A Cold Week

After trying all week to put pictures on my blog I still am unable to do so. I don't know why it is. Is anyone else having this problem? I hope I can publish this entry.

After I posted on Sabbath about the snow and how nice and warm it was it turned very windy on Sunday night/Monday morning. Tim cleaned out the yard on Sunday and went to work. He said the roads were good. I was just feeding the cat and dog when I saw him drive in the yard Monday morning. I was a bit surprised as it was so blizzardy (I know this isn't a word :) looking outside and I thought he might stay at his dad's place in town.

Tim said that he had a hard time seeing on the way home but that the roads were good until he got just a little way from our place. Then he said the snow got really deep and he couldn't see where the road was. Thankfully he made it home fine though he was worn out from working 15 hours and driving home in a blizzard.

When he got up later in the day I asked him why he didn't sleep longer as there was no way he would be able to get to work. The wind had been blowing 45mph all day and there was new fluffy snow that was blowing around. At times we couldn't even see the garage which is close to the house. He did end up taking a vacation day and staying home.

The wind finally ceased sometime early Tuesday morning. Actually our yard didn't look too bad as far as new drifts that needed to be cleared. While the kids and I were doing school upstairs I heard a tractor. Our neighbor, Bruce, was clearing the roads with his snow blower. While he was at it he cleaned up the one drift in our driveway by our mailbox. Tim said the roads were good when he went to work.

Yesterday the road maintainer came by our place so the road should be good to the south as well. We should be able to make it to church on Sabbath if no new storms come through.

In ECC we are finishing the last week of our study of Africa. Next week we will start studying Asia. The first two weeks in Asia will be mainly focused on Saudi Arabia and Islam. I couldn't find many books for book basket on any Arab countries. After reading the idea forum on MFW I found that others didn't either. Some suggested getting books on Israel. I liked that idea and found a few, not many, books listed at our local library. It will be a sparse book basket compared to the one for Africa.

I wondered why Israel isn't studied in ECC. I think it is because the next year will begin a four year study of the history of the world. Next year we will be using Creation to the Greeks and will get a good study of Israel then and in the years to come.

I best get my students upstairs for school. I hope to finish by noon so we can get to town early. I have many errands to do there.

Snow storm

We had another major storm move through our area Friday afternoon into Saturday morning. It was so beautiful out there yesterday morning that I took a walk. The air was still and I could hear our neighbor's tractor over a mile away. The trees were laden with ice and snow and I could hear some cracking of limbs but not many. I took some pictures but for some reason I am unable to put them on here today.

Since church was cancelled for the day we had planned to stay home. It was so warm and nice though that we decided to go pick Whitney up for the day. As everything including the road was white it was hard to see where the road was. We drove slowly and watched the side of the road where we could see some grass poking through the snow. In some places there were tracks of a previous vehicle. Most of the way we had to make our own tracks. A trip that normally takes only a few minutes took us 40! Whitney was happy to see us and was ready to leave. Ryan came driving over shortly later as he had finished his ranching chores. We spent a nice day eating and visiting with our older daughter and son-in-law.

In the afternoon most of the snow and ice melted from the trees and power lines. I don't think we will loose power as so many in our state did.

Right now it is snowing lightly and the wind is blowing. It definitely isn't nice like it was yesterday. But I don't think it is going to be as bad as they had originally predicted. Tim and Daniel are outside getting our old tractor started so they can clear the snow from our driveway. Tim wants to make sure I can get the van out if I need to get somewhere.

Because of the storm Brandon didn't come home this weekend. Last night we watched the local news out of Fargo. It looked like they got it worse than we did. They got a lot of rain, snow, and slush. There were reports of several accidents and people sliding into the ditch and snow. The slush freezing on the roads will make for some awful driving conditions.

Last night we watched Globe Trekker. It was on the Balkans, very beautiful countries. After that was over we watched figure skating. It was the women's national championships with two skaters being picked for the Olympic teams. Since then Leah has been wearing her Super Girl costume and has been skating around the house. She sure has some graceful moves.

I need to look up some new books for book basket. This is our last week in Africa then we will be going to Asia starting in Saudi Arabia. I will try to post some pictures later.

Frosty Morning

While I was loading my wood stove this morning I noticed how beautiful the trees looked. Since I always have my camera handy I took a few pictures.

I love this evergreen tree.

Actually, it isn't as dark outside as it looks in these pictures. The temps aren't bad either. I hear another snow storm is on its way for the weekend so we had best enjoy the outside now.

Don't kids love to make forts? They love turning our recliners into big forts. The bad thing is they can never seem to be able to fold the blankets and put them away.

After lunch yesterday I sent Daniel and Leah outside. It was so nice and sunny. They played on and around the snow piles for 2 hours. Their cheeks were so rosy and they smelled so good and outdoorsy when they came inside. Lately they have been playing "spy." I love it that they are such good friends (most of the time.)

I just gave the 5 minute warning for school to begin so I had best get this posted.

ECC Week 18

There doesn't seem like much happened around here for me to write about. But we have been busy in school so I will give a report about our week.

Daniel has read through Matthew 13 in Bible. This week he learned the last two verses of the passage in Matthew 6:19-21 about storing up for ourselves treasure in heaven. It was an easier passage to learn as it had many repeating words. We read about Mary Slessor, a missionary to Africa, in Hero Tales. And we read about and prayed for the Riffi Berbers of the Rif Mountain Range in Morocco. Did you know that "there were many Berber Christians during the first centuries after Jesus died? Some were even martyred for their faith. Sadly, the church grew smaller, and by AD 1100 there were no Berber Christians. But Berbers are coming to know Jesus again!"

In All About Spelling Daniel has been learning to add suffixes to base words. He has learned the rules for doubling the consonant before adding a vowel suffix. There are so many rules to remember that we go over them every couple days. He is doing much better in his spelling and his reading and I have to give some of the credit to this spelling program.

In math Daniel has been working with measuring in centimeters and meters. He likes doing that. Then he worked with adding and subtracting problems with meters and centimeters. I have to admit is much easier to do conversions in the metric system than in inches and feet. We will start doing that in a couple weeks.

I had a hard time playing the geography game for Africa. I only know a few countries and there are so many to learn. But I know from experience that we will learn them if we just keep at it. Daniel did a few worksheets on Africa. He learned a bit about the country of Kenya.

We have been reading about grasslands in science. We learned that grasslands have different names in different continents.

North America-prairie
South America-pampas
Europe-steppe
Africa-savannah

Maybe I knew that but had forgotten it. It is amazing how much I learn as I teach the children. I love it!

We sang some African songs from Wee Sing and have been listening to a CD I found at the library.

Daniel has been reading about African animals in his reading book, "The Complete Book of Animals." And I have been reading aloud from "David Livingstone", another missionary to Africa.

While Daniel is busy working on his math drill I help Leah do some school work. She has been wanting to read. Since she knows the sounds of the letters, I knew it should be an easy thing for her to read. When we went to the library I tried to get some Bob Books. The first level was checked out. I remembered I had some easy little readers with cvc words here at home. It was so fun to sit and have her read to me. Imagine the excitement for her as she sounded out words and read for the first time! She read a whole story from the book and was very excited to be able to read to her papa when he got up! After she read she wanted to spell on the spelling board with the letter tiles. I gave her words from her reader and she easily spelled them. I think kindergarten will be lots of fun for her next fall.

We are a week behind in art. I didn't get the flowers in time to do the flower pressing assignment for Germany last week. So we did it this week. First we had to press the flowers for a few days. Then we made a picture out of the flowers. This is an art form in Germany.




I bought some inexpensive frames at Walmart so the children will be able to save and hang their pictures in their rooms.

I hope to get to our African art project today.

Another storm

We had another storm this past week. It was pretty snowy and blowy. I didn't think Tim would make it home that one night but he did. He has his dad's 4-wheel drive pickup so he is having an easier time getting to and from work this winter. It sure is nice to see the sun today and to know that the temperature is a lot warmer!

Daniel is outside shovelling snow again. Tim is getting ready to go out and plow our yard. We would never make it out of here with the van. He has an appointment to get new tires put on the van Monday so he does need to have it clean.

We did get to town on Friday with the pickup. Daniel and Tim went to the monthly home school ice skating party. Leah and I went to the library. I'm not used to the pickup, yet, and there are so many the same color. When we came out of the library we went to the wrong pickup. I had opened both doors before I realized it wasn't ours. That was a little embarrassing!

After we picked the men up from skating Tim took us out for an early supper at Applebees. What a treat and so delicious it was. It was different driving a pickup than a van, not much storage for groceries! We sure had it packed in there. And we didn't have that much.

We finished our 17th week of ECC and the study of Europe. Next we will be going to Africa for 3 weeks. Last night we watched a video, Duma, about an orphaned cheetah. We liked it. There sure were a lot of children's books, videos, and even a CD of music at the library about Africa. I mostly got fiction E (skinny) books. They are the most interesting to the children and teach them a lot about different cultures and countries.

Daniel started his second book, Singapore 3B, in math. This one will be mostly measurements and geometry which will be a nice change. Daniel will still do a different math facts sheet each day to keep up on his addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts.

Daniel continues to do well in spelling. He is almost halfway through Level 3 in All About Spelling. It takes him 3-4 days to finish each step. I'm happy that he is remembering the different rules. I just wish our English language would be a little easier. Why couldn't there just be one way to spell each sound. It is so confusing!

Today I'm planning to make our German dinner. I looked through the "Cooking the German Way" book that I got from the library. But I didn't find anything that sounded good to make from there. I have a cookbook from Fredonia with a lot of German recipes in it that I'm going to look through. I have never tried making strudels but think I will today.

I will take some pictures (if I remember) of our dinner.

New Year's Eve

I realized it had been awhile since I had written. We are now in a new year according to the "pagan" calendar. In line with God's keeping of time we are in the 10th month and the 18th day. But we live in this world and have to keep its time as well.

We looked forward to company coming here for New Year's Eve. I had prepared all kinds of food which we are still eating. Once a year my friend Renee and I like to get together and make egg rolls. I had all the filling ready and had good help with the rolling. At first we wondered if we had enough wrappers. Then later we laughed that we thought that as we had so many left. I froze them and they are good warmed in the oven.

After supper we decided we should play a game. I said I would play anything but didn't want to read the directions. Renee picked out Cranium which we had never played. It didn't take long to figure it out and we had a great time playing. We had three teams of two. Whitney and Ryan, Tim and Dave, and Renee and I were the teams. Shirley didn't want to play.




We had to get Leah's play dough as the molding clay for the game was spoiled. Here Shirley made a cute bird nest and bird for Leah. It looks like Leah didn't want Daniel to touch it. Tim was molding something for Dave to guess. Whitney found it funny.



There were four different categories. The color you rolled decided the category. If your team got the answer correct before the time ran out you could advance to that color on the board.

The game was fun and I would play it again. Here's my teammate. All played a good game but we were the winners.

This week we are back to school for the whole week. Daniel was thinking we would have a three day week again! We are in ECC Week 17. After this week we will be halfway through ECC. Since we are in Germany we have been studying castles. Yesterday while Leah was napping Daniel and I made this castle. Both of us didn't want to get too elaborate and just keep it fun. Daniel's one requirement was that it needed to have a drawbridge. It was fun and easy to make. Later he made some siege works out of Legos.

In science we have been studying lakes and rivers and the wildlife that lives in and around them. We did a couple experiments to show that water has a film that allows insects to walk on water.

Last night I went online to our library's website to look for books for our next continent, Africa, study. I found 53 books, music Cd's, and movies. It's nice to print out a list of the books. When I get to the library it won't take me long to find them. I probably won't choose all of them but will get most. These books go into "book basket" for the children to look at during that time of the day. Some we will read out loud. Mainly they are there for pleasure.

Over Christmas vacation our library got a new computer system. They were closed for a week while it was installed and the employees learned how to use it. It is different and took longer for me to save the books I wanted to a list. I think there must be an easier way to do it. If the librarian isn't busy on Wednesday I will ask her about that. The program is nicer as it gives more information about each book and I can look for only children's books in my search which saves me time. Think how much computer technology has advanced in just a few years!

I remember when we first were home schooling our older three. We used a curriculum called KONOS. Each week I would go to the library and look through the card catalog. You remember the kind that was in little drawers. It took so much time. And it was frustrating as most of the books listed in my manual were not at my local library. I could order them inter library loan and some I did. It is so much more efficient and quicker to do this on my own computer when I have time at home.

Speaking of time, it is quickly getting away from me and I need to get my little students fed and up to the school room.

Happy New Year everyone!