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.