goal this year, even if it's just to finish one book this year, or one book a month, or whatever will get you reading. That's the important thing. Not how many books you read, but just that you read.

Be Real

That's my theme for 2016. Not sure what that will entail, but that's what I'm going with. It could get messy. I guess we'll see.

Weekly Wrap-up: break from texts, but not from learning

We are taking a break from our regular schedule and books for the whole month of December, but that does not mean that we are taking a break from learning.

Bible

During the month of December Anna and I are attempting to memorize the part of the Christmas story that can be found in the Bible in the book of Luke, chapter 2 verses 1-14. We were a little late starting but we're doing okay. This week we managed to memorize verses 1-3. We are using Scripture Typer to help us. We started with verse one on its own. When we had that one memorized we started on verse two. When we had verse two memorized we put verse one and two together and deleted them as individual verses. Then we started working on verse three while still reviewing verses 1-2. We will continue this process throughout the month and hopefully memorize the whole passage by the end of the month, if not before.

Art

Lots of different art activities happened this week. Here's a sampling of some of it:

Completed following the steps on the How to Draw Baby Jesus page at Art for Kids.

This one was done using the Doodle app on her IPad and following the Step by Step Drawing Lessons to draw a drum

Paper lanterns made using the How to Make a Paper Lantern Wiki and the How to Make Paper Lantern With 2 Copy Papers YouTube video

Language Arts

We've had fun completing Christmas themed worksheets of all kinds from education.com. We did a reading comprehension exercise, a choose the correct spelling activity, an alphabetizing exercise, a word search, and an unscramble the words activity. Anna was getting a little frustrated with unscrambling the words so I suggested we use scrabble tiles to help and she really enjoyed that.

We are doing the Adventures in Odessey Advent activities, which include listening to, and discussing, an audio program most days. Along with that we have been watching and discussing, a different Christmas/winter themed movie most days. So far we've watched Frozen, Golden Winter, Elf, Christmas Comes to Canaan, Home Alone 1, The Town Christmas Forgot, Wind at My Back Christmas, and An Avonlea Christmas.

Math

Christmas themed work sheets from education.com were also used for Math. Anna struggled a bit with a word problem sheet but it made me realize that I should be doing more of these with her. Once she recovered from the frustration of not immediately understanding what she should do she did good with it. She had no problem with the Sudoku game sheet. Anna got some practice with money values through counting her money and going to the store and buying something herself. She was pretty proud of that. :-) we also covered some fractions as we did some baking and discussed 1/4, 1/3, and 1/2 cups and teaspoons.

Music

We have been working through a 5 Days of Christmas Carols Unit Study and really enjoying it. We're sad that is finished. I'm thinking we're going to continue on with doing a Christmas song a day ourselves for the rest of the month. The unit study covered Carol of the Bells, Away in a Manger, The Little Drummer Boy, Angels We Have Heard on High, and Come oh Come Emmanual. We learned about one song each day and listened to a number of different versions of the songs, printed out the lyrics, and tried singing them ourselves. It was great fun!

Social Studies

Using a couple of different resources - The Christmas Around the World Unit Study and the Online Interactive World Advent Calendar 2013 - we are learning about how Christmas is celebrated around the world. Anna loves finding each place on our wall map and finding the flag for each country on the border around our wall map before we add a flag ornament to a house plant that we are decorating as we do this study. We have also been making ornaments, crafts, and baking suggested by information about the different countries. So far we've covered Malta, New Zealand, China, Wales, Japan, Russia, and Great Britian.

 

And that is the learning that has taken place during our break this week. :-)

 

Weekly Wrap-up Posts inspired by Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-up Meme. Check out her wrap-up for this week and scroll down to see the links to check out weekly wrap-ups from others.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Weekly Wrap-up: Power Outages result in plan changes

It has been another crazy week weather-wise. We've gone from snow covered grounds to flooding and back to snow covered grounds; from wearing winter coats and boots to spring coats and boots and back to winter coats and boots. Crazy times! One day this week we were without power for most of the day, with the power flicking on for a bit but quickly disappearing again. That particular day we chose to stay cuddles under the blankets in bed to stay warm, and we brought our school work in bed with us. It ended up being a pretty fun day.
Bible
Anna continued to use the Bible.Is app most of the week and read/listened to chapters 5-8 of Matthew with it. Then she discovered the newly released YouVersion Bible App for Kids and devoured it. She worked her way through all the stories presently available on the app and hen proceeded to go through them all again. She loves it. I have informed her, however, that while she is welcome to play with the app as much as she wants in her free time it does not count as Bible reading and she must continue to do additional Bibke reading. She seemed to understand.
Once again she seems to have come to a stand still in learning scriptures and hasn't added any new verses. I have a plan to help with that next month.
Art
Anna made a beautiful art project in her art class at the recreation Center this week. She decided to give it to her sister and she loves it. Anna suggested she could use the box to hold her CDs.

Anna also did a couple of art projects on her own at home. She made a doghouse for her new stuffed dog and also made her a food and water bowl and a bone. :-)

I absolutely love this picture that she did all on her own. She was inspired one day by the view out our back patio door.

Language Arts (Reading, Writing, Spelling, Grammar)
We learned about adverbs and reviewed adjectives while completing lessons 45-49 in First Language Lessons. We also did a picture narration and learned how to address a post card.
We made our way through review test 3 of level A of Spelling Power. Anna struggled with a lot of the words in the last few groups of words and I expected her to struggle more with the review test but it seems she may finally have mastered many of these words.
We layed aside our formal writing program this week and writing was done through our other subjects.
We have been listening to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and we're almost finished it. We are enjoying this recording.
Math
Math continues to be a favourite time for Anna as we continue to play games to help her learn the facts. Anna came up with another new game this week. Its a card game to practice doubles. You have to try to get pairs and you must tell what the pairs add up to when you lay them down. She also decided to add a bit of French to her math lessons. She insists that we say the numbers in French. She uses a French app to help her with the numbers. Somehow or another multiplication came up this week and we spent a bit of time playing around with that concept with the cusinaire rods. I've been encouraging her to do more of the writing for math and most days we end up with a sheet like this one from one day this week. On this sheet she recorded the answer to a How Much Money game, five addition puzzles, and practiced writing some numbers as I called them out. I wrote the multiplication and addition sentences at the bottom as we discussed them.

Music
The only structured music this week has been her piano practice, which she continues to do great with. Other than that Anna has been almost constantly in song, singing her own made up tunes.
Science
We are really enjoying our Exploring Creation With Zoology 1. We are learning about the five different kinds of feathers and the importance of each kind. It has been very interesting.
Social Studies
We finished Chapter 11 and 12 in Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages. Anna did great on the tests for both chapters. We learned about the early history of France and Spain.
And that's it for this week. We are taking a cue from the power outrageous and we are changing things up a bit next month. Stay tuned to see how it turns out.
Weekly Wrap-up Posts inspired by Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-up Meme.

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Weekly wrap-up: sloppy inside and out

The weather is starting to get sloppy here. It fluctuates between sunshine, rain, and snow. It kind our mirrors our homeschool this week. There have been great moments, okay moments, and extremely frustrating moments. I'm choosing to try to learn from the frustrating moment and then trying to forget them, concentrating more on the great moments. :-)

No weekly wrap-up last week; we took the week off because my sister was visiting.

 

Bible

Anna completed the Courageous Kid's Bible reading plan in YouVersion and, as she couldn't find any other reading plans that included videos, decided to take a break using YouVersion. Instead she decided to do her daily Bible reading using the Bible.Is app. She is using the NIV dramatized version and she listens to the audio while following along with the text on the iPad. She listened to chapter 1-4 of Matthew this week.

She's been kind of slack with her Scritpure memory. She has only been reviewing a verse or two and not adding any new ones. I need to encourage her more with that.

Art

Anna did a neat picture at her art class at the community center this week.

At home our art time has been taken up with fingering knitting. Anna loves it! We started with one finger knitting and have moved on to four finger knitting.

Here are some projects she made with one finger knitting - the two top pictures show a bracelet she made. The bottom. Left picture is a small wash cloth she made for one of her miniature figurines. I showed her how to sew the string into a circle. The bottom left picture is a collar she made, using a thicker wool, for her stuffed dog.

Here's her first attempt at four finger knitting. We made it into a headband.

 

Language Arts (Reading, Writing, Spelling, Grammar)

We completed lesson 41- 45 in First Language Lessons. We learned about indirect quotations and review the four kinds of sentences, parts of speech, direct quotations and titles of respect.

We made it through group 17 words in Spelling Power. She flicked through most of them but there are a few that she struggled with so that it took most of the week to actually be done with whole list.

The copy work, narration, and dictation exercises in Writing With Ease this week were based on passages from 101 Dalmations. Anna has seen the movie a couple of times and she also has a couple of different picture books based on the story so the story is very familiar to her. I'm not sure if we'll take the time to read the original book or not.

We finished reading Pippi Longstocking together this week and I found a Pippi Longstocking movie available on YouTube. Anna enjoyed watching that and comparing the scenes to the chapters in the book. The movie was quite different from the book.

Math

We are continuing to play games to review facts and money values. This week I decided to start each math session with a couple of quick review activities. The first activity reviews counting money. I simply place a handful of coins on the table and Anna has to figure out how much money it is. I write down the amount after she's figured it out to get her used to reading the amount. The other activity is for reviewing facts. I take a handful of cusinaire rods from the bag and arrange them into addition problems. Anna has to figure out the answers. The first part of the week I wrote out the equations as she figured the out but the last part of the week I had her write out the equations herself. She continues to enjoy playing Go to the Dump, Math War, and Capture the Looney.

Music

We didn't pick a song to learn this week. Instead Anna's been working in learning how to play some Christmas song on piano. This is in addition to her piano lessons. She's doing great.

Science

We finished chapter 2 and have started chapter 3 in Exploring Creation With Zoology 1. Anna enjoyed doing the bird map in her note booking journal.

We were supposed to make bird feeders but we've decided to out that off until the spring. In Chapter 3 we are learning about birds feathers. We are both enjoying all that we are learning.

Social Studies

We finished chapter 10 and have started chapter 11 of Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages. We had a great time learning about the early history of Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. Anna loves doing the chapter tests and does great on them. Today we started learning about the early history of Gaul. Anna loves to find on our big wall map all the places mentioned in our lessons.

 

So, inspite of the sloppiness, we did manage to accomplish a fair amount of work this week. That's one of the great things about doing these weekly wrap-ups, it helps you realize learning does take place, even in the craziest of weeks.

Weekly Wrap-up Posts inspired by Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-up Meme. Check out her wrap-up for this week and scroll down to see the links to check out weekly wrap-ups from others.

 

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Weekly wrap-up: picking up the slack

Part of the reason why last week was such a struggle for me was because I was starting to get slack. I didn't pay as close attention to things as I could and should have. This week I changed that and it was a much better week.

Bible

Anna finished the Book of Daniel with Kids reading plan and is still working on the Courageous Kids reading plan in YouVersion

She added another verse to the mastered list in ScriptureTyper, bringing her total to 15.

Art

I recently came across the 17 Playful Doodles that Incorporate Everyday Objects blog post and bookmarked it, thinking it would inspire Anna to do some artwork, and it did.

Anna has started going to some after school programs at our community recreation center and has been doing some art projects there so I've cut back some on our art projects. This is one of the projects she did at the Center this week.

Language Arts (Reading, Writing, Spelling, Grammar)

Lessons 37-40 of First Language Lessons had us addressing an envelope and posting a letter, discussing direct quotations and quotation marks, doing a story narration of The Little Red Hen, and working on memorizing a new poem.

Anna got through the group 16 words of Spelling Power without too much trouble and rather than go right into the next group in the book I decided to spend a couple of days working on words she had been constantly misspelling in her journaling. She was quite happy to do that and proud that she could now spell them.

The copy work, dictation, and narration passages in Writing With Ease this week were from Nurse Matilda by Christianna Brand. Anna continues to do great with the required work.

We finally finished listening to The Jungle Book and we were both quite happy to be done with it. We really didn't enjoy the last few chapters. I found Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren at a local library and I've started reading it aloud to Anna. We're both enjoying it.

Math

We learned two new card games this week, Go to the Dump and Math War. These games provided Anna with more review of the facts. She's still struggling with Math concepts. They do not come easy to her and having her encounter the facts in all this different ways should help her to grasp them eventually. One day this week we reviewed odd and even numbers and made a doubles tree to give some practice with doubles.

We also had some fun playing a game we call How Much Money? We take turns dumping a handful of coins on the table and figuring out how much money it is.

Music

The Sound of Music is one of our favourite movies and this week Anna decided to work on learning Do, Re, Mi. She actually did the taping herself today and I think she did a pretty good job.

She continues to do great with her piano lessons, too.

Phys. Ed.

We went swimming twice this week. We both find it refreshing and reviving.

Science

We are still working our way through chapter two of Exploring Creation With Zoology 1, learning more about field marks, habitats, and songs and calls of birds. We share the reading of the text by taking turns reading paragraphs. After each section we talk about what we learned and I write some notes. One day this week Anna decided she wanted to write the notes herself for one section and she did a great job.

 

Social Studies

We learned about the early dynasties of China and Japan this week as we worked our way through chapters 8 and 9 of Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages. Anna did great on the test for chapter 8. We just finished chapter 9 today and will do the test next week. She loves doing the tests.

 

And that was our week. It went a little better this week than last week, thank goodness. How was your week?

Weekly Wrap-up Posts inspired by Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-up Meme. Check out her wrap-up for this week and scroll down to see the links to check out weekly wrap-ups from others.

 

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