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