Fishy fishy

The boys completed their first swim class together in January. They had a great time working with their teacher and getting to know the one other child in the class.

The boy passed the level and has moved on to the next! He's enjoying learning to float and glide on his own.

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Physical Education: Physical activity, skills

Click!

After yet another read-through of one of their favourite insect books, The Beautiful Beetle Book, the boys became particularly interested in click beetles. We discussed their defense mechanism in detail and looked at pictures of the beetles.

The boys then spent the next several minutes acting out the scenario. One of them pretended to be the predator while the other laid down, pretended to be dead, and then jumped up suddenly with a loud "CLICK!" before scrambling away, leaving the startled predator behind. Then they swapped roles and repeated the scenario.

The boy is very interested in the variety of ways animals and insects protect themselves, including camouflage and self-defense, so this was a fun addition to that list!

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Science: Description
Fine Arts: Drama

Rainbow math

We spent a fun afternoon playing with math, exploring the various ways to make 10. We used a Ways to Make 10 Rainbow worksheet from The Littlest Scholars, and used chocolate chips to add a visual (and yummy!) dimension to the activity.

Little brother sat with us working on counting, one-to-one correspondence, and taste-testing.

Colouring the rainbow.

Done!

Visually representing the numbers with chocolate chips.

Activity complete!

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Mathematics: Numbers (addition)

Do clouds have shadows?

The question recently came up as to whether or not clouds have shadows. The boy thought that clouds would not have shadows, but his friend's mom told him that they did.

The next time we were outside, we were able to find a small cloud that was casting a shadow on a portion of the mountain, thereby confirming the information he had been given.

We talked some more about what shadows are, as well as whether or not a variety of other things would have shadows. In the end, we concluded that water vapour does indeed have a shadow even though it originally seemed to him that it shouldn't.

Naturally, shadow puppets followed the discussion!

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Science: Observation, description

Lego Robotics

The boy spent two hours this afternoon at a Lego Robotics class run by Bricks 4 Kidz. He had a great time and looks forward to signing up for another class.

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Mathematics: Shape and space
Science: Observation and experimentation

Storytelling

Part of our bedtime ritual for the past year has involved some form of spontaneous storytelling. Currently, our stories of choice are "bad day stories", during which we make up a fantastical bad day - aliens, monsters, dinosaurs, natural disasters, and so on. Following is a transcription of one of the boy's recent bad day stories:

I woke up in the middle of the night and heard tiny little footsteps. I opened my eyes and I saw a tiny little monster. It looked like it had wings and it was black. And it looked like it had wings like a bird. And then when it came up to me, it was [sister]! She was dressed up in a costume of a monster in the middle of the night, and I said, "[sister], why are you awake in a costume of a bird monster, awake in the middle of the night?" And then I said, "[sister], go back to bed," and she stayed awake all night long and I keeped seeing her. And one time I saw a big blue monster and when it came close, it was actually [brother] in blue pajamas. And then I looked out and I saw some real monsters, and [sister and brother] keeped saying, "there's monsters out there!" and then I was scared so I counted one, two, three, and I went into the hallway and jumped on them and then they ran away into the front door and fell down. The end.

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Fine Arts: Drama
Language Arts: Speaking and Listening

Lego creations

Much of the boy's day is spent wrist-deep in Lego. Sometimes he recreates his various sets following the instructions, while the rest of the time he designs his own models.

Recent designs have included a family of ducks (parents and several babies), a giraffe, people, vehicles, a playground, and a Duplo vacuum. His first still life drawing attempt was based on one of his self-designed Lego vehicles.

Testing a "harbour" he designed to keep boats from being washed into the town by big waves.

A playground which he continued to add to over the next several days.

A beach house he built following the set's instructions.

Vacuuming the rug.

Drawn replica of his Lego vehicle.

He also enjoys playing a few rounds of Creationary whenever he can find willing participants, and loves to take many (many) pictures of his Lego creations.

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Mathematics: Shape and space
Fine Arts: Visual arts (creativity, artistic design)