Tuesday May 14

Today was a full and busy day. The two younger boys worked on some laundry this morning. Thomas and Matthew completed a construction job today that's been long and drawn out, fitted in between door jobs. Austin was out with the lawn crew.

I was up earlier than usual. After breakfast, I read with the boys until the midwife came. All seems to be going as a normal pregnancy should.

After my checkup, the boys had scattered. Melvin was mowing the lawn. Between mower breakdowns and rain, the lawn was looking pretty hairy. More hairy than pretty.

Christopher was watching chicks and trying to see how many hatched. He also emptied the dishwasher. (Click here to see a video of the chicks.)

I worked on making menus for the next couple weeks and getting a shopping list ready. Then I made a list of some food prep that could be done.

The last few months I've been using Eat at Home meal plans, simply because of pregnancy brain. It was too difficult to plan and Tiffany has all the thinking done for me. Actually, I did alternate my own meal ideas with hers but leaned heavily on her plans.

Now that I can think again to some degree, I decided to make my own plans for the next couple of weeks and see if I can whittle the grocery bill down.

Last year was not a real profitable garden year so my freezers and canned food shelves are quite empty. That does not help the grocery bill! Especially with six big eaters. My appetite has returned so that includes me.

After lunch we headed to school for program practice at 12:45. It's that time of year again. Practice every day this week and Friday evening is the performance. Next week we'll be FREE.

While the boys practiced (for an hour) I crawled into the back seat of the van, curled up and slept. If you've never tried pregnancy at age 46 you should! Ha ha. It is quite difficult.

After we were home and I rested a bit more, Christopher and I tackled some things in the kitchen. He started working on a breakfast casserole. Then he had to go do the milking early so Melvin finished the casserole.

I got a batch of bread mixed and rising, then worked on supper and other things. There were leftover mashed potatoes from Sunday that I reheated;

I fried burger, onions and cabbage together

and made a fruit salad with apples, canned pineapple, frozen blueberries and yogurt. Sweetened with a bit of maple syrup and flavored with vanilla.

The cow has really upped the milk production this spring. I turned a gallon of it into vanilla pudding, sweetened with Sucanat.

I want to make some freezer meals so I fried a couple packs of hamburger for that venture.

And a pound of bacon, baked for another potential breakfast casserole.

The fresh baked spelt bread.

It takes more bread with the guys getting their own breakfasts and lunches. With my poor coping skills at present, there are fewer leftovers as well for lunches. Plus Austin wants more finger foods to eat "on the run" with his lawn care job.

I felt pretty good about how much I accomplished single handedly. The boys were all gone to Kid's Club for the evening. But. ..if I do that much, it just kind of sets me back physically. One day up, the next day down. One step forward, two steps back.

Thomas spent the evening working on a chicken coop. The chickens have been in the fenced-in garden area but if we want to plant a garden they need to move. Plus the chicks need something with a "roof" so hawks and owls can't get them. AND we want something that we can move across the lawn or field to let them pasture feed.

The boys came home around nine o'clock, ate their supper and we called it a day. Kitchen cleanup waits till morning. That's the way we roll around here. Not the best way but hey, you can't always have the best, you know.

Wow!

Last year I started composition books with our two youngest. They each have their own. I would write a question and they would answer it. Then they returned it to me with a question. I answered, wrote another question, etc. (A sneaky way to get them to write.)

It was very interesting. They would ask some hard questions. And give some revealing answers.

This year I decided to use the books for math. I will give them problems to work and they will return the favor. I enjoy math but I figured sooner or later they will stump me. Sure enough Christopher went online with the search line, "hard word problems".

He got one for me that went clean over my head. I studied it awhile and decided to see where he got it. No help there except for the info, "Most tricky and tough algebra problems are covered here." Yikes!

Determined to master this, I searched for how to solve algebraic problems. (I'm the person who, if you tell me it isn't likely to be done, I'll master it. I was told in my younger days that, "Girls can't whistle with a blade of grass." Wrong thing to tell ME!)

So I settled down to GET THIS! I followed a couple tutorials online until it finally got through my head. A few simple steps and presto! There was the answer! Christopher said he hasn't seen me so excited in a long time. Well, I was! I can't describe the feeling of empowerment that came from mastering that problem.

And a piece of info I left out above from the "hard problems site"- "If you can solve these, you can probably solve any algebra problems." Obviously there are lots more on that site but to tackle and conquer something that seemed so impossible, was fantastic. Maybe I can do it again.

It was interesting to me how that feeling stayed with me even in other matters. Where something would before look impossible, I'm thinking, "Maybe I could get this!"

Here is the problem in Christopher's handwriting (he writes very faintly in pencil) and also copied and pasted from the site-

The cost of petrol rises by 2 cents a liter. last week a man bought 20 liters at the old price. This week he bought 10 liters at the new price. Altogether, the petrol costs $9.20. What was the old price for 1 liter?

Can you solve it?

Another Event You Don't Want to Miss

Flowers growing from a crack in the patio at my sis-in law's house

The Not Back to School Summit began this week at Home Education Council of America. There have been numerous talks this week that have been helpful to me. We were out of state until Wednesday evening and dealing with jet lag Thursday so I missed a number of presentations.

But there is another full week of wonderful speakers and topics to come. As a basic free member of HECOA one has access to all live sessions and a complimentary 24 hr replay. Sign up now to catch today's and possibly yesterday's presentations. 

Jillian Newkirk started off with helpful tips for ending the power struggles between adults and children.

Joseph Hoffman taught about music and pointed us to his academy where he offers hundreds of free lessons. 

Greg Denning tells how to simply and successfully teach teens. Greg comes from a broken home but found the help he needed to succeed in life. He now mentors teens while being a father of seven and traveling the world with his family. (He's the one who inspired our sons to stay away from sugar a couple years ago. He himself has been sugar-free since age 16.)

Dr Angela talked about how to understand your children who have gifts that can seem like hindrances, e.g. dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia, ADHD and etc. She recommended books by Ron Davis- The Gift of Dyslexia and The Gift of Learning. It was eye-opening and empowering to hear the stories she told regarding children and adults she has helped to appreciate and work with their gifts.

Andrea Hall taught us how to make math real through everyday living. Learn decimals in the grocery store and fractions while baking in the kitchen. Do square foot gardening to learn counting, measuring, and much more. Look at shapes in nature for geometry. There are so many ways to make math tangible for your children.

Come join the fun, be inspired and enriched. Maybe you will even be stretched and learn something new! 

Strewing

One of Thomas Jefferson Education's "Seven Keys of Great Teaching" is...

"Inspire, don't require." 

Most people say, "If I don't require my child to study, he won't!" 

I ask, "Did you ever try?" 

We require our children to attend school (or homeschool) at a very young age and soon the flame of curiosity is stamped out and we begin to lecture them daily about the "need" to study. 

We have no clue how all of our requiring would not be necessary if they had a natural learning environment.

Do I, as a parent, do hard things? Do they see me struggling to learn new skills? To get a degree while raising my family? To write a book? To master a new cooking skill? To learn how to improve my health- by knowledge and discipline?

Laura Ingalls inspired her worst student to become a good student when he realized she was keeping up with her school studies at home while teaching school herself. She had agonized over how to get him to study, but here it was, as simple as example.

My own studies will inspire me to strew bits of knowledge as I go about my daily living. This will pique my child's curiosity. They will want to know more about things.

It is in this manner that we are instructed to teach God's law, as well. While sitting, standing, lying, walking, etc. We were discussing this the other day. Does that mean we talk of it all the time?

No, but if we are full of God's Word, we will apply it to everyday situations, while speaking about it with our children. (Deuteronomy 6:7)

As my son peruses the Kindle account, he may find things I've strewn there. One recently "picked up" The Gentleman's Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness. He's gaining wisdom from it. (Or maybe I should say, knowledge. I'm not certain it's turned to wisdom yet.)

Lay a few books/magazines on the coffee table. See which ones get picked up. Put more out, later. 

Set out books that inspire doing- drawing, painting, building, home repair, farming, photography, cooking, and you name it. Do some projects yourself.

The learning is in the books. Find interesting books on a myriad of subjects and introduce them in subtle ways. Try pulling one out from the row on the bookshelf and placing the front to face the one who comes looking.

Hang paintings around the house in strategic places. In front of the kitchen sink. By the toilet. On the bedroom door. On the bathroom mirror. 

Print out quotes, Bible verses and poems that inspire. Place these where they will be noticed.

Strew ideas. 

"How could we get surround sound in this room?" 

"We need a magazine rack." 

"The chickens need a shelter." 

"Watch this Back to Eden gardening video; couldn't we do that?" 

Introduce new games. Thrift stores are excellent places to find the old games you enjoyed as a child. Games can be very educational. They are especially great for learning math.

Strewing is an excellent way to inspire your children to learn more. If they bite what you've strewn about, fine. If not, fine. Keep strewing. The curiosity is there, if you haven't killed it by requiring.

Plato said, "Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body, but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind."

Here is a very inspiring article. The author speaks of joy and delight in learning. May you find it inspirational in your own homeschool journey, if that's where you find yourself. 

Strewing is helpful even if you send your child to a conventional school. Your enthusiasm about learning is sure to wear off on your children.

Today my strewing included a Bob Ross video. Now wouldn't you like to paint when he makes it look so easy? (The above-mentioned article had me checking him out.)

Words I'll strew today-
Archetype
Doggerell
Piazza

Culture Fair

This post has been in the making for a long time. Ancient "news".

The three youngest boys joined our church school and other homeschoolers for a culture fair on January 27, 2017. We got the details for the fair about 4 weeks before it was to be. Talk about panic! Two of those weeks were already carved out to work at my parents' house.

How was I going to help Melvin (who is dyslexic) and Christopher to get their reports done? Part of the requirement was a 600 -700 word report from both of them. That meant a lot of my time helping with a writing project bigger than anything they had yet accomplished and not enough of my time to do it.

The deadline for the report was a week before the fair. Most of my time had been spent helping Melvin by reading to him and writing down his thoughts and paraphrases. By Thursday morning Christopher had about 200 words done. As I set out to see how I could help him, I realized he had been copying some of it from the encyclopedia. I said, "Oh, you can't do that!" He burst into inconsolable sobs and declared he didn't want anything to do with the fair.

After talking about how he might still accomplish the task using speech to text accommodations we got him happily on his way again, telling the computer all about Germany. He really waxed eloquent on the history.

Christoper chose Germany because his aunt comes from there.

After contacting the teacher and realizing he didn't even need to see the reports (they would take points off toward the prize if it wasn't finished) I relaxed. Mostly. 

Pakistan, Melvin's country of choice was so foreign to me that I didn't know where to begin to find clothing or how to make the food.

Matthew chose Switzerland and truffles were his "food" choice. How hard is that? Christopher chose sour kraut and sausage. Another easy one. 

Matthew chose Switzerland because he has roots there.
Take notice of the upright display. He built that and it swivels, showing info on both sides.

Pakistan? Oh, what do they eat? Google just about had my mind made up on a chicken dish.Then my memory was jolted- we knew someone who had married a Pakistani. She had died but surely the family could tell me something. And indeed! I called Reuben Yoder and spoke with him awhile. He was full of such helpful advice. Rice and Dahl was a common food in Pakistan he said.

Google to my rescue again, I found an Easy Peasy recipe for rice and dahl.

Reuben told me how I might make clothing so Google helped me there again, once I knew what their clothes were called. I found tutorials for making the Salwar, Kameez and turban.

Melvin chose Pakistan because his finger landed there when he spun the map!

Everything turned out great and we had a fun evening. I will include pictures from all the students. I've blurred the faces of all children but mine for privacy reasons. I missed one girl who had Chile.

Buddhism

Japanese 

A bit of the Japan display & part of the flag of Malaysia

Stephen (in the background) was photographer for the evening

English

Italian

Egyptian

Netherlands (Dutch)

French

Chinese

Iraqi (because his brother is a missionary there)

Mexican

Polish

Chechens

Malaysian

Mr Vernon (right) and Miss Rose (back left) are the brother/sister teacher team at school

Don't you think the children (and their moms & teachers) did just a totally amazing job?

Which is your favorite? (We were supposed to vote.)

Do you realize how much you learn when you have a project like this to do?