The Village Nest Homeschool Group

We are delighted to announce that registration is officially open for the Homeschool Swim class, which will run on Tuesdays from 2:30-3:15, at the Pointe Claire Aquatic Centre. The fall session runs from Sept 16 - Nov 25, and the cost is $112/child.

These are the requirements that the aquatic centre has outlined:

Age range: 7-12 years old
Swim level requirement: Green or higher. Participants in this group must be able to complete the following skills:
• Jump in, unassisted
• Demonstrate a front and back glide
• Swim 12 m (1 width) unassisted with no bubble, face in water
• Front float, unassisted (5 seconds)
• Back float unassisted, face at surface (5 seconds)

This is a private class, and participants must register through our group. Spots are limited, and filling quickly. Please reach out if you’re interested.

Send a message to learn more

Back-to-school season is officially upon us, and The Village Nest is pleased to announce that registration for our Fall session is now open.
If you’re looking to join a community of inclusive, hands-on, like-minded families, look no further!
Msg us for more info.

Insect Life Cycles (part 1) - Butterflies 🦋
Our group raised caterpillars and released 40+ Painted Lady butterflies. Each of the kids took their caterpillars home, cared for them, and observed the magic of their transformation. Everybody loved the experience, from the teens to the tots. 🥰

Chicken life cycle 🐣
One of the best things about homeschooling is bringing learning to life with hands-on experiences. We’ve been extra hands-on throughout our life cycle unit, and literally brought things to life. We teamed up with our friends at Project PACE and incubated some of their eggs. The learning we did throughout this process was incredible! We watched the miracle of life beginning when we candled our eggs after 7 days of incubation, and observed the tiny embryos inside beginning to move around (see videos in comments). We turned the eggs twice daily, and closely monitored and adjusted the temperature and humidity levels inside the incubators for 18 days, we candled once more to monitor the development of our chicks and the size of the much-needed air pocket inside the eggs, and then put the incubators into “lockdown” from day 18 to day 21 - during this phase, the chicks are preparing to hatch, and so humidity levels must be increased, turning the eggs stops, and the temperature must remain steady. To our delight, on day 20 we began to hear the chicks peeping inside their eggs, and they began to pip their way out. We watched 11 fluffy little chicks hatch, one-by-one, and it was incredible! Only a few hours after we transferred our chicks from the incubators to our brooder, we got word from the fabulous folks at Project Pace, letting us know they had a broody hen (a hen showing signs she is ready to be a mama), who was sitting on eggs that were about to hatch. They invited us to bring our chicks and see if their hen would adopt them and raise them along side her chicks. Knowing this would give our little chicks the best life, we jumped at this opportunity. In the dark of night, while mama hen slept with her freshly hatched chicks, we embarked on a covert mission to carefully place our chicks in her nest without disturbing her. Our friends at the farm monitored closely for the next few days, and have comedyirmed that mama hen has indeed embraced our chicks into her brood! We’ll be planning lots of field trips to the farm to visit our chicks (and all the other wonderful animals they have there)!

Plant Life Cycles + Space Tomatoes 🍅🌱
We’re learning about plant life cycles, and taking part in scientific research. 🤓
We were sent two set of tomato seeds - one of them has been to space. Our mission is to plant both seeds and track our observations, noting any differences between them as they grow, which we will then submit to the research project.

A few weeks ago, a hen sat on some eggs. We call that a 𝒷𝓇𝑜𝑜𝒹𝓎 𝒽𝑒𝓃. For three weeks, she would sit on the eggs 🥚, getting up from time to time for water, food and a toilet break.

At the same time, our friends at The Village Nest Homeschool incubated a dozen of our eggs. The timing was perfect! When the eggs began to hatch under the broody hen, our friends' were seeing little chicks "pip" out of their shells 🐣

A couple of days later, they brought over the chicks and under the cover of night 🌙 we placed the incubated chicks under the mama hen. We monitored the following few days to make sure she took them in, and we were thrilled to see that she did! 🐥 🐥 🐥 🐓

Here are some moments from the mama hen with all her babies (we counted 15!) 🥰

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Il y a quelques semaines, une poule s’est mise à couver des œufs. On appelle cela 𝓊𝓃𝑒 𝓅𝑜𝓊𝓁𝑒 𝒸𝑜𝓊𝓋𝑒𝓊𝓈𝑒. Pendant trois semaines, elle est restée assise sur ses œufs 🥚, ne se levant de temps en temps que pour boire, manger et faire ses besoins.

Pendant ce temps, nos amis de The Village Nest Homeschool ont incubé une douzaine de nos œufs. Le timing était parfait ! Lorsque les œufs ont commencé à éclore sous la poule couveuse, nos amis voyaient également des petits poussins percer leur coquille 🐣

Quelques jours plus t**d, ils ont amené les poussins chez nous et, à la faveur de la nuit 🌙 , nous avons glissé les poussins incubés sous la maman poule. Nous avons surveillé les jours suivants pour nous assurer qu’elle les acceptait — et nous avons été ravis de voir que c’était le cas ! 🐥 🐥 🐥 🐓

Voici quelques instants capturés de la maman poule entourée de tous ses bébés (nous en avons compté 15 !) 🥰

We’re digging into our final project for the school year, a we explore the cycle of life. Together, we are learning about plant, animal, and insect life cycles. From planting seeds, to raising butterflies, and hatching chicks, we’re all about hands-on learning opportunities. Stay tuned to follow along, and send us a message if you’re interested in joining us.

🇱🇧 We said farewell to Europe, and made our way to the Middle East. While in Lebanon, we made a mouth-watering batch of Mujadara, a seasoned dish consisting of rice and lentils with sautéed onions. We learned about the science behind why cutting onions makes us cry, and continued to develop our knife skills, while expanding our pallets with another incredible international recipe.

🇬🇷 We left Holland and headed to Greece, where we explored emulsification while making vinaigrette for our delicious Greek salad. We made our salad dressing using three methods, and compared the differences in taste and consistency between each. Once again, we ended our day with our brains, hearts, and bellies feeling full. 🥰

This week our tastebuds took us all the way to The Netherlands, where we made butter. We whipped up a batch of butter using a stand mixer, and we shook things up as we each made our own batch of butter in a jar. 🧈🇳🇱

Adios Paraguay, hola Argentina! 🇦🇷
We had an absolutely blast in Argentina this week, where we made Alfajores - traditional Argentine pastries, made of melt-in-your-mouth shortbread cookies, with creamy dulce de leche sandwiched in the middle. Using homemade dough and dulce de leche, we rolled our dough, formed and baked our cookies, and piped our filling in the centre. Making them was a lot of fun… tasting them was even better! 🤤
Any guesses where our tastebuds will take us next?

Last week we traveled from Cuba to Paraguay, and we whipped up a popular local recipe of Mbejú, a cheesy flatbread made with cassava flour. We worked together to prep, cook, and cleanup, and had a fabulous time. It was a fabulous day in Paraguay! Stay tuned for our next adventure! ✈️