Homeschooling – A Look At Theme-based Learning

It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten a chance to talk about homeschooling here on OBE. For the last year or so, we’ve been mulling around our educational options for the tiny person and it wasn’t until this month, actually, that we solidly moved forward with our plans to home-school.
It’s not that I think [...]

The Science of Beans

As the tiny person gets older, her curiosity in the checking-out-how-it-works realm grows exponentially.
Catch her out on the trail and she’ll be the one digging through the dirt, picking up creatures to examine and – in yesterday’s case – experimenting with the whole theory of velocity when pitching her boots into the marsh.
At home she’s [...]

Discovering Living Books

When we first started talking about homeschooling our daughter, I started to read.
I researched nearly every homeschooling philosophy out there, scanned blogs, subscribed to newsletters, checked out and pored through a huge pile of books from the library and realized pretty darn quickly that we are an eclectic secular homeschooling family.
There are bits and pieces [...]

Be A Pollinator Observer

It’s National Wildlife Week here in Canada and the buzz is all about pollinators. Check out a full week’s of posts on our buzzing friends. Make a Nature Journal, Learn how to build a pollinator-friendly garden, learn about pollinators and food at the Bee-Free BBQ, get the Pollinator Primer and get into Backyard Bee [...]

Nature Crafts – Make Your Own Nature Journal

I cannot even begin to count the number of science, language and history lessons that went in one ear and out the other for me in my life.
Book learning has never been my forte.
I appreciate having a book in hand – field guides take up some prominent real estate in our day pack – but [...]

Build A Pollinator Garden

The first year we lived in our house, the bees were everywhere and our apple trees rewarded us with the biggest, juiciest apples I’ve ever had the pleasure of biting into.
Last year, for some reason, the bees came in much smaller waves, and our apples were nearly non-existent. It was sad and a bit baffling, [...]

The Preschool Garden Replant

Today’s comment challenge: What were your favourite childhood family projects? Do you build those into your family life today?
Reesh, you definitely score in the comment department. A Log’s Life is yours! Today, I’ve got a cool dinosaur puzzle for one random commenter. So, jump in and win!

There’s nothing like digging in the dirt.
Kiddos know that [...]

Nature Crafts – Bagel Bird Feeder

OK, I’m over all of this serious cold outside.
Brrrrrr…
In honour of coaxing Spring along, and making sure the local birds (who I think are as stunned as we are by this frosty snap) have enough to snack on, I went looking for some cool ideas for making backyard bird feeders today.
There are always pine cone [...]

Holidays Around the World – Kwanzaa

While relatively new on the holiday schedule, the North American celebration of Kwanzaa is rooted in the strong cultural heritage of people of African descent and their annual celebrations.
Kicking off on December 26, 2007 the seven-day festival of “first fruits” (Kwanzaa’s definition in Swahili) honours seven principles or Kawaida:

* Umoja (Unity) To strive for and [...]

Holidays Around the World – Winter Solstice

A Winter chill is in the air. The days are short. Vacation planning to warm February destinations is at its peak.
And, by the end of next week, much of the world will be in the midst of mid-Winter celebrations that range from the simple placement of special gifts of food on Winter dinner tables to [...]

Geography Awareness Week

What is the capital of Nepal? (Kathmandu)
Where are the Farallon Islands? (just off the coast California near San Francisco)
What is the tallest waterfall in the world? (Angel Falls in Venezuela)
If you are like me, it’s a good thing the Internet exists. Otherwise, world geography – as fascinated as I am by it – would be [...]

Watching the Salmon Run

When a friend mentioned the other day that she and her tiny person had hit Puntledge Park to check out the total coolness that is the Fall salmon run I knew we were headed out there as soon as we left her house.
Being a landlubber myself, the only salmon I’d ever seen run were in [...]