Week 10

Little birdie, Rico, is doing well.  He is very attached to Daniel and will call for him if Daniel leaves the room. His wings are clipped but the feathers are growing.  He is starting to fly very short distances.

I woke to this scene this morning.  It looks cold out there.

School has been going so well.  We are loving Exp. to 1850.

We finished week 10 already.

In Bible we have learned James chapter one.  This past week we did another week in Boy, Have I Got Problems!  The children did very well doing the work in the book this time.  Next week we will start learning chapter two in James. 

We have been enjoying learning a new hymn and singing it for two weeks.  The music study has been good.  So has the art.

Leah has read several of these already.  Plus she listens in on Daniel's history.

Daniel finished Building a City On a Hill.  At first I wasn't sure I liked this book but it grew on me.  We don't read from every book every day.  Many days we do read from at least two of them.  This week we studied about General James Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia Colony, the last of the thirteen original colonies.  In  The Story of the World we read about the science of that time period.  The Last 500 Years had some neat pictures relating to the science study.  Daniel is a visual learner so he liked that.  Usborne is good for that.  

The children and I loved The Witch  of Blackbird Pond which we finished reading this week.  It was one recommended for our book basket that we found at our local library.  The past two weeks we have been reading Madeleine Takes Command which is based on a true story of an Indian attack in New France ( by Montreal, Canada) on a French log fort.  Madeleine who is 14 years old at the time is left in charge of the fort and bravely takes command during the raid with few people to help her hold off the Iroquois.  We are further along than the schedule as the children usually ask me to read another chapter.

This week in science we have started the study of arthropods specifically insects.

I have found Daniel doing well using Spelling Power.  He is in the groove.  We review missed words every Monday when I find him getting more words correct each time.  I decided not to use the Emma Serl grammar books this year and like what we have been using better.  Also, I have added Writing Strands twice a week for Daniel and find that he is doing better with it than he had when we had tried it a few years ago.  The other three days he does Easy Grammar.  Leah has been using Rod and Staff's Phonics, Spelling, Reading, and English.  I like the Biblical content in their curriculum.

Both children are doing well in their Singapore math books.  Leah finished 1A and Daniel is about half way through 6A.

I have added typing, a computer software I have had for years, to the children's schooling.  If they are going to be using the computer I want them to be able to correctly use the keyboard.

In other news Tim had taken vacation this past week.  We went to the the Youth For Christ banquet one night, had a "date" another night when we went out for supper and a movie, went to Bible study another evening, and just spent time together as a family.  It's going to be tough today when he goes back to work.

I've got a few tomatoes to juice today.  There aren't too many so I'm going to use the juice and make spaghetti for today's dinner.  That will save me doing any canning.  Whatever tomatoes are left after today I will use as they ripen.

I had best get juicing.

What Have We Been Doing?

Fall is such a busy time.  This fall has not been any different.  School starts which takes up most of our day.  Then there is garden produce to process.  Plus many other chores that go along with home making and life on a farm.

A little over a week ago Tim, Daniel, and I picked all the tomatoes, pulled the plants, dug the potatoes, and pulled any big weeds in the garden.  Then Tim tilled the garden that afternoon.  Leah didn't help with the picking as she was sick that day.  The next few nights we had temperatures that got below freezing so it was nice to have the garden taken care of for the year.

We got nine five-gallon buckets full of green, turning, and orange tomatoes.  I am now down to 4 or 5 buckets.  As they ripen Daniel and I put them through the Champion Juicer.  Then I cook the juice down to sauce consistency and process it in a water bath canner.  We use a lot of tomato sauce every year so I am happy to have my own from tomatoes I raised.  I also process canned tomatoes but did most of those earlier.  I will probably do the last of these tomatoes as canned whole tomatoes when I don't have so many to do at one time.  This year I planted all heirloom varieties and found they all worked well for canning.

The other day I read on one of my favorite blogs, Morning Joy Farm, a recipe for using all those hot peppers I had to pick before the frost.  Annie said that she made this green tomato salsa and uses it in place of canned green chilies.  This week I made a batch and a half and got 34 half-pints.  To me it tastes and looks like canned green chilies.  Tomorrow I am going to cook one of the pasture raised chickens we purchased from Morning Joy Farm and make some chicken enchiladas.  Then I can try my home canned green chilies.

I want to put a plug in for Morning Joy Farm.  Their chicken is the best I have eaten.  And I know it was raised in a way that will promote health for my family.  I was very pleased to be able to get one turkey from them as well.  We will have that for our Thanksgiving dinner.

Another thing I have been doing is staining and finishing wood trim.  About a month ago we bought all the wood trim we need for around our doorways as well as the baseboards.  Since most of the main floor in our house will get new wood trim it was a lot of boards to do.  They have been finished for a few weeks and are awaiting a time when Tim can cut them and put them on the walls.  It will look so nice.

Tim has been busy with some help from me cleaning out the two Quonsets.  It doesn't take long to accumulate more junk that we need.  He has already hauled a few trailers full to the dump in Jamestown.  He has almost finished the Quonsets then we will start on the garage.  Now if we can just keep the kids out of the garbage bins.  I have noticed a few treasures they have rescued turning up in different places.

Tomorrow we will finish week 8 in MFW , Exp. - 1850.  Things have been going well having two full time students.  I have been mostly successful in keeping one busy while helping the other during individual study time.  Daniel is better able to stay focused this year and doesn't need to have it completely quiet in the school room.  Plus he can work more on his own in some subjects which makes it easier for me.

In Bible we have memorized James 1: 1-22.  I'm not sure we like Boy Have I Got Problems as our Bible study.  It seems to go over the heads of my students but maybe they are picking up more than I think.  It isn't scheduled every week.  Most weeks we just focus on the memorization.

Leah likes her Rod and Staff, spelling book and English and says phonics is her favorite subject.  I'm glad I went with the English and phonics from Rod and Staff as she likes them.  I didn't really care for the Primary Language Lessons or the Intermediate Language Lessons recommended by MFW.  They were good for Daniel as it worked to keep his lessons short and oral at that point in his teaching.  I realized that Leah would prefer something else.  She totally enjoyed her English test today!

This year I am using Spelling Power for Daniel.  He used  Rod and Staff spelling in second grade.  In third grade MFW recommends starting Spelling Power.  At that time I didn't think it would work for him so we used the All About Spelling program which helped with his reading skills.  I think that was the right choice and we used it for grades 3-5.  Since his reading is so much better now I pulled out the Spelling Power book and am using it for Daniel this year.  It isn't as time intensive.  So far he (and I) like it much better.  The review of words missed is a must for him, I think.  Only time will tell how well the program will work.

This week in history has been more focused on what is going on in different countries around the world in the time period we are studying.  We read about King Louis XIV, the Sun King of France as well as Frederick, the first Prussian king.  At the same time we studied about settlements France made in North America and what the art and music was like in the world then.

For the past two weeks in science we have studied fish, amphibians, and reptiles.

We have almost finished Amos Fortune, Free Man for our read-aloud.  And we are about half way through The Witch of Blackbird Pond.  I usually read a chapter of the Amos book and a couple from The Witch book each night.  Both books are set in the same historical time period and are very good.  Neither child wants me to stop reading either book.  But my voice gets tired.

For the first time this season I made a fire in the wood stove yesterday.  The house is much warmer.  The new windows help keep the house warm with just using the furnace.  But the living room and new bathroom still have the old windows which are very drafty.  Since the wood stove is in the living room right by the bathroom both rooms are nicer to be in now and we won't need to run the furnace.

Those are just a few things I have been up to in the last few weeks.