Nature Studies

Our adventures in homeschooling this week have been nature studies (as well as F and the number 6).

We found a dead bee in our windowsill which Eleanore found fascinating. She loved seeing his tiny hairs under the magnifying glass.

We also found a snail out by our pond which has been great fun to watch. We brought him in for a few days to get a closer look. We will take him back out before we leave on our next camping trip.

We have also managed to get all of the garden in finally. No pictures yet, but this year we planted potatoes, sweet and hot peppers, tomatoes, Swiss chard, kale, eggplant, broccoli, cabbage, peas, zucchini, winter squash, pickling and slicing cucumbers, carrots, gourds, and pumpkins.

And just for fun, here is the outfit Eleanore picked out today.

In case you can’t tell, those are black leggings with neon stripes…

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Painting with Flowers

After seeing this idea on the Little Acorn Learning blog, I knew we had to try it. You simply squish the flowers into the paper to draw with them. Dandelions are especially juicy and work well.

It worked great and was a nice ending to our dandelion and violet crafting. We also did a little printing with the flowers and a hammer. Both girls *loved* that art project.

I’m also doing a little crafting after the girls go to bed. Jason is out of town this week, so I’ve spinning and plying while watching the first two seasons of Doctor Who. I had a mishap with my wheel the other day- the nylon tube that attaches to the pedal broke, but I’m crossing my fingers that my temporary fix will at least hold until I can be the rest plied. I’m planning to start a pair of longies with it on our camping trip next week.

Dandelion crowns

Finally a few “real camera” pictures… We made dandelion crowns today. The weather has been beautiful this week and we’ve all been enjoying our wildflowers (aka lawn weeds).

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We made dandelion syrup and violet syrup last week. We will miss all the flowers when Jason finally mows! We’re always the last on our street in the spring to mow- I’m sure our neighbors are not happy…

I also blended up a batch of chive, spinach, sorrel pesto. I love having garden greens again.

And a little messy chalkboard fun was had today, too.

Kindergarten with Oak Meadow

With the new baby coming in late August/ early September, our plans to start Eleanore’s kindergarten year got bumped up a bit. Our plan is to start this spring and take things very slowly this year, giving us lots of time to settle into a family of five and not worry about being rushed.

We have one of the older, more gentle editions if Oak meadow kindergarten that we’re using and it’s going great so far. I was worried it would be too slow, but Eleanore is loving the focus on one story/letter/number of the week. Even though she already knows all of her number and letters, the extra focus is really improving her handwriting practice.

She especially loves her Main Lesson Book and asks to write in it every day. Some of our pages so far:

She also loves to do extra practice with her numbers outside of her main lesson book.

Of course we’re also doing lots of crafts, outdoor play and nature exploration. Our days certainly don’t look like school at home, but right now it’s working for us.
Adelaide is getting in on the fun, too. She absolutely loves the Wee Sing Fingerplays cd that goes along with Oak Meadow, especially Eency Weency Spider. Both girls run around the room singing and acting out the verses.

You’d Think We Lived On A Farm

My activities today: rendering lard and quilting. You’d think we were homesteading it hardcore, but it’s actually two things I’ve wanted to learn how to do for a while.

If you’re on my Facebook, you already know I’ve had the quilting bug lately. It all started with a 1600 jelly roll quilt for the girls’ bed and that’s what I worked on today- another 1600 in flannel from my fabric stash. I did we’ll and think I used almost all of my flannel pieces.

Yesterday I cut lengths of flannel into 4″ wide strips:

And today those strips became these two tops. I had expected to only be making one quilt, but apparently I cut way too many strips, so turned it into two. They will become car and camping quilts for the girls and I’m HOPING to finish them before our camping trip to the Smokies next week. We shall see…

And my other project has been working away in my crockpot all day… Rendering pork fat. A few months ago we joined a raw milk share and I love the meat offerings they have. I’ve been able to get a kinds of different things- chicken liver and feet, pork fat, and I’ve kept us quite stocked in bacon from the coop. This baby loves bacon…

And speaking of the baby, I also just finished these longies over the weekend. Just need to weave in the ends.

Trying Something New…

Getting time to blog is so tough these days. When we had a working laptop it was a little easier, but now that has died and our days seem to be filled. So much outdoor play, I started Oak Meadow kindergarten with Eleanore, plus it’s garden and crafting time. So I figured I would try the WordPress app for blogging. I’ll have to put up with my crummy iPhone pictures, but hey I’ll be blogging again!

Yesterday the girls and I did some tie dyeing. We all ended up with dye spattered all over our hands and feet but had a great time.

Adelaide was quite enjoying dyeing her own skirt and t-shirt and Eleanore did too!
I dyed a few gauze swaddle blankets I sewed for the baby as well as a shirt and skirt for me. We also dyed some playsilks but the girls immediately grabbed those to wear.
Here’s how they turned out.

Simple Crafts

We finally took our tree down last weekend, and our house was missing it’s festive cheer, so we decided to make an early Valentine’s craft. This is an oldie – just sticking tissue paper to contact paper, but Adelaide *loved* it. She loves anything sticky right now. Glue makes her literally squeal with glee.

Eleanore worked and worked to get hers *just right.* I think she pulled all the tissue paper off three times before it was to her liking.

They are simple, but with the afternoon sunlight shining through them, they bring us a little wintertime cheer.

I also finished up Eleanore’s new pair of mittens a little while ago.

Just a basic mittens pattern – simple and quick.

Snow Paint

Using a mixture of shaving cream and elmer’s glue, we had fun snow painting. I think more ended up on places other than the paper.