Singing, listening to different pieces, learning piano, learning guitar
Crochet
On break
Basic Information
We talk about the days of the week and play games with the cutouts of the names. We do the same thing with the names of the months of the year. You can find the print-outs here.
Printing words
Download material
Counting objects/math-type activities
Practice counting objects and writing how many of each type – (in download material)
Pegasus loved the movie and wanted to rewatch it immediately after it was over. It really shows the universality of these movies, that they’re still so loved by kids over 30 years later. He watched it again in English on the Wednesday and still wanted to see it again.
Dance
As per usual, I didn’t do anything specific for this.
Music
His scales are coming along nicely and he willingly practises both his scales and the pieces in the book. He’s only 20 pages away from finishing the first book. I don’t know where the 4 pages idea came from – probably Pegasus himself exaggerating!
Crochet
We haven’t started this yet.
Basic Information
We are working on the day before and the day after any given day. The months of the year is going well. All months have proper pronounciation now, and we’re working on the month before and after any given month. That’s coming slowly.
We practised the seasons, but he still needs help remembering them in French.
Printing words
We’re working on spacing and keeping the words on the bottom line. He really doesn’t care about spacing lol
Counting objects/math-type activities
He did very well with his numbers this week.
Math worksheets. He did them both on Tuesday morning because he was so excited to do them once again. He didn’t need my help, and only made one mistake, which he corrected when I pointed it out (on page two, he added instead of subtracted 9-6. He did get the right answer if it had been a plus, and was very disappointed that it wasn’t). He was very proud of his rectangle. He was very excited about the letter sequence.
Storytime
We have no French library books this week, so he read some French books through Boukili.
Activity
Plan stop-motion movie – On Monday, since the eclipse was happening, school didn’t really happen, but I did spend some time cuddling him before fully waking up in the morning, and we discussed what he wanted to make his movie about. Then on Tuesday, he dictated the scenes that would be in his movie and the dialogue that would go along with it. On Thursday, we built the glider for the villain to fly on. The cardboard was already cut from when we had cut off the excess when making his touch and feel book, and after looking at the glider from the show for reference, we folded the glider into a similar shape. Then we made straps for the villain’s feet (conveniently, his shoes are curled up at the toes, so he’s actually quite secure!) and taped them down. It’s decently built, but he’s not allowed to use it as a toy until after filming. Then I cut the pieces of yarn to use as webs on Friday.
Make a soot sprite – Once again, we were able to use cardboard excess from the touch and feel book, this time as the pompom shaper. Pegasus wrapped the yarn around it, I tied the knot (it needs to be VERY tight; no, tighter than that), and then he glued the eyes on. He’s very pleased with it and said he wouldn’t have complained that wrapping the yarn was hard if he had known it would be that easy. Right…
I wrote this letter already and it was eaten by a server problem. I’ll do my best to recreate it.
The weather in April, as it is now who knows what climate change will bring, has been pretty erratic in April. Two weeks ago we had a snowstorm and less then a week after we had several days above twenty. It’s interesting to see. Hopefully will have a nice May and summer. I look forward to gardening with you, especially now that Pegasus is old enough to help more so I get two helpers.
The school year has been fraught with sickness. We’ve all caught so many colds I’m not sure I can count them all. Hopefully next year will be better but with Pegasus going to in-person school, I doubt it.
This year has been quite the transition for you, Dragon (also for us), going to school full time, in-person. You’re excelling academically and you have friends. You’ve been dealing with bullying, nothing enough to call the school but its still bothering you. You have a very strong sense of what’s right. That’s a good thing but it means you’re really bothered by what’s happening. You’d think with the amount of bullying I survived in grade school I’d be better placed to help you. Unfortunately, I feel completely out of my depth. If it gets worse we’ll contact the teacher. The only advice I have is to ignore them and not let them see it bothers you.
It’s been a big year for you too, Pegasus. You’re being homeschooled by Mum and you’re doing great. You’re still resisting French but so did Dragon. I worry about how you’ll do at school with other kids. You’ve almost exclusively played with your sister and haven’t really played with kids your age. Hopefully, you’ll adapt as well as she did. You’re in your boundary pushing phase. You’re lying for silly reasons and stubbornly say no for silly reasons. Your sister went through it and it’ll pass (I hope). You’re also chewing your fingernails and putting toys in your mouth again. At this age, your sister was biting so I consider us lucky, however it makes me nervous about sending you out into the world.
Last week was an eclipse. Ottawa only got 98% I think, but we were nervous about the two of you so we watched it on TV. You weren’t super interested and both of you argued that it wasn’t getting darker despite the fact that it was.
There won’t be another total eclipse in driving distance of Ottawa in any of our lifetimes. Maybe we can all head to Disney World in 2045, that could be fun.
There were two movies going on, the first half and the second half. The first half is a meandering mess and the second half is halfway between a revolution and some overly saccharine idealized version of Disney.
Score: 0
Characters
While the main character and the king both get some good developement, the rest of the cast don’t, and that’s too bad because they were interesting.
I loved the goat and the star (the nose booping was cute).
Chris Pine ate up this role and was fantastic. I hate that they made a relatable villain who could be redeemed and chose to make it impossible for him because of “magic rules”. It took away his agency. I prefer my villains leaning into evil instead of being trapped in it forever because they read a book. (Good message there, Disney.)
Score: 0.5
Dialogue
There were a lot of great Disney callbacks and inside jokes. Beyond that, most of it was okay but not amazing. The best lines belonged to the villain and the goat.
Score: 0.5
Visuals and Music
Normally I love Disney’s innovation but the characters in this look like a made for TV animation from a decade ago. The backgrounds are spectacular though.
The score is a great homage to older Disney films but the songs are paradoxically catchy and forgettable. Like someone who was trying really hard to write a Disney song instead of a Wish song.
Score: 0.5
Fun
When we watched the movie, it had a weird stuttering in the video when it panned or zoomed. It bothered me enough to play with my settings before I realized it was the movie. It wasn’t fun for me.
The movie itself was fun but not engrossing. I liked the ending enough.
Score: 0.5
Overall
The most forgettable Disney movie since Black Cauldron (although I haven’t seen Home on the Range). It’s not a bad movie but it tries too hard to be a Disney movie and forgets that each has their own special magic.
Singing, listening to different pieces, learning piano, learning guitar
Crochet
On break
Basic Information
We talk about the days of the week and play games with the cutouts of the names. We do the same thing with the names of the months of the year. You can find the print-outs here.
Printing words
Download material
Counting objects/math-type activities
Practice counting objects and writing how many of each type – (in download material)
Addition and pattern – worksheet
Storytime
Activity
Make a movie – take stop-motion pictures, stitch pictures together, make music Learn how to draw a 3-D box – link to video
Pegasus was glued to the screen yet again, and nearly squeezed my arm off a few times when it got scary. (Specifically the point when they had only one cannon left, and then the massive hun army showed up.)
Dance
As per usual, I didn’t do anything specific for this.
Music
His scales are coming along nicely and he willingly practises both his scales and the pieces in the book. He’s only 4 ish pages away from finishing the first book.
Crochet
We haven’t started this yet.
Basic Information
We are working on the day before and the day after any given day. The months of the year is going well. All months have proper pronounciation now, and we’re working on the month before and after any given month. That’s coming slowly.
We practised the seasons, but he still needs help remembering them in French.
Printing words
We’re working on spacing and keeping the words on the bottom line. He really doesn’t care about spacing lol
Counting objects/math-type activities
He did very well with his numbers this week.
Math worksheets. He REALLY likes these. He did them both on Tuesday morning because he was so excited to do them once again. He didn’t need my help, and only made one mistake, which he corrected when I pointed it out (on page two, he subtracted instead of added 9+4). He doesn’t care very much about drawing the shapes, which is fine.
Storytime
We read 2 of the French library books this week.
Activity
Learn about makeup – Pegasus decided he didn’t want to wear it (totally fine, obviously!) but since we had special guest Aunt Lindsay over, she put it on herself and talked about what she was doing and the two main rules of makeup: 1. Makeup is for fun and for yourself, and 2. Never share makeup brushes!
Fireworks with paint – I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. Dragon had a major meltdown over it. But Pegasus had a lot of fun, I think partly because I used regular forks instead of plastic ones, so they worked really well. He insisted that I make fireworks with him, and I had fun with it as well. He chose both of our colours and I think it turned out very well.
First colourWaving the paper to dry itSecond colourPegasus’s creationMy creation
Make a puzzle – Instead of gluing the paper to foam, which didn’t really work last time and we didn’t have any foam this time, I just let Pegasus have fun cutting shapes into the paper. Wait, let me begin at the beginning. He had fun choosing pictures to put on the background he had chosen, and then when I explained that he was going to cut it up, he decided that he didn’t want pictures, he just wanted the background. Okay, now we’re caught up. He proceeded to cut literal shapes into the paper, which I found hilarious. And for the leftover paper, he cut it into tiny pieces because, and I quote, “I want it to be harder than Dragon’s.” Then he put it “together”. He said it was too hard and that he probably should have made the pieces bigger (no kidding, buddy). But he was very happy with the resulting “image”, which was not the original shape of the paper, I might add. He cleaned it up before I had the chance to take a picture of his creation.
