Scribblings from a twenty-year homeschool veteran about homeschooling, life after homeschooling, occasional peeks into the world of writing for children, and the ups and downs of life in general.
Show and Tell with Mary! Don't miss it! Click the graphic!
Out of desperation for Blog Fodder this week, I decided to share with you some of our favorite "livestock and other creatures" moments through the years. This is a pictorial adventure which I hope you will enjoy (in no particular order):
A boy's best friend is his . . . hen?
A girl's best friend is a little smaller . . .
Uh, Grandpa . . . are you SURE it's safe to carry him like this? I mean . . . he's still clicking those claws!
(True, not a farm critter, but crabbing was a favorite activity when visiting Grandpa and Grandma.)
How many more of these critters do we have to feed, Mom?
When you're too little for the real thing, a calf works in a pinch.
Now, that's what I'm talking about!
(Note braided tail. This horse was a pet in the truest sense of the word).
This is the biggest frog we ever saw on our place. Don't know where Chad found the thing!
"Oh give me a home, where the critters all roam,
Where the children stay outside all day!
Where often is heard, sweet laughter and words,
Saying, 'Please can I go out and play?''"
"Home, home on the farm,
Where the critters and children live well.
Where each day is so fine...
Be it rain or sunshine...
And the old place we never will sell."
--by Susan Marlow, with apologies to "Home on the Range."
Where do we like best to study with our kids (or in my case, my grandkids?) Pictures are better than long descriptions, so I'm happy to dig up some favorite study spots from past and present:
First, some past favorites:
The floor is one of our more popular study spots. Especially good for making time lines that stretch from 3,000 B.C. to 1980 A.D.
We tried the individual study desks in each child's room for a while. This really helped the older kids escape what you see here: Baby Andrew wanting to get a head start on his education. He occasionally slipped by and took over their seats.
Fast forward. Baby Andrew grew up and took over the room when big brother moved out. I do like the non-distraction idea for the teens in their own rooms. Note: The "Halo" was photoshopped in for an earlier purpose of this photo. He wasn't really allowed to play video games during school time!
And the ever-versatile kitchen table. My all-time favorite spot for the younger children. It has so many uses: eating meals, keeping the schoolwork all in one place, and dissecting worms and other appealing creatures as opportunities arise.
Fast forward to the present. Two of Kristel's (girl from above) little ones now come over 4 days a week to learn to read. The kitchen table is still #1 in my book for best study spots. Note the M&Ms for good formation of letters.
This is quick because I'm out the door to teach my writing class at the co-op. Fridays are crazy for me, but I want to share this picture. Did you know God made pine cones this big? This is a Sugar Pine cone. We picked it up at about 7,000 feet in the Sierras. I have a couple others, but I hesitated to get the pitch all over Kaetlyn for the picture. Messy things, fir and cone trees. I spent my childhood climbing Douglas fir, sliding down the branches, and coming home with hands streaked with black. The pitch is clear, but picks up dirt galore. And it doesn't come off. I went around the house and to school smelling like a forest many days.
I'll try to get around and say hi to everyone later this afternoon!
Ah! Food! What a great HM theme this week. Click the graphic to find examples of snacks that will supply you with ideas well into the next decade.
For me snacks can be summed up into two categories:
1) Snacks to eat while reading a good book, and
2) Snacks to eat while watching a good movie.
Other than that, I try and stay away from eating snacks between meals. You younger ones can eat all day long. We older ones can't afford to do that--calorie-wise.
My all-time favorite snacks are as follows:
1) Chocolate chip cookies. . . .soft *to be eaten by by threes and fours, if there are any left after the dough is sampled* (and I don't care a whit about raw eggs in dough. I have 4 healthy kids to attest to the fact that the raw egg scare is...in my opinion....highly overrated!). I don't make these cookies any longer, but the kids always loved helping me. They are definitely not healthy. I never believed in making them with whole-wheat flour, because that sort of defeats the purpose of a cooky, if you ask me.
2) Popcorn . . . the real stuff . . . with butter. *mouth waters thinking about it* Sometimes a large bowl can last me half a book or a quarter of a movie. I try to be good now days and go without the butter, but it's difficult.
3) Granola . . . my own recipe. This is actually healthy, and I have written out the recipe below because it is tasty and healthy and easy.
4 cups old-fashioned oats
1 cup sweetened coconut
1 cup wheat germ
1 cup raw sunflower seeds
1 cup chopped pecans, almonds, or other nuts
1/2 cup oat bran (if available)
Mix well.
Combine 1/2 cup honey and 1/2 cup canola or olive oil. Slowly drizzle into the mixture while beating with a hand mixer until distributed evenly. Spread onto a cooky sheet (with edges). Bake at 300 for 10 minutes. Stir. Bake another 10 minutes. Stir. Bake another 8-9 minutes. Remove and immediately dump it into a large bowl for cooling. Stir occasionally while it cools so it doesn't stick together. Store in an air-tight container. Can't wait to go around and see what y'all have for your snacks.
Oh...News flash! I'm having a book giveaway on my Circle C blog. In honor of the official release of book 4, San Francisco Smugglers, I'm giving away an autographed book and an authentic little Chinese doll from China. Click here for details and to enter the giveaway: CIRCLE C BLOG.
Show and Tell with Mary!
This is a quick show and tell. Three pictures can't begin to describe my week in sunny California, but everybody's seen pictures of Yosemite so I'm not even going to show more than the one that proves I was really there. LOL
So, with no further chatter, enjoy the quick takes of some fun in the sun (and yes, it is raining back home in WA. It's like we passed under a cloud in the middle of Oregon and are now trapped).
Yep, that's me sitting on the (very) small brick wall on the edge of a cliff. To the left is El Capitan. I only know about El Capitan from watching Star Trek V, The Final Frontier. It is the worst Star Trek movie I've ever seen (and I'm a Trekkie).
This kind of thing is more to my liking. This fellow drove us on part of the original road to Yosemite. Can you imagine riding all day in this stage in the dust--up and down steep mountains--to go into the Valley? And that was from Wawona, near the entrance to the park. Yikes!
(Oh, that's me up with the driver). He was a hoot and told the most incredible stories during our 10-minute ride).
The best part of our trip was driving around the High Sierra the next day. We hiked up to the top of Fresno Dome---7,000 feet high. A relatively easy hike from the backside, but sheer cliffs all around the 3 other sides. It gave me the shivers and I stayed in the middle and did not venture near the sides--not even to look over the edge. The drop is about 3,000 feet to the valley below (the valley already being at 4,000 ft).
It was opening weekend for bear hunting, and it's like they needed a traffic light up there in the middle of nowhere! We passed a good number of men and dogs and pickups. The biggest surprise was nearly running a small angus calf over at 6,000 feet in the mountains. We couldn't see his mother, and he started following our truck, bawling. Poor thing. We thought it was a small black bear at first. We didn't stop for a picture for fear we'd end up with an orphan calf on our hands. LOL
I couldn't decide whether to show the brand new pillar for our rock wall on the homestead blog or a bread-making day. Since I've used the homestead blog twice for S&T, the little helpers won out this time.
I've ground my own wheat for years and years (can't wait to grind wheat from our trial plot, but it hasn't been threshed quite yet). LOL
On this bread-making day I had two eager helpers, who shaped their bits of dough into what looks like a pizza crust and a dough ball. I wish I could visit everybody's S&T this week, but alas! I have to teach a writing class all morning, and as soon as I get home, I'm off to California for a week. So I'll be off the grid. Maybe...just maybe...a hotel will have a wireless connection.
"Rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens,
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Silver-white winters that melt into spring,
These are a few of my favorite things!"
************* Sung with a slightly British accent to reflect the British spelling of "favorite" in this week's meme. LOL
My favorite things? Oh, boy! Hang on. The longer you live the longer the list, so mine's long, but I will limit it to a readable length.
1. The Sound of Music!Not so much because it's a favorite movie, but it reflects my favorite time of life. Being 12 years old was my favorite thing (and I still am 12 on the inside). I saw this movie in the theaters when it first came out, memorized all the songs, and still remember them. In our before-school chorus we learned them, and it stamped the love of musicals on my life.
2. Little Children. I love little (and big) children! Maybe that's why I'm a children's author. I love the things they say and do. For example: my 5-year-old granddaughter began her school journey a couple weeks ago. (My DD homeschools but my DS has chosen to send Kaetlyn to school. In her case, this is a wise decision, and she's charmed them all already). She needed to use the bathroom during P.E., so the teacher gave permission. She ran into the girl's bathroom, but returned 15 seconds later yelling, "There's a spider in the bathroom!" (she hates spiders). The teacher, quick as a flash, replied, "It's all right, Kaetlyn. The spider probably just needs to go to the bathroom." Apparently satisfied, Kaetlyn ducked into the bathroom. A few minutes later she ran back out exclaiming, "But it's a BOY spider in the GIRLS' bathroom!"
3. Mountains. "The mountains and hills shall break forth into singing." And that's how I feel when I see the mountains. I grew up with "my" mountain always near--majestic Mt. Rainier. Right now we have 14 acres at 3,000' with higher mountains all around. My friend loves the ocean. The ocean's OK, but I love the mountains! I dread the day when Mt. Rainier finally does a "Mt. St. Helens" on us, not so much because of the destruction (which will be bad, of course) but because it will no longer be Mt. Rainier (seen Mt. St. Helens lately? The beautiful lady is ugly now). 4. Eating popcorn and watching an exciting movie in the evening. This is a rare treat, as I think I've seen most of the movies worth watching, and only a handful have a date later than 2000. I would have loved LOTR more if I hadn't read the series. But I knew what was going to happen so it lost a bit of the adventure. Same with Narnia.
5. Eating popcorn and reading a good book....anytime! This is a rarer treat, as it takes time to find a book that really grabs me. I remember one series, The Zion Covenant, that did just that. I couldn't put it down. After six books I still wanted more! I was so impressed that I created a years-worth of a unit study for my 2 high school kids based on this series (yes, we had to make up our own back in those days). To this day, My DD says, "That was the best homeschooling year ever!"
I could go on, but I've got to sign off for now. Thanks for this fun meme today!
It's late; I haven't posted for nearly a week! Guilt is building up. Waves of guilt. So here's a video I took a few weeks back. I think it's 17 seconds. Wish I'd had one of these when I was a kid. So I tried it. No video of that, thank you very much. I bottomed out half way down. Very embarrassing. I took it of a number of the cousins and happened to have this one already hosted over at the Lounge. So the video "lottery" fell to . . . Kevan.
"Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue."
OK, so nobody's getting married here, but this week's meme got me going. Since my youngest is doing running start at the community college as a senior in h.s., and I'm teaching my two little grandsons to read, any "new" curriculum is hard to energize right now. "Been there; done that" is my battle cry these days. So I thought I'd expand on the "something new" meme and do all 4 categories of this little saying. So . . . here we go and I hope you find it at least interesting.
Something New:
I actually have created something brand new (just converted it to a pdf file last week). And it's free. Go figure. I LOVE writing curriculum. I created a unit study guide years ago to go along with the Zion Covenant for my high school kids (in the days before the h.s. curriculum bonanza). I have revived my love of writing curriculum by creating a 38-page unit study/literature guide for my newest book, Andrea Carter and the San Francisco Smugglers. It's the most historical of the Circle C Adventure books, so I had a blast digging deeper and expanding on the topics, allowing folks to get extra "mileage" out of a book purchase. If you have the book and would like the free pdf "e-book" to print out, just e-mail me. My publisher hasn't hosted the file yet, but I'm happy to send it to you. I finally figured out the PayPal stuff on my website, so if you want to buy the actual book, you can get an autographed copy by clicking the cover on the right sidebar. It feels a little weird talking about my own curriculum creations, so I'll move on now. But this pdf unit study was the only "new" thing I could think of off hand. Moving on . . .
Something Old: With the little boys I'm using pattern blocks and the pattern block cards for extra fun once a week. It takes a little bit of extra effort, but the variety for a 5 and 7-year-old makes their day shine. Also, when they are writing those long rows of letter "A"s for practice, I have them close their eyes and then I put an m&m on the one letter in the row that I think is their best effort. They can't wait! I've done this for nearly 20 years in some form or another.
Something Borrowed: My DD (whose kids I'm teaching to read) was taught to read using ACE (the ABCs of ACE). I'm borrowing the teaching material from our former church--the actual material used to teach my DD and 3 other DSs! I love this program, mostly because it is painless, avoids having to memorize countless phonics rules, and wonder of wonder....they learn to read! I LOVE it and highly recommend it as being very user-friendly. Here is a link to the ACE site: ABCs of ACE. It's not glitzy but the animal songs, letters, and stories are great fun!
Something Blue: The pillows the boys sit on for their lessons are blue. They come over in the morning and set them up, all ready to go! The pillows keep them in their places on the floor and add a little organization to our school "day" (which lasts about an hour and a half). Then I send them home. J and K practicing writing the letter "A" on the wall with a washable vis-a-vis pen. They can't wait to do it each morning!
I was only going to blog Wednesdays and Fridays, but I couldn't wait to share about our first day of school. Wow, it all came back! The little boys had a grand time and I'm feeling good about being honored to teach them to read. Here is a picture. Note the M&Ms. When writing those tedious letters in the PACEs, it helps to have the boys close their eyes when they've finished a row of letters, and I choose one letter that I feel has been written the best, and lay one M&M on it. This motivates them to do a fine job the next time around. Justan didn't want to go home.
Oh, and I have them earning "jewel" stickers, also, for completed goals and a good attitude. After 5 "jewels" they earn an ice cream bar or an ice cream sandwich. Hmmm...no wonder they don't want to go home. Grandma privileges (though I confess I was always thinking of fun motivations for my own kids to get them to learn their "skills.")
They went home, and then who should wander over but Nathan, the 9-year-old. His mother sent him over because he was having a problem with a math area. I perceived that it was more of an attitude, however. But I worked through it with him for nearly an hour and he finally seemed to accept it and understand it (Hmmm...he understood it the first time I explained it, but he didn't WANT to understand it, if you know what I mean?). So a quick post and then I've got a million things to do. I forgot how much TIME homeschooling takes up. It's a full-time job!
Can't wait to go around and see what y'all have for your snacks.
I wish I could visit everybody's S&T this week, but alas! I have to teach a writing class all morning, and as soon as I get home, I'm off to California for a week. So I'll be off the grid. Maybe...just maybe...a hotel will have a wireless connection.
J and K practicing writing the letter "A" on the wall with a washable vis-a-vis pen. They can't wait to do it each morning!
Justan didn't want to go home. 
