School Begins with some Cross-Saints, Lilac Symbolism, and Fables

    Welcome to our 2022-2023 school term. Our schedule is Sun, Mon, Tues, Thurs, and Fri. We chose to take Wednesdays as a break, similar to the way the children of France are educated.  We began with an easy transitional start to our week. Sunday found us beginning our regular old-school curriculum called the complete Canadian Curriculum by Popular Books Company Canada Ltd. Ours was purchased at our local Indigo/Chapters store: chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/complete-canadian-curriculum-4-revised/9781771490320-item.html

Tim Horton's was our topic of the day from our English section. Barron worked on those pages from Sunday to Tuesday. We could not let a chance to enjoy our favourite treats by a talented group of staff go by without a back to school indulgence. Thank you for these great sweets in your item shop. Our favourite the birthday doughnut, a plain croissant (although the cheese version is also delicious) and some warm French Vanilla.

Something interesting is it takes 3 days to create a perfect croissant, some neat facts shared: https://youtu.be/VjFr2wGZ8ME

Monday we referenced a beautiful mini lilac pack that discusses the science and nature of lilacs (4.00- a great gift price!) at: raisingupwildthings.com/product/__lilacs/ 

After reading through this delightful pack we learnt that lilacs have so many wonderful meanings that we want to hold true for the desired school year- wisdom, magic, and love of the past. I could not print this yet so I made a replica for our classroom area and am sharing some screen shots, kindly being this into your school setting of you can as it is exquisite.  Barron also created a painting as suggested in the raisingupwildthings unit. His work has such movement and quality. His first masterpiece of the term. He also helped me created a picture of a lilac using a really neat blue bingo dabber.

We played a homemade bingo game and Barron won a pack of washable markers and blank paper. We watched this video: https://youtu.be/SBhFjhR29pY and searched for various images. This video foreshadows our botany unit which we will begin sometime soon. 

To practice creating check marks Barron signs into a daily homecrafted attendance sheet, this is something new to our routine as is the 100 day tracker of gathering knowledge we started. Once we accomplish 100 days we will have a celebration of being half way through the school term. Thanks to the free sources in TeachersPayTeachers webpage search result such as:  teacherspayteachers.com/Product/RACE-TO-100-A-100-days-of-school-freebie-1092348 and teacherspayteachers.com/Product/100th-Day-of-School-Poem-Activity-Freebie-2355172

Also https://aroundthekampfire.com/2013/02/100th-day-writing-a-freebie.html offers the most lovely resource. Linda Kamp has the most adorable inspiring notions. She will be referenced much by us as she is a treasure that we are so happy to have found. 

Today Barron began his life skills by preparing a salad. He picked apart the entire head of iceberg lettuce and then he styles the salad with placing the cucumbers among it. I think it looked delicious. 

We also thought this week would be great for revisiting fairy tales and fables. We watched three great videos from Fairy Tale Stories For Kids YouTube channel. The Ant and the Grasshopper, Pinocchio, and Little Red Riding Hood. Barron answered some true or false questions, did a quick story summary with correct word selections, and a navigation safe vs unsafe map as follow up activities to these videos. 

It wouldn't be complete if we didn't bring a bit of science into our day. We popped over to a very wonderful woman's named Rebecca's webpage and found a free anatomy of an and which you could download at: fiddlestickseducation.com/anatomy-posters.html

For a great variety of excellent drawings (free) visit Julie at: natureinspiredlearning.com/?s=Grasshopper

We also found an extremely interesting webpage: library.fvtc.edu/VirtualDissection#s-lg-box-24902656 which allows you to view a grasshopper dissection, among others, and this is an example without and with labels: