I'm moving!

I do not really have time to keep up 2 blogs....SO I'm combining my blogs into one.  Please come on over to Reflections in the Window to read about homeschooling and life.

Pioneer life

A big part of pioneer life was the food. Where would it come from, would we go hungry, is there enough ect. Grains played a big part in the diet of pioneer families. To go along with our Little House on the Prairie study we bought a Grains unit study from Marmee Dear Co. The study covers a bunch of different grains, rice, wheat, Kamut, rye, triticale, spelt, barley, oats, buckwheat, flax, corn, amaranth, quinoa, millet and teff. Some of these I have never heard of let along tried. But I did notice that our local Mennonite store has most if not all of these. We have tried rye, wheat, spelt, barley, oats and flax. I must admit I feel much better after introducing these into many of my baked items.

After a short lesson on the grain of the day we went to the Bible to see how many verses on bread, baking and food we could find. Below is a list of what we found: I have used many versions to find these.

Bread:

Gen. 14:18
Gen. 47:12-13
1 Sam. 16:20
1 Sam. 21:6
1 Sam. 25:18
1 Kings 17:6
2 Kings 4:42
Nehemiah 10:37
Psalm 80:5
Psalm 102:9
Psalm 104:15
Hosea 7:8
Matthew 6:11
Matthew 26:26
Mark 14:22
1 Cor. 11:23-26
Luke 6:4

Baking:

Gen. 18:6
Gen. 40:1
Jer. 37:21
Hosea 7:4
Exodus 16:23
Lev. 2:4
Lev. 26:26
1 Kings 19:6
Matthew 13:33

Food: just a few because there are A LOT of verses in the Bible on food.

Gen. 1:11-12
Gen. 9:3
Judges 7:13-15
Psalm 78:25
Lamentations 5:9

I really enjoy turning all of our studies to Christ. Isn't that one main reason we are home schooling our children? Point them to Christ. We bought the book:" Where to Find it in the Bible: the ultimate A-Z resource" by Ken Anderson. I must tell you I am so glad we bought this book. No matter what the subject we are studying I can open this and it will point me to a scripture passage to use. Many times it is more than one. We bought this book at Dollar General for $5.00!

Sorry I've been away....

I've neglected this blog for a bit. I'm sorry about that. It has been a very crazy few weeks. We were away for a weekend, had a sewer problem here at the house, my Husband was up for a promotion at work and did not get the position, 15 year old is rebelling against everything (I think if I said the sky is blue she would say NO....its red LOL!), I was on my way to my scrapbooking club and the tire blew on the car...uggggh! Then we found out we needed new brakes on the back of the car....not cheep. Honestly I had in the past few weeks lost the desire to homeschool. I battled with such guilt over this. That is when I just put all the workbooks away and we have done some fun stuff centered around autumn. I have really enjoyed it. I have worked in math, language arts and writing in these. It has been great because the kids do not even know they are doing these "boring" subjects. Why is it we sometimes feel the need to "conform" our children to the school's way of teaching???



So anyway, I'm hoping to get everything caught up tomorrow....I'll be all alone in the house in the morning....but I'm not promising anything. :-)



I'll leave you with this wonderful unit study from The Old School House magazine. You will find it on the side bar. I'm so excited to do this study. We have just finished the book Little House in the Big Woods and the final chapters are all about the harvest.

Great pioneer websites

Since we are on a very limited budget for school curriculum I thought I'd share exactly what we use. The majority of the items we use for our home school are free!! I do a lot of research ahead of time to gather materials on the web or at the library. Here are a few of those resources I have found to go along with our school. This year we bought the Prairie Primer, and a number of workbooks for seat work. I work very hard at keeping our school cost to below $200 for all 3 per year. So far over the last 4 years I've succeeded.

I did a search on Pioneer Life and came up with a wonderful website all about pioneer life. This site is stuffed full of anything and everything you will ever want for a study of pioneer life. It includes crafts, cooking, and much more.

My husband and son built us a fire pit out in our backyard. I am excited about getting the chance to cook over the fire very soon. I will post about our experience doing this.

Another great resource is "The Young Man's Handybook" by Gail Kappenman and Martha Greene. Although it is written to prepare boys for life, we have used it for the whole family. There are a number of fun projects in the book from kitchen adventures to managing your money. If you have never heard of Martha Greene, click on the link and visit the website. You will be SO blessed by all the wonderful and affordable products there to make your life so much simpler.

Another major resource we use is our library. We are blessed to have a library system here that is very home school friendly. They have put together learning kits for us. They are all placed in a large bag and labeled according to what the topic is. Each library in the county has a different subject, science, history, math, language arts ect. We are able to borrow from any or all of the libraries. So utilize your local library system. You will also meet many home schoolers this way as well.

It may take more time using this approach to homeschooling, but I love it. Besides I am learning so many new things this way. If I am excited about a topic my children will be as well.

Little House on the Prairie

We are REALLY enjoying our curriculum this year! I highly recommend it to anyone still looking for a curriculum this year.

I know it has been a while since I've posts our progress but we have had a crazy month! We have been busy every week. So I'll try and get you caught up on what we've done this month.

We studied owls, where they live, what they eat, and how they act. Since we live right across from a nature center we went outside after dark and listened to the different sounds in the woods. My husband is a great outdoors man and was able to imitate an owl and call an owl in to our tree. The children were thrilled at the fact an owl was in our tree right above our deck!!

We used many library books and some Internet sources to round out our study of owls.
Some Internet are:
My Owls of the World
National Geographic Kids

Books from the library:
"Owls: flat-faced flyers"
"Barn Owls"
"The book of North American Owls"

Our library also has a homeschool section and we used the Pioneer Life kit. We are very fortunate to live in an area with a large amount of homeschoolers.

We have also learned how rust forms. What is it? How does it form? What are the causes? Does it form on everything?

The kids wrote in their notebooks what they thought would happen to a nail we placed in water for a week. (I wanted to make sure it rusted!) We read a few books about rust and what different things rust.

Well that about does it. I promise to keep this more updated. The computer is very busy at our house with my husband's online classes. But keep coming back, I plan on taking more pictures to go along with our studies.

Week 1

This week was very exciting for us in many ways! We started our 4th year of home schooling, which I must say will probably be my favorite one of all! We were able to meet Karen Grassle on Saturday! She was the woman who played Ma on the series "Little House on the Prairie". We went to the Genesee Country Museum near our home for Laura Ingalls Wilder Day. We had such a wonderful week I'm not sure how to top it!

Tuesday we made home made butter, Wednesday we made our home blessing schedule. We took exactly what was in the book and set it as our schedule. Of course we have changed it some to match today.

Wash on Monday

Iron on Tuesday

Mend on Wednesday

Churn on Thursday

Clean on Friday

Bake on Saturday

REST on Sunday

Thursday we learned about 1800's family Christmas gatherings. The children were just amazed at how excited Laura and Mary were to just get 2 gifts for Christmas. We talked about how materialistic modern children can be with the I wants! I gave the children a number of things to think about with the upcoming holidays. First I asked them to think of the real reason for Christmas. Not only that Jesus was born but that he came to save us! What a gift he has given us. Second was that there are still many children in the world and this country that do not get any gifts for Christmas. They all agreed that they wanted to give up a gift and send to someone in need. So this year we will be taking an angel off the tree in town and buying for another child. I was very touched by their excitement!!

This leads me to Saturday!! Below I will share many pictures of our travel back to the days of Laura Ingalls Wilder. ENJOY!!

Katrina washing clothes. She has decided she wants us to get rid of our washer and dryer and do laundry this way from now on. That would last about a day! LOL!

Andrew wasn't so sure about doing the laundry. It took some convincing to get him in there to try it. Doesn't he look thrilled??

Hannah was so excited about learning how they did things in Laura's day. She loves Little House. The bonnet she has on is something she has had for a while. She wears it everywhere, even Church!

This is Karen Grassle, who played "Ma" on the series Little House on the Prairie. She is a very soft spoken woman. She is kind and down to earth. Although, she admits to being a feminist, I really enjoyed listening to her speak. She talked for about 20 minutes about how she was cast into the roll of Ma. She was asked to come in for an interview with Michael Landon to read for him. After she did he was very excited to give her the roll right on the spot. Then she opened up the floor and took questions from people. Some questions she graciously refused to answer, but I do not blame her because I couldn't believe someone would ask her, "Who did you not like on the set of Little House?" She also said she was nothing like Ma, but she does have the grace of her! This woman is a direct descendant of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Her Great Grandfather was Charles Ingalls. She just happened by the museum on a bus tour the day before and one of her family members brought her back for the day. Wonderful lady. Next it was onto making ice cream. The children were able to turn the crank and see how the ice cream was formed. Then we were able to sample it. But because of NYS laws we had to sample some made in the museum kitchen by "professionals". It still tasted very good!!

We then moved on to the baseball field. Where we enjoyed a 19th century baseball game. It was great because Friday nite we went to a modern baseball game with our church. Andrew loved watching it and seeing how different it was from today's baseball. One thing he noticed was that they didn't use gloves in the 19th century because the ball was much softer. They also pitched underhand, like in softball of today.

There are SO many more pictures, but I need to get some work done. So I promise I'll post them later! If you are ever in the Rochester, NY area please do not miss this museum!

Off to a great start!

We are off to a great start this year. As I mentioned we are using the Prairie Primer this year as our history, geography, and science. I love the way you can incorporate many different ages as well as learning styles.

The first book we are reading is "Little House in the Big Woods". The first few chapters had some details in it that the girls did not really care for, butchering a pig. Andrew on the other hand loved every minute of it....and he was worried there would nothing in it that was interesting. In the first few chapters it talked about bears and owls. So we read a couple of books about them. The books we have read so far are:

"Baby Bears and How they grow" by Jane Heath Buxton
"The way of the Grizzly" by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent
"Owls:Flat Faced Flyers" by Adele D. Richardson
"Barn Owls" by Patrica Whitehouse

For our science activity yesterday we made home made butter. This was somthing the children loved doing!! We bought heavy cream, put it into a mason jar, placed the top on it and shook it for a long time. The children got a taste of how hard it really was to produce the food that we take for granted now a days.I placed a plastic baggie over the top of the jar just incase. Have the children shake the jar until a solid lump starts to form. This takes a long time.
Then pour the butter into a strainer, be sure to save the buttermilk to use in baking. We saved it and made biscuits last night. The kids really enjoyed making this. It tasted so good!!

Getting ready for a new year....

Well August is upon us and that means school will begin again. Our family likes to start in August so we have many days to play with. We also love taking Friday's off to have some free time. We have 3 children whom we school at home, Katrina-15, Hannah-12, Andrew-9. The above picture shows how creative I have to get sometimes to teach them. We were learning about north, south, east and west, they just could not get the concept of it so I made up a song for them to sing and move to. IT WORKED!!!

My husband is very involved with our homeschool. He not only works full time to support us but he also goes to Grand Canyon University (online of course) working toward his BA in Christian Ministry. If that were not enough for him, he teaches math to Hannah and Andrew. He also does PE with all of them. He is an amazing man!!

So this Monday August 3 we will start our 4th year of home schooling. I can not believe it. It seems like yesterday we began this wonderful journey. We began home schooling 4 years ago this month, just to "try" it out. We had no idea of what we were doing when we pulled them out of public school. Here we are loving every minute of it....well ok almost every minute of it. I'd be lying if I said every moment of homeschooling is a bed of roses!

This year we will be using the Prairie Primer as our main curriculum. It goes through each one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. In each lesson there are many options to do unit studies. We choose to just get a lot of books from the library (they love to see us coming with our lists of books LOL!) and read about the different topics. Our children love to read so it is a great fit for us.

I'd have to say our learning style is a little bit of everything. I love just being able to curl up on the couch and read to my children, although they are growing up so fast. Their favorite time of the day is when we are able to read our Little House books, so I use that as incentive to get them to finish their language arts, math and other things they need to finish. Each day we do some sort of fun activity based on what we are reading about.

This week we will be starting out with "Little House in the Big Woods". Some of the things we will be covering are, bears, owls, light and prisms, manners, lungs and breathing, rabies, Louis Pasteur and much much more!! We will be making our own butter, bread, and clean the house like Ma did. We want to experience as much as we can through our studies. (I have a link to a site with a ton of fun activities, just click on experience)

At the end of the week at the Genesee Country Museum there just happens to be a Laura Ingalls Wilder Day. We have been looking forward to this all summer!! There will be a guest appearance of Karen Grassle, the actress who played "Ma" on the show, "Little House on the Prairie". So not only will we have our first week of school but we will also have our first field trip of the year as well!

I hope you will check back with us through out this school year and see what we are up to in the "Big Woods".

Home school struggles

Recently I've been struggling with home schooling. Oh we've been getting our work done but there is no joy in it for me anymore. I know many struggle with this same thing. Well this morning I received an email from The Old Schoolhouse Magazine entitled 10 reasons not to give up written by Lori Barrett. There are only 8 reasons listed...not sure where the other ones are...LOL!

Top 10 Reasons Not to Give Up!
This week's list comes from Lori Barrett. Her reasons show that home education isn't just about schooling, it's about reaching our children's hearts for Christ.

We can use the Christian books and materials of our choice for academic instruction.

A small group atmosphere allows us to teach according to each child's particular learning style.

Homeschooling allows us to spiritually train our children to serve God as we build their foundation on the Rock.

We can work on character issues more easily as we are confronted with them each day.

Our children can pursue subjects that they are most interested in, instead of following a schedule dictated by a school.

We can be in the world but not of it, allowing our kids to socialize and mature in a safe environment.

We can condense our learning time into fewer hours, thereby providing more time for hobbies, volunteer work, and field trips.

Homeschool moms (in particular) are being perfected as they seek God along the more difficult and unusual path of homeschooling their children.

China Unit Study

We are beginning our unit on China. Below are the books we will use through out this study. There will be more added as we go through this study.

China-The Land by Bobbie Kalman
China-The People by Bobbie Kalman
The Great Wall by Elizabeth Mann
Count Your Way through China by Jim Haskins
A is for Asia by Cynthia Chin Lee
The Children of China by Matti A. Pitkanen
Children of the World:China

This morning we watched a movie titled Mysteries of Asia: Secrets of the Great Wall. This was a very good movie. The children learned how and why the Great Wall was built. They also learned that many lives were lost during that time as well.

We will be learning all about the Chinese culture, people, homes and just everyday life. This comes at a great time for us. Next month we will be having a missionary family who will be going to China.

I will post any websites I find useful for the study. Some of the stuff we have has come from our curriculum My Father's World.

One website all about China we have really enjoyed looking at is China Pictures. There is a lot of information on there. Just be aware of some of the advertisements.

Resurrection Week

This week is very special to us Christians. So what better way to teach our children the real meaning of Easter than to spend a week on it. Each day we are doing something related to what the Bible says about this week.

Today we talked about Palm Sunday and Jesus coming into Jerusalem. We read some verses in the Bible that mentioned the palm tree. I looked up in our concordance palm. There are 19 listed in our concordance, those are just from the Old Testament. Each child took turns looking up the verses.

We then headed to the dictionary
Palm-1. any of a family of mostly tropical trees, shrubs, or vines usually with a tall unbranched stem topped by a crown of large leaves. 2. a symbol of victory.

That was very interesting to the children. Andrew put it together...a symbol of victory means Jesus was victorious over our sins. Put in terms he understood!!

We then read in the Bible about Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. Luke 19:28-44 We talked about how the triumphal entry fulfilled Bible prophecy.

Prophecy Fulfilled
Psalm 8:2 Matthew 21:15-16
Zech. 9:9a Matthew 21:8-10
Zech. 9:9b John 12:12-13
Zech. 9:9f Matthew 21:6-9

Our vocabulary and spelling words for this week are:
Angel, Arimathea, Council, Earthquake, Emmaus, Galilee, Jerusalem, John, Magdalene, Mary, Mountain, Peter, Pilate, Priest, Resurrection, Risen, Robe, Room, Sabbath, Sepulchre, Skull, Stone, Sunrise, Temple, Thomas.

We are also doing a bunch of fun activities for this week also. Every year we make Resurrection Cookies, i will post the recipe at another time. This year I found this really neat cake to make. Today we had fun looking up the verses and coming up with ingredients.

~ Scripture Cake Ingredients ~
Judges 5:25 - (1/2 cup butter or margarine)
Jeremiah 6:20 - (1 cup sugar)
Isaiah 10:14 - (3 eggs, separated)
Exodus 16:31 - (1 tbsp honey)
1 Kings 4:22 : - (2 cups sifted flour)
Leviticus 2:13 - (1/2 tsp salt)
1 Corinthians 5:6 - (2 tsp baking powder)
1 Kings 10:10 - (3/4 tsp ground cinnamon)
1 Kings 10:10 - (1/4 tsp EACH cloves, allspice and nutmeg)
Judges 4:19 - (1/3 cup milk)
Genesis 43:11 - (1/2 cup chopped blanched almonds or pistachios)
1 Samuel 30:12 - (1/2 cup chopped dried figs)
1 Samuel 30:12 - (1/2 cup chopped seeded raisins)

Cake Recipe Directions:

Cream butter. Add sugar gradually, beating until light. Add egg yolks, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition. Beat in honey. Add sifted dry ingredients alternately with the milk and beat only until smooth. Stir in nuts and fruits.

Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites and pour into a loaf pan (9x5x3) lined on the bottom with wax paper.

Bake in preheated moderate oven (350 F) for 1 hour, or until done.

Cool cake in the pan for 5 minutes. Turn cake out on a rack and peel off paper. Turn cake right side up to cool.

Finishing our Maple Syrup unit study

We finished up our study of maple syrup last week. We read a number of books and did some mini books to put in our scrapbook.

Books we read:
The Gift of the Tree by Alvin Tresselt
The Sugaring Off Party by Jonathan London

The Sugaring Off Party was a very cute book about a young boy who is talking with his grandmother about her first sugaring off party. It brought back many memories of being with my grandparents.

The Gift of the Tree is another cute book. It takes you through the woods visiting all the animals in the forest. It talks about different trees in the forest. This is a must read for children.

On Saturday we went to the Genesee Country Museum on a Sap, Sugar, Syrup tour. We had so much fun. The day started with a wonderful pancake breakfast.

This was an all you can eat breakfast. It was delish, with real maple syrup. The kids noticed how different it tastes. We even bought some for home.

After breakfast we headed out into the woods. There were many stations set up along the way. The first station showed us how to tap a tree. The above picture is Andrew drilling a hole. It was more difficult than it seemed.

The next station was to show us how sap is boiled down into syrup. Here we are looking into the boiler. My parents went with us along with our nephews.

Then it was off on our hike in the woods. We walked about 5 miles total. It was such a nice walk. There were different trees labeled and a little history about the area.

All along the way we saw many trees tapped collecting sap. The museum makes their own syrup. You will see that later.

This gentleman talked to us about how sap collection has changed through the years. From wooden buckets to steel ones. The different drills used back in the 1800's till today.

The kids were able to see how the sap was collected and carried. Using a yolk they were able to carry buckets of sap or in this case water. They enjoyed themselves, Andrew would like us to get one for him.

Here we were able to see one of the yolks being made. Andrew and our nephew Ryan loved watching this.

Here museum interpreters are telling us about the process of making maple sugar. Since they had no way to preserve the syrup they turned it into sugar. Nothing like the smell of wood burning and sweet sap! They used this instead of white sugar in our area in the 1800's. It was so interesting on how they do it. Each one of the kettles holds sap, they are all at different stages, but start out as the same amount of sap.

We then went out into the village and learned how maple syrup was used back in the 1800's. The kids were so good and asked a lot of questions. This young man was really good at answering the questions asked, even if some were pretty silly!

This is the cook at one of the houses, she is making maple oatmeal cookies! YUM!! I'm going to try and get the recipe because they were the best ever!! We were even allowed to taste them. Of course they were made in a "safe" kitchen as they say.

This is the village farm house. Usually in the summer time they are showing how cheese was made on a farm in the 1800's. But today she was making butter and a noon meal with maple syrup.

Here Andrew is trying his hand at churning butter. The kids didn't realize how much work went into it. When the woman asked my 3 year old nephew if he wanted to make some butter he said, "No I buy mine at the store". It was so funny.

Another stop was for the kids to make a tin ornament to take home with them. Here they are practicing before actually nailing into the tin.

My Husband ended up finishing up the ornaments. We have the tin plates hanging on our windows.

We had such a wonderful time here. Since we live pretty close to this museum we go here all the time. I'm really looking forward to sharing more of the museum with you later in the season.

Gym Class

So many times we forget about gym class. So last year my husband decided to utilize our park not far from us. Thursday was the kids first day of gym class at the park. They love it, although I can just imagine what people think seeing our "poor" children out there doing laps and such!

Getting all warmed up. This shot is of Katie and Hannah.

Our little soldiers! Getting ready for jumping jacks.

Leg stretches...I'm not really sure what the technical name is for it. Maybe lunges...Look the gym teacher is even doing it!

Make gym class fun and make it a whole family event. I had fun taking pictures of them. I also took pictures of the trees and birds.

Maple Syrup

We are almost done with our maple syrup unit. Since we have all been sick I have not been able to post about it.

Books we read:
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Sugar Bush Spring by Marsha Wilson Chall
At Grandpa's Sugar Bush by Margaret Carney
Backyard Sugarin' by Rink Mann
Sugar on Snow by Nancy Dingman Watson
Maple Harvest by Elizabeth Gemming
Sugaring Time by Kathryn Lasky

After reading the book that day we did a small book to add in our scrapbooks. All of the mini books we did I found through Homeschool Share.

Mini Books we completed:
Maple producer maps this was a great activity for all ages. They had to color in the state listed also some in Canada.

Vocabulary about maple trees. There are a number of different little books you can complete with this.

Copywork book which is a small poem for the children to copy. The kids loved doing this. I took it one step further and had them copy some scripture that had to do with anything sweet. (Ex 15:25; Judges 14:18;Ps 119:103;Ps 55:14; Prov 16:24) They copied one verse a day and put them into their journals.

Tools for tapping is a book listing all the tools you will need for tapping the trees.

We even went outside and measured around our maple trees to determine if our trees are big enough to tap. We have 2 trees that are!! So we will be gathering tools for next year.

Sickness has hit!

We are sloooowly still working on our maple unit study. But starting Sunday night our son Andrew got the flu. I knew it was only a matter of time before it went through the house. Sure enough, Tuesday-our daughter Katrina, Thursday-my other daughter Hannah and I came down with horrible colds. I still sound like a goose! LOL!

We have all just been huddled on the couch reading many many books about maple syrup. The Lord knew that we were going to need all those books from the library! It has been quite a week. I'll be back Monday with a follow up on the books we read and some more projects.

Have a great weekend!

Maple Syrup Unit

Today we read a very informational book, "Sugaring Season, Making Maple Syrup" by Diane Burns. It took us step by step of the process of making syrup. Later today we will walk around our property (depending on how we all feel, we've been sick) and identify the trees around our house. I know we have at least 3 maple trees.

The temperature plays a very important part in getting the best quality sap from the trees. The best days are between March and April, you can also get sap in September and October. The fall sap is not as sweet.

Steps to making maple syrup: A lot of my information came from the Cornell website on maple syrup production.

• locate and measure your maple tree. Use a tree identification book if you are unsure of what a sugar maple looks like. A tree needs to be at least 31 1/2 inches around before you can tap it. This will save on damaging the tree.
• tap your tree using a drill, tap, hammer, bucket. Drill a hole about the size of a man's thumb, gently use the hammer to put the tap into the hole, place the bucket under the tap. A normal tap will produce about 10 gallons of sap per season.
• Once collected the sap needs to be cooked down into syrup. This is something you need to watch very closely. From my research I've learned that you can do it on the grill outdoors. Which is what we may do if our trees are big enough. The boiling will bring any impurities to the surface that you can skim off. Watch it VERY closely at this point so it does not boil over.

For anyone living in New York State here is the website for the Maple Events. This website has a lot of information on maple syrup and one of my favorite things...RECIPES!

Tomorrow we will read another book and do some more mini books for our scrapbooks. Have a sweet day.

Maple Syrup Unit

Today was the 3rd official day of our maple syrup unit study. I got most of this unit from the Fall 2008 issue of The Old Schoolhouse magazine. The lapbooking mini books I got from Homeschool Share. Then we added a lot of books. Our children learn best this way, and I love it also.

I am so excited about this unit that I can hardly contain myself! One of my favorite childhood memories is walking into the woods with my Dad to tap trees in March. I miss being able to do that. But we do have 3 maple trees on our property we may use in the future. It takes 40-45 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup.

Book we read: "Sugar on Snow" by Nan Parson Rossiter.

This was a wonderful cute book. It is about 2 brothers who were so excited to help gather sap and make syrup.

After reading the book we worked on our lapbooks. This is a wonderful way for children to remember what they have learned, while making mini books.

This is Katie and her book. Instead of using file folders for our lapbooks we wanted something to keep everything together in one book. We put everything in a scrapbook.

This is Hannah and her book. I let them pick a place to put their mini books, it is their project after all. She is so proud of her book.





Here is Andrew's book. He is such a perfectionist, everything has to be just so. He did school in his pajamas today because he was up all night sick. I was surprised he was excited to sit at the table today. I was ready to give him a sick day.




When Matt gets home from work the kids usually run to the door excited to show him what we did today.

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog. This is where I will journal about our daily tasks. I will tell you what I liked and did not like about certain products we have tried. I will also list my favorite homeschool/teacher websites. Most of all the websites I visit are free. I will also talk about some great tools for those homeschooling or are thinking about homeschooling.