Home Schooling Summary For the Last 2 Weeks

These last two weeks have been full of celebrations. (Read: Lots of partying not much formal education) We had baby brother S's first birthday, my nephew  (the first grandchild on both sides) got baptized, and my parents were visiting for these events.  

Riding on a princess pumpkin

Baby S's birthday party followed a familiar pattern - the little guy tries to figure out what these presents are good for with LOTS of demonstrations from older more experienced siblings and cousins.

Here are some great pictures that my dad snapped the day of the big Baptism party:

Apparently sticking out your tongue when you are happy is genetic in our family

Recommended Reading: The Black Cauldron Series- Chronicles of Prydain Book 4

The Chronicles of Prydain Book 4: Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander

Funny story about this cover. The whole reason that I started reading this series is because my daughter brought this set to me. She liked it because she thought the covers looked "scary"! She is kind of obsessed with reading "scary" looking books. We read a lot of Halloween books as you might guess.  Lucky for me the children's section is pretty safe.
I was about to put this book back and then recognized the "Black Cauldron" title from the Disney movie.  I am glad that I decided to read this series for myself.  I recommend it for children ages 7 and up for all the reasons that I mentioned in my previous posts about the Chronicles of Prydain. 
Book 4 is still an adventure story, but lacks Eilonwy, which is sad for female readers. It is also more introspective and philosophical as Taran is seeking to discover his true parentage. For all the "finding yourself" philosophy that it included, it still kept me on the edge of my seat.  I don't want to spoil the ending for anyone, but I was hoping for a bit more myself. Hopefully, Book 5 will clear it all up.

Reuse Recipe: Covering Up the Old Monogram

My husband's company was recently outbid by another firm and lost the contract that he works on. Luckily, the new company hired most of the old staff including our hard working daddy.  Unfortunately, the old company had provided all of husband A's work shirts and most of his coats. Before the first day of transitioning we had to decide whether we could salvage the old shirts somehow without looking disloyal to the new company.

Here is what we started with: nice polo shirt with the old company logo monogramed on the side:

I used another polo shirt with a pocket to trace a pattern for a pocket and added 1/4 inch seam allowance. Since husband A wears his shirts tucked in I was able to steal a pocket worth of fabric from the lower back corner of each shirt.

Cutting out the pocket 

I ended up with a colorful pile of pockets. In addition to the shirt front pockets, I cut 5 replacement pieces from an old yellow work shirt. I allowed an additional 1/4 inch around the pattern piece for those so that they could be easily inset in the place of the pockets that I had cut (see below) 

 Before attaching the pockets I basted a 1/4 inch hem around the edges. The top hem was already done since it had originally been the bottom shirt hem. Tricky right?
After some trial and error, I realised that the best way to attach the new pockets was to first insert my green cutting board between the layers of the shirt and then center the pocket over the logo and topstitch. I also learned from my test shirt that the top of the pocket needs to be at least 1/2 inch above the logo lettering or else the old monogram will be visible when the wearer moves or leans forward.

Finally, I inset the replacement piece, first using a straight stitch 1/4 inch seam and then top stitching that down with a wide tight zigzag stitch.  Again, this bottom section of the shirt is not visible once it is tucked in.

Voila! 5 "new shirts"with no company affiliation visible.

Garden Progress: Fall Sights

The star of the fall garden this year is the French Sorrel. It continues to grow and provide plenty of fresh lettuce for our table.

2 new trees joined our mini orchard - A pear and a plum. The perennials go on sale for half price after Halloween every year and I have a hard time resisting them! I do not think there is room for any more trees though, even dwarf fruit trees.

Dwarf Plum Tree

Dwarf Pear Tree

Big brother M helped me prune and cut back the bushes for winter. He kept saying, "We are good workers, aren't we Mommy?" Yes, my hard working little man.

Pruned daisy bushes 

Hard working little man holding his toy hammer

 Next activity: Rake leaves and jump in them!

Sew Special: My Favorite Curtains

Any one who has been to my house will know exactly what my favorite curtains look like. They adorn 4 of the 6 rooms on the first floor of our home. They are easy to make, but can look fancy or cozy depending on the fabric and ribbon chosen. I love that they dress up the window with out blocking much of the sunlight.

1. The Living Room - white linen

2. The Bathroom - large floral

3. The kids "farm theme" bedroom

And number 4, the newest addition - to go with my new dining room table - calico and cotton

 It is hard to see in the picture, but the bottom fabric is white with tiny black polka dots.

Home Schooling Summary for the Last 2 Weeks

First major activity of the last 2 weeks: Playing with the new ribbon baton that big sis A got from her friends party.

We continue to follow our schedule (flexibly):

Monday - Reading and Math

Tuesday - Science class with friends and Drawing class for daughter A.

Wednesday - Reading and Math

Thursday - History and Gymnastics

Friday - Reading and Math

 

We are using The Great Big Book of Fun Phonics Activities most days for reading. Daughter A likes the games and is working on consonant blends. I photocopy a few pages at a time and then when they are done we add them to her portfolio. She has also been doing dictation (short vowel word lists) from the Phonics Pathways book. That allows her to practice her writing and spelling. 

For history class we continue to study Native Americans. Last week we used the book If You Lived With the Sioux Indians and practiced harvesting like the Native American Indian women. 

We had a great class at our local nature center on animal noises. It included a campfire and roasting marshmallows. I forgot to bring my camera so these are "after" pics of the campfire craft that they made there. 

 Little brother S is deliciously cute. I am so glad that his Button Lover sweater still fits too.

He took his first steps a few days ago and here is what he has been practicing this week - Ride 'em cowboy! He is getting into everything and climbing up the furniture now. 

Recommended Reading: The Black Cauldron and the Chronicles of Prydain

I take back what I said earlier about this story being too scripted. I've come to relish these books and look forward to introducing this series to my kids. I have enjoyed Lloyd Alexander's well rounded characters and plots in both books 2 and 3 of the series. I think that with all the "young adult" books out there these days it is hard to remember what an epic adventure for young children reads like. This is the gold standard. I still think that the dialogue sounds goofy at some points, but in some ways that is the charm of the book. The characters each have both noble and annoying features and the dialogue is true to those traits.

The Black Cauldron (Book #2)

This is the summary from Good Reads:
Since The Book of Three was first published in 1964, young readers have been enthralled by the adventures of Taran the Assistant Pig-Keeper and his quest to become a hero. Taran is joined by an engaging cast of characters that includes Eilonwy, the strong-willed and sharp-tongued princess; Fflewddur Fflam, the hyperbole-prone bard; the ever-faithful Gurgi; and the curmudgeonly Doli--all of whom have become involved in an epic struggle between good and evil that shapes the fate of the legendary land of Prydain. Released over a period of five years, Lloyd Alexander's beautifully written tales not only captured children's imaginations but also garnered the highest critical praise. 

The Black Cauldron was a Newbery Honor Book, and the final volume in the chronicles, The High King, crowned the series by winning the Newbery Medal for "the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children."
....
In their more than thirty years in print, the Chronicles of Prydain have become the standard of excellence in fantasy literature for children. 

The Castle of Llyr (Book #3)

Garden Progress: Green Tomatoes by the Peck!

We had our first frost last week and so the kiddos and I set out to harvest the last bits of peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes from the garden. We filled more than half of a bushel box with green tomatoes. I began flipping through cookbooks and calling on friends for ideas on what to do with green tomatoes. I came up with several. Green tomato pickles sounded fabulous, but was set aside for another time since I still have bottled pickles from last year to eat up. Brother M and I are the only real pickle fans so far.

Here are the two consumer tested winners for using up our green tomatoes:

1. Green Tomato Salsa - It's gorgeous and it tastes great! We eat salsa by the pint so no chance of it lasting until next canning season! It took me 2 days of snippets of time here and there to get all the requisite ingredients chopped up fine for this large pot full.

2. Mince Meat Pie - I know I have eaten this at thanksgiving some time in my life, but as I looked at the recipe I could not recall what it actually tasted like. It calls for "suet" which I had never heard of and had to look up. I decided that leftover fatty ham bits would do instead - since I already had them on hand. I made up a small batch using the Ball Canning Book recipe for Green Tomato Mincemeat and baked it.
This is what it looked like after 24 hours:

A hit! Husband heard the word suet and did not have much - this decimation is mostly from the kids and I. It was a delicious pie, very "spiced". Not hot spicy, just Fall spicy - cinnamon, orange zest, nutmeg, cloves, etc. I made 2 batches of it the next day - enough for 7 more of these pies this winter. Instead of canning it,  I measured enough for a pie into 7 ziploc bags and froze it.

Sew Special: Winter hats, Sweaters and Wonderful Pants

Boys are so hard to photograph - constantly in motion!

There is so much to talk about this week... since I did not publish anything last week due to the camera battery being dead on arrival. That always seems to happen to me.

Last week it started to get cold here and we simultaneously saw a cute blog post from my all time favorite blogger and author Amanda Soule about pom poms. So we raided my yarn stash and the kiddos chose the colors they wanted for this year's winter hats. Big sister A's hat was improvised and for brother M's hat it was loosely based on the Luuk pattern.

Girly Pom-pom hat

Brother M has grown more than 2 inches since February according to our wall chart. That means that he was down to only 2 pairs of jogging pants and high waters for church. I reviewed my pattern stash and decided on a mass production (5 pairs) using a lengthened version of the Oliver & S shorts pattern. I have already mentioned repeatedly how much I love the Lisette patterns for women and Liesl Gibson's book, Little Things to Sew. Based on my experiences with those patterns I went ahead and bought some clothes patterns for the kids when they were half price this summer. If the shorts/pants pattern is any indication, the children's patterns are the cream of the bunch. A good pattern makes sewing fun. It is worth the extra 5-7$.

Here are some pics of brother M sporting one of his 5 new pairs of pants. They have a faux fly, flat front, and elastic in the back.  I made this pair from one of husband's old work shirts. 

Faux fly and two front pockets

The shirt front pocket became the pants back pocket