I don't have much to say today, but I will post a couple of pics.  I already had these up on photobucket and since it takes about 20 min to upload photos, I might as well use them.

We made maple leaf cut out cookies.  I think it was on recipezaar.com.  The kids always enjoy making cut out cookies and I don't, but I let them do it once or twice a year because I remember how much fun it was as a kid.  Now that I am the grown up, I have to deal with rolling the dough - which is my least favorite part - and of course, the clean up.  Lots of little sprinkles all over...  yuck. 

B was walking around with a bandana, so I turned him into a pirate.  He was a pirate with a sullen attitude.  He likes drama.    But isn't he adorable?

My next post will be a little more exciting.  Or creepy....

This is a picture of the chicks at about a week old.

Aren't they cute?  They didn't stay cute for long.  They grew fast, and soon we needed to move then into their big chick coop. 

Here is D inside the chicken tractor, which was their "nursery", catching the chicks and passing them out. 

And N moving the chicks to their new home.

They have so much more room now.  You see how they've gotten ugly?  Some of them look like hawks. 

Our neighbors gave us four chickens about a month ago - two hens and two roosters.  Two days ago, we found an egg from one of the hens.  And a little over a week ago, Mrs. Duck started laying.  That is very exciting news around here.  Our four hens do not produce enough eggs to feed this family.  Now that we have two more birds contributing, that will help a lot. 

And that wraps up this edition of Fowl News. 

Last week, Wednesday, we headed to the post office to pick up our chicks!  We ordered 27 Americana chicks, and we received one extra.  Americana chickens lay tinted blue, green eggs.  They also go broody, so in a year or so, we should get our own baby chicks.  It sure beats trying to incubate eggs!  That was fun, but a pain, and not very successful. 

I just love all the different colors they are. 

So far, 3 chicks have died.  We expected it, but it was still sad.  Especially knowing that I paid money for the dead chickens now rotting in my garden. 

Speaking of sadness, we had to put down two of our ducks.  We think the guineas were picking on the ducks, which caused open wounds.  Since it was warm and the flies were out like crazy, they laid eggs in the wounds and, well.... you can imagine the horror that ensued.  When we found them, they were really bad off.  The vet said it would cost over $200 minimum per duck and it could take up to 6 months to nurse them back to health.  So we chose to put them down for $13.  We were really upset, but we still have two ducks, one male and one female, so we are hoping for some baby ducks come spring. 

I have seen the future of schooling, and it is us.

Let me explain. My oldest daughter, who's 14, is supposed to be going into grade 9. Our province allows students who wish to take their courses online, through one of the school boards. So we decided to have her do Math and Science online, while I continue to teach her English, History, Social Studies, etc.

Last year she took French and Science, and she quite enjoyed it. This year she's doing grade 10 Science and grade 11 Math. She could have done grade 11 Math last year, but there was no room in the class. My younger daughter, who is 12, is ready for grade 11 Math next year, but I'm going to let her wait a year before she takes it online. But teaching them at home just let them whiz through most of Saxon Math's program, and we've loved it. They're so far ahead.

So even though I love homeschooling, I'm letting my daughter do some public school courses (although they still are online). Why? It's simple, really. If she has six grade 12 credits from an acredited school, then getting into university is no problem. We don't have to jump through hoops. And I've decided that this just sounds easier, and I want to make it easy for her.

Besides, I'm still teaching her the important stuff!

We calculated it out, and she'll be finished her grade 12 credits when she's 16. And then she has a year and a half to work full time, or write a novel, or travel, or do missions trips before university.

But as we've been watching this whole process unfold, it has occurred to me that this must be the future of schooling. Think about it: it's much easier to teach online. Sure, you still need a teacher to mark the papers, but there's no physical building. You don't need gym equipment. You don't need a library. You don't need to hire a janitor, or a secretary. It's a lot cheaper.

And then the kids aren't exposed to all the crap they get in high school. Why wouldn't more parents have their kids do it this way? And as governments face more budget cuts, you can bet they'll start to look at more online alternatives.

Of course there are Christian online options for high school, but here in Canada most of them aren't acredited, so we went with something that absolutely was. But it just makes so much more sense. Rebecca has two Science classes a week, of about an hour and a bit each. She submits one assignment a week. And they cover the entire course curriculum. In a regular classroom you'd do 400 minutes a week, instead of their 180. You just get rid of all the wasted time. So the kids have more time for their real life.

Why wouldn't this catch on? Personally, I'm still having fun teaching History and English. We're using Veritas Press' Omnibus curriculum with both she and her sister this year, although I've added some books for her to read. Over the course of the year both girls will read approximately 27 books. Next year she's doing Sonlight's Survey of British Literature, which also has 27 books. That's serious learning and serious reading. In public school English (including online), they read 4. How is that education?

I'm thrilled that I can find the best education that works for my girls, and for our family. We're taking a month long missions trip to Kenya this year, and we don't have to worry about missing school in the middle of it.

I really think more and more people are going to clue in to how much time is wasted in school, how poor an education it is, and how much better your life can be with real educational alternatives. So let's not shirk when people ask why we homeschool. Let's be proud! We, after all, are the future.

This morning we woke up to a blanket of fog.  That wasn't completely out of the ordinary, but what sparked our interest was all of the spider webs that we could see.  The wet air had put drops of dew all over the webs around the house.  And being "fall", there were a LOT of webs. 

We started out investigating our front porch. 

But soon the kids were running around the yard finding webs.

We found lots of teeny tiny webs in the grass about 1 inch in diameter.  We also found some bigger webs in the trees and on this sunflower in our garden. 

I found a really good example of a funnel web.

On the way back from the house, I noticed our bushes. 

Can you believe all those webs?  And you can see the fog in the background.

After breakfast, we set up bug bombs and went to Walmart while all of our indoor spiders died. 

When we got home, I read to the kids about spiders from the Handbook of Nature Study.  Tomorrow, we will begin our spider unit study that has been sitting around for a few years, waiting to be used. 

And since we are on the subject of spiders, here is one we found the other night.

And his web which was about 5 feet tall. 

Today we started back to school!  I forgot how much work it is!  Thankfully my mom is here to help out with some of the lessons.  She was entertaining the little ones while I worked with the big ones.  I am terrible at being prepared.  But part of the problem is, I don't know how to prepare.  I like to wing it.  But I know things would run smoother if I was prepared.  How do you people do it?  How do you school some kids and keep the other kids busy at the same time?  How do you keep them sitting quietly?  Things actually went rather well today, despite my pleas for help.  :-)  It's just that right now in my life I am desperate for organization and schedules, but I am so awful at it! 

This year, I bought Teaching Textbooks for D.  I still love Saxon math, but with the other kids schooling to do, I needed something easier on me.  I actually just ordered it today, so I will have to let you know how it goes.  But it is CD Roms and it actually teaches the lesson, has him do practice problems, lesson problems, and most importantly to me, it checks his work.  He tried the sample lesson online and is really excited about it.  He will also finish up his Learning Language Arts through Literature book that I got for him in January.  I really like that book.  When he finishes, I will get him the next book. 

N is moving on into Saxon 3.  It's the last Saxon that I will be doing with him.  Next year, he becomes independent.  He is so happy to be doing school again.  It's awesome.  I am still using First Language Lessons since it is for 1st and 2ND grade.  We like it and I plan on using it for the other kids as well. 

For science we are going to start out with our nature journals.  When the weather turns nasty, we will move on to a volcano/earthquake lapbook.  After that, I have Christian Kids Explore Chemistry that I will hopefully use this year.  (We never got to it last year) 

We are putting off our Story of the World for right now to do A Child's Geography:  Explore the Holy Land.  I did a couple lessons last year, and then I realized it was May and the school year was almost over, so I saved it until this year.  When we finish that, we will continue Story of the World Volume II. 

They will still have copywork, reading, and writing. 

Princess C and Toddler B will be starting Saxon 1.  Mostly Princess C, but Toddler B will be sitting in on the lessons and learning with her.  C will also be practicing writing.  She has hit the point where she wants to do things neatly and carefully, so that helps.  B is just a nut.  Today, we were doing lesson 1, and I was trying to get him to repeat the date and the year and other things.  He would shout out goofy answers like, "2000 and mama!"  or "Tuesmama!"  Oy.  This should be fun.  And since we are speaking of fun, C and B are doing a shape book of some sort.  It is filled with songs and rhymes with a few worksheets thrown in.  They know there shapes, but the worksheets have them tracing shapes and letters.  I am also going to go through the alphabet with them, and have them memorize a scripture for each letter.  We will be using Psalty's song to help them memorize them.  C will be learning to read this year using Abeka's reading and Bob books. 

I have the book, Drawing with Children that I would like to fit in somehow.  We used it once or twice last year and the kids really enjoyed it.  But it's so hard for me to fit in the regular need-to-do things, that it's practically impossible to fit in optional, fun things.  So, we will see how it goes. 

I think that about sums it up.  What are you using?

Just when I vow to be consistent with my blogging, my computer breaks.  I have had such computer problems, it's ridiculous.  N was holding Lil' L when her foot got caught on the power cord of my laptop.  He walked away and, BOOM, down went the laptop.  There were three things wrong with it.  Dell only fixed one problem.  We have been trying for weeks to get the other problems solved.  Nobody knows what could be wrong with it.  The only answer they have is to reboot the entire thing.  So we had to go buy an external hard drive - which took us awhile since our "big city" is not so close.  Now we have to talk to Dell again.  My desk top computer has been broken for awhile.  While we were at Best Buy, we picked up a new fan for it, got it working, but then couldn't install the internet on it.  Of course.  And the next day it broke again anyway.  My mom was in CA visiting my brother, so since she wasn't going to be using her computer, she let my sister borrow it.  So normally I have three computers in my house, and yet I was not able to use any of them.  Very, very frustrating.  Thankfully, my mom is home, and so is her computer.  Phew.  So that's my story.  I have pictures to post and updates to share, but for now, I need to clean my house.  I have a weekend full of company.  Shockingly. 

I am looking forward to reading what everone is doing this school year!