Family Schooling Summary: Soccer and Irish Dancing

Saturday we had 2 soccer games and team pictures. 

Then we went to watch our good friends daughter Z's Irish dance performance.  They are very serious about competitions and one of the dancers placed 3rd in the world championships.

 Miss L loved the sparkly costumes. Big sister A thinks that she wants to add Irish dance to her list of activities.  I told her that I think soccer, ice skating, and guitar lessons are enough for now!

Here is Miss L with her buddy during the intermission.

Travels to Harper's Ferry

We took Icy to get spayed in West Virginia this week.  It is about an hour away, but costs half as much as spaying does around here so we decided it was worth it. 

 While we were in WV we decided to do a little history tour around Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.  They have an amazing little town set-up. The whole thing is like a museum.  We just popped into each building and looked around at the way the town would have been set-up during the time of the John Brown revolt and the Civil War. My favorite building was the Dry Goods Store:

 Harper's Ferry was a factory town because of its convenient location where the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers lended water power and made transportation easy. The C&O canal was there and the B&O Railroad.

 

Several of the houses were museums dedicated to particular topics - like the industrial revolution, the John Brown Revolt, and the Railroad. In one of them their was a dress-up corner. 

 Civil War era wagon (replica):

 We could have hiked a lot farther, but Miss L was super tired and wanted to get lunch.

 

Farm Fresh: Chasing kittens leads to trouble

Last weekend we let the kittens out of their cage for awhile to explore the barn. They are supposed to stay in with mama cat until she gets spayed, but that is sad so we let them out from time to time. 

 Shortly after I took these pictures Miss L climbed up on the big barn storage dresser to look behind it at the kittens.  She lost track of her place on the dresser and fell off, knocking down a mason jar full of pencils in the process. The jar broke and she got a big cut across the ball of her foot from the sharp glass.

 A trip to urgent care and about 5 hours later she came home all bandaged and glued.  They x-rayed the cut to make sure that there was no glass in it.  I had to carry her around for the next three days so that she would not walk on it.  We brought the kittens in the house to entertain her. She had a rough time with the pain that first night and I had to give her Tylenol twice before she finally fell asleep at 3 am.

 Another batch of chicks hatched this week.  We had 18/19 eggs hatch, but one chick only lasted a few hours.

The big teenage chicks next door are almost ready to go outside now. 

No pictures, but I butchered the two meanest geese this week.  I intended to butcher all 5 of the extra ones, but it was a LONG process because of how hard it is to pluck them and the cold weather.  After 3.5 hours I decided to be done. We had spiced roast goose for dinner today. The other geese have become a lot more mellow and mama goose decided to set on her eggs. 

 My broody hen has been setting on 4 turkey eggs for 3 weeks now.  One more week to hatching time!

 I have about a dozen other turkey eggs in the incubator.  I just put them in on Thursday, so they have a long way to go. 

AND one of our rabbits had 7 kits last week.  It really feels like Spring! 

Family Schooling: Soccer Season and Space Exploration

A big dead tree at the corner of our house has been making us a little nervous ever since we moved here (2 years ago in February!). We finally decided the time and the price were right to get it down.  Getting the wood all chopped and chipped is another task added on Daddy's ever growing "to do" list. 

 Soccer season has begun again.  The littles play on the playground while brother M or sister A have practice.

 Miss L got her nails done at Big sister A's "Spa" (and so did the boys!).

  It has been a cold couple of weeks. Brother M is wearing a sweatshirt and fleece pants because it is only about 45 degrees.

 Brother S and Miss L are NOT dressed appropriately for the weather.  I was freezing with my winter coat and hat on.

  We do the "Mystery Science" labs as part of our science curriculum.  The one they wanted to do this week, not surprisingly considering the National Science Fest last week, was about space.  This particular lesson is called "Wandering Stars" (aka - planets).

 We drew the spread of the planets to scale, but not the planets themselves.

We played a game where they learn the order of the planets by racing to whichever one I call out.  

 The kids have been doing a lot of wildcraft/pioneer type activities. They are sharpening their own arrowheads, whittling sticks, and building little "homes" in the wood sheds -- like their own log cabins.

 I took and texted this picture of what big sister A was doing with my Cutco knife to spur hubby on to get them some real pocket knives (and a lesson on knife safety).

 What hubby did with the boys on conference Sunday:

USA Science and Engineering Festival

We went to a HUGE science festival downtown at the Washington Convention Center. First up was an amazing laser light lesson and show put on by SPIE.

 We had 4 hours to spend at the festival and we decided to focus on the two areas that seemed most interesting to our crew: Space (NASA) and Oceanography.

 

  Virtual reality tour of the Orion mission rocket.

 Soft circuits made at the FERMI station (Gamma Ray Space Telescope)

 This year's American girl doll is an astronaut. She had a lot of cool space tools and toys.

 The kids did the NASA scavenger hunt cards. They had to go to 9 stations and talk to the reps at each one in order to get a stamp.  The reward was pass through the fast track line to try the simulator.