Books: The Cure For Everything
April is zipping past us! For me it always seems like the shortest and fastest month. Maybe for most people this year it should seem much slower, however so much is going on here that it is just as speedy as ever for me! Mostly because April is finally warm enough to really start gardening, so we spend most of it outside in the dirt. And this year I have partnered up with a friend to use our garden space to start a CSA business, so we have been extra busy!
I have missed two weeks again, so I will do a quick catch up of both weeks!
Story of The World finished up the new Americas with tales of Montezuma and Cortes. We watched Road to El Dorado, not exactly true history, but I love when a childrens fiction movie brings history to life. That movie showed what inca people may have looked like, worn, eaten, and some of what their relgion is like (ish, it gets a bit hooky with voodoo and magic, but touches on sacrafices which we read about) and of course has Cortes coming to America to find gold. We went back to Europe the next chapter and read briefly about Martin Luther's new ideas and about Henry the Eighth's life and distancing from the Catholic church. Because our internet options a limited out here in the woods (mostly because we have big hills on either side of us) husband used my phones mobile data last week, so we switched it up since SOTW is on my phone and we read pages from Usborne's History of the World on south American tribes.
Michael finished his Usborne Multiplication workbook! He was really happy, and super excited that I had the fractions and decimals book to do next! Emmet is almost done with his book as well and Avery continues to do pages out of a couple different K workbooks.
Avery did Q R, S, and T letters the last two weeks. Michael and Emmet started the second reader book in All About Reading, learned about bossy R syllable rule, and the Find Gold rule of single vowel words. In All About Spelling we worked on consonant teant NK and compound words. We only have two spelling lessons left in this level, and 24 lessons in reading! Avery will finish the alphabet sounds soon and I plan to start 100 Easy Lessons to Reading with him to continue through the summer to prepare for level one in the fall of the All About Reading series.
For Spanish we have just been re-reading our easy readers. One of our goals is to be able to read them all independtly by end of year. Both older boys have 3 they can read by themselves out of the 10 in the set. Emmet has informed me he wants to learn Chinese, not Spanish, so I am going to get a few Chinese books soon for him as well.
For science I have been trying to come up with some fun activities as well as invovle them in all the farm projects. Two weeks ago we had a video chat cooking class from a friend who sells cooking ware. The boys make two types of dip and pizza for our lunch following the live video instructions. They had a blast and are excited for her next one in a few weeks! Last week we did an art and science mash up of reading about how the Earth was formed and then painting pictures of Earth. Avery made a lava planet, but he had fun so that's all that matters. Haha. I cannot, for the life of me, remember what we did for art the previous week and have no pictures (hubby had my phone, remember?) And when I asked the kids Michael informed me, "You should really write this stuff down as we go mommy." Which is ironic because I made a joke to someone recently about keeping homeschool records and my version is chicken scratch scrawl in random notebooks. Whoops! Lol!
Around the farm we have been fermenting our chicken food to give it more protein and natural probiotics. Our meat chickens needed to get out of the garage and the boys helped dad build them a chicken tractor to move them around the field. Our no-dig garden beds came together last week and the boys helped plant potatoes! We created a mud kitchen with a random vanity and sink that was left here when we moved in and have plans to make a green bean teepee soon. We have so many plant starts in windows that we have eaten all our meals on the patio table or at our coffee table for six weeks now!! We built a green house which they helped with and have been watching with glee how much faster our starts in there are growing. They also have several seeds from various fruits we have eaten recently they are trying to grow, including: apple, mango, and orange. We had tried taking plum pits and soaking, then storing in fridge for six months (like a forced winter) but they wouldnt sprout for us. We also bought some rooting hormone and are trying to grow new trees from our established fruit tree with cuttings.
Whew. No wonder I am tired. Oh! And our fourth and last baby calf was born a week ago today! Now time to start sending them to new homes, as we have discovered we cannot feed so many at once! Hope you are staying busy and finding lots to do!
The Dillmans
P.s. My title of this blog post is in tribute to Powell's, our gorgeous six story bookstore in the big city who sent our order last week, keeping the boys VERY occupied for two days while I helped wheel-barrowed 15 yards of compost into garden beds!!
I have missed two weeks again, so I will do a quick catch up of both weeks!
Story of The World finished up the new Americas with tales of Montezuma and Cortes. We watched Road to El Dorado, not exactly true history, but I love when a childrens fiction movie brings history to life. That movie showed what inca people may have looked like, worn, eaten, and some of what their relgion is like (ish, it gets a bit hooky with voodoo and magic, but touches on sacrafices which we read about) and of course has Cortes coming to America to find gold. We went back to Europe the next chapter and read briefly about Martin Luther's new ideas and about Henry the Eighth's life and distancing from the Catholic church. Because our internet options a limited out here in the woods (mostly because we have big hills on either side of us) husband used my phones mobile data last week, so we switched it up since SOTW is on my phone and we read pages from Usborne's History of the World on south American tribes.
Michael finished his Usborne Multiplication workbook! He was really happy, and super excited that I had the fractions and decimals book to do next! Emmet is almost done with his book as well and Avery continues to do pages out of a couple different K workbooks.
Avery did Q R, S, and T letters the last two weeks. Michael and Emmet started the second reader book in All About Reading, learned about bossy R syllable rule, and the Find Gold rule of single vowel words. In All About Spelling we worked on consonant teant NK and compound words. We only have two spelling lessons left in this level, and 24 lessons in reading! Avery will finish the alphabet sounds soon and I plan to start 100 Easy Lessons to Reading with him to continue through the summer to prepare for level one in the fall of the All About Reading series.
For Spanish we have just been re-reading our easy readers. One of our goals is to be able to read them all independtly by end of year. Both older boys have 3 they can read by themselves out of the 10 in the set. Emmet has informed me he wants to learn Chinese, not Spanish, so I am going to get a few Chinese books soon for him as well.
For science I have been trying to come up with some fun activities as well as invovle them in all the farm projects. Two weeks ago we had a video chat cooking class from a friend who sells cooking ware. The boys make two types of dip and pizza for our lunch following the live video instructions. They had a blast and are excited for her next one in a few weeks! Last week we did an art and science mash up of reading about how the Earth was formed and then painting pictures of Earth. Avery made a lava planet, but he had fun so that's all that matters. Haha. I cannot, for the life of me, remember what we did for art the previous week and have no pictures (hubby had my phone, remember?) And when I asked the kids Michael informed me, "You should really write this stuff down as we go mommy." Which is ironic because I made a joke to someone recently about keeping homeschool records and my version is chicken scratch scrawl in random notebooks. Whoops! Lol!
Around the farm we have been fermenting our chicken food to give it more protein and natural probiotics. Our meat chickens needed to get out of the garage and the boys helped dad build them a chicken tractor to move them around the field. Our no-dig garden beds came together last week and the boys helped plant potatoes! We created a mud kitchen with a random vanity and sink that was left here when we moved in and have plans to make a green bean teepee soon. We have so many plant starts in windows that we have eaten all our meals on the patio table or at our coffee table for six weeks now!! We built a green house which they helped with and have been watching with glee how much faster our starts in there are growing. They also have several seeds from various fruits we have eaten recently they are trying to grow, including: apple, mango, and orange. We had tried taking plum pits and soaking, then storing in fridge for six months (like a forced winter) but they wouldnt sprout for us. We also bought some rooting hormone and are trying to grow new trees from our established fruit tree with cuttings.
Whew. No wonder I am tired. Oh! And our fourth and last baby calf was born a week ago today! Now time to start sending them to new homes, as we have discovered we cannot feed so many at once! Hope you are staying busy and finding lots to do!
The Dillmans
P.s. My title of this blog post is in tribute to Powell's, our gorgeous six story bookstore in the big city who sent our order last week, keeping the boys VERY occupied for two days while I helped wheel-barrowed 15 yards of compost into garden beds!!
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