Father and Sons' Camp-Out

 I was expecting a bunch more pictures, but it was a rainy camp-out. The tent is hanging up to dry in the barn. Sad.

Family Schooling Summary: Class Fair Spring 2016

Co-op school ended this week with the class fair.  We had a STEM theme this time. Any class that had a STEM topic was asked to provide an activity booth.  Our Hot Wheels Engineering class made a self-propelled car. 

My CSI class booth just had a poster and a Mystery Challenge that people could take home to figure out whodunnit. 

Big sister A worked on the cup challenge with her friend.

 The most popular class this semester was the microprocessors. I hear it was excellent, but all our kids were too young to be enrolled.

This is the booth from the Mother Goose on the Loose class that brother S took.  His teacher was amazing.  They had lovely crafts and songs for each nursery rhyme.

Big sister A took a fun Korean class.  She loved learning it and I hope Uncle C will quiz her when we see them at the family reunion.

Little brother S made this self-propelled car with a BLUE balloon, of course.

 Big sister A showing off her planet mobile from Science as Art class:

 And the 3D art project she made at the fair:

 Brother M's mobile and self-propelled car projects:

For FHE we made each of the 3 older kids a mason jar bank. They have been wanting a new chore chart system.  We liked how Uncle P had a more direct do-the-chore-add-to-your-money tally system, and decided to do something similar with the money jars.  They do a chore or are an extra good helper and get some change asap in their jar. Then we avoid the weekly sum-up and make payments step. So far so good, but it always goes well the first couple weeks. Ask me in a month or two?

Farm Fresh: Ducklings Bathing and Chicks Moving to the Coop

This is the beautiful view out my kitchen window.  The azaleas and dogwoods have been a treat to watch come to life. 

 

Another happy surprise is a huge patch of lilies of the valley around one of the hickory trees. They are one of my favorite flowers. It reminds me of the ones in Goomie's side yard.

 The 2 week old ducks went for their first swim this week while I cleaned out their brooder.  It was so fun to watch them.  Makes the expression of someone taking to something "like a duck to water" soooo much more meaningful.

I also moved the chicks out to our coop area this week. This has  been tricky for several reasons. It's still going down to 50 degrees at night! They are 6 weeks old and I have been putting them out for most of the day (with temps in the 60's) so I finally decided to just let them shiver a little and leave them overnight. And of course, they are fine. The bigger problem are the old ladies of the house.  They have been around the chicks a lot, always with the chicks fenced for protection. So far they have not been too aggressive. I am keeping the chicks in the coop and run all day for a couple weeks. That is supposed to help them recognize it as home and return there to roost. The hens shouldn't be allowed to eat the chick's food and vice versa, so I lock the hens out of the coop and run all day. Only about 10 more weeks... and then they can mingle and all eat hen food.

  

The 7 week old ducklings treat the 2 week old ducklings much better than the hens do the chicks.  They waddled right over to meet the new arrivals and have a chat. Then they stayed (despite L's efforts to catch one) to watch the ducklings' pool party.

Family Schooling Summary

I always forget to take pictures of the day-to-day workbook type school work that we do. Here is A working on her spelling and penmanship. She copies down the word list and then I ask her to spell them.

Typical mornings around here go like this.  I wake up around 6 am and run around outside - feeding animals, cleaning coops, working on gardening projects.  Children trickle out of the house to help or play. Around 8 am Baby L wakes up and I go in to make breakfast. Then we get dressed, eat breakfast, and start school. It is a lovely routine. My favorite time of day.

Baby L is loving riding toys.  She can push herself all around the driveway now. It makes me a little nervous because she is not afraid to go fast and just picks up her feet on the hill. I have to keep an eye out or ask M and A to help her.

Baby L and brother S both had ticks on them this week -- of the dog tick variety. We are watching for rashes.

Cousin JJ is in the hospital with pneumonia and so the other cousins were hanging out with us on Saturday.  They have such a great time playing together. They had a dance party in A's room, played dress-up, herded ducks in for the night, picnicked on the deck, did crafts, and...

...made a cake! Another independently led cooking project by Sister A.  I just poured the batter into the pans, loaded the ovens,  and made the frosting.

Mother's Day 2016

This was a lovely Mother's Day.  I was spoiled by the kids and hubby.   They all got up at 6:30am to make me waffles for my breakfast in bed while I snoozed. A gave me a bag of my favorite candies. Hubby fed the kiddos and cleaned up all the breakfast making mess in the kitchen.

 

And then I went downstairs and found my presents on the deck. Three hanging planters of shade friendly flowers, just what I wanted. A family at church invited us over for dinner, so we had no cooking or mess to clean from that either. What a lovely day!

Family Schooling Summary: Co-op School Picnic and Pajama Day

Two weeks ago (sorry, still catching up from when the camera was broken) we had our co-op school picnic at a local park.  Luckily the weather was beautiful.

We discovered that the kiddos like badminton.

 We played firetruck and ran to the rope ladder to rescue people. Baby L decided that she loves the slide!  She was making me nervous with the fearless attitude that she had about going up the ladder and coming down, so I did not feel safe enough to snap a photo of her doing it.

 There was a shallow creek that the kiddos played in and got nice and dirty.

 

 

 This is what happened while I wrote the blog last Sunday. Big sister A made waffles all by herself.  She had lots of help from little brothers.  It was great to have the Sunday dinner all ready for me.

I am the assistant teacher in M and S's Hotwheels engineering class. We brought some Thomas Train toys to share last week.  

Last Monday at co-op was also pajama/bedhead day.  Big sister A had some wild hair. Funny thing was we also needed to go to Costco that day.  Got a lot of interesting looks, mostly smiles.

Here are some of the seedlings hardening off outside on pajama day. It's been mostly rain here lately, so they were kind of water logged.   They are all out in the garden beds now.

The ducks are also living outside now, on the lower level of the rabbit hutch.  Miss L tries to catch them, but so far has not succeeded.

For FHE we tried out the magnetic goo that A and M made in their Science as Art class.

 It was pretty cool how the slime followed the super magnets.

Another less cool bug project -- this wasp was trying to build a nest on the door frame right outside our patio doors.  Hubby caught it so that we could examine it.

This made me nervous, but they also found a Worm Snake at co-op school and were holding it and playing with it. According to the kids,  "They are harmless and non-venomous".