Homeschooling in Illinois - Homeschool Blogger

Mouse in the House

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:55:00 -0600

One day, as we were innocently watching some tv, a nasty smell started wafting into our noses. My hubby said it smelled like death. All I knew was that it stunk. For about a week we searched the house for the smell. My hubby actually went down to the basement and cleaned and still didn't find the smell. Finally, I turned the couch over because I was convinced there was a dead mouse in the couch. I smelled all over the couch, didn't find the source, but then, out of a strange hunch, I smelled the outlet. There it was! The outlet stunk! That's when I remembered about a month previous to that, we were sitting in the frontroom and heard scratching in the walls. UGH! There was a dead mouse somewhere in our walls! What were we supposed to do? My hubby wanted to start tearing apart the walls - which I couldn't really blame him since the smell was just awful. We tried to wait it out for a little while. We were hoping it would go away. No such luck. Finally, hubby started surgery on our house. Thankfully, the other side of the wall that the smell was coming from was the basement stairs. So we didn't have to rip apart a wall that could actually be seen.

And this is some of what hubby found:

Creepy. Obviously, this isn't the first time this had happened. Unfortunatly, he still didn't find the source of the smell. And we are still living with it. It is definitly not as strong as before, but it's still there. I need to write a book about everything you need to know about before you move to the country.

Cookies and a Pirate

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:02:00 -0500

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....

New Home for the Chicks

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:24:00 -0500

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.

Baby Chicks and Goodbye Ducks

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:04:00 -0500

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.

Impromptu Nature "Walk"

Tue, 8 Sep 2009 20:02:00 -0500

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.

First Day Back to School

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:11:00 -0500

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?

Computers - Ack

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:50:00 -0500

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!

A Conversation From our House

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:27:00 -0500

If you were a fly on our wall, you might hear something like this:

N: We are not allowed to say the "S" word.

D: What about the "D" word. We aren't allowed to say that, either.

N: The "D" word? What's that... Oh, I know. What about the "F" word? Mom does NOT like the "F" word.

At that point, I'm like, what in the world?????

Then I decode their words. S = stupid, D = dumb, and F = fart. Those are the worst words my kids know.

This morning, B came down wearing overalls looking all cute and everything. Princess C comes over to me and says, "I want to wear oreos."

Where Is Summer Going?

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:15:00 -0500

My SIL informed me the other day that we only have 6 more weeks until school starts. SAY WHAT?!?! That's it?! Didn't summer just start? Isn't it still June? D still hasn't finished last year's math. I havn't bought next year's math. I will be homeschooling three/four kids next year! AHHH!!!! I say three/four because I plan on including B in on C's schooling as much as I can. If I can keep them on the same page as far as schooling, life will be so much easier in the long run. I can't imagine either one of them being ready to sit and learn, so I think I'm going to have to get creative with them. I don't do creative. I wish I did creative. But, I just don't. Oh, and I just realized there will be a new baby to deal with come Febuary. Wow, that sounded bad. But what I meant was, crying and pooping and nursing to try and keep up with therefore school will most likely come to a halt. Yikes, I hadn't thought of that. More creativity. I'm in trouble. Lil' L was born in May, so we ended the school year early. B was born in Dec, so we had an extended Christmas break, Princess C was born in August, and really back then, I was only schooling one child, so that wasn't even a big deal. This is the first baby I'll have to try and work school around.

If I'm talking in circles, I'm sorry. I just now thought of all that.

All summer, N has been working on a snake notebook. He has been researching things like what is the fastest snakes and most poisonous snakes. He has drawn pictures and written things about what he drew. He has printed out pictures and written things about that as well. He has done all of this on his own. I showed him what books to look in, and Hubby looked a few things up on the internet for him. I am quite proud of him. He is the type of kid that loves collecting things. So to have a collection of books and pencils and what not to carry around with him makes him happy. He was just carrying around the stack of things, but then he found an empty container, so he has that filled up and he carries the container around with him. Right now, he is reading over a book trying to find some cool information to write about. He probably has about 20 pages in his notebook.

I love that he is learning and loving it.

Coming Back With Some News

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 18:42:00 -0500

I think I lost all of my readers. Hopefully I will get some new ones.

Life has been crazy busy. Summers are usually like that. We finished off baseball season. That only lasted about 2 months so it wasn't as bad as by our old house. Speaking of old house, yesterday marked our 1 year anniversary of being in our new house.

So on to the news, right? We are expecting baby number 6 Jan 31. We are all excited and happy about it. I have been feeling TIRED! Only slightly nauseous. Just very, very tired. I don't remember being this tired with my other pregnancies. But that's OK, because with my other ones, I was insanely sick. I am actually enjoying this pregnancy so far.

D turned 11 a few days ago. He is getting old so quickly. He is also maturing into such a helpful young man. He takes care of the animals almost completely by himself. He feeds them and waters them, lets them out and puts them away. He is always willing to help and do whatever I ask usually without complaint. Unless it's school work... that's another story.

Hopefully I'll get back in the habit of blogging. I miss it. I am 10 weeks now, so hopefully in a few weeks I won't be so dead tired.

Chicken Eggs

Mon, 1 Jun 2009 20:22:00 -0500

We have 16 eggs sitting in an incubator. Today, I noticed the first pip. Meaning, the first little crack in the egg. I was surprised because it is only day 19 of 21. I noticed it around 4ish and it hasn't gotten very far. I read that it could take 24 hours! Hopefully it won't hatch during the night. I want to see it! I keep checking the egg like every 1/2 hour. Sometimes I can hear the chick peeping. I want to break the chick out so bad, but I know not to. During one of my checks, I noticed another egg rocking slightly. I wasn't sure if it was the egg, or an earthquake. Being that it was the only thing moving, I ruled out earthquake.
On the subject of babies, yesterday, my fil brought us 6 guinea keets. The are so tiny and cute. Once again, my camera is in the other room and I don't feel like getting it. I will post pics of the keets when I post picks of the chicks.

I Love My Ducks

Mon, 25 May 2009 18:09:00 -0500

We built the ducks their own duck tractor. (When the chicks move in, it will be a chicken tractor.) They grew out of their plastic container pretty much the day we got them. They grow really fast. They are already twice the size they are in the picture.
Anyway, I cut some pieces of wood and screwed them together and then enlisted my hubby to put on the chicken wire. I hate using the staple gun. It's very frustrating.

The next day I tried to put the door on. Two screws broke and the eye hook wouldn't stay hooked. So I had to have hubby to that for me, too. It's always nice to have back up.

The ducks are loving their new home.

They love the green grass and dandelions. Lucky for them, we have tons of dandelions. On nice days, we throw a blanket over half of the cage to give them some shade. Today, I had to put a tarp over it because it was rainy. A couple of days ago, I gave them a shallow container to swim in. I had visions of duckies swimming and dunking their heads. We put the ducks in the water and they ran back out. One duck sat there looking confused. The next day, one of the ducks had it figured out. It was sitting there, splashing it's head. It was everything I hoped it would be. Today, two ducks were in it. Once they all get in, I'm going to need a bigger pool. Hopefully soon, they will be big enough to wander the property without me worrying that a hawk will grab them.
I'm pretty sure I had something else to talk about, but I don't know what. Ah, story of my life....

Lil' L's One and Other Things

Tue, 19 May 2009 20:44:00 -0500

My baby turned 1 yesterday! On Sat we had a huge party for her and for Hubby's transfer. It was a blast. We had 45 people over. I am so thankful for all the people who made it out. We had people from a mile away to 130 miles away.
My garden is slowly coming together. We had put chicken wire all around it to keep out the chickens. That worked, but apparently I should have built it to keep out bunnies. I have never seen a bunny on my property, but my neighbor says they are here. My tomato plants are all getting chewed to nothing. My broccoli and cabbage plants are all nibbled. My garden is so frustrating to me. We have put so much hard work into it and it looks so junky! There are weeds all over, grass, half eaten plants, rocks, slopes.... it looks awful. We were out there today working on it and it looks a bit better. My mom put some bricks around the outside of the chicken fence to try and keep out the bunnies and we all dug out some weeds and grass. I planted a few more tomatoes, zucchini, pumpkin, acorn squash, yellow squash, and sweet corn. I still have a lot more things to plant. The calendar keeps moving.
Last week we didn't do any school in order to get ready for the party. This week is looking like we won't be doing any school work. It's garden week. Hopefuly next week we can squeeze in a few more lessons before we quit for the year. Of course, who am I kidding? We probably already have.
My ducks are getting so big. I love my ducks! I want more! They are so adorable! I wish I had pictures to post, but the camera is in the other room and I don't feel like getting up and uploading them. Sorry, I'm just too lazy right now.
We have 16 eggs in an incubator right now. They are due to hatch the first week of June. Hopefully. I am paranoid that none of them will hatch. Reading about all the things not to do it seems as though they don't have a chance.
Well, hopefully soon I will have some pictures for you guys. Until then....

Farm News

Wed, 6 May 2009 20:17:00 -0500

Our new addition to the farm is.....

four cute little ducklings! I was only planning on getting 2, but I wanted to give myself better odds at having females and also, just in case one or two died. We are new at this, ya know.
In other news, we've been working hard at getting our garden ready. Well, not as hard as I should be. My allergies are killing me! I have had a constant headache and have been crazy sleepy. My allergies are much worse here in the country. So bad that I have had to take medication to help. I hate medication. Anyway, our garden. We put in a couple of tomato plants. The cutworms got to a couple of them. So sad. I sprinkled diamatacious earth around them to try and keep them away. Hopefully that works. We have peas coming up. We have onions, garlic, lettuce, radishes, turnips and spinach planted. About a month ago, I made a makeshift cold frame. I put an old window on top of our barrel that held flowers last year. So now we have a nice thick garden of lettuce. Once I harvest all of that, I can put flowers back in it. I love useful things.
I had better go. I am trying to blog and watch tv at the same time and I am just no good at multitasking anymore. Good bye for now!

Hopefully I Am Back

Tue, 5 May 2009 21:07:00 -0500

It is so great to be back on the internet! We were having Hughes Net problems... again... and I was so incredibly fed up with how much I was paying for internet almost as bad as dial up and sometimes even worse! So we canceled. And then we had no internet! So I checked our computers for a free trial of something, and all I could find was a free trial of AOL on my mom's computer. I was only able to get on that a few times, but my mom's computer is getting old and acting funny, so it wasn't long before her computer decided it didn't want to connect to the internet. So now, I have an aircard through US Cellular. That is pretty neat because I can connect to the internet anywhere. Hopefully I will be happy with this.
Now, what do I do first? Blog? Read blogs? Bank? Facebook? Look up all of those things that I kept saying, "if only we had internet we could look that up"? Maybe I ought to do some banking....
We have some new arrivals on our farm. I don't have pictures yet. But they sure are cute. You'll have to come back later to find out what they are. We had to say goodbye to someone. Our boy goat, Buddy. We gave him to my fil for his birthday. The kids were sad, but it was a good experience. I warned them that next year when all of our goats give birth there is no way we are keeping them all. Of course, they were sad about that. At least with Buddy, they had to say goodbye, but they will get to visit.
Ok, off to the bank...

Two More Goats

Fri, 3 Apr 2009 07:36:00 -0500

Wednesday afternoon, our goat Havanah gave birth to two does! I was able to be at the birth this time. Seeing her deliver really made me feel sorry for the people who attended my births! It's scary stuff! She was yelling like crazy and it looked like her bottom was going to explode! She was pushing and after a couple of minutes and only the baby's hooves and snout were sticking out, I started getting worried. "Is she going to be able to push them out? What happens if they don't come out? What do I do?" And then she got louder. And she started to panic. She started trying to stand up! What should I do? Should I keep her down? She's going to smash the half out baby if she gets up! And then, FLOOP, out it came.

Ok, I can breathe again. Now what. Ok... wipe of the nose and mouth, bring the baby around to the mommy.... HERE COMES ANOTHER ONE! FLOOP! Out in a matter of seconds. Much, much better.
The second one was trying to walk the second it came out. She is a fiesty little thing. And very, very tiny. But so adorable! She looks just like her momma and even has blue eyes as well.

Here is a pic of the first girl all cleaned up. Sorta. Havanah isn't the best cleaner. They are still kind of crusty.
She is such a pretty thing. And they are both friendly already. Much calmer than Star's babies were at this age.

Baby Goats

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 20:04:00 -0500

I finally have my internet service back. During a wind storm three weeks ago, our internet got knocked out and we just now got it back. So I didn't get to announce the birth of our goats. Just over two weeks ago, on a Wednesday night, Starberry gave birth to twins. A boy and a girl.

My girl with Star's girl.

And her little boy:

He doesn't have blue eyes. Goats eyes turn blue from a flash like our eyes turn red.
Havanah is due starting tomorrow. Hopefully I will have internet when she gives birth!
These kids are so stinkin cute! They hop and jump and leap and buck. My kids will carry the babies to the corner of the pen and then race them back to the barn. The goat babies win every time.
As soon as my milking supplies come in the mail, I will begin to attempt to milk. That should be interesting.

Havanah

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:57:00 -0600

She is such a lover.

They both really hate it when I leave. But Havanah, REALLY hates it. As soon as I close the door, they start "maa"ing. And then they stand there looking at me. "Please don't leave us," they say. "Take us in the house with you. We want to sit on your lap and watch TV".
So the other day when I was leaving, Havanah scared the pants off of me. She was looking up at me, just like in the picture, when she stuck her backside down and geared up to jump over the 4ft wooden wall. "NO NO NO! DON'T JUMP OVER THE WALL!" Thankfully, she chickened out. But she did give me a heart attack. Hopefully she never tries that again. Because if she does, I just might have to bring her in the house with me.

Crawling Out of Her Pants

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:42:00 -0600

She's really slimmed down the last few months. I should start soldier crawling everywhere I go.

Haircuts

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:18:00 -0600

It was time for our annual haircuts the other day.

B usually only gets a trim when I cut the other boys hair. I figured it was about time to cut all of his hair.

I wasn't exactly happy with the way the front laid, so I tried something different.

He thought it was great!

And Princess C's hair was really scraggly.

So she got a trim. I looks SO much better now.