Life

I am amazed at how busy a life can be on a remote and quiet mountain.  Granted our lives here are all about becoming as self dependent as possible.  Yes, when you have kids, that adds an entire dimension to life you wouldn't otherwise have!  On top of that, being self employed, self motivated, self taught and self sustaining, we are also homeschoolers.  Truly, if it wasn't for this marriage being the awesome team that it is, neither of us could go on like we do now!

Harvesting zucchini 8/15/11

Trouble holding onto harvested zucchini 8/15/11

Drying our onion harvest in mid August.

Homeschool began on 8/22.

Science experiment in the first week of school.  Floating eggs in heavily salted water and comparing with egg in fresh water.  Kids loved this experiment, they didn't realize just how effective it would be!

My 5 year old son is having a little fun-time on the internet playing a math game called "Save the Whale."  It's free, it's so easy and gentle that it makes learning/remembering math facts seem more like, well, a game!  I got this idea from my chosen math program called "Math Mammoth."  We all LOVE IT!!!  I highly recommend it to anyone!  Check it out if you're floundering in the math department!

Here my 2nd grader enjoyed the study we did on Leif Ericsson and the Vikings so much that he designed his own long ship with pipe cleaners!  It wasn't an assignment, it was simply the sheer joy of learning at work!

September 13th was amazing winter-like weather.  It was a much needed change from the relentless heat and the "non-soon" we got in place of typical summer monsoons!

The weather was unpredictable and the scenes equally surprising!  Here we are at sunset!

The children joyfully display their handiwork.  We studied North American Indians last week.  They made paper wigwams and teepees!
This week we are studying the Pilgrims.  We even did an activity which demonstrated what the Pilgrims did in place of glass for their windows.  Each one oiled his own sheet of printer paper with veggie oil, then compared it to a regular clean sheet of paper.  We held them both up to the light and saw how much more light could get through the oiled paper.  Then we placed both sheets on top of newsprint and they could see the newspaper through the oiled paper.  We then made it 'rain' on both sheets of paper and saw how much more durable the oiled paper was!
On a side note for any of you homeschoolers out there, I'd like to recommend checking out the curriculum offered by "My Father's World."  It makes it possible to teach one curriculum at each child's level, freeing you from having to teach multiple and widely varied curricula.  I'm difficult to please, and this one has got me leaping for joy!  It's Biblical while implementing the best of classical education, unit lessons, and Charlot Mason approaches.  It's great.  I am even free to start teaching the children beginning Latin for their foreign language.  For that, I'm using Memoria Press' "Latina Christiana."

The apples on the tree are ready for harvest!  Tasty homegrown apples!

It's official, I've been bitten by the Autumn bug!

I'll sign off now, but not without sending out a great big, THANK YOU to Candy at the Lazy J Bar C.  Even though it appeared I was MIA in blogger world, she up and bestows me with the Liebster Award.  Then as if that wasn't a miracle unto itself, two hearty sweat souls join me in my followers list!  Thank you MamaTea and Dr Momi for your faith in me!  So happy and humbled that you would come join me!  Thank you!

In your honor, I will pass on the love and the award in my next post!

Joyously linking to Farmgirl Friday blog hop #25