Lorihadams-- hi guys...been busy!

[lorihadams]

Seriously....I had a whole post typed up and it got wiped out. Grrrrr.

I'm better today, slept better last night but the dogs woke us up around 4. Frawg is the peeingest dog I've ever had.

Anyway, going to the library today and meeting up with another homeschooling family to give their DD some of Maddie's old clothes and the lady is coming to get the ducks tomorrow so after some rearranging last night and resexing everyone to make sure I had what I wanted to keep I switched out my males so I would have totally different bloodlines between my male and my females so she is getting 2 males and a female which is fine cause she has 5 females now so that will work out good for her.

The lawnmower is fixed, not covered by warranty but the guy was able to splice the wiring back together for $70 cause the new part was going to be at least $300 so he saved us a bundle.

 

[lorihadams]

So today I am supposed to be selling the ducks but haven't heard from the lady yet....the last time she said she would be here around 6:30 but I don't know what time she's gonna be here today, she wanted to bring her girls with her to see our farm.

The kids want to camp, I'm kinda just wanting to open the windows and sleep inside

Hubby is camping all weekend cause he is teaching classes for Va Waterfowlers at an event over an hour away for the whole weekend....says he's gonna take Tonka with him to keep him company.

Tomorrow is the Powhatan Pauwau....the kids are super excited to go again, they both want dream catchers for their bedrooms.

We went fishing this afternoon and caught at least 20-30 bluegills, we were fishing with corn kernels so most of them were small but we did catch a few whoppers!

Did our reading outside this morning while we had a picnic, did fractions preparing the food for the picnic, some online math games, spelling with the foam letters I found at the Dollar Tree yesterday, some math with blocks, and painted a bit. I'm looking for some science experiments to do with them but evidently I didn't check out the book I thought I grabbed at the library yesterday. :/

Maddie got some really good ballet chapter books so I'm thinking we'll start Swan Lake tonight.

I got all the towels and blankets washed, 3 loads worth and hubby's new goose decoys came a bit ago just in time for the classes tomorrow and Sunday.

I ordered my 35 broilers from Meyer's about a half hour ago, they'll be here next week sometime between Tuesday and Thursday so I know what I will be doing Sunday afternoon....I have a coupon from TSC so I'm gonna go ahead and get wood shavings for the brooder that has to be cleaned out and 4 bags of flock raiser and a bag of cracked corn to start with. I'm sure we'll end up having to have more feed than that but that will at least last us a while. I have cash to pay for it from my egg money and I'm calling the breeder back tomorrow about the goats. I may spend some time on her website tonight making a list of possible candidates for bucks for the ladies.

It looks like it is going to rain but I've opened all the windows in the house and there is a nice, cool breeze gently blowing through the house. It's gonna be downright cold tonight! Supposed to get down into the 50s I think. Good sleeping weather

I want to build a fire but I have 2 huge sunflowers growing in my fire pit....I put the shavings from the mouse cage in the fire pit cause I figured I'd just burn them and evidently they had buried some sunflower seeds.

I let the two new girls out of quarantine this afternoon and had to clip wings already. They have had DE for a week and I'm treating the whole flock for the next two weeks just to be on the safe side and then I'll clean out both coops and dust everything with DE too. They just look happy to be out of the smaller isolation pen. I'll try to get some pics of them but they are still settling in and there are lots of squabbles amongst the flock.

 

[lorihadams]

We had a good weekend, Chad surprised me and showed up at 5am Sunday morning. He said he had a good day Saturday but lectured from 8am to 10pm and worked with a gentleman that had had a stroke and was paralyzed on his left side for 3 hours to teach him how to blow a goose call. Made him all teary eyed to tell me about it.

Saturday we went to the Pauwau and had a good time, there weren't as many dancers this year which was a shame, but the ones they had were really good.

Sunday we went to Chesterfield Berry Farm and went through the corn maze, pumpkin patch, hay rides, haunted pirate cove, bouncy house, saw pig races, did rubber duck races with old hand water pumps, crawled through bunches of hay bales, saw lots of different farm animals (including 2 rabbit colonies with all sorts of tunnels), and met up with a few people we met. We had a really good time. It was cold and windy but we were good and worn out by the time we left.

We got home and checked on the food plots in the field we hunt and they are coming in nicely...we planted winter peas, chickory, and clover. Chad is supposed to go to Southern States today to see if he can find some bulk seed for the other food plot on the other side of the field.

Today the kids have gymnastics and then the lady is supposed to come get the ducks....finally. She said she left out of work Thursday and got everyone in the car to come here Friday and realized she had left all my information in her desk at work. She had no way to get in touch with me cause she only has internet at work. So, the ducks leave tonight. The meaties get here sometime between tomorrow and Thursday. We cleaned out the barn, moved some things around, and put the brooder (freshly cleaned) in the hay side of the barn. The electrician forgot to put in an outlet in the ceiling of the hay side like I asked and I didn't catch it so Chad is going to drill a hole next to the other wiring and we are going to run a heavy duty extension cord from the ceiling into the milk room to plug in the heat lamp so that it won't be in the weather. I have to go to TSC as soon as I can get the laundry done and get all the feed for the meaties and another bag of shavings for the brooder and chicken coops, and a new tarp for the chicken tractor. The good news is that I have cash to pay for it. The bad news is that it wipes out my egg money/poultry sale money. Oh well....I am using the money from the mallards to get the goats bred so that is paid for.

I put another couple of ads on CL today for some things I am trying to get rid of and for Chad to do some more side work.

Today we did lots of math this morning and then did some science work about the earth's rotation, why the sun rises and sets, and got a globe and flashlight and went in the closet to show the kids how everything worked. Then we talked about shadows for a while and now they are watching "Rob Roy", a dvd we got from the library based on Sir Walter Scott's story. I'm beat. It is cloudy and spitting rain intermittently so we are drying all the clothes in the dryer. I have to wash the bedding and sleeping bags Chad took to the campground but I will do that tomorrow and hopefully be able to hang them out. We had to turn the heat on yesterday morning. It is cold.

I have a bunch of cucumbers that are coming up nicely that I am planning on putting plastic over to keep them warmer. All the other stuff in the garden looks pretty good. My strawberries look like someone poured miracle grow on them and I don't know how I'm gonna get straw on them. I also have to pull up the last of the tomatoes and the pepper plants that never peppered. I'm thinking I will plant some more broccoli in there or maybe some lettuce. I don't know, we'll see. My beets are coming up too and so is the little bit of swiss chard I planted. My spinach and lettuces are coming up too. All my brassicas got attacked by caterpillars so the leaves are toast....I got most of them off and fed them to the chickens but there are lots of holes in the leaves. GRRRRRRR.

I'm really looking forward to going hunting. Chad is going to try to get his dad's pressure washer so we can wash the house and blast the freezer that has molded. We are gonna need masks to go in that thing. Seriously, it's that bad.

 

[lorihadams]

I did it!!!! I was able to tell when the goat was in standing heat!!!! We took her to the breeder after this mornings milking and had her bred to a beautiful blue eyed buck named Obadiah....we stayed there for about 1 1/2 hours and I'm gonna watch her for the next week to see if it was a false heat or not and then keep tabs on her to see if she is preggers!!! I hope Aliana has beautiful babies with him cause they made a very handsome pair and he comes from really quality milking and show lines.

I also wanted to show off some pics of the kids. Yesterday they went squirrel hunting with Chad and killed 2, which he then cooked for them for dinner. Then today we made dream catchers with some beautiful guinea feathers we found today at Barb's farm. Chad took off half a day and went with us and is now hunting with his brother cause apparantly he doesn't know how to skin a deer.

Aliana is really stinky and so am I cause I had to go in the buck pen to pick out a stud for her and they all ran to me and rubbed on me as if to say "pick me lady, pick ME!!!"

Now...to get Bethoron bred.

Here's the pics from the berry farm, hunting and our dream catchers!

 

[hillfarm]

Its cool that you family has such a wide and varied experiance. You're a good mommy.

 

[lorihadams]

Thank you darlin'! We try....hubby was very fortunate that he was able to do some side work cutting up trees after the hurricane came through so we have had extra cash on hand to do lots of fun stuff with the kids....today they met some kids from North Carolina at Barb's farm that go to school year round so they are on a 3 week break and staying at her bed and breakfast and get this...doing chores at 6am with Barb!!! Today they took a hike with their mom around the surrounding farm and Barb packed them a lunch and gave them a lamancha buck to pack it on so they hiked with the goat! The lady's kids were so excited to tell someone about it they made fast friends with my children.

I love homeschooling cause we were able to take my kids with us today...they love Barb's farm so I'm excited to go back again with Bethoron and since she has a bed and breakfast there we never know who we're gonna meet.

Never a dull moment at Swingin' Tree Farm!!!

 

[snapshot]

You all most definitely have an interesting life! Love reading your posts!

 

[calendula]

I loved your pics! Looks like so much fun, fall is great!

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

I wish my experience with homeschooling had been as much fun as yours!! I really felt like I was struggling to get the basics instilled into my kids.

Honestly, putting them back into public school was an easy out for me

Love your pics! You're such a good momma!!

 

[lorihadams]

Thanks Quail....it's not easy for me, honestly being certified teacher with a college degree and training on "how to teach" is more of a struggle for me. I broke down in tears last night. I told Chad that I constantly second guess myself and worry that what I'm doing...or not doing...is right. He just looked at me and said, "our children are doing just fine....they're smart and that's because of you" That helps but I still get overwhelmed. Days that I just feel exhausted mentally I usually try to do lots of art projects, get outside, or just read a lot of books because I just don't have it in me to do much else.

Sitting down and "doing school" at home just doesn't work for my kids. They hate it and I hate making them do it. It took me forever to explain that to my family....I told my mother Saturday that no, I wasn't using all the little workbooks that she just bought for my kids cause they hate them and I refuse to make them do something they absolutely hate right now. They are 4 and 6 and shouldn't be made to sit at a desk all day cranking out workbook pages that they won't remember and resent me for making them do. I guess we are slowly falling into the "unschooling" category more and more....sit down repetitive exercises just don't work with my kids. My daughter will benefit from more copywork and writing exercises because she does well with that style of learning....she is more like me in that respect. I did very well as long as I could write everything down. I was the girl in school that took impeccable notes in every class. If I don't write it down I don't remember it. That's just how my brain works. I also love to read...I read all the time....I tend to get stuck in certain genres for a while and then get bored and switch it up. Science fiction for a while, mysteries for a while, historical fiction and biographies for a bit, how to books for a stretch, and so on....My daughter is probably gonna end up more like me in that way. My husband is the total opposite...he only reads when it is in a quick moving, direct, to the point writing style (James Patterson is one of his favorites) or when he can get some sort of usable concrete information about something....like how to books, but even those he skims through to get the big picture first and then goes back to read the finer points. My son is a carbon copy of that. He wants to know the end result first and then go back to examine the process. Sitting still and reading a book is too tedious for him right now...he wants to be moving so for now all he reads are things that are useful to him. He shocked us in the car the other day and said about his vitamin water...."mommy, this says zero calories....what's a calorie and is zero a good thing or a bad thing?" So we had a reading lesson and an improptu science lesson in the car that day about what calories were on the way to the breeder.

Today he comes to me with his hungry hippo (taken apart from the game....also something he likes to do) and says "mommy, there's a marble wedged in there....it's stuck and I can't get it out." I told him to go get me a screwdriver so I could pry it out....his reply was "okay, but I've already tried that and it won't work but you can go ahead and try it again if you want to...." I was hanging out laundry at the time....he brings me everything and I asked him how he tried to pry it out and had him show me....well he was prying it in the wrong direction and couldn't get enough leverage with the screwdriver to get it out cause he was hitting the underside of the hippo. I showed him that if he went in the other direction where there weren't any obstacles in the way of the screwdriver he could get more leverage with the screwdriver and "pop...out came the marble". I said, "understand, if you have more leverage then you can pry it out farther" He snatched everything out of my hands and stuck the marble back in the hippo and proceeded to do the whole thing again first the wrong way and then the right way which popped the marble out. He says...."oooooooohhhh, leverage" and goes on his way back into the house.

Now, if I had read that to him in a textbook or had him do it on paper in a worksheet he would have immediately forgotten it but because it happened the way it did in a way that was interesting to him, he'll remember it.

Homeschooling, or unschooling, is all about teachable moments and giving your children access to different materials to discover what they are interested in and what they want to learn and letting them learn it on their own with you in more of a "tutoring" role than "teacher" role. It is our job as parents to help facilitate learning experiences as they present themselves....lots of people would have just gotten the marble out and handed it back to him but because I stopped to explain what I was doing and why it worked he discovered how to do it himself. The beauty of homeschooling is that kids can learn algebra at age 10 if they are ready for it instead of someone saying...."oh no, you're too young to learn about that now, you'll learn about that in 4 more years....right now you need to study this" My kids know more about frogs than anyone I know but they also have used that to learn about lots of other things....like measuring and comparing different sized frogs, identification of different species, comparing the characteristics of one species to another, habitats of different types of frogs (and toads), and my son may not be able to recognize a list of dolch words (sight words) but he knows how to read any word associated with a frog. We learned about habitats by going outside and examining different ones....we learned about the process of seed growth and the life cycle of trees by observing and growing them, we learned about the rotation of the earth and how night and day happen by acting out the process in a dark closet with a globe, flashlight for the sun, and bouncy ball for the moon. That also led to a discussion on shadows and how that happens.

It seems like we don't do much all day because I don't have lots of paperwork to show for it but my kids are learning all day everyday. If they are interested in something we go look it up....in books, the dictionary, encyclopedias, or on the internet. Last night my husband got online to look up different styles of paper airplanes so they could go outside and fly the different ones and measure which one flew the farthest. We watched a program on the history channel about rogue waves the other day which led to a discussion on satellites which led us to an experiment to see what would interrupt our satellite signal on the tv....he ended up making it work with a cookie sheet btw after trying several different things. Then we went to the pool yesterday (2-3 weeks later) and he was going in circles yelling "I'm gonna hit you with a rogue wave mommy"....I know he remembers it cause we make it interesting and relevant to him WHEN HE IS INTERESTED IN LEARNING ABOUT IT.

One of the best books I ever read was "Guerilla Learning" by Grace Lewellyn....it is geared towards all parents, not just homeschoolers, and gives lots of tips on how to help your child succeed whether they are in public school or otherwise.