Confession: I had to restart the fire in the wood-burning furnace today. Twice. I started it, checked to be sure it went. It did. Went down (too many hours) later and it was out. Started it again. It lit. Went down (too many hours) later and it was empty and out. Again. But I fed all five six kids twice three times today.

I went through kids drawers yesterday. Chucked clothes in a “give away” box with wild abandon. Today, we sorted, folded, bagged, and put away the few that were simply too small. Drawers close. It’s a wonderful thing. Ruby is down to five pairs of pajamas. She started with eleven. Who needs 11 pairs of pajamas?! (Who needs five either, really?)

The UPS truck delivered a package today. I behind in the air, back to the window in the door, bent over and vacuuming the floor with the vacuum hose. Turning around to a knock and strange man in a brown uniform was startling. For both of us.

A most effective way for something that needs my attention to get it has been found. Leave it in the middle of the living room floor. One way or the other, I’ll get to it, just to get it out of my way. I’ll not mention who figured out this little trick… but I got the project done as requested within 18 hours. Amazing.

Diet update: I’ve lost 8 lbs. so far. Pretty happy with that. Still working on it, but it’s a good start.

TOS Review: Flowering Baby LLC

For the last several weeks, as part of the Old Schoolhouse Magazine’s Review Crew, I’ve been using Flowering Baby, LLC’s Volume 3 and Volume 5. Volume 3 is for children ages 2 and 3, and Volume 5 is for 4 and 5 year olds. Charlotte and Ruby have been eager participants and have loved having their own “school” to do. Painting and coloring and reading and other “normal” household activities are abundant in this curriculum that can be purchased either as a download or as a CD with PDF pages that can be printed out. (I didn’t print it; using it from the CD worked well and saved my printer from 300+ pages of activities.)

Flowering Baby has recently developed curriculum for each age group, from birth to age five, to help your child to, according to their website, "develop his cognitive, language, gross motor and fine motor, social, emotional and self-help competencies". You can begin the program at any time, during any given year.

With several kids to homeschool, and several more to parent, life is pretty busy. My little ones are getting less formal “schooling” than my first few. I've felt bad about this often, but with limited time and the older ones requiring more and more of my time as they get older, (How is this? Aren't they supposed to become more independent? We’re not there yet.) this curriculum didn't require much extra time, and my girls loved it. Cooking next to me is one of the suggested activities. I can do that. I already do! There are often 4 little stools lined up during the supper prep hour, and two more children who are finally tall enough to stand on their own two feet. Being reminded to talk with them and discuss what we’re doing during that process was good.

We read books (and olders read them books when life got crazy) and made jell-o and discussed colors and shapes. Charlotte, I learned, doesn't know her shapes at all. She didn't get her colors right very often when we started, but now she’s almost always right. She really enjoyed all the time we spent together working on the activities. Making jell-o and eating blueberries and walking the sides of a square and putting toys above and below the chair to practice those concepts is quite thrilling when you are two! Music to listen to and books to read are all listed for the 20 lessons to do each month, separated by their age in months. (Charlotte is 28 months.)

Ruby worked with Volume 5 and worked on her penmanship and learning to assign one number to each thing she was counting was an improvement for her. When I asked her if she liked her schoolwork (Flowering Baby), she replied, “Yes, I liked everything. Except writing 2’s. I don’t like writing twos.” Well, then. We’ll work on those!

Ruby often feels like she gets left behind. As the oldest of the youngest, and the youngest of the olders… yeah, she’s stuck in the middle. Spending time with her working through the activities suggested (some, obviously, more fun than others!) was good for her. Since we were studying this while visiting my parents’ sheep farm in South Dakota, we picked the farm week to study. Talking about farm animals, getting some hands-on experience in the lambing barn, and discussing which animals produce which of our foods (Ruby’s hatred of milk became a full-blown discussion right about then! She agrees beef is good but milk is decidedly bad – unless chocolate is involved.) was part of that week. Charlotte and Pierce especially thought making animal noises was hilarious and even Blaine joined in our study, unknowingly, when he found videos online of cows and ducks mooing and clucking. What a world we now live in, now able to find videos for these noises instead of making complete fools of ourselves trying to sound like a cow. (Whether this really went on in our house that week, I’ll never tell…)

As with Volume 3, Volume 5 includes a great book list and also has website suggestions to go along with it’s themes and curriculum, which is sorted by month for Volume 5. Each month’s holidays are discussed and learning a bit of Spanish each day was fun for Ruby. Since Blaine speaks French, I’m tempted to switch that out a bit (since he’ll be able to take that farther than me and my one struggle of a semester of Spanish) but for now, Spanish is easy. I can count to ten.

All in all, as a fan of less book work and more life experiences, I was impressed with this curriculum. If you’re looking for ideas and suggestions to keep your young child learning in their play, this is a great (and economical, really!) way to go. I’m going to try to keep this up, since the girls have learned much and had a ton of fun with this. It took us about 20-30 minutes a day, and they begged for more. The book list is super, and the girls will be better prepared for formal learning when that time comes after making a habit of learning each day with Flowering Baby.

Volumes 1-3 are $30 each. Volumes 4 and 5 are each $38. The complete set of all five years can be purchased for $132.For a 10% discount on the curriculum, enter discount code BLOG10 at checkout.

To read other reviews from the Review Crew on this curriculum and the other age options available, click here.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of these materials through the Schoolhouse Review Crew in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions expressed in this review are mine and my family’s. I am disclosing this in accordance with FTC regulations.

Homeschool experiment: fail.

Dear Person Who Keeps Leaving the Basement Light On:

You are skewing the results of our data.

Love,

Adrienne

Because that’s the kind of guy he is.

I have a tree.

 

I’ve had a Ficus tree since college. The thing is kind of old. It needed to be repotted, pruned… it’s looking pretty sad right now. Blaine and I looked at pots, but none caught my eye. I clicked over page after page on Amazon. (Thanks to a Amazon Prime membership, compliments of my sister-in-law, 20 gallon pots ship two-day free. Who would have thought?!)

Nothing. Then Blaine found one locally, bought it for me, and brought it home. He even got me purple. And then the (in)famous words were spoken.

“It’s not self watering. But I’ve been looking online, and I think I can make something.”

I nodded, smiled, and I’m sure my eyes got a little bit glazed over. Couldn’t we just put rocks at the bottom like my mother always did?

Oh, no. Certainly not. Yesterday morning I was called into the garage to see the product of all the bumping and scraping and drilling I’d heard.




I’m quite certain I did not make over the invention nearly so much as he desired. It’s a former goat-watering tub, my friends. Re-purposed. I cannot smell the buck’s eu de billy, so all’s good. But is this really necessary?




It’s a pot. With a pipe sticking out of it. That’s where the water goes, I’m told. He even put a stick in the corner of the bedroom so that I can check the water like I check he checks the oil.



I’ll be the first to admit. It' looks lovely. Ten times better. I still think the rocks at the bottom trick would have worked and been far less work. But then I wouldn't have been able to write this post, and all of you wouldn't understand, on a really small scale, the kind of guy I married.

Who am I kidding? I’m not sure I understand either. We’re opposites, that’s all I know. That, and he makes me look really, really lazy when he does something like this.

Review: Apologia Exploring Creation with Anatomy and Human Physiology

As part of the Old Schoolhouse Review Crew, Liberty and I have been using Apologia Educational Ministries’ Exploring Creation with Anatomy and Human Physiology for many weeks now. Liberty has been journaling in the Notebooking Journal and we’re been using the Anatomy and Human Physiology MP3 Audio CD as well.



I was thrilled to be chosen for this review. I’d long heard good things about Apologia and wondered if it was true. Could kids really be so excited to do school that they are asking for more?

Umm, yes. I've been asked every day since we started if we can do science. We've done an experiment “mummifying” an apple and saw the differences between the one submerged in salt and baking soda and the one left open to the elements. We've studied bones and discussed them at length. We've made a Jell-O “cell” with candy components.



You know what the coolest thing was? We went on our own little field trip to the Discovery Center and the kids got to do a science experiment. They got to scrape their own mouths to look at their own cells! After studying this the week prior, there was Liberty, naming all the parts of her own cells, remembering what she’d learned and being able to apply it. That was pretty awesome!

I tend to be pretty bare bones in the classroom. I’m so busy with all of them, if they can work alone, all the better. If I have to get too involved, I’m pretty unlikely to choose that curriculum again. This one, I wouldn’t have had to be involved too much. She could listen to the CD, read the book on her own, and I could provide the materials to experiment with and she would have needed little instruction.

But this has never happened before: I wanted to be there. I wanted to learn this stuff too! It was really easy to use, and before shopping, I just flipped ahead to see what we might need. Most of it was pretty basic and we had it on hand, but the Jell-O cell required a few extra things. I’d do it again in a heartbeat though. Liberty had so much fun and learned enough to be able to name cell components again the following week!

I plan to use these materials for science for all four of my older kids, who will be 5, 6, 8, and 10 in the fall. I’m sure the older students will get more out of it, but judging from the little chins I had to tell to back up for those Jell-O photos, they will still be interested and learn a great deal. Even I’ve learned a bunch! I have to admit, I love this stuff. That CD got less use than it would have in any other subject – I wanted to read it! On the busy days, it’s a great idea, but I really enjoyed reading this aloud on the days when I could make time.

The Anatomy and Human Physiology textbook is hardcover and is $39.00 on Apologia’s website. It is recommended for elementary ages and beyond, depending on each student. I think it could easily be done for all elementary ages - but the little ones won't get as much out of it. The notebooking journal is spiral bound softcover and lists for $24.00. It is for students with upper elementary writing skills, and they offer a Junior Notebooking Journal for those with limited writing skills. The MP3 CD is $29. If your budget is tight, I’d suggest getting just the text and you could use your own notebook and, with a bit more work, make a pretty good notebooking journal of your own. If you have the extra funds to be able to swing the notebooking journal, I’d highly recommend it. It makes remembering the information studied that much easier. The MP3 CD is a great add-on, especially if you have a student who struggles with reading and learns verbally better.

I love this curriculum. I’ll definitely continue this one and pursue their other sciences in the future. Any textbook that has them begging for more is worth a second look!

Click to read more reviews from the Schoolhouse Review Crew.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of these materials through the Schoolhouse Review Crew in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions expressed in this review are mine and my family’s. I am disclosing this in accordance with FTC regulations.

It’s going to be a doozy of a week.

I’m two for two this week, my friends. I’m afraid to touch anything at this point.

On Friday I took my sewing machine to the repair shop. It’s been having issues for some time, and that was the last straw. I walked in with it, and within 38 seconds the lady told me I was using the wrong size bobbin. This may have – and likely has – caused all of the problems I’ve been having with it. I left it anyhow, since it’s 15 years old and has yet to have any repairs to it.

Friday night, we realized the new fridge in the garage was not cooling properly. I researched, tried a million things, took the back panel off and cleaned the coils, and nothing helped. I left the panel off and gave up. Yesterday the appliance repair guy came and couldn’t find anything wrong with it, except that it cannot run properly with the back panel off. He put it back on and it is working fine.

Turns out, one of my million repair tries actually worked. (I do know which one. It resulted from someone pushing buttons on the fridge. No child is fessing up. The child lock is now engaged. Grr.) And then I took the back panel off. I paid the guy $79.95 to put six screws into the back of my refrigerator.

Two for two. Ouch.

What a way to wake up.

I woke up with a start in the dark of night. The coin cup we use for math – a metal cup full of likely 500 coins – had crashed to the ground. It wouldn’t have fallen off the shelf by itself, so I was a little disturbed. Who on earth?! I crept to the doorway and peeked around, wondering what on earth I would find (and what was I going to do about it?! I didn’t even put my glasses on. I wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyhow!) and there were my daughters, attempting to do schoolwork by the yardlight beam coming through the window.

Today is Eden’s birthday, and they’d decided to get up early and do their schoolwork so they could have a fun day. I asked them what time it was. They didn’t know. It was 4:09 a.m.

I shook my head, sent them to work in the kitchen where the light could be on without shining into the bedrooms, and went back to bed. I’m not sure why, since the adrenalin rush from thinking we had an intruder in the house left me shaking and unable to sleep.

Eden finished her schoolwork at 5:09 a.m. (She’d started the night before. After a day that made me shake my head and wonder if those big yellow school buses that take them away are such a bad idea after all, I made her quit because I didn’t want to do school after 5 p.m)

Liberty finished everything but her spelling at 6 a.m.

On the agenda for today: naps, all around.