It has been a week of teaching everything Thanksgiving to the kids as we bring in our own little harvest from our own little crops. And as I teach Savannah and Liam about blessings, and thanksgiving, I am overwhelmed with what I have to be thankful for.

And I mean truly overwhelmed.

God, thank you for this beautiful world that we not only get to live in…

But Grow in...

And Love in…

Play in…

And harvest in…

A world we get to discover

Cherish...

Savor…

This is my little, beautiful, unbelievably wonderful world…and with each moment that passes I cannot help but have Thanksgiving in my heart.

“With my song I shall thank Him” Psalm 28:7

Random...

This will be a rather random post- but these are a few of the things I felt like sharing on here:

First, our darling little baby girl in a picture I've decided to name "baby girl camouflage"

On the learning encounters front, Savannah (and Liam by observing her) is learning how to tell time on a clock with hands, she can tell you what hour it is, what it means when an hour has passed, the notches for minutes and seconds, etc. Pretty exciting to get to see it *click* and to know she'll carry this skill with her the rest of her life. But that's what all us moms do, homeschooling or not, right?

She's also now knows the long and short vowel sounds for all of the vowels and how to recognize them in a spoken or written word. We've also been working on sight recognition for words and some spelling. And math, and games, and reading, the usual.

We also had a pumpkin painting night...

Didn't Nick do a great job? He hasn't been able to use is artistry much lately.

Savannah got to milk a cow. It is our friend's cow and they had a milking contest at their kid's birthday party. They are fairly new to our lifegroup but are already like family, and are such neat people! They even had a root beer drinking contest at the party! Isn't that fun? We will be babysitting this cow the week of Christmas on our land. Which means, if you know us pretty well we will be offering you LOTS of milk around Christmas time.

And if you take the milk (which they have given us some) you can skim it, make your own half and half, cook with the cream (aka heavy whipping cream), make your own butter and buttermilk. Like we did...


*Recipe and instructions for homemade butter from another awesome book from my mom Made From Scratch. We love it when family gets on board with our crazy-back-to-the-land way of life.

And if this is all grossing you out, you can just forget you ever read any of that- and proceed to read about how normal we are...

We went to our homeschool co-op family night at the Parkhurst Pumpkin Patch. It was so much fun to spend the evening at such a fun place and hang out with so many awesome families. Our group rented the place out after hours and we had fires, roasted hot dogs and s'mores, went on a hay ride, and did all the other pumpkin patch fun stuff.



This is Levi, he was born a few months before Felicity, along with 2 other little baby boys all in our lifegroup, all within months of each other. FINALLY we're introducing another baby girl in about a month. Felicity will have a girl friend! Thanks Knox's!! So all in all, we've had 5 babies born in the span of 8 months in our tight knit lifegroup family. We are having so much fun together. This is what it's like to really do life together in fellowship with each other and Christ. We are blessed.

Speaking of, here are all of our lifegroup kids, minus Abigail who is still in utero...


Onto the next subject, before and after pictures of our remodeled (or painted, carpeted and refurnished) reading/ learning room.

I would call it a school room, and find myself calling it that all the time, except what we do in there looks nothing like "school".

It's more like the place we hang out and pick books off the shelves at leisure and read them to our hearts content, with and without the kids. And where the kids learn their colors, the globe, shapes, letters, vowels, human anatomy, animals, different cultures, math- you get the idea. But it's always casual and fun. When an opening comes up in our day, where we are all in that learning state of mind, we find ourselves here, the kids and I, perched on that couch learning together, and spending precious time together.

And its also where we listen to Nick play his guitar in the evenings.

So, there you go, a few random things that have been going on around here. See you again in another couple of weeks!

Fall Happenings

Well, fall is upon us in full swing. Our basil plants are dropping their leaves, we haven't gotten to enjoy mowing in a couple weeks since the grass growth has slowed down, and we are fattening up the chickens with corn for the cold winter months.

On the upside, we are enjoying things like chamomile tea and Scottish scones with lemon and ginger ...

*recipe from A Homemade Life, thanks Mom!

fires in the fire pit, and smelling like a camp fire till we get around to showering, sorry friends..

gloomy, rainy days at the Omniplex (I refuse to call it "Science Museum Okahoma") teaching the kids physics on the sly (with our friends Clayton and Evan who came with us so their mom could have a baby)...


We have green onions, broccoli, lettuce, and carrots growing since they like cooler weather, and used some slivers of green onion on this yummy cast iron skillet pizza...

Fall 2009 is also the season where we said goodbye to Grandpa John.
He was Nick's great-grandpa and the kids great-great-grandpa. John was 97 years old and he was just simply ready to see his wife again. Sharp as a tack and incredibly sweet till his last days. It was a blessing to have him around as long as we did.

He is missed by many people.

It's been a while since I've posted, so below is lots of stuff that we have been up to regarding our "learning encounters". I'd be flattered if you actually read it, but understand if your eyes glaze over.

First, we finished our unit study on Grandfather's Journey. In addition to what we already studied, Savannah learned some new art concepts like contrast and reflection, and we did some artwork together that exhibited these techniques. We did lots of math and did some work on the concept of weeks in a month and multiplication with numbers of weeks and days. The kids learned some new vocabulary. We discussed more about Japanese culture, the differing landscapes from Japan versus America, talked about pollution and taking good care of the world around us, and how big companies are supposed to be respectful of the world we live in. We also noted and discussed the different types of transportation that was available during the time periods in the book.

The next book we explored was How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World. I suggest every parent get this book and explore it with their kids. I have talked about it before in a post below. It is just one of those books that you and your child fall in love with together.

First, we explored Italy, France, England, Sri Lanka, Jamaica by doing lots (daily discussions) of talking about their geographies, cultures, native animals, vegetation, and landscapes. For example, semolina wheat (we even bought some) from Italy and the Italian language, jaguars, Indian elephants and kurundu trees in Sri Lanka, the Indian and Atlantic oceans, bananas and sugar cane from Jamaica, apple orchards in Vermont, a review of France and much more. We did a science experiment of making seawater ourselves and waiting for the sun to evaporate it and collect the salt- just like the girl from the book did with water from the Caribbean sea.

We did this on the only sunny day we've had in forever and it proceeded to rain the same afternoon, so we'll be repeating this experiment, but the kids get the idea.

We did lots of new vocabulary, pantomimed, subtraction, fractions (with baking measurements) which led to the making of this...

Nick and the kids made it (since I do all of the cooking around here, it was a special treat to cook with dad!)

We started it after Felicity was in bed for the night and did not eat it till 11:15 p.m., on a picnic blanket, in our room. It takes a long time to make an apple pie from scratch.

Look at all the places in the world we have "explored"!

In addition to our book studies, Savannah has been doing lots of kindergarten worksheets, and Liam has been working on learning, drawing and gluing shapes (since it's fun and he loves it). Savannah has also learned the concept of seconds and minutes.

The kids have also been learning lots and having lots of fun at our homeschool co-op.

I have to end this post on a "only a homeschooled kid can...." phrase

Only a homeschooled kid can wear an outfit like this to "school" and not get made fun of, which makes my heart smile. Savannah can wear her 60's wallpaper print blue dress, pink sweater, red leggings, white socks and glitter shoes all she wants around here (till we go somewhere). ; )

Hello family and friends! We have been up to A LOT over here these past two weeks. First of all, we have started up with our unit studies "five in a row".


The first book we studied was Madeline. Through reading Madeline daily, we learned many new things in a variety of subjects. The kids learned where on the world map France is located, particularly Paris on the river Seine.
We discussed the trade aspect and why big cities are usually located on or near rivers. Then to prove our point, we took a fun field trip to the downtown Oklahoma river and canal. We road the canal boat and walked around the river, much like Madeline did in Paris (too bad we couldn't go THERE for a field trip).






* Unlce David happened to actually be in town from Austin, TX when we took our field trip so the kids got to have a fun night with their uncle, we were all excited!*

We noted throughout the night the big "city" buildings and how rivers attract people and businesses through trade via river boats, and the water source in itself. We also discussed how in the case of Paris, the river Seine was able to bring in trade from surrounding countries from the ocean feeding the river (the English channel). The kids also learned what the flag of France looks like and the kids got to paint one of their own.





The kids also did math with blocks as manipulatives, and we worked on a new concept- division. Savannah learned the symbol for division and we took groups of 12 blocks (to represent the 12 girls from Madeline and we divided them into different sized groups to see how many groups of 4 there would be, groups of three, etc. It was a fun activity and Liam played along.



We did other activities including social studies and history. We even compared our heater to the heater that was drawn in the hospital scene in the book. We found the copyright page and located the year the book was written and discussed how different the 1930's are from now, and who we know that were children during that time.

We have also begun a new book for our studies called Grandfather's Journey. It is a fascinating book that lets the kids in on Japanese culture, history, geography, and landscapes. It is also a Caldecott Medal winner.So far we have located Japan and traced the "Grandfather's Journey" from there by boat across the Pacific ocean to our own continent, North America. We all agreed that 3 weeks in a boat is a very long time and it must have been quite a journey. And also how mom probably would have been throwing up the whole time since I get seasick. Savannah noticed how the women in the book wear Kimonos and how that's what the waitresses at Shogun's steakhouse wear, and we think we just might need to take a field trip there :). We discussed a little bit about World War II and how our countries were fighting and the tragedies of war.

We discussed comparisons in the book, how their lives after the war were scattered like "leaves in a storm". We learned a new word "simile" and how this type of writing is used by the author to give us a better picture or feeling of what the character's went through.



Also on the homeschooling front, we started our awesome co-op. A homeschool co-op is a once a week event where a number of families get together and the kids get to take different classes taught by all of us moms. We know and love so many of the families involved in this co-op. There are around 80 kids involved. Savannah is taking a science class, an art class and a fun and games class where she'll be doing hands on activities and games with other kids her age. She had a blast. Liam is in a 3 year old class where he will be doing lots of learning activities for kids his age.
I get the privilege to teach chemistry to 7 middle school to high school age students and I think it's going to be fulfilling and lots of fun!

Lastly, Liam turned 3 and he had an awesome time at his birthday party. He felt so special that day and that is what birthdays are all about!










I can not believe my giggly, snugly sweet baby boy is already 3. Time really does fly more and more every day.

Pre Labor Day activities...

Well, we have been enjoying the cooler weather with a bitter-sweet feeling. Our favorite time of year used to be fall, but with all the outdoor activities that this homestead keeps us busy with, we are actually going to miss working in the hot sun in the garden, mowing on our John Deer that was given to us (for free!!), and sitting back watching the chickens chase the abundant bugs.

We celebrated this cool, gloomy Saturday morning with homemade bread and corn chowder from our neighbor's brother's cornfields.

*Side note- after the kids helped me make the yeast bread dough, Liam literally ate 1/4 cup of flour. He even passed on reading time while the bread was rising so he could stand on the stool in the kitchen and eat the left over flour from kneading!

We all have been enjoying curling up on the couch in the mornings every day and reading numerous books. The kids absolutely love to read and the stories and discussions we share are actually so fascinating that even Liam, a 2 year old boy, is frozen in interest.

We have been exploring 3 of the books for the five in a row unit studies. One of the books is titled How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World in which the market is closed in a little girl's town so she travels the world to collect by hand each of the ingredients for her apple pie. She finds her wheat in Italy, chicken's eggs in France, cinnamon from the bark of a kurundu tree in Sri Lanka (did you know cinnamon comes from the bark of a tree? I sure didn't), a cow for butter in England, salt from the salt water in the ocean, sugar canes from Jamaica, and apples from Vermont. She then proceeds back home and actually takes the raw ingredients and makes them into what the kids and I see daily during our cooking adventures in our own kitchen. She mills the wheat into flour, grinds the kurundu, evaporates the seawater from the salt, boils the sugar cane, churns the milk into butter, etc. I love that the kids get to learn at such a young age that sugar and flour don't just exist in their present forms somewhere out there in the world. And of course, we have to read this book numerous times for the facts to really sink into the kids growing brains.

We will start up with the structured five in a row activities on Tuesday after labor day.

Fall planting has begun and the kids helped us plant the green beans and carrots that we hopefully will be eating by October.

Savannah has been working everyday on her kindergarten workbook. Most days she is practicing lower case and staying in the appropriate lines for the different kinds of letters (e.g. d and c and g all have different ways they are to be written on ruled paper.) She's also been practicing writing her numbers which is somewhat new since our math at her age is mainly spoken, me writing the numbers for her to observe, or reading number books.

Liam gets better with his letter recognition everyday and now gets super excited when he can recognize a letter written in random places. He knows his colors and like all 2 year olds learns vast amounts about the world around him everyday.

We all got to watch (even Felicity) a huge tractor with a baler on the back bale a huge round bale of hay about 15 feet away from us in the property behind our house! Gives seeing a bale of hay from the interstate a whole new meaning.

Regarding the hay baling, I've learned that turkey vultures celebrate the end of summer by scouring the chopped off grassy fields that are to be baled and indulging in the suddenly exposed wildlife that's right at their talon-tips.

Stay tuned for more learning adventures!