KW Christian Home-school Conference

Yesterday my mother-in-law and I went down to a big Christian Home school conference. My mom-in-law home schooled all her kids (my husband did only a couple classes his last year in the Missionary Academy and the her other kids did a few years each but she home schooled for more than 10 years) and is heading up a resource center for missionary moms who will be (and are) homeschooling on the mission field.

We had to get up WAY too early to get down there (5:45am - we are NOT morning people LOL) to register and be ready for the first session at 9. (She just had her second surgery of the year so we didn't pre-register  in case she wasn't up to it) But it was well worth going.

The main reason I went was for a session called "Teaching Art to Young Kids" it was taught by the owner of the art store in my town. I was in there one day talking to him about teaching at the Academy next year and he mentioned it to me. It was great, he had a lot of great tips for teaching young kids (he actually talked about all ages but spent the most time on the youngest age group (3-7) but that is great for me since that's the age group Aurora is in. :) (and I know a lot more of what to do with the older ones already))

I unfortunately missed one of the session, I took Gideon and he took one nap all day and that was during lunch break (of course) so I missed one about reading difficulties which was apparently really good. (hubby and I both stink at reading out loud, I used to make my literature teacher laugh so hard when I would read aloud in class because I tend to change the story without even noticing. FYI - I was never even slightly offended that she laughed or she would have never done it) M.I.L told me a bit about it, like when you read (if you have difficulties) you should follow along with your non dominant pointer finger. I'll try it out next time I read to Aurora and see if it helps.

The other two sessions I went to were:
      "Lazy, Late bloomer or Learning Disability" that one was excellent.  I am not worried about Aurora having a learning disability, but two of my husbands brothers have them and it's something that's always interested me to know more. The speaker was great and it was really worth sitting in on even if you don't have kids with learning disabilities.
       and one on Charlotte Mason. I really didn't know a lot about the different home school philosophies before, heck, I didn't know there even were different styles so "Charlotte Mason", "Montessouri" and "Un-Schooling" were all new terms to me a year ago and I am still learning what goes into each, although I am leaning mostly towards classic style I think with some of the other styles mixed in a bit. I guess we'll see as time goes by.

It was great to meet so many other home school families from all over Ontario and see some awesome resources too. It was a pretty good day (except for the parking ticket I got :-( stupid bylaws I've never even heard of....)

This basically sums up our weekend....

Aurora and I both have cold and poor Gideon has an ear infection and a cold. He had a pretty rough night last night. :( 

We didn't do any preschool today at all, I had a newborn photo session this morning which takes a good amount of the day (it takes a LONG time for them to go to sleep so you can pose them usually) so between that and everyone feeling crummy we decided to take the day off.

We did do our last bit of worm study on Saturday though, it was a perfect rainy day so it was easy to catch a bunch of "wormies"

I had looked up ideas for worm units and seen the idea of letting the worms "paint" to see how they move. We (obviously) used non toxic paint and were carefull to get it all off the worms before letting them go again. After all, we like wormies. :)

Aurora LOVED this project. She finally got up her nerve to actually HOLD a worm (only the really small ones though)

princess preschool

Aurora always likes dressing up but this week she's been going all out, changing multiple times a day, fairy wings everything. Here is what our week has looked like so far:

Fancy dress beading...

 Princess lunch...

 Belle dress and fairy wings name spelling...

 Belle Geography...

My girl is so silly. :)

Hope everyone is having a good week!!

 We found a new game at the Bible book store. We haven't played it yet, We are going to wait and play it when Caleb is off work and can play with us. We did have a look and it looks pretty cute!!

 Here is Aurora with it, It's called Bible Snap. It looks like you could use it for Bible lessons as well. and flash cards. Very useful game! :)

 Saturday m mother-in-law is doing a small party to celebrate Caleb's promotion. Aurora and I made a present for him today using an idea I found on Pinterest from I am momma hear me roar one of my favorite blogs.  Aurora drew a picture of him on parchment paper (It's supposed to be freezer paper shiny side down but I didn't have any, i think it would work better with freezer paper the parchment paper doesn't stick when you iron it) then I cut out her drawing and used it as a stencil

 Turned out pretty funny I think. I love the crazy little drawings toddlers do!

 And she made him a card while I was doing that.

 While we were doing that Gideon was chilling in his sassy seat...

 Then this afternoon Aurora worked on her puzzle. This is a pretty big deal, she's never been interested in puzzles before and has done this one completely by herself, probably because it's princesses...

 and here he is sleeping again, he likes to hold his hair while he sleeps. :)

Tuesday Lesson

We are making rock candy. We decided to make it green. This is only day 1 so we'll have to wait 3-7 days for it to be done, I am pretty excited to see how it turns out!!! (the recipe was from Science Bob)

 We made these today for learning to count money.

 And these for counting to 5 still. (This idea was from Pinterest.)

 Aurora learned about watercolors today. She was pretty into it. She really seems to like arty type stuff.

We also worked on the letter F, sewing and her verses. She's still working on Romans 6:23, I think that she has actually already memorize it but she sometimes like to be goofy and doesn't say it so we are not moving on yet. 

the rest of our week

He's trying to lift his head and he's really trying hard to sit up, man the abs on babies....

 Aurora helping me with the dishes before doing an "experiment"

 baking soda + vinegar + food coloring = fun for Aurora

 Yesterday morning we made pancakes and Aurora had a "funny one"

 Here she is making them

 flour on her face....

 Gideon tried out the excer saucer, he's a bit small but he really liked it, he just needs a lot of supervision because he doesn't have complete control of his head yet.

 Aurora learning to sew yesterday as part of her school work. She loved it.

And a little kiss for her baby brother.... 

Oh ya, and an official blog congratulations to Caleb for his big promotion!!!! (that is what the yellow cake was for we just had to keep it a secret until HR announced it at work)

math and letters

working on the alphabet. She used to know A-E but kind of forgot it all when we stopped working on them for a while... Doh!

 "C" says C as in Cat worksheet

 Today we did something new with math. I put out the numbers and she put that amount of pennies on the number. I didn't expect her to absolutely LOVE it and want to do it over and over for almost an hour!!

At the end she got to put the pennies in her Cinderella piggy bank.

We are also still working on Romans 6:23 she's about 2/3's done.