Jul. 3, 2009 Field Trip to Motherwell Homestead National Park
I took Janney and Asher on their first field trip to Motherwell Homestead National Historic Park yesterday. This was with a fairly new homeschool group, with young kids. I've met some of the mums through the Babywearing group I joined this winter, and some of the mums I've met on Facebook, and some new ones too. I invited my friend Marie to join us with her kids too.
The tour guides - Shane and Sarah, first engaged the kids by getting them into costume, and then playing a little game about farm animals.
Asher behaved much like Myles used to - not wanting to participate, shying away from the crowd, hiding behind me etc. I let him be, not forcing him to participate... notice there aren't many boys in these photos, that's because most of the boys headed to the play park instead of participating.. I let Asher go play in the park too.
Elias hung out in my sling on my back, there were so many babies in slings on mommies backs or fronts, and two dads came, nice to see them carrying babies too.
After the warm up game, we headed to the buildings. First a storage shed that housed sleds and wagons.
Can you imagine riding 100 miles to Regina in this? It took the Regina families just over an hour to drive to Motherwell from the city in their modern vans, a trip to the city in this buggy must have been a 4-5 hour journey. From there Mr. Motherwell must have taken a train to Ottawa to sit in parliament.
Shane shared with me, that Mr. Motherwell quit politics because of the bilingual issue. He wanted Saskatchewan - or the whole country - to be bilingual. Had Saskatchewan had bilingual education, Saskatchewan would have been a much more powerful province in the country, as one needs to be bilingual to have power in Ottawa - to be Prime Minister definitely. But there are so few French speaking Saskatchewaners. Very interesting! Such vision in Mr. Motherwell, such lack of vision in the politics of the day.
Then Sarah, our other interpreter, took us to the house to show us around. When Mr. Motherwell arrived, he built himself a little log house, then built the stone part of the barn. Not until the barn was built did he build this house, and then the summer kitchen was added the following year. He married his first wife the year he built the house, she had two children and died young, of a respiratory disease. Mr. Motherwell later married his second wife, who ran the farm while he was away being a politician.
Washing up in the kitchen before entering the house with all those farm smells.
Summer kitchen equipped with all the tools of the day
 
The lovely dining room layed out to feed the family
Kids playing crokanole in the livingroom
3D Glasses in the study/piano room
The daughter's bedroom
The aunt's bedroom
Asher playing Crokanole
The we moved to the barn, where Asher was much more comfortable. Joshua caught a chicken (a maturing chick really, they were still quite small)
Janney got brave and went to collect her own chicken
Miss Suzy the pig is expecting a litter of piglets, apparently last year the pig had 14 piglets, I wonder how many Miss Suzy will have
The Jersey cow has a calf, but she shares her milk with the farm.
A pair of work horses. These two are the real farmers, they pull the plow to work all 20 acres of land.
Shane let everyone have a climb on the tractor before taking us upstairs to the hayloft, which he told us was built in 2 days, after which was a dance. Mr. Motherwell was away during this work, and was quite displeased to hear his neighbours took advantage and were consuming alcohol on his property. He took the time to let him know of his displeasure - a politician who was not afraid to speak his mind, and stick to his morals, even if they weren't popular.
After the tour of the barn, we went back to the park for lunch, which gave the kids lots of play time, and time for Elias to get down and walk around.. watermelon in hand!
 After lunch we participated in some hands on learning activities.
Gardening
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Apr. 27, 2009 Homeschooling The Littles
The job of homeschooling the littles has begun this year. Janney has worked through some the Pathway Reader workbooks in preparation for reading.
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Janney has just started reading this past week. I've been using the Reader Rabbit booklets that came with a software called Reader Rabbit's Interactive Reading Journey many years ago. I used these same books to teach Trent, Myles and Rourke to read, and she's really enjoying the thrill of accomplishing reading these simple books. Here's the story for book 4 which she read yesterday
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This Is Not Sam
New words this, is, Mat, not
I am Mat. Look at me.
See Mat. See Sam.
Look, Sam!
Look!
This is not Sam. I see Mat.
Look at me!
See Mat. See Sam.
I see Mat.
See Mat.
See Mat. See Sam |
She's also done a little bit of math, and some Hebrew, and learning to colour in the lines and cut paper. I've been trying to get her to learn handwriting too, but I think I'll let her get more familiar with the letter shapes, she has trouble making the letters the way the lessons want her to..
And we went on a field trip to the museum of natural history last week with some friends.
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Feb. 18, 2009 Opening The Snack Store
Lyndee gave Janney a wallet last Saturday among some other toys she was divesting of. On Sunday, Janney found a quarter, and was beside her self looking for her wallet. The wallet was finally found yesterday, and Janney couldn't find the quarter, so she swiped a few coins from daddy's desk (we'll deal with that later if it becomes an issue, we're not going to go there right now). So Janney fills up her change purse with about $1 worth of coins and was playing with them this morning. Asher wanted some coins so.. so I took some from daddy's dresser (It's not an issue with me, what's his is mine!!!) to give him.
They both were asking about the coins, so I was telling them what each one was worth. Then Janney asked for snack. I got this idea to open a snack store. I put out some items, assigned a price, and then they brought thier coins to the counter and started to buy some snacks (see, not an issue, I got the coins back in the end). I helped them to understand how much each snack cost, and how to identify the value of each coin, and they "bought" the snacks from me, and ate them right there at the counter. Asher was so into this he kept buying even though he wasn't eating them. Janney was more conservative, buying and eating, buying and eating. I think we'll do this again. It's a good learning tool to get used to money and such. Later I'll teach them about getting change, or putting two coins together to come up with the right amount to pay for the snack.. today they just gave me a nickel for what cost a nickel etc..
FUN stuff!
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Feb. 18, 2009 The Linen Dress
I've been working slowly and patiently on Janney's new linen dress. I want to make sure it has nice finished French Seams so it doesn't unravel on Janney and tickle. I also have a deadline, we're leaving for the wedding in 13 days.
Here is a series of photographs as I work through the dress, I'll add as the dress gets sewn up.
I had to make my own seam binding/ bias tape in order to finish this arm hole. And this french seam is down the side of the bodice. I'll tack down the bias tape by hand when I finish the dress.
I don't like how the bottom of this button band opening looks, but it's not like I can go back and re-do it.. the slit is cut.. that's it.. it's done.
SIGH and one of the challenges of making French Seams is not getting THIS
 Those are the "hanging chads" of sewing french seams, they're little fibers that frayed off the edges of the fabric, that should have been caught INSIDE the seam.. I had to carefully trim them off, I still know they're there, but the average eye won't know..
Skirt ready to be gathered... WOW that's a lot of fabric for a little girl skirt, I hope it doesn't look like a balloon on her.
The button band up the back of the bodice
The sash, with a closeup of the lace.
Finished!
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Jan. 2, 2009 The World of Janney
Remember in the 50's when women were dressed in dresses and high heels to do the housekeeping, and looked completely put together when hubby came home from work? Well, I'm not that woman - I try. I do the housekeeping, but usually it's jeans and a t-shirt - that is if I got out of my jammies that day. And I do run to the front door when I hear hubby come home and give him a kiss, that is if my hands aren't deep into cooking dinner.
Well, somewhere along the way, I seem to have mentored this:
Doing dishes in a floor length gown, feathered tiara and matching dish gloves. - What a girl
My friend Susan sent Janney the book Little Mommy by Sharon Kane a Little Golden Book Classic, about a girl who is mommy to her dolls and has to tend house and babies and does a wonderful job of it. We love it.
Meanwhile, Janney's bangs are getting long, and rather than cut them (because we really should never have given her bangs in the first place!) we need to find a tidy way of letting them grow out. She pulls out hair clips, which break her hair, so today I tried French Braids. Beverly, you're a very patient girl, Janney was fidgetting through the whole thing, which lasted about 10 minutes. If you are patient to wait for Mama to plait tes cheveux, you are a Tres Bonne Fille! No wonder God loves you and says your special!
pictures taken lying on the floor because she wasn't feeling well. An hour later she was throwing up.
5 hours later, they're all pulled out. |
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Dec. 13, 2008 Beatrix Potter Dec. 1, 2008 Home-Ec and Anatomy Lesson
Myles killed a chicken for me this afternoon and when I opened it up to gut it, I found it had a fully formed egg it would have laid soon. I called Janney to come see, it was still in the tube, but the shell was fully hard. Then when I pulled it out, and cut it out of the tube, she carried it to the fridge and put it in the door for me. She came back to have another look, and there was a half dozen or so fully formed egg yolks, and dozens of smaller ones in the process of being formed. She took those ones to the cats. When I pulled out all the innards, we gave those to the chickens and the dogs. I think we need to do a lap book about this and learn the names of the tubes and the functions of each part.
The chicken is in the oven, we'll eat it for dinner. |
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I've told you before about the little goodnight game Janney and I play, well, the game continues and morphs as it goes. Today the game went like this.
J: Mummy, I love you the stars
M: I love you twinkles
Janney smiles
M: I love you shimmer
Bigger smiles
M: I love you sparkles
More smiles
M; I love you confetti
J: What's confetti?
So I took out the three hole punch that has a catcher at the bottom, opened it up, poured the dots into my hand and threw them over her head. That's confetti!
She loved it, she gathered up the dotes and threw a few handfuls before going to bed. They're still on my floor, but what's a little mess when you know you've sent your princess to bed with a big smile and confetti in her hair. |
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