Moments later, they return.

“The camera doesn’t work, mom.”

“What’s wrong?” I ask, as I take it. I’ve been having problems with it, but up until now turning it off and on a few times cleared it.

“It just keeps telling us it has a focusing error.”

I turn the camera off and on. Again and again. Nothing. The camera is dead. Normally, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal to go a month or two without a camera. I don’t take that many pictures. I sort of go in spurts, and most of the time when I do think about it, it is only because I have something in mind for my blog.

But this is different. It was messing with my plans, and I never take too kindly to that. These plans went far beyond this one assignment. It was part of an intentional act on my part to make our lessons more involved. To focus less on “getting done” and more on the process. It is an adjustment I have to frequently make for no matter how hard I try, in the hectic mess of the day to day, I frequently resort to streamlining lessons down to the “essentials.” But mom and child do not always agree on the “essentials” and I tend to remove the most engaging portions in the interest of time.

As I sat with the children to choose pictures from Picasa and the internet, I found myself becoming rather distraught. I went from the mild annoyance of having to change my plans to real disappointment at losing this part of our summer adventure. My daughter and I had been planning a short video series, and while I wasn’t sure I’d ever have the courage to actually post any of them, I was looking forward to the shared project. And then there are all the things we’re planning.

Our chicks are growing, along with those mop tops. Our geese should be arriving in a couple weeks. There’s the oil change on the tractor my son was going to help his father with. Our garden. Our bees. Our year of plans.

Now of course, a camera isn’t that expensive. But moving is and most of our extra money is spoken for. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the heat pump hadn’t gone out. Then the car. Then the tires. Which means that for the moment, simply replacing it isn’t so simple.

It means choosing. Would I prefer to replace the camera or rent the tiller? Replace the camera, or finish the fencing to protect the garden from the deer? Replace the camera or purchase our hive? In short, which is more important: the projects or the ability to record them?

Back to the assignment at hand, the children cut their pictures and carefully glue them in place. Each is labeled carefully in German, a task even my writing-averse son takes seriously. Their books turn out nicely, and all week we practice. First, they find the pictures while mom says the German. Then I begin to form simple sentences, using the pictures as clues. They translate and when they have it, they repeat. We do the same sentences every day, turning pages to reinforce the vocabulary for the week.

And it only takes two days for my three year old to stop shouting indignantly,

“That is not an eye! That’s an egg!”

when I get to “das Ei.”

I can’t wait to add to this simple book this week, and get back into regular German lessons.

I only wish we had a camera.

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To make a simple pictorial dictionary, all you need is a sheet of paper and pictures of your vocabulary words. We did a simple eight page mini-book. Glue a picture to each page and label accordingly. Make sure each word is conceptually related and it will help your children learn the words in context, more like how they learn words in English. These can be collected together in a folder, glued together in a lapbook or even bound together. However you choose to store them, be sure they are accessible and to use them frequently in your mini-lessons.

homeschooling home education homeschool German foreign language

In the summer, I’m completely free from that and any nagging sense of “well, if I wrote it on that stupid form, I really should try my best to get to it.” Instead, we are free to make lilac jelly. We didn’t make a lapbook or track anything in a notebook. We didn’t fill out a single worksheet or even jot down a single note. We did, however, make jelly. We learned what pectin is and why you have to put so much sugar in the jelly. We found a whole list of edible flowers and looked up when the more interesting ones bloom. We’re thinking of planting a significant amount of violets and roses for the express purpose of making jelly from their petals.

That, you may say, isn’t exactly homeschooling. It’s life with children. Intentional life, I would stress, noting that this is what homeschooling is all about.

The only real difference is that I free us from record keeping. So our plans for this summer?

• Mouse is working on reclaiming several old flower gardens and planning a bird and butterfly garden to fill out where the grass took over.
• Inspired by the natural playground at Pioneers Park, the children are planning a natural play space as an extension of their forts.
• We’re learning the names of all the farm equipment that now surrounds us.
• We’ll be getting to know our “neighborhood” with numerous day trips to the various attractions here in southeast Nebraska.
• We’ll be learning about our own small tractor, its history, and its maintenance.
• Hopefully, if we can swing it, we’ll be starting our own beehive yet this spring.
• Soon we shall have our geese. They’ve been delayed twice already, so I’m a little nervous this might not work out, but I’m still holding out hope for this May 25th date.
• And of course, there are our chickens, a daily source of entertainment, protein and education. Especially was we move rapidly toward our first slaughter date. We’ll see how well one can process a chicken using primarily tutorials found on the Internet!

So yes, we’re homeschooling straight through the summer. But there won’t be any groaning, or longing stares out the window. If all goes as well as it has in the past, the children will not whine about their assignments again until August when they think our homeschooling starts back up.

When I do summer school right, they very rarely notice that’s what they’re doing.

So what are your plans for this summer? Please feel free to link to posts you have already written! You can also click to get the code for your entry so that all links will appear on all participating blogs. A sort of summer school blog hop! The linky will be open until the end of May!

homeschooling home education homeschool summer school

A joint to learn to read an’ write, to work on his bike at night
To grow up as he likes, to grow anything under lights
A place to keep his tools, nuts and bolts and drills
To hang a hide, to hide the dry or hang to pay the bills

I think it is why children are drawn to building forts and clubhouses and tree houses. For as much as they like being underfoot, they also have a need to carve out their own space. Their own private space. It may be in the attic, under a stairwell or even under a blanket thrown over some chairs, but it is a place to get out from under the immediate influence of parents and be themselves.

My children have been busy claiming a closed off section of the hen house, a small room with the door boarded shut and a loft area that can only be accessed through a small window. The younger ones require a boost up and help down from the older ones and there is something so very touching watching the four of them work together to slip through. I don’t really know what goes on in there aside from a bit of hammering and occasional requests for scrap lumber, but it is their small space and they seem to get along much better when they escape there.

The next project is to clear a space for them in the barn to keep all their treasures. Snail shells, antler sheds, mouse skulls…all those delightful things children come across and cannot bear to part with despite the limited room for such things in the house.

So yeah, every boy (and girl) does need a shed. Or at least a small space they can carve out as their own if only for a little while.

Come to think of it, I think mom does, too.

Where do your children escape to? And how actively do you encourage that time to themselves?

After all, we have our own traditions to keep and one of the ones we keep best is “Oh yeah. Yesterday was a holiday.”

I hope you enjoy Walking With Jesus His Final Days. Feel free to share the study but please leave my links in tact. Should you be so kind as to share this link, please link to this entry rather than directly to the document.

Anyway, we did this last year and the children really enjoyed using the toys to tell and retell the readings for each day. It is sort of like an Easter version of the Jesse Tree with objects to go along with each day’s reading, except instead of decorating a tree, we filled a container garden with toys that the children then got to play with all day.

And as for me and my house, well, it is Palm Sunday our time. Until lunch. Then I think I’ll let it be Monday and our little project will be on track until we skip a day again.

Holy Week Easter Passover homeschool homeschooling home education

Did you know that the cotton patch goose was important to people during the Great Depression?

No, honey, I didn’t. Why is that?

Her eyes light up and, closing her eyes to remember her reading she ticks off their uses.

The backyard flock was an important source of eggs, meat and grease.  And it was called the cotton patch goose because it was used to weed cotton patches!

I am glad to see her enjoying her research project so much. She is even finally talking about adding to her website again because she has gotten excited about the project.

See, we want geese and she has been given the important task of determining which breed would be best for us. I gave her a list of questions to help guide her, focusing on heritage breeds, which has spawned many interesting conversations about our relationship to the food we eat.

She finds it somewhat disconcerting that chickens and turkeys have been so selectively bred that they can no longer survive outside their climate controlled sheds, couldn’t find food if they had to, and cannot reproduce without someone’s help. She looked at our chickens wandering the property, scratching back the dead grass from last year searching out sprouts and insects and thought that was just how chickens should be raised.

Returning to her research, she discovers the Sebastopol. Delighted with their long, curly feathers, she announces that she has found her favorite goose and is pretty sure she knows what we should get. I encourage her to finish, to examine all the breeds but otherwise bite my tongue.

Because you see, I’ve already done all this research. Not intentionally, really. Just that once we decided to get geese, I couldn’t help but read everything I came across about them. I fell in love with the Pilgrim goose after reading an article in Backyard Poultry, and everything I cam across after that just served to confirm this docile little creature as a perfect fit for our family and experience level.

This is where it gets difficult. At least for me. I already know what I want, but I’ve given Mouse the responsibility of researching the best breed because I want this to be educational. I didn’t want her to pull up a chair and have me show her why we were getting Pilgrim geese. I wanted her to come up with the characteristics we desired most, research breeds and come to a decision she would then defend with her presentation.

Was I really willing to let go of my preferences for the sake of my daughter’s education?

“Oh, mom,” she whines. “The Sebastopol needs to have water to swim in all the time.”

She thinks about our old bathtub and how we could fill it and clean it. But she seems to have some sense of how much work that would be, several times a day, in order to keep her favorite goose. Disappointed, she fills out her check list and moves to the next breed.

In the end, she does a pretty nice job on her presentation. She argues nicely for heritage breeds, though they are a bit more expensive. She notes that many of these breeds are considered endangered and that we can help make sure they survive as a breed by raising them and breeding them ourselves. And she compares the geese on the main traits she has decided suit us best: lack of aggression, ability to forage, ease of differentiating the sexes and quality of meat.

She decides on the Pilgrim goose.

And I’m happy. Not because of her choice in goose, but because she was able to come up with several criteria and judge the suitability of the different breeds for our family. There were several geese which would have worked well for us, but she was able to set aside her personal preference based on looks in favor of characteristics she had already determined were more important. That isn’t the easiest skill to teach, but she seems to have learned it well.

If you have Power Point, you can take a peek at her work: Why Geese?

How do you incorporate your family decisions into homeschooling?

homeschool homeschooling home education geese

A bill, a postcard, The Penny Press and. . .oh happy day. . .Orscheln’s flyer.  The local feed store has quickly become my favorite local hangout. I lament all the days wasted wandering WalMart during AWANAs when I could have just as easily visited the feed store across the street.  But that was then, before we had five acres, before we had chickens even.

Then, WalMart defined my world in a strange sense.  Today, Orscheln’s does. But as we research and plan and dream, I sense something else on the horizon. Something that doesn’t have a name, or a logo or a weekly flyer. But more on that later.

I toss the mail on the counter, reserving Orscheln’s flyer to look through over breakfast. I open it up and what should I see in bold green print but “Chicks Are Here!”

Up until this very minute, I had intended on getting our next batch of chickens from a hatchery.  Up until this very minute, I had been frustrated by the minimum orders required by hatcheries or the use of roosters as packing peanuts.  I didn’t need 25 birds, but it looked like ordering from a hatchery was going to provide me with 25 birds, whether I paid for them all or not.

At this very minute, I realize that the feed store really was a better option for us right now.

To no one in particular, I announce that I am going to be at the feed store at 8:45, fifteen minutes before they open.

Why, mommy?

It’s Chick Days.

My husband rolls his eyes. The children leap with excitement. They know what Chick Days are. That’s where they got the four hens we currently have. But we got those at the tail end of the yearly event and pretty much got what was left over. This year would be different. This year, we would get first choice because this year we would be sitting in the parking lot when the doors open.

Yeah, I’m a little weird like that.

Less than 24 hours later and ten minutes before Orscheln’s officially opens, Bear, Bug and I are heading back to the chicks, led by the sound of their peeping. They dart back and forth, trying to look at them all at once. I concentrate on one bin: Plymouth Rock, straight run.

This year, in addition to layers, we are adding on a rooster. A rooster to guard the flock. A rooster to strut about the property. A rooster to crow in the wee hours of the morning and remind us of just how beautiful each and every morning is. A rooster for fertile eggs.

So I ponder the Plymouth Rock, straight run bin.  Straight run means they’re unsexed.  In theory, half of them should be male. How many would I need to guarantee I got at least one rooster? What would I do with a second or even a third?

Someone arrives to help us and I ask somewhat stupidly,

Theoretically, half of these are males, right? So theoretically, if I get five, we should end up with two or three roosters?

He smiles, not sure how to answer the obvious. I smile back, understanding the dilemma I’ve put him in. “It’s ok,” I try to say with that smile. “I’m just thinking out loud.”

Happy with my statistics, I ask for five.

Bear begins to squeal as he recognizes the little Rhode Island Red pullets.

Diego! Diego! They’re just like Diego!

That was the breed he selected last year. He carries her around the property, showing her everything and teaching her to be an explorer like her namesake.

I ask for one of those.

Bear then moves to the Americaunas, fascinated by their many colors.

Are these leghorns? he asks.

No, they’re Americaunas.

Bear and Bug light up simultaneously.

Oh, canwecanwe?!  They lay blue and green eggs, mom! Canwecanwe?!

I ask for four of those.

I look at the Plymouth Rock pullets. Unsure why, I am suddenly drawn to these, a breed I’ve never paid any particular attention to, a breed that has never made it on either my “must check out” or “must avoid” list. A new thought is forming in my mind. I already have five.

I ask for two more.

I ask what is crossed to make a production red. The young man guesses Rhode Island Red and…and, well, something else. “Maybe leghorn?” he ventures. Still, my attention has fallen on them for more than a brief moment.

I ask for one.

Will that be everything?

No, not quite.

Not quite. The new idea, not yet fully formed, needs a point of comparison. Cornish crosses are the standard for meat birds. Ready for slaughter at just six weeks, they present minimal investment in time though they tend to camp out at the feeder, moving only for a drink. They grow so fast, their little legs are known to break under the rapidly increasing weight.

I ask for five.

And now for the comparison.

On their third day with us, you can see that the Cornish Cross (left) is starting to show just a little more size than the Plymouth Rock (right). It feels firmer and more meaty, as well. This is where I discover that our small scale is broken so I can’t do an official weight comparison, but we’ll remedy that over the weekend.

Stay tuned to watch these guys grow toward our dinner table, complete with recipes for how they are eventually served!  Also, if you are interested in raising your own chicks, stay tuned for some rare weekend posting as I discuss the why and how of beginning a small backyard flock.

homeschool home education chickens raising chickens Cornish Cross Plymouth Rock

Note: Clicking on the link should open a pdf.  It worked several hundred times, and then stopped working.   Appears to be fixed, now.  If not, please contact me.

Since I would like to write more e-books, I would love your feedback.  Are the instructions clear?  Do the lessons fit together?  Is there something missing?  Is there a lesson you particularly enjoy?  Why?

Let me know what you think, and enjoy gardening with your children!

And while you are gardening together, please consider Sharing the Harvest!

free e-book lesson Christian homeschool homeschooling

And I never, ever, ever would have guessed that I would stoop so low as to bribe my son to read.

Bear slides into the chair next to me, looking suspiciously at the book I have laid out on the table.  I chose it for our first formal reading lesson in our new house because he has been pouring over it for days.  He drops his shoulders and sighs as he realizes what is going on, but I let it slide.

“How do you spell pig?” I ask by way of an introduction.

We are beginning a unit on farm animals that will last them the rest of their schooling as we slowly transform our lives here on this property.

“Pig”, he repeats.  “/P/-/I/-/G/,” he makes each sound distinctly.  “D-O-X-O-T-O-L-O-B!” he spells, triumphantly.

You’re silly, I say, tickling him.  He falls out of his chair laughing.

OK, OK.  It is P-I-G.  P-I-G. P-I-G!

He gets back in his chair, still smiling as he reads, Mig the Pig’s Big Book.  Just like that, fluently and with no prompting.  I’m impressed.  Not only has he not forgotten what we have learned so far, he seems to be gaining some confidence and is reading words rather than sounding out each and every letter.

That all came to a screeching halt when Mig had to go and take a ride in her gig.  He looked at the word in disbelief, refused to try to read it, argued with the book even.  I rested my head between my forefingers for a moment, breathing deeply, willing myself to not get frustrated.  To not let my frustration show.

Deep breath.  1-2-3.  Another deep breath.  Suddenly, I realize his problem is not the word itself.  I cover the picture with my arms and ask him to read the word.

“Gig,” he say with disgust.  “It says gig, but that’s stupid.”

“Why is it stupid?”

“Because it is a chariot, not a gig!”

I try not to laugh and reassure him that the little cart can be called a gig.  He recovers, if ever so slightly, and moves on until we get to “stopped.”

There, all sanity ends and he throws himself on the floor.  He moves to his bed letting out a soul wrenching cry of despair.  Dramatic, that’s all I can say, and the poor guy can hardly catch his breath.

And this is the problem we have with reading.  He shows all the signs of being ready to read.  He knows his letters, their sounds, loves word games, sounds out words, asks how words are spelled continuously.  He loves word windows and word family strips.  He inhales pattern books.  He likes the familiar, the predictable, the comfortable.  But he has a low tolerance for frustration and he falls apart as soon as he is pushed the slightest bit outside his comfort zone.

But he likes lists and charts and order and little boxes to check, too.  He likes simple, straightforward goals that are easy to accomplish and come with clear rewards.  He loved the Pizza Hut Book It program we were involved in for a whole month before my husband inadvertently threw away all the coupons.

So when the tears finally subsided, we made a chart.  He loved it’s neat rows of boxes even before I told him what it was for.  Especially his name at the top and the boxes that were big enough for him to write something in.

I told him he could put ten cents in each of those boxes if he did his reading without tears or complaints.

“Ten whole cents?!  I’m going to be rich!”

“You can’t fuss, or whine.”

“Can we start now?”

And he took the book with a smile.  Enthusiasm, even. He read well, if a bit falteringly.   He wrote ten cents down in the little box and beamed.  Then he went and got another book and sounded out a couple of words, just to show me he could.

So, yeah.  I totally caved.  I’m paying off my son for a little cooperation during reading time.  But you know what he told his father today?

“Daddy, I can’t wait for my next reading lesson. I just can’t wait!”

Instilling a love of reading is probably one of my top goals for education.  And if it costs me sixty cents a week, well, I guess I’ll swallow my pride and go with it.

Because he just can’t wait for his next reading lesson.

And someday, the reading will get easier and he will be able to satisfy his voracious appetite for knowledge in the pages of those books.  I’ll worry about how to stop paying him later.

homeschool homeschooling home education reading teaching reading

What do they sound like, Mommy? [Whoo whowhowho Whooo]

“Whoo whowhowho Whooo,” I call back. Partially to let Bug know what she is listening for, partially in hopes the owl will answer.  The sun hasn’t set yet, but they’ve been calling to each other since I came out to lock up the chickens.

Are they in our woods?  {Whoo whowhowho Whooo}

No, I whisper back.  I point to the treeline where the calls are coming from.

Will it eat me?  {Whoo whowhowho Whooo}

Her timing is impeccable.

Bear starts to giggle.  I have no idea why. {Whoo whowhowho Whooo} I raise my eyebrows at him, ask him if he wants to go inside.

Silence is his answer.

They all answer with silence.  A minute of total silence as they strain their ears.  Bug and Bear look off into the woods, as if hoping to see something.  Mouse stares at the ground, concentrating only on listening.  L.E.Fant stares at me.

Another minute goes by.  A dog barks in the distance.

Another minute.  The setting sun is beginning to turn the sky a fiery red.

Are the coyotes coming out, yet, mommy? {Whoo whowhowho Whooo}

Shhh, I answer reassuringly.  Hunter is right here.  He’ll let us know if any come this way.

Another minute.  They are straining their ears, standing on tiptoe.  And finally, echoing through the silence of sunset:

Whoo whowhowho Whooo Who Who Whooo, calls a Great Horned Owl.

Their faces light up.

Whoo whowhowho Whooo Who Who Whooo, answers the prospective mate.

I don’t have to ask if they heard, their eyes are beaming with excitement.

“It is breeding season for the Great Horned Owl,” I tell them as we go inside to warm up.  “They will lay their eggs in an open nest at the top of a tree while there is still snow on the ground.”

“Won’t the babies get cold?”

“The owlets have their mommy and daddy to keep them warm and to feed them.  Mommy will stay on the nest and brood them, while daddy hunts for food.  That’s why we have to take extra special care to lock up our chickens.  They would love a nice juicy chicken for dinner.”

The children giggle. I tell them about the Great Horned Owl’s range, its habitat, how it uses the nest of other birds or even squirrels to raise its young.  I tell them how I once “talked” to an owl for twenty minutes before it flew in for a closer look.  Suddenly, there was a huge owl perched on a telephone pole, looking menacingly down at me and I wanted to know what I had been saying all that time.

Apparently, I was neither threatening its territory, nor particularly attractive in owl terms for it flew off almost immediately.  But it was the closest I had ever come to a wild Great Horned Owl, and it left an impression on me.

The children’s questions taper off as they get absorbed in other tasks.  I tell them the owls will likely continue to call for some time, while they lay eggs and rear their young.  Owl calls can be heard for miles, I say, but they don’t sound that far away.

If we keep listening, maybe we’ll get to hear their babies.  I’ve never heard a baby owl before.

They smile, and go on with their play.

More on the Great Horned Owl if you are interested.  Now is a great time to take children out to try to listen for them because they will be calling frequently until they have bred.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

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The Carnival of Homeschooling is up at SmallWorld!

homeschooling homeschoool home education Great Horned Owl owls

It is a new feeling for me. For some time, the mere thought of staying home for days at a time led to restlessness and a vague sense of being trapped.  I could only straighten the same rooms, mediate the same squabbles, fold the same laundry, wash the same dishes so many times before going stir crazy.

I tried not to go into town unnecessarily.  We were, after all, doing our best to save wherever we could.  But having something to do away from home was a relief.  I even looked forward to grocery shopping, especially on the rare occasion my husband was home and agreed to take the children while I “picked up a few things.”

Like my sanity.

Living here is a little different.  Part of that is because it is still new, but there’s more.  The chickens keep me occupied throughout the day, I have several light remodeling projects and I’m in the midst of planning for a sizable garden as well as a small flock of geese.  I have enough work to fill each day, but it is a different kind of work than  just continually cleaning and moving around the same things in the endlessly tedious task of maintaining our stuff.  It feels more productive because I am building and creating something new while laying a basic groundwork for our future here.

Interestingly, even my ever-present pile of laundry seems less daunting and the continual picking up behind small children less tedious.

And for the first time since leaving the workforce, I truly want to be here at home.