My sister, my friend. 

She is strong in the Lord and a mighty spiritual mentor.

Sharer of our mother.

 Fun to go places with.

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Yesterday I took the kids with me to do a little blueberry picking with some friends.  The 4yo has gotten the picking part down but she ends up eating all the berries she picks.  Her and her little buddy just sat down in the grass between the rows and munched on berries they had plopped into their buckets.  Oh how I wish I'd had my camera.  What little cuties they were. 

The 5yo picked for a while and then dumped his bucket into mine so he could go play hide and seek with his friends.  He didn't even cover the bottom of his bucket!  But at least he didn't eat them. 

My dear faithful 12yo stuck by my side and picked until the end and all in all we ended up picking 20 pounds of blueberries.  Afterwards we went over to one of my friend's houses and she made us a fabulous blueberry pie with some of her berries. 

This morning I made a fruit salad to use up a pint or two.  And dh, our 4yo and I have been eating berries non-stop since I brought them home.  Our 12yo has helped I must admit but I don't think she's keeping up her end.  LOL  DS says he doesn't like them.  Oh so sad.

I plan to make blueberry jam tomorrow if I can get my hands on some lemon juice.  Here's a link for the recipe I plan to use with some very detailed instructions for those who have never canned before.

I've also been setting some aside for freezing.  This is the easiest thing to do and will provide our family with blueberries for the entire year.  I simply wash my blueberries and pick out the stems and yucky bits then dry on a towel.  I spread the blueberries onto a cookie sheet to freeze them then pour the frozen berries into freezer bags.  This will keep them from clumping up.

Now my list for the rest of the week:

• Blueberry pancakes
• Blueberry cobbler
• Blueberry muffins or bread
• Blueberry smoothies

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Have you ever noticed how as people age they start showing an interest in birds?  Retired couples everywhere are hanging birdhouses and filling birdfeeders.  I've never really been interested in birds before.  Never liked the surprise droppings falling from the sky.  I spent a lot of time at the beach growing up and on occassion a nice elderly person would bring down a loaf of stale bread to feed the seagulls.  Oh I'm sure their intentions were good, spending time with a little kid feeding the birds seems so nice.  But let me tell you, those seagulls can become quite bold and before you know it they are fighting over the bread scraps and dive bombing the child, who is only trying to be nice. YIKES!

I think I must be getting old.  The last time I went to the beach I got a good feeling as I gazed upon the seagulls and listened to their unmistakable call.  Last month I asked my parents to give me their window bird feeder that they no longer used.  DH mounted it in the window but we have yet to witness any birds eating from it.  And just this week DH built two new bird houses.  Friday he hung the two of them plus another in different areas of the yard.  

 Yesterday, a pair of wrens moved in and we, as a family sat on the back deck and watched them build their nest.

DH got out a camera and a couple pairs of binoculars for us to take a real close up look without disturbing them.  Even though they are right in our backyard, we were trying to see their exact coloring, they are such tiny little birds.  At first we thought maybe sparrows but after I got the Bird Fandex out, we were able to identify them as wrens based on their coloring, uplifted tail, beak and bubbly music. 

I also pulled out my copy of Birds at Home by Marguerite Henry, a beautifully illustrated book written with warmth and humor.  Sadly it does not include a color illustration of the house wren but we did learn that the male wren will fly north, ahead of the female, and build little nests everywhere in hopes that his dear wife will like one of them.  But she does not like ANY of his nests! And she can't sing like her husband.  "She just sputters about everything.  Not a single nest pleases her.  'Tsk, tsk!  What rubbish!' she seems to say..."  (That would explain the uninhabited cup shaped nest we found in the petunia plant out front.)  Finally, "she chooses a nest, tosses out all of her mate's twigs, and builds to suit herself."    We laughed quite a bit reading those pages.  DH loved it and it was so nice to have something we could all enjoy together as a family.

Since I am not even close to retirement age, I am going to have to assume that the subject of birds must be a homeschooler thing too.  But now what will I do when I grow old?

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I made such a yummy lunch today I thought I'd share...

Start with two whole wheat pita pockets from your friend who very kindly forgot them at your house.

Slice them into quarters.

fresh basil and fresh chives - about a handful of each, chopped up 

sharp cheddar cheese - 12 slices

2 inches of pepperoni sliced and then cut in half so you have at least 16 pieces but more is perfectly ok if you like pepperoni

one tomato - sliced and seeded

Lay out your 8 pita quarters on a toaster oven pan or baking sheet.  Put one and a half slices of cheese in each one.  Sprinkle chives over cheese then put two or more pieces of pepperoni in each pocket.  Add slices of tomato then basil.  Bake at 350 for 10 minutes.

They were the yummiest lunch sandwiches.  Dh and I both enjoyed them thouroughly and DD liked them without the pepperoni.

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To point out that I've always had pet peeves, even as a child, I'd like to discuss "Magic Markers" with you.  I believe I was in elementary school when it all started.  My friends would ask for a magic marker and I would start into thinking, "...that's a name brand of a marker, why don't they just say marker?  I don't have any Magic Markers and what's so ""magic"" about them anyway?"

I've carried these thoughts with me for many years because I still think the same thing when people refer to magic markers now.   The term "magic marker" is in fact a genericized trademark, like Xerox or Astro Turf.  The funny thing is, there are so many brands of markers out now that I'm not even sure if you can buy an actual Magic Marker anymore.

Here's a little history for those interested:

• Felt tip markers were invented in the 1940's
• The Magic Marker was invented and put on the market by Sidney Rosenthal
• Binney & Smith (Crayola) bought the name "Magic Marker" in 1989

So there you have it, my deep dark secret which really wasn't a secret but maybe now that I have officially "told the world" I can let it go.  Maybe.

Historical info pulled from http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blpen.htm

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Before we started homeschooling, my oldest and even my then 3yo would only use markers.  I could never convince them to use the crayons or the colored pencils.  We had a nice big box of markers that I had to sort through constantly to weed out the ones that no longer worked.  It always irked me that you couldn't blend colors nicely with markers, you couldn't color fine details and the good, juicy ones bled through a page of paper.  I knew why my kids loved them - they are so bright and I'm sure they felt very grown up using something that took scrubbing to wash off. 

When I started to look into homeschooling I read somewhere, another woman's distaste for the markers and she had banned them from the house.  What a thought!  It never occurred to me to just make them off limits!  So I tried it.  I still kept the good markers but I told the children "Markers are very useful for posters when we have a yard sale or something but you are not to use them for anything else." 

At first there was some grumbling, I admit it.  I had to continually explain to my children that you get much lovlier results with colored pencils, you can use their finely sharpened tips to work color into tiny places and that even crayons can be blended to make multi-faceted colors.  I encouraged paint a little more (we still don't paint as much as I'd like.) and asked them to experiment with other mediums such as chalk or even oil crayons though they are messy.

Three years later, I am pleased to say my children have their markers but they prefer their colored pencils the most. 

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Last night before bed I told the little ones I would read them each a story of their choosing as well as a story of my choosing.  The book ds chose was The Magic School Bus On the Ocean Floor by Joanna Cole.  He just loves the Magic School Bus books - they are long reads but they get so much out of them!  Of course when we finished the book they were dying to make a big picture of the ocean themselves but it was 8:30 so I promised we would color together in the morning.

I think they forgot by morning but dd4yo asked to do school this morning which reminded me of the mural.  They were so excited when I told them we could draw the ocean just like the Magic School Bus kids.    I pulled out the long old rolls of fax paper my Dad had given me a couple years back and dc helped me tape a strip to the floor.  I let them choose between crayons and colored pencils and they chose the pencils.  I'm so glad the children enjoy using pencils now - it took some time to break them from markers but I think that's a subject for another blog post. 

Here's the finished product.  You'll have to imagine it all in one long strip mural.  DS suggested we hang it at the foot of the stairs so Daddy will see it when he wakes up tonight.

I wish the photo had come out clearer.  The kids really put a ton of detail into it with jellyfish and sharks in the water.  DS colored in some lava for a hot water vent as well as coral next to his island castle in the lowest photo.  I realize now that I was sitting in the middle so most of that picture I did with some coloring help from dd.  Oh but she did the octopus and ds drew some fish and a shark.  He's got people on the beach, some other small doodads that wash up and a huge oyster in the top section.

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We just got back from our week and a half away in West Virginia, my dh's home state.  Visiting family is always a joyous experience but the highlight of this trip was a camping trip on the banks of the New River.  Even in the rain we had fun.

Mommaw and Poppaw took us all on an adventure to see the breathtaking views of the New River region.

DS and DD just liked the trains I think.  Every time we heard a train coming they had to see it and this was often because the train runs right along the river so while camping we saw MANY trains go by. 

I'm not sure if you can tell but ds is missing 4 teeth in that picture.  They all came out within the last three weeks!  He's saving up for a Lego set. 

At Hawk's Nest, we saw many hawks flying about while we ate lunch.  The neatest part was that we ate lunch in the lodge at the top of the mountain and the hawks were flying below us between the mountains.  That was really cool, we usually only get to see their underbellies.  We didn't get any good shots of them through the windows of the restaurant but we did later see a couple cute deer and dh was able to snap this picture of a mother and her fawn.

We saw a LOT of deer on this trip - both dead and alive.  One of the dead ones had antlers which is a new site for me because although we see live deer families a few times a year in or near our yard, they never have antlers.  And the ones I saw in WV while driving about didn't have antlers either.

Poppaw put some coins in the view finders for the kids while we were climbing around.  They loved that.   After lunch we took a tram ride down the mountain to the jetboat tour.   

 The guide brought us as far as he could safely take us to get a closer look at the famous New River Bridge.  This is the second highest vehicular bridge in the world - was the highest until 2004 - and is featured on the new West Virginia quarter.  I was much happier under it than if I'd had to go over it. 

I took the following picture of the family to prove we all made it back alive from the scarey tram ride.

On our way back to the campground we stopped to see these beautiful water falls.  This is just tucked away off the road, you could easily pass it by without even noticing.

This last one is the family on a great BIG rock that had beautiful water markings on it.  Too bad you can't see them in the picture but it did make a pretty neat family photo anyway, right there in front of the lowest part of the falls.

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Could anything be so delicious?  I think not!

Today we recieved the first delivery of this summer's bounty.  We belong to a CSA - Community Shares Agriculture.  It's a convenient way of getting organic produce while supporting local farmers.  The best part of it is, the produce is better than anything you can buy in the store because it is mostly harvested the morning it is delivered.

My box today was filled with ramaine lettuce, leafy green lettuce, cilantro...

...that I will dry and store away for winter.  Granted, nothing beats fresh herbs but I'd end up using dried in the winter anyway so I might as well feel confident in knowing the dried herbs I'm using are organic.

...succulent, ripe strawberries, potted thyme, bok choy...

...which I cooked tonight in our chicken and broccoli stir fry.  Bok choy is a Chinese celery so you can pretty much use it in any of your recipes that call for celery and it tastes wonderful and crunchy.

...and zucchini!

I cannot wait to cook it up and eat it.  My favorite way to eat zucchini is very simple.  I slice it up into rounds and place it in a baker in the oven with pats of butter all over it, salt, pepper and garlic.  Actually it tastes great without the garlic too.  I cover it and bake it at 350 until the rest of my dinner is cooked.  LOL  I just realized I never paid attention to how long I cook it.  I like it soft so I guess about a half hour - 45 minutes would do it since that's about how long it takes for dinner to usually be done.  But I'd check it if I were you and see if it is cooked to YOUR liking.

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I finally got to see it!  I saw the 1996 rendition directed by Ang Lee.  After taking the Austen quiz and finding out I am most like Elinor Dashwood I just had to see the movie.  I know, I know, I should have read the book.  But who's got time?  So I watched the movie instead and I do see similarities between her personality and mine but then I also saw several differences. 

For instance, there is no way I would be able to be so quiet and I would certainly have cried a lot more and much more loudly than Elinor gave in to.  I think I cried more than she did just watching the movie.  DH came home to my red face and was happy not to have had to watch it with me.  I chose to watch it on a night when he was out.

All in all it was a wonderful movie without having read the book though I cannot make an accurate comparison nor would I dare to review it. 

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All winter long people around here are kind of eager for the sun to come out and melt away the snow.  We can't wait for summer to arrive so we can swim and play in the sunshine.  Spring comes and we just want the rain to stop and when it does we run outside and plant so we'll have pretty flowers and vegetables growing throughout the summer when we are going to be out all day, everyday.  Now it has finally arrived and we can't stand THE HEAT!  It's hitting 100 degrees everyday.  I have no desire to go outside.  I want to stay inside with the cool air conditioning.  

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I thought my first week off would be spent relaxing, reading and watching movies I've been wanting to see.  HA!  So wrong, I'm not sure what I was thinking.

Monday we went to meet up with another family at the park and had a fabulous time trying to teach our 3 - 11 yo children how to play kickball.  Kickball is one of those things that you just assume everyone knows how to play until you talk to your homeschooled kids and they say, "huh?"  So here we are, 2 moms with seven kids of varying ages, totally not getting our instructions.  You can hardly see the frisbees we are using for bases so when we instruct the 3 yo to run to third base he doesn't know where that is.  Instead we figured we'd make it easy for him and we tell him to run to 8yo brother.  He's such a good boy he does exactly what he's told but meanwhile 8yo brother has left third base and is chasing the ball all over the field so here goes the 3yo right after him.  And the game continued pretty much like that for at least a half hour or more.  We laughed so hard - what a delightful game we had.  Mostly we just kept losing the kids.  The little ones just wanted to swing on the park gate.  After our game of kickball we let them play what they wanted then took them for a short walk on the nature trail.  All in all it was a wonderful afternoon but filled with good old fashioned exercise.  I wish I had brought my camera.

Tuesday dd had color guard practice and I spent my spare time sorting books for an upcoming book sale and preparing the program for our talent show coming up this weekend.  Not very exciting but at least I accomplished something.

Wednesday morning I continued with the books, made some space in the basement (very little LOL) and then spent the afternoon with friends.  DS wacked his forehead on the corner of the bathroom vanity and scared the daylights out of me.  I was worried he would need stitches but thank goodness my df, who is also a PA, was there and she looked at the wound.  She was able to verify that I did not need to take him to the ER and in fact he should have no scar because of the location of the cut and the good tight bandaid. It looked yucky and I really felt queezy looking at it and still do thinking of it but it was looking 100% better by morning.  The kids played outside in the misty weather the rest of the day, they were just dying to get out.  And my friends and I walked with Leslie Sansone for a couple miles - more exercise.

Thursday, those same df's came over to visit me.   We just can't get enough of each other.  We learned a new game called "Bang," the kids played inside and out, and then while the kids road bikes and scooters, we took a walk up and down my little road for a half hour, stopped, one friend had to leave and then we walked another half hour.  Yes, more exercise.

So that was basically my first week.  I didn't know summer was here so that I could exercise but I suppose it is good for me and my friends are good enough to encourage me through all my complaining. 

This week we are getting ready for a book sale fundraiser for color guard.  Should be interesting.  I'm not sure anyone will be there but it's our first try so whatever happens it will be good practice for next year.

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old maids, widows, dud, flopcorn - all the little kernels left at the bottom of your bowl that never popped

I promised a post about our adventures with popcorn and here it is.  We read, we sang silly popcorn songs, we recited popcorny poems and more.  Here is the list of books I picked up from the library beforehand.  I'll post my comments with each one.

Popcorn Plants by Kathleen Kudlinski  - very informative and gave us a good look at the plant as well as a comparison to other types of corn.

Mr. Picklepaw's Popcorn by Ruth Adams - Just plain fun in a classic clean story.

The Popcorn Book by Tomie De Paola - Informative and fun all rolled into one.  Can be used with the following Thematic Unit

Popcorn A Thematic Unit by Janet Hale - I really wish I had spent more time planning and looking at this book before doing the lessons because I had no idea what  a plethora of information was in this book.  It is put out by Teacher Created Materials and they have lots more just like them filled with activities having to do with art, literature, math, science experiments as well as printables, vocabulary, poems, songs and recipes.

 Science Fun with Peanuts and Popcorn by Rose Wyler - Chock full of experiments, ds asked if we could hold on to this book a little longer so we could do some of the experiments over the summer.    You know when we don't have to do school anymore?   

Once we were through reading up on popcorn we made some with butter and salt - our favorite way - and snacked on it while singing popcorn songs and reading popcorn poems to each other.  Experiment time came next and started by floating popcorn in water.  The question was:  Will popcorn sink or float and does it make a difference whether it is popped or not? 

First we got two glasses of plain water: 

  We tried the unpopped corn kernels first with the hypothesis that they would sink:

 Our hypothesis was correct so then we tried popped corn with the assumption that it would float:

Once again correct.  But now we decide to try and drop in a couple unpopped kernels from the bottom of the bowl so we wiped off the kernels to remove and oil or butter and we also checked to be sure they weren't cracked open or anything. 

It's a bit blurry by can you see which ones are the duds?  They are the two floating on top.  We've learned through our readings that popcorn kernels each have a tiny drop of water encased inside.  It is when this is heated enough to boil that the kernel bursts open and all the starch stored inside the seed comes out.  So based on this information we should be able to pour our kernels into a cup of water before cooking and weed out the bad ones right?  We're going to try it next time in hopes of getting fewer old maids.

Now we also read in Tomie De Paola's The Popcorn Book, that if you add salt to the pan before cooking, that the result will be tougher flakes.  We tried it just to see and you know what? We got the exact opposite results.  Each flake was actually lighter and fluffier!  Very ineresting.  And also the reason I am so poor at science - almost every experiment I try comes out with the "wrong" results.  LOL

Lastly, we finished our day with a little popcorn art by ds 5 and dd 4 respectively:

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You remember my post Three Weeks Left in which I explained the topics for our final days of school?  Yesterday and today we were inquisitive about doughnuts and ice cream and I believe the kids think this has been the best week of school yet.  LOL 

For our study of doughnuts we read from a couple books that discussed doughnuts as a part of American culture and another book that was purely fun and really didn't teach us much of anything but had these crazy wild black and white pictures all through it with tons of detail.  It made a nice book to do a search and find with the kids.  Questions like "Can you find a train on a clothesline?" came up as I thought about the wild imagination this illustrator must have.  Here's the book list:

Who Needs Donuts by Mark Alan Stamaty

Donuts An American Passion by John T. Edge (didn't read this one with the kids but used it for info)

The Donut Book by Sally Levitt Steinberg

The best part of the day was the actual making of the doughnuts.  After a bit of research, I decided to use a recipe that was converted from a receipt for doughnuts originally published in the 1800's.  It was messy, as I have been informed, but so worth it.  We found the hardest part was making them in circle shapes with holes so we ended up just making doughnut holes.  They were the cake like doughnuts and we "experimented" by making a glaze for some and then dc sprinkled a bunch.  I'd have shown you a picture but sadly we ate them too fast. 

Today we discussed the process of making ice cream.  Here are the few books we used for this subject:

Milk to Ice Cream by Inez Snyder (This one ds5 read aloud, a great little starter book, I love books for beginning readers that actually contain information.  )

More Ice Cream: Words for Math Comparisons by Marcia S. Freeman (not really about ice cream but you know we're unit study people and it was a good way to get math in for today for the littles.)

We borrowed a book on tape but our plan was foiled - it didn't work.   Will have to notify the library about that.  And we also watched a video again about American culture and ice cream.   I guess we really got in Am. culture this week.  It was quite good though, the title is An Ice Cream Show by PBS home videos.  It showed ice cream being made in small shops and big companies as well as how the cones are made, a little history on where they come from and different ways people serve and eat ice cream across the country.  Tomorrow we conclude our study with a make-your-own ice cream sundae bar.

As if these two treats were not enough, our best day of following our curiosity this week was by far, Popcorn Tuesday.  A detailed post coming soon...

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Every once in a while you find something that just works for you and makes your job as teacher a little bit easier. 

Puzzlemaker is a site I come back to again and again.  It has been so useful to me I thought it deserved a blog entry of its own. 

This is a site that will allow you to use your own words and/or phrases to make puzzles for you.  Being able to use my own information in a puzzle is key in a puzzlemaker so I can adapt the puzzle to our current unit of study or spelling list for example.  Then the program does all the thinking and counting and arranging.   You only have to input your info and it does all the work.

Also don't forget to check out their other very useful free helpful items in the left sidebar.  A great site to visit.  I hope it is a help to you too.

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DH is reading a couple books he picked up at homeschool convention.  Mainly I think he is reading Know Why You Believe by Paul E. Little but he hasn't mentioned much about it.  I'll have to remember to ask him how it is.

My dd 11yo was reading Moby Dick.  All on her own, I didn't assign it.  She got about 3/4 of the way through and she has given up.  Doesn't want to finish.  I was so hoping she would.  But alas I will not make her and I finally asked her to remove it from her list of books she is currently reading on her Shelfari. 

But now her shelf stands empty.  It's not because she is not reading anything at all.  It's because she doesn't get onto her shelfari often enough to list the books she is actually reading and she goes through them too fast.  I think I will ask her to pick our her next 5 books and post them onto her shelfari as current reading list and then go update Shelfari with a new five when she finishes those five. 

DS5yo is doing well with his reading but he is not up to chapter books yet so I can't really say what he is reading per se but he has been taking his turn reading the Bible each morning with us.  I just love to hear him read God's word and be eager to do so too!!!   He also gets in a couple easy reader type books per week but I'd really like to make sure he is reading at least one book a day.  I just haven't been sitting down with him enough.    New goal!

To all the kids, I am reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.  The lengthy descriptions can be tough at times even for me so I have allowed the children to color while I read to them as long as they are drawing "the story."  We have seen some pretty interesting sea monsters from the first few chapters.  When we left off, they were about to go "hunting" underwater with Captain Nemo.  I wonder what kinds of pictures my kids will draw based on that chapter?  

I am reading Ginger Plowman's Don't Make Me Count To Three.  It's taking me a while to go through it to be honest.  Not that the reading isn't good, it's just that I rarely sit down to read for my own enjoyment anymore.  Do blogs count?  Except that I do enjoy reading through curriculum and planning our schooling so the bulk of my reading comes from that arena.

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I did not write this I got it from champlion on the KONOS yahoo group.  And I'm not really sure who wrote it as this was forwarded there.  If you know who wrote it, please comment so I may give proper credit.

Thanks,

Cheryl 

How does a KONOS Homeschooler change a light bulb?

First, Mom checks 3 books on electricity out of the library, then the
kids make models of light bulbs, read a biography of Thomas Edison,
and do a skit based on his life. Next, everyone studies the history
of lighting methods, wrapping up with dipping their own candles.
Next, everyone takes a trip to the store where they compare types of
light bulbs, as well as prices, and figure out how much change they'll
get if they buy 2 bulbs for $1.99 and pay with a five dollar bill. On
the way home, a discussion develops over the history of money and also
Abraham Lincoln, as his picture is on the five dollar bill. Finally,
after building a homemade ladder out of branches dragged from the
woods, the light bulb is installed. And, there is light!

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How's this for a nice chain of links for you?

I was visiting The Little White Schoolhouse today to see how she made donuts and she said she got the recipe from here.  But I couldn't help but notice some of her other blog entries and one led to The Crafty Crow which was loads of fun.  She has oodles of *good* craft links including one that will show you how to make a fabulous newspaper hut.  Which reminds me so much of my Zoming friend.  I bet she'd love these!  So I go bebopping over to her site... and look what she's doing over there! 

Craftiness truly abounds in the blogworld.

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