Homestead Acres

I can’t believe that it is September 1st already!  This summer seems to have flown bye so quickly.  In some ways it wasn’t quite the summer I had thought it would be.  The year started off with heat waves in March, sooo not normal for us.  Early summer was very dry, with gardens needing to be watered almost daily.   Then the rains started…  And seemed never ending for much of the summer.  I think I lost count on how many times our gardens were flooded.  We lost some things, like the new potato patch and 100 or so tomato plants and others were stunted.  But other things did quite well!  The huckleberries are loaded with fruit, potatoes in the dryer gardens have done nicely.  Despite the squash bugs, the zucchinis yielded very well to.

I’m still working canning my way through the garden.  We should be digging up the potatoes for storage in another week or two.  I really am looking forward to Fall and Winter!  I’m ready for a quieter time of year.

I haven’t been on here much lately.  In between the gardens and canning, I’ve been reorganizing the house.  Sorting, packing and purging.  And lots of school lesson plans to!  I’ll share a little about them latter. 

While I’m busy working on lesson plans, I stumbled onto  this funny vid!  The song I Will Survive redone about homeschooling.  Just had to share it!

Well I’m finally feeling pretty much better. I’ve talked to a few people hit by this virus. Its a nasty one. Anyway now I’m playing catch up with the garden.
Harvested the onions today, yesterday (forgot to post last night lol). Then laid them out to dry. They will need a few days to harden the skins well. After that they can be safely stored in the cellar.
Then I started working on the tomatoes. I lost some that got over ripe and split. But they’ll make good chicken feed.  Still ended up with lots of tomatoes. There are still green ones out there to.
I guess I’ll be starting more sauce tomorrow! Also going to dehydrate some.

I haven’t posted a garden update vid in a while.  We’ve been getting almost non stop rain.  So some things like our new potato patch rotted, other things like the cucumbers are doing well.

Don’t mind the weeds.  With all the rain the ground is so soft you can’t till it and the hoe just gum’s up with mud.  I’ve been hand weeding when I can between rainy patches.  But most of my time is held up canning right now.

This week hubby noticed something strange on some of the corn plants.  The kernels looked gray and hugely deformed.  We had no idea what this was and hadn’t seen it before.  We were growing a heirloom type called Golden Bantam.  After posting this short vid on YouTube many shared with us its called Corn Smut.  And in Mexico and other southern areas people actually eat it.  Ok I think I’ll pass!  LOL

This has been a very wet and humid year for us.  That’s led to more mold problems then normal.

This past week we’ve been fighting a flu like bug.  It really knocked Hubby, ds and myself for a loop.  The girls were a little sick as well.  Thankfully it didn’t last long, although I’m still fighting it.  I’m sure if I can get enough rest it will pass quickly.

Wednesday we had a cold front move through.  Thankfully the heavy rain and storms staid south of us!  I was finally well enough to head out to the garden this afternoon.  I did a lot of weeding, still have much more to do before I will be caught up.  But weeds or not, the garden is producing great!

I harvested a large bowl of cucumbers, 4 more zucchinis and our first cabbage.  Then from the children garden we harvested more cucumbers, a few purple beans and cherry tomatoes.

Huckleberry’s

Okra finally starting!  This will be our first time growing and eating this.  Anyone have good recipes I can try?

Eggplant flower, I think they are pretty!

Sunflowers starting to bloom in the kids garden!

While each day is unique in itself it helps to have a pattern or routine to follow.  Over time I’ve found that fixed schedule just does not work well for our family.  What I do like is a routine, then no mater what time you get started your day still has a flow to it.  When something happens to interrupt your day, just start back with the next to do on the list.  And interruptions DO happen don’t they.  It can be anything from someone dropping buy to visit, an unexpected appointment, illness or a fussy toddler.  I find these things so much easier to work around if I’m not worrying about the “schedule”.

Our routine might get some tweaking this year.  But this is basically how it’s been working for us.

Get up, dressed and have breakfast.  After breakfast we do morning chores.  This is washing the breakfast dishes, starting some laundry and getting the table reading for lessons.

Dh does Bible study with the kids.  Then we do map time.  This is something dh started doing with them last year.  We have different maps on our living room walls.  He started teaching 1 country at a time last year, adding a new 1 each day.  The children now know a large number of countries, all the continents, oceans and provinces/territories of Canada.  These get reviewed every day, they love seeing who can get the answer first.

After that we head out to the table and start math.  This is followed by our LA activities, copy work, spelling, grammar.  Then we will take a snack break while I read our FIAR (Five in a Row) title.  After that we’ll do the FIAR activity for the day.  Then read about what ever country we are currently studying and do an activity with that.  I have been using Galloping The Globe along side FIAR and it’s a wonderful complement to each other.

We take a break for lunch and after that read our science or history section.  Then do any activity or copy work relating to that.

That is about the end of our formal lessons.  Most of the time we are finished by noon or just after.  The afternoon is saved for crafts and nature studies.  We also have family reading times in the evening.  We are currently working our way through the Little House On The Prairie set.

It’s important to have plans and goals, they give you a target to aim for and help keep you on track.  Each year before I start planning out our lessons I stop and think about what goals each child needs.  I also talk to each child and find out what goals they have for themselves.  I will try to help them meet these as much as I’m able.

A few of the goals we will be working on are…

Dd8 will be working on memorizing her multiplication facts, neater hand writing and learning cursive.  She also would like to learn to sew.

Dd6 will be working on phonics and reading fluency.   She also would like to practice knitting more.

Dd4 (5 this fall) is learning to read.

Dd3 & ds1 are to play and have lots of learning fun.

I try to keep our goals in mind as I pick out curriculum and put our lesson plans together.  I will be doing a detailed post soon on how I keep our records and lesson plans.  I’d hoped to have it written up by now but a summer flu bug has hit our house.

Basically I have a planning binder that I’ve put together.  Here I keep a paper copy of all my lesson plans, reading logs etc.  I also use Homeschool Tracker + to keep records and grades from the work we have completed.

One problem I’ve always had is how to organize all the work sheets, activities etc that we do.  Last year I finally found a system that works great for us.  I stumbled upon a blogger that used a milk crate filing system.  The folders were organized by date and in each folder that weeks lessons were placed.

There is a little more to it then that, but I will explain how I do it very soon.  I’m hoping to start setting up this years file system this week.

Normally we school year round.  This year I decided to take a summer break.    We needed the extra time to work on the gardens, renovations and just enjoy the summer.  Last year was an unusually cold summer, so there wasn’t nearly as much work in the gardens to do.

I’ve been looking over our curriculum and thinking about making some changes.  Most of what we have been using works very well for us.  We love unit studies and hands on learning.  One area that has been tricky is spelling.  We’ve tried spelling workbooks such as spelling workout and CLP spelling books.  We just aren’t fans of workbooks and I don’t find the children learn much from them.  I’ve also tried the Natural Speller.  Its a great  book but just doesn’t suit our needs right now.

I recently stumbled on to All About Spelling.  I think this will be a much better fit for our family!  Its hands on, using letter tiles to build words.  We use Math U See and the hands on method had worked very well for us.  All About Spelling teaches the phonograms in a logical order using site, sound and touch.

I’m also going to try using this as a reading curriculum.  They have made some lovely readers that match up with the phonics lessons.

I’ve enjoyed reading all their samples online and browsing through the videos in their forum.  I ordered the first few levels and reader.  They should be in this week and I can’t wait to see them.  I’ll do an updated post on what we think of the materials once it arrives.

This time of year our zucchini plants are producing very well.  Our second planting is flowering and also will be producing soon!  Yes we love zucchini!  I’m always looking for new ways to use it up.  I stumbled on a recipe of zucchini brownies that I just had to try.

They came out good but seem to be just missing a little something.  Perhaps its because I left the nuts out, I also didn’t use the frosting.  I will be trying another batch soon with some nuts sprinkled in.

When you mix this together it looks VERY dry.  But as it cooks the liquid from the zucchini brings it together nicely.

Here is the recipe as found on all recipes.

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups shredded zucchini
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup margarine
• 2 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9×13 inch baking pan.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the oil, sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla until well blended. Combine the flour, 1/2 cup cocoa, baking soda and salt; stir into the sugar mixture. Fold in the zucchini and walnuts. Spread evenly into the prepared pan.
3. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, until brownies spring back when gently touched. To make the frosting, melt together the 6 tablespoons of cocoa and margarine; set aside to cool. In a medium bowl, blend together the confectioners’ sugar, milk and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Stir in the cocoa mixture. Spread over cooled brownies before cutting into squares.