Come visit me where I reflect on my desires and prayers for my family as we strive to learn more about God through our lifestyle of learning. Come and see as we watch our girls unfold to what God is calling each to become and as we ourselves change and grow through struggles and challenges and blessings. In our homeschool, Holly Hills Academy, we pray that God would cause our souls to pant for Him as the deer pantenth for the streams of water...Psalm 42:1 and that we would live our lives overflowing with thankfulness and always showing gratitude to our Heavenly Father...Eph 5:20. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/ en-us Homeschool Blogger Fri, 6 Nov 2009 10:37:00 -0600 Fri, 6 Nov 2009 10:37:00 -0600 I have been taking a blog course and am blogging at www.liftingmyeyes.wordpress.com. Please visit me there! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/742583/ Fri, 6 Nov 2009 10:37:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/742583/ Some weeks we have more food scraps than our worm composting bin can handle and our garden has no more room to compost in it so....I had a friend that built this compost from pallets. My father-in-law helped me today get some from a nursery and now we are going to try and build this.  It looks easy enough. This is a great website for all kinds of things. http://www.instructables.com/id/Pallet_Compost_Bin/ I will post pictures as soon as it is done! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/689920/ Sun, 17 May 2009 17:43:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/689920/ I am so excited that we all have had our applications to DAR and CAR approved and we have a national number!!!!  Thanks to my husband's Aunt...we were able to trace several lineages back to the Revolutionary War.  Both these groups are excellent and we are so excited to be a part of them.  http://www.nscar.org/ http://www.dar.org  Check this neat site out:  It is an ABC book of the Revolutionary War http://diana.thehunterfamily.com/abc_book Here are some good unit study websites for the American Revolutionary War http://www.eclectichomeschool.org/articles/article.asp?articleid=106 http://www.easyfunschool.com/article1076.html http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/688472/ Wed, 13 May 2009 01:26:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/688472/ We are looking forward to using this curriculum this summer as we continue our study of nature, botany and gardening.  Each child will have their own 2X4 foot garden to plant and tend.  We will still have the other raised beds for the family garden and we are going to incorporate these ideas presented in this book as well as ... The All New Square Foot Gardening Book by Mel Bartholomew.  In the front of this book is a note to Home School Parents written by the author: It states " Square Foot Gardening is a uniquely simplified system of gardening that eliminates 80% of the space, cost, and hard work of conventional row gardening, yet produces 100% of the harvest, joy, and beauty of a garden.  It is user friendly, economical, adaptable, teaches the 3 R's - Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle - and besides that, it's alot of fun....."  ...... "  There is extensive associated subject matter included, such as math, history, geography, art, science,etc..." Mel Bartholomew We are looking forward to fun all year round with our gardening. www.squarefootgardening.com In addition to our indoor worm composting system, we are planning to build this outdoor compost from pallets this summer.  Here are easy instructions:  http://www.instructables.com/id/Pallet_Compost_Bin/  We also use this book on an ongoing basis: http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/688471/ Wed, 13 May 2009 01:06:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/688471/ Our spring garden is growing very nicely!!!  We have been composting some directly in our garden if we have more refuse than our worm bin can handle.  This has given us quite few pleasant surprises...such as these potatoes!!!  Awhile back I noticed something growing that looked like a potato vine...we left it alone and it continue to grow....a few days ago it wilted and died and so we knew it was time to dig for the potatoes!  I was surprised myself to find 15 - 20 potatoes.  The girls were so excited!!!   We also have had 4 tomatoes plants and we also have had some surprise gourd vines and melon vines!!! We are about to put an additional 4 foot by 8 foot square foot garden prefab box and use a curriculum for part of summer science lessons.  I will keep you posted on our progress. http://www.squarefootgardening.com/  These seeds are the ones we just planted a few days ago.  The girls got seed packets in their Easter baskets.  They were so excited to see them sprout so quickly....now to get them planted. We have been studying Native Americans in a unit with some friends.  We are going to plant one part of our garden as a "3 sister" garden which includes squash, corn, and beans.  It was common for Native Americans to grow these crops together.    http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/683908/ Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:26:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/683908/   These are some of our favorite Easter resources for our family.  We really like the countdown to Easter.  We like to make either thes resurrection rolls or cookies: http://www.my.homewithgod.com/mkcathy/holiday/resurrectionrolls.html http://www.annieshomepage.com/resurrectioncookies.html We always dye eggs and that is so much fun.  Sometimes we use natural dyes like spinach for green, beets for red, cabbage for purple, tumeric for yellow, coffee or tea for brown, blueberries (frozen) for blue...(they look like robin's eggs) ..it is very fun...  Other years we use the shrinky dink type wraps and old fashioned food coloring with vinegar.  That is our favorite.  Each girl gets a dozen eggs to color and we usually boil a few for Mom and Dad:)  We often make our own sets of resurrection eggs.  It is very fun to do this.  One year I had a neighborhood party and let all the kids make their own set of eggs.  http://www.easyfunschool.com/article2110.html www.easyfunschool.com/NamesJesus.doc  This is another great unit study either at Easter or Christmas. These jelly beans and carrots are really cute: http://www.annieshomepage.com/jellybeansandcarrots.html http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/683855/ Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:28:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/683855/ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth....Happy Earth Day.... Last year we made some family goals concerning Earth Day and being more aware of our environment.  We chose realistic goals that we felt could make a difference.  We have always had a compost bin of some sort.  Last year we decided to invest in the can-o-worms composting system.  It has worked very well and been an ongoing science lesson.  We even have a curriculum that goes with it....Worms Eat My Garbage... Worms Eat Our Garbage: Classroom Activities for a Better Environment This curriculum uses over 150 worm-related classroom or home activities to develop problem-solving and critical-thinking skills in children grades 4-8. Activities integrate science, mathematics, language arts, biology, solid waste issues, ecology, and the environment.   Author: Mary Appelhof, Mary Frances Fenton, and Barbara Loss Harris Level: Grades 4-8 Specs: Paperback, 8 1/2 x 11, 232p, 16 appendices, resource materials, teacher's guidelines, bibliography, glossary, index. We also compost directly into our garden.  It is one of our daughters jobs to dig a hole in the garden and pour in the vegetable and fruit, eggs shells and coffee grind refuse.  The soil in our garden is extememly fertile.  Sometimes we get surprises that actually root from the compost.  We had potatoes this spring!  We also decided that we would be very diligent in recycling.  Our town does not have recycling through our garbage system so we find an independent company that would service our house.  They have been great and every week the girls put the recycling out and they have fun deciding what can be recycled (which is alot!) We have almost a full bin every week. We are still working on using reusable shopping bags.  We have plenty but it is hard to remember to TAKE them into the store.  We are going to work on that some more.  When we get the plastic shopping bags we at least use them for garbage sacks or take them back to the store for recycling. http://www.amazon.com/Recycled-Crafts-Box-Laura-Martin/dp/1580175228 This is a fun book we use to make crafts. This what want to make this year: http://www.instructables.com/id/Pallet_Compost_Bin/ I saw one of these built using the direction and it turned out really nice. I really like this site www.instructables.com .  There is a lot of interesting ideas here. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/682189/ Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:19:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/682189/ http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/681916/ Thu, 1 Jan 2009 22:10:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/681916/ While the flooring was being worked on...the girls and I spent a few nights in Phoenix in the hotel...it was fun and we went to the Botanical Gardens one day after we were done with our school work....We have been studying pollination and flowers in science so it worked out perfectly.  We have a membership to the gardens and try to go their as often as we can.  They give the children a board to help them identify the butterflies when you go into the house.  We are working on planting some vines and bushes in our garden to attract butterflies.  We also get to see the Chihuly glass again!!!!  Everyone spent the night at grandmas and grandpas the night before Easter....because of the house remodel so things were a little different..the girls were able to make the resurection cookies at our home-school co-op this year so that was great!  After going to church on Sunday morning, the girls and Martin and I came home to a nice Easter lunch at grandma's and everyone went through their Easter baskets.  They were so cute this year!  I found these at World Market. The girls usually get a small amount of candy and some fun things in their basket.  We dyed three dozen Easter afternoon and had fun hiding them for a few days.  This year they get the Velveteen Rabbit DVD, a new set of resurection eggs, some Easter egg wraps, markers, colors, pencils, and some lip gloss....and some veggie tale seeds to plant in our garden. I will add some of the Easter activites we do and the Easter books we read later... http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/681211/ Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:33:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/681211/ Okay, we finally decided do some house remodeling....I wanted to paint and take out the carpet and lineloum.  Sounds easy enough???ha!!!!ha!!!We are working away and are near the finish.  We did some of the work ourself and hired some of the work done.  After the initial stain, on the floor, I ended up applying stain with a paint brush over the entire floor ... about 1300 sq feet!!!! It is turning out just as I had envisioned it!  Everyone is getting tired now but we are almost done!!! Here are some pictures of the beginnings...I will update soon how it all turned out!!! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/681207/ Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:02:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hollyhillsacademy/681207/