August & Back to School

 It's not quite mid- August. We are getting a later start at back-to-school than I had intended. I had hoped for the last week of July, but we will just press on from here.
I am already suffering curriculum set-backs. The "Good and Beautiful" History kit is still on back order- and when Tom cleared the history on the computer, my link to my paid downloads disappeared. The company auto-replied in email, they can't even get to my email to read for a number of days.

This year, Nickole is studying Astronomy, and Chemistry. (Today, we built a Robot from a kit, just for fun!)

 We are supposed to do US History, whenever our kit eventually gets here. For Math, I am trying "Life of Fred", and supplementing with Khan Academy. Khan Academy is also what we are doing for Language Arts, at the moment. We have Home Economics. I'm very disappointed in the course I bought, but can use it as a starting point. (It's Nutrition section uses things like bullion cubes... when I can teach her to make a stupid-easy bone broth that is FAR better for ones health!) We have Geography, and Geography through Art. I hope the two play nicely together! We are continuing our Atlas Adventures from last semester. We are continuing to read- Nickole is a voracious "listener"- she goes through audio books at a crazy pace. I do require actual READING, and we continue to go to the library. My friend Lori and I plan to do many field trips, though Lori isn't starting school until after Labor Day. Field trips and extracurricular classes are a challenge, due to Covid19 restrictions.

The garden is finally taking off. It was quite late in getting started, as the cool, wet weather hung on well into June. Last year, most of my canning was over with by the end of July. This year, I didn't get enough to even begin canning until this month (August).

I've been doing a few jars of green beans, and a few jars of tomatoes several times a week. A recent visit to my folks in Texas gave me a good start on pickles. I guess I should say 'traditional' pickles! I already have a cupboard full of Squickles. That's what I decided to call squash pickles!
The zucchini seems to be dying off at last. We have had squash relish, squash casserole, grilled squash, roasted squash, fried squash, sauteed squash, squash 'fries', Granny's Garden Veggie Saute (featuring squash), spiral zoodles, fried spiral zoodles, squash bread, squash as lasagna noodles ... I am sure I am leaving some uses out. The yellow squash has got a second wind.
We have done jellies and jams. Strawberry, blackberry, plum, mixed berry, peach... and I am only just getting enough peppers to consider jalapeno jelly.
The okra is finally giving us a few shy pods per day. The first batch of corn was the WORST corn I have ever tasted. Hopefully, this second batch will be better. We shall soon know!

The trip to my folks was fun. It had to be short, due to the garden needing care. I met Becky and her kids there. We made a couple hundred tamales with Grandma Rose!

That's all for today! Thanks for reading!

Klingon

Have you ever speculated on whether other life-forms have poetry? Today, the twins were assigned to write a poem. Daniel asked if he could write his in Klingon. (Klingon are a race of people from the TV series Star Trek)

I told him I was not accepting poetry written in Klingon- as I don't have a Universal Translator handy.

Maybe I should have just allowed him to write it in Klingon, and sent it to Becky to grade. When we needed to learn a foreign language when she was homeschooling- she wanted to learn Klingon. As much as she wanted to learn Klingon, we never did find lessons available.... we settled for Spanish.

Not that we completely learned Spanish- but that is a sad tale for another day.

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Now this is interesting! I just did a spellcheck before posting. Of all the words I have had highlight as misspelled, many were names that just aren't in the lexicon of the spell check. It did not highlight "Klingon"... so Klingon is not only spelled correctly, it is in the Blogspot spellcheck lexicon!

Dan and Sam's Loom

I decided to give the boy's loom its own post. Daniel and Sam got their start weaving this school year. In studying the ancient Sumerians for Social studies, we learned that they wove their own cloth. I got a small lap loom, and Dan and Sam had a blast weaving tiny little mats. These were too small even to use for placemats, but the boy's did make Jade (their step-niece) a handbag for her birthday.
The lap loom is great for in the car. We ordered ours through Rainbow Resource Center. When we went to Texas during the first part of March, I suggested that maybe Grandpa Bill could help the boys build a larger loom in his workshop. Grandpa suggested maybe the boys should build their OWN loom, "like the Indians did". He sent the boys out into the woods, where they used their ever present Multi-Tools to hack down a small dead tree. Grandpa took the tree into the shop, and used his fauncy machinery to put together a more or less square frame. Then we had to head for home.
At home, the loom frame languished several weeks, until Mom and Dad remembered to buy some dowel rods to use for pegs. Dad and the older brothers helped cut the dowels to length, drill peg holes, and pound the pegs into the frames. Ta-Da!

Yes, they DO need haircuts. Dan is wearing the blue shirt, Sam is in the red shirt.

Why We Started to Homeschool

Tom and I got married in 1984. Just a few weeks before, Christopher had been diagnosed as "Hyperactive" by the Child Study Center in Ft. Worth. I didn't want to put him on drugs if I didn't have to- so the Center said 'some people' have had success with the Feingold Diet. Basically, that is eliminating ALL artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives from your diet. We gave it a try, and had amazing success. It should certainly be easier to follow the diet these days- but back then, finding anything that didn't have at least one of the three no-noes was difficult!

Time came to enroll Chris in Kindergarten (1985?). The local public school asked me plenty of questions, one of which was "Is your child hyperactive?". I said he was great now that we had him on this diet. The school said we would have to have him on drugs before he would be accepted as a student. They said it wasn't "fair" to the teacher or the other students to have a disruptive kid in the classroom. I argued that Chris was NOT disruptive any more. He just needed to stick to his diet- which he understood- and I would supply his food.

The school still balked. What if a teacher gave him a treat and it set him off? (What if he had been diabetic and needed a special diet... or allergic to peanuts... or, or, or?) They stood firm in their refusal- it was "best for everyone" if Chris were medicated.

Tom and I talked it over. I decided to teach him at home for the year, and we would re-evaluate next year. After all, it was Kindergarten, how hard could it be? I had never even HEARD of anyone home schooling at that point. After talking to several people I knew who had kids in K-3rd grades, I listed the skills I expected Chris to learn. I bought supplies and workbooks, and filled in the gaps with my own ideas.

Bill Joe was just over four years old, and would butt in- prompting Chris at every turn. A few days of that- I just duplicated all of the materials I had for Chris. Bill was obviously ready to start school- why wait until next year? So both boys started out together in our homeschool.

Somewhere that first year, we learned that we were not the ONLY people who were taking back the control of their children's education. There was actually a Homeschool "movement" out there. We attended a seminar, collected information on various curricula and the rest became our history.

One of the first smack-myself-on-the-forehead moments came when we were going to bake a cake together. I had all our cake baking supplies laid out on the table, when nature called. (I was pregnant and had someone sitting on my bladder) Before going, I instructed the boys to carefully grease the cake pan- all along the sides and bottom.

This is where I learned one must be VERY, VERY specific when dealing with young children.

They greased the pan liberally. All over. Inside AND out. They did an extra nice job on the bottom of the pan. They even took turns.
(Mommy was so proud.)

Our Adventures in Learning began.