Hunting for Fossils

A few weeks ago we had a wonderful family day searching for fossils.  Vancouver Island has many places which are perfect for amature fossil hunters.  We equipped ourselves with hammers, picks, buckets and of course a lovely picnic lunch.

 The weather was gorgeous.

 These two fossil hunters took their work very seriously.

 In the end we were successful and found what we think are two trilobites!!

A wonderful day was had by all.  Even when L fell into one of the pools and had to wear Daddy's top as a dress while her clothes dried!

After our finds we have gotten the fossil hunters bug and hope to go out hunting again soon.



First Finger Knitting

L and I learned how to finger knit today.  We watched this video on Youtube together and then she tried it out herself with this wool I'd been saving for ages for just this occasion.

L caught on pretty quickly and I just had to keep reminding her to start pulling off at her pinky each time.

I sat with her and helped along the whole way and she ended up making this bracelet.  She was so proud and decided she wanted to make something else.  I told her to go and ask Granny if she had any extra wool.  Well L hit the jackpot there.  She came up with a HUGE bag of wool scraps!

L ended up choosing this cheerful yellow to make a headband with.  Once again I helped and encouraged her.

I'm so happy that L is now able to finger knit and that she enjoys it as much as I'd hoped she would.  I think it will take a few more sessions before she is ready to do the whole thing on her own but she is well on her way!

Gone Fishin'

Blackberry picking and Birthday gifts

There are two reasons why I haven't been posting much lately.  The first is that we are really just laying back and enjoying the last days of summer.  The second is that my husband has become slightly addicted to playing poker on Facebook and has been hogging the laptop!

Anyhoo, last week our longtime family friend Uncle P came to visit us from England.  L really enjoyed playing with him since he is up for almost anything.

Here they are picking blackberries.  L amazes me with her dedication when blackberry picking.  She will stay out there for hours hunting down all of the 'low' blackberries.  She was the same last year.  It also surprises me that she doesn't eat them all! 

 After we pick them we wash them and freeze them on cookie sheets.  Once they are frozen I put them into Ziploc bags.  Perfect for smoothies etc.  I love free food!!!

 L is invited to a birthday party on Saturday.  My philosophy on gifts is that the person giving them has to be directly involved in the whole gift process.  We decided to make a little memory game for L's friend using rocks we found at the beach.  We had a great time trying to find round flat rocks together.  I painted on the little beach themed pictures and L painted the two rocks at the top.  We then modge podged them and put them in this little basket.

We tested out the game a couple of times to make sure it worked and may just have to make one for ourselves!

Summer of Science Part Two

Lately we've been learning about matter and how it can change.

I introduced L to the three states of matter with this tray.  We talked about how matter is anything that takes up space and how it can be in three different states.  Once we discussed this L looked around the house to first find solids and then liquids and breathed in lots of gas (air : ).  It's wonderful to see the delight in a child when they first discover something new and the whole world opens up to them.  L was excitedly running around the house pointing to things and saying "my shampoo is a liquid, milk is a liquid....."

We then talked about how some things can be all three states at different times.  We used water for our example.  L is examining a glass with water in it, ice cubes and the steam from boiling water.

We've also been talking about reversible change and irreversible change.  L could see and experiment with how water can change into ice when frozen and then melt back into water when heated, which is an excellent example of reversible change.

We saw an example of irreversible change when we did the "heat" experiment with apples.

We also did an experiment on decay and talked about how all living things will eventually die then decay and turn back into soil.  This led to some interesting discussions as you can imagine but I tried to keep it light and scientific.

We took a large piece of watermelon that had been in the fridge for a while and did an observation of it.  L drew a picture of it in her science journal and we dated it.

Here it is a week later.

Here is L doing her second observation in her journal and noting the changes.  She didn't last very long out there as there were too many wasps and she retreated to the kitchen periodically going out to "observe" from the deck.
We left it out there until it was so small and shrivelled that we just dug it into the soil.

Our weather has been the pits this summer so it's been and ideal time to do all of our science projects.  Before I found Sid the Science Kid I have to admit that I was really unsure of how to introduce science to L but the show has made it super simple and tons of fun.  I also have a wonderful book of 101 Science experiments that we will move on to soon.

And the winners are.....

Thank you to everyone who entered the Australia classified cards giveaway.
The three lucky winners (picked very randomly by my husband) are

Natasha from Leptir, Sandra and Homeschool @sg.  Congratulations and I will try and contact you or you can email me at montessoribeginnings@yahoo.ca to get your classified cards.

To the rest of you who entered don't worry as I will be doing similar giveaways for all of my Continent Boxes as they are finished.  Next up is Antarctica.  Can't say exactly when I have it finished but hopefully sometime soon!

Australia Activites Part Two

Although we did these Australia activities ages ago I am only now getting around to posting about them.  You can see my first post with more Australia activities here and my Australia Continent Box post here.

I found these wonderful books at the library.  The first Sun Mother Wakes the World is a retelling of an Aboriginal creation myth with gorgeous artwork.  The second book Are we there yet? by Alison Lester was a huge hit and a must in my opinion for anyone studying Australia.  It is about a family who sets out in their camper and travels the whole way around Australia.  L was super excited to see the same pictures as her landmark cards and we looked up some others on google images to see the exact same picture.   

This is a picture of the materials I used to present the didgeridoo, Australian music and Aboriginal artwork to my music class.  To read more about it and for the link to True Blue Wonders see this post.

We also made our own boomerangs.  Your can find the template here.  I traced the template onto a cereal box and cut it out and then L used it to trace her boomerang and cut it out.  We decorated them and then tried them out.

These were a super fun outside activity and I would recommend trying different thicknesses of cardboard.

Included in the continent box are a few recipes.  One is for Lamingtons which is basically a few day old cake covered in chocolate and then dipped in coconut.  We tried out a bit more of a healthy option with bananas on a skewer and dark chocolate.  We LOVED them!  Warning this is a messy project but very tasty!

If you are working on your Continent Boxes and would like to win my classified cards you can enter to win here.