Well, let's see if I can resurrect this whole blogging thing. I have failed to keep myself updating. Not sure if anyone reads this anymore at all, for that matter.

With our family of four young children we are always kept busy! They participate in a few extracurricular activities, and then of course there is homeschooling on top of it. Esther and Noah are always a source of entertainment for us, Esther is always active and we never know what is going to happen next with her around. Noah is a little bit of calm in our storm. They balance each other out well. 

Elias is now five, and still loves his dirt, trucks, tractors, trains, etc. He loves to spend time digging with his tractor in the garden, and building "houses" using scrap wood. 

Esther is always in motion, and is in gymnastics. At just over 3 she is getting up into head stands, cartwheels, and other such things-- her teacher is quite pleased with her progress. Rebecca has been helping with Esther's class as Esther started refusing to go in for no known reason, but will happily go in if Rebecca goes with her. We'll go with it. She loves the classes!

Rebecca keeps our lives interesting. She is turning into a little lady, and loves to help mother her little siblings. She is often found playing with Noah and/or Esther, making sure they have all that the need and then some of whatever they are doing.

School This Week

This week we finished up chapter 1 and started chapter 2 in Weaver Volume 1. It took a few more school days than it is "supposed to", but we have certainly been enjoying ourselves! 

We began making a topographical map of the United States of America-- I got to put my VERY rudimentary map drawing skills to work for this one!

We talked about how Christians are to be a light to the world, a city on a hill. I showed them how putting a candle up high in the room makes the whole room light up, whereas putting it down on the floor makes almost no difference in the darkness.

They made a picture of a light bulb using foil for the filament.

They also made crosses to remind us of heaven.

 The Bible first lesson in Chapter 2 is about the Tower of Babel again. We discussed how the people chose not to obey God, and instead wanted to make a name for themselves. We also talked about how, historically, ziggurats were used as places of worship. So, we went on a trip to see a number of different places of worship! Mainly Christian churches, but we also threw in a synagogue and observed the fact that there were crosses visible on nearly every church, but not at all on the synagogue. We first took them to see a number of more ornate and grand structures in one of the neighbouring communities, so that we would be able to discuss the historic architecture and design, and then we came back to our area, where the churches are far newer and compared the ornamentation of the older churches to the newer churches.

Apparently this "looks like heaven" to our children.

Greek Orthodox church

Jewish synagogue

Spring Has Come!

I had told the kids that we would make St. Patrick's Day cookies, but feeling pretty yucky myself meant that I really didn't have the energy to deal with making St. Patrick's Day cookies. Instead, we made sugar cookies in a number of spring shapes, and then of course we absolutely had to decorate them!

For the last couple of years Elias has asked us for a duck. Specifically a green duck. However, there is absolutely NO way to guarantee that we got a green duck without paying a small fortune for it (ducklings sexed at the hatchery are rather expensive!), and this year he decided he just plain and simple wants a duck. Who cares what colour it is. So we called up the person we knew of who hatches various birds every spring and asked if he happened to have any duck eggs due to hatch. He said he did, but they weren't due to hatch for another week, so call back and see what he had then. We called a week later and found out that his batch of eggs had been a pretty poor hatching result this time round-- he only got two ducklings out of the whole batch of incubated eggs.

We told the kids we were going to go see some ducklings, and possibly get Elias a duck, and Elias ran off to get his money he has been collecting for the last year so that he could buy his own duck(s). He was adamant that he be the one to get them! We are just letting him think he paid for them in full. I believe they are Pekin ducks, I'm not sure if they are both regular ones or if one of them happens to be a jumbo one. They are drastically different in size right now!!

And... our winter garden stalled out when the snow came, but we are finally getting really nice produce out of it! Perhaps next year I will try planting carrots as well?! I can't wait to use these turnips and their greens this week! :)

This Week in our Homeschool

This week we continued to talk about soil, civilizations, and land formations. In Bible we talked about Jesus talking with the disciples about counting the costs of something before beginning an activity, and we also talked about being a light set on a hill rather than down in the valley, and how we can see for miles around from a hill instead of being unable to see and defend ourselves in the valley as well.

I gave them small cubes to build two circular towers. One set of cubes was only 20, the other 200.

She decided that it obviously pays off to count the costs and be sure we have the materials and abilities required before we begin a project!

 Along with counting the costs, we talked a bit about stewardship and the need to have our money set aside for tithe, spend, and save. We made little "piggy banks" out of dixie cups (my kids don't get a whole lot of money!).

Since we have been talking about soil and its components, we got a jar of water and added a good large scoop of the soil from our garden in the front yard. We shook it up until there were no more lumps visible, and left it to settle into the different layers of soil. It took a good 24 hours to get the layer of silt to settle in, but the sand layer was visible almost immediately, and the clay layer about 2 hours later.

In this picture you can see the sand layer having already settled at the bottom.

This picture shows sand on the bottom and then a good thick layer of clay-- I always suspected we had a very clay-based soil in our garden considering how wet it stays and for how long!

 We also have discussed the need and uses for electricity, and so we went to take a look at where we get our power from. Our power is supplied mainly by a nuclear power plant, which is about 20 miles from our house, but takes nearly an hour to reach due to rivers and such being in the way! We wanted to go see both sides of the plant, but couldn't figure out how to get to the other side. We are thinking they must have had the access blocked off for some reason, so we just went to a spot where we could see one of the domes and the distribution center of the plant from the road, and called it good. We'll look at some pictures of the plant online in the coming week.

The control buildings and one of the domes are visible in the center/left of this photo, and some of the distribution equipment to the right.

Distribution equipment

Results! Sand on the bottom (yellowish), clay in the middle (brown), and silt on top (grey). There was also a very small amount of humus left floating around on the very top.

We have also been waiting on the tomato and pepper plants that we started on Sunday to sprout, the tomato plants started sprouting yesterday, hopefully the pepper plants will sprout by next weekend, though I always find those quite difficult to coax into growing. We also plan to plant the garden in the coming week or so!

St. Patrick's Day!

I found an interesting "icebox dessert" recipe as I was browsing my facebook last week, and since it is made with Lucky Charms, it seemed fitting we would make it for the St. Patrick's Day weekend!

In case you would like to make your own, you can get the recipe here

As it turned out, it tasted pretty good the day we made it. We ate it about 3.5 hours after I finished assembling it, and I would say you probably would want to eat it within 2-6 hours of making it. However, by the next day it was starting to taste a little "soggy", and by today it is just not that great, in my opinion. It is very rich also, which has somewhat turned me off. However, Justin seems to have no issue with it. But, it was a fun experiment... I'll just stick with Lucky Charms and regular milk, personally. :)

Instead of doing Weaver activities I decided we were going to learn a little about St. Patrick's Day this year. We read a book all about the holiday-- its origins, where Ireland is, what the Irish flag looks like and stands for, the way the holiday is celebrated by Irish people around the globe, etc. We listened to the Adventures in Odyssey episodes about St. Patrick, and we made cupcakes!

We coloured them with sprinkles to look like the Irish flag!

We finished the day with shamrock shaped raviolis in green and white. Which wasn't particularly Irish, and my kids would have happily taken corned beef over the raviolis, but it turned out that my plan was the raviolis, because I was feeling pretty rotten by the end of the day yesterday, and despite having a nap in the afternoon with the baby while I occupied the older two with a Magic School Bus marathon, I was feeling pretty nauseated and doing my very best to continue to function long enough to get everyone into bed! We were going to make sugar cookies, but that didn't happen. I do have a shamrock shaped cutter, however I think we might save it for next year and just make some cute spring/Easter shapes instead-- I have a lovely set of Easter cutters now, so that should keep everyone happy.

And, that's it for our St. Patrick's Day fun this year!