Family Schooling Summary

 This week at SHARP Co-op School we had Easter activities. They divided us into small groups and the kids rotated through various stations.  Our group went to the egg hunt first.

 Then we played games that kids would have played in Jesus' time. They had a craft/lesson about food and culture in Jesus' time. They tasted olives, honeycomb, cheese, and grapes. Then they made a mezuzah scroll with scriptures in it to put by their bedroom door.  They played an easter egg game where each egg contained something symbolic of an event in Jesus' life.

 After all the activities we had a picnic on the floor.

We took a field trip to the feed store to get more food for our hens and see this years baby chicks. They were so hard to resist -- especially the ducklings.  "Maybe when we get our farm" - is a phrase that we often say to each other.  I asked them when the turkey poults will be available -- not until May or early June. That would be a fun project for our farm too.

Aunt H was in the hospital this week for a kidney infection and because they found some kidney stones.  The kiddos were happy to have the cousins over to play and the big kids had a sleepover upstairs.

Easter egg dyeing with daddy.  He does the best color combinations.

 Showing off their loot. We took it easy on the candy again this year. They had plenty of candy from their two Easter egg hunts.

We did the usual math and reading workbooks this week. We are still talking about WWII for history and Big sister A and I started reading this book out loud to each other.

 The bean and potato science projects are also still in progress.

Sew special: A new couch cover for 5 dollars

At least a year ago, I snagged a very nice white ikea loveseat cover from the "As-Is" bin.  It was 1 dollar! I grabbed some cushion covers and other denim bits from the bin as well that were of the same color.  Each one was a dollar!
Here is the couch that that cover set was supposed to be for:

My old cover was made from a double layer of white sheets. Brother M is in a cutting phase and recently made a small hole, which quickly became gigantic as they played with it.  The day before the Easter Egg hunt party I decided that completing this project was a priority and stayed up very late almost finishing it. (The back/side hem is still not done).
In some ways starting with a cover that did not fit was harder than starting from scratch. The rounded back of this couch is always challenging to slip cover. This is my 3rd time making a cover for it. I think it is the best yet in terms of the pleats.

I made these little tucks around the arm curves both because their was excess fabric and because that was what I was hoping to test out on this third iteration. The piecing in the center of the couch, I would rather not have done, but it was the only way to fill in gaps in the other model to make it work for this couch. and my fill ins were seat covers... so I made do as best I could.

I also finished off another doll project for my neighbor's doll business this week.  She had an antique dress that was falling apart. My neighbor brought me this nice quality satin and tulle to work with and I replicated her wardrobe, including the parasol! That was the most fun part of the whole thing. 

4th Annual Easter Egg Hunt

It is getting to be a regular tradition for us to invite friends with little kids to hunt eggs in our yard. Everyone brings some plastic eggs filled with candy, the kiddos wait inside while the dads all go out and hide them. This year we had more older siblings and so we told them that they had to help each of the littles find 3 eggs before they could start hunting for their own eggs. That worked well. The weather was a chilly 45F, but sunny.

 The grass and garden were pretty soggy, but no one seemed to mind.

 After the hunting the kiddos came in and started munching away. I was enjoying socializing and let them enjoy for awhile before encouraging them to "save some for tomorrow".

Recommended Reading: Women in WWII

I don't usually watch much TV.  Downton Abby is over now so I am back to watching things on Hulu once in awhile. Lately I have been enjoying the costumes and girl power storyline of "Agent Carter".  Thinking of Peggy's story got me wondering about the roles of female spies in WWII.  I ended up reading a bunch of books about WWII. I already talked about a couple of them here.

In the last couple weeks I read these 4 books:
1.  Women Heroes of WWII  by Kathryn Atwood -- This is a wonderful non-fiction book that tells the stories of 26 women spies in WWII.  There were so many women involved in counter intelligence work during WWII.  I had no idea the intricate webs of spy networks going on behind the scenes in occupied Europe. They were feeding information to the British and helping pilots/soldiers caught behind enemy lines escape. The book is organized by country and includes stories of women from France, Belgium, Poland, Italy, and Czech Republic.

2. Women Heroes of WWI by Kathryn Atwood -- After I read about the women in WWII, I had to get Ms. Atwood's other book and see what happened in WWI.  It was interesting to compare the situations in the 2 wars. The WWI stories are organized into stories about spies, medics, and soldiers. Yes, some of the women were soldiers! The Russians had a whole unit of women fighting.  One of their jobs was to shame the discouraged male soldiers into battle by being heroic themselves.

3. Journey to Topaz by Yoshiko Uchida-- is about Japanese internment in the US after Pearl Harbor was bombed.  I enjoyed this story because it is told through the eyes of an eleven year old girl named Yuki, and it is based on the author's own personal experiences.  I am hoping to read it with big sis A as part of our study of WWII.

4.  The All Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg -- this book is by the same gal that wrote Fried Green Tomatoes and the tone is similar. The dialogue includes fun southern and midwestern speech patterns, but BEWARE the loads of cursing.  It is not a good book to listen to in the car with children. The story follows a family of 4 girls 1 boy (like someone else I know!) during WWII.  Three of the girls become WASPs (pilots for the military). It is funny and surprising and heartfelt.  I loved it aside from the foul language.

Family Schooling Summary

Big sister A tested the engineering of the 4th little pigs' house of logs in her "fairytale engineering" class, learned about Spain in Spanish culture club, and studied roots in her botany class.

Then sadly, she had a sore throat on Tuesday-Thursday and so we took it easy at home.  I learned that I could add tea tree oil to our humidifier as sort of an herbal vaporub while they were sleeping. That seemed to help.  We also drank lots of juice with echinacea mixed in. I told all the kiddos that we needed to all be healthy on/by Friday or else I would have to cancel the Easter Egg hunt we planned for Sunday.  Positive thinking really works!

Brother M is getting to be a great helper. He LOVES making things and is always coming to me with projects that he wants to do - usually involving glue and scissors.  He and A both love entertaining baby L, who is just "so cute!". They are still on their Uno game kick too. 

Brother S has been collecting ladybugs in jars, digging for worms with brother M, and generally getting into mischief.  Also, apparently anything that is light blue in our house belongs to him -- spools of thread, pins, cars, cups... He is making a little horde. 

Baby L is as sweet and happy as can be. 

Family Schooling Summary

Co-op school gave the kiddos some homework this week. Brother M brought home this "rainbow maker" and another music toy that he made with bells. 

 Big sister A brought home her Botany notebook and an assignment to do the bean seed experiment. I remember when we did this in second grade too.  We are observing the seeds every day and documenting their progress.

Big sister A read aloud to us this week, including reading baby L a story. We are still studying WWII for history. We read Happy Birthday Molly this week.  I also called my grandma to ask her what she remembered from that time period. We talked about their Victory garden and food ration cards. She said that her mother always had a garden, but during the war they called it a Victory garden.  She told me that was when she got sprayed by a skunk! It just came running out of the corn patch and was across her feet before she realized what it was. Then it lifted its tail and sprayed her.

A. is also mastering the art of multi-tasking at a young age.  Playing Uno and doing her grammar workbook in between turns. That's my girl. 

Uno is the most popular pastime at our house now. Everyday when daddy comes home from work they are all over him to play a game or two before dinner and they play all day long with just the 2 or 3 of us.

Brothers M and S have each created little "hordes" in old animal cracker jars.  They like to carry around all their favorite trains, cars, small things and have races while sitting on their jars and scooting on the floor. 

Baby L is laughing and rolling onto her back. She is such a good baby. She has the sniffles and I have been using the nebulizer on her to make sure that she can breath easy before she goes to sleep every night. She holds the mask sometimes now, grabbing it with her two hands.  She also found her hands and comforts herself by sucking on them. 

Garden Report

This weekend it was warm enough for me to spend some time in the garden.  I cleaned all the deep litter out of the chicken coop.  It's supposed to keep them warmer to just pile more on each week instead of cleaning it out in the winter.  AND it makes a lovely manure for the garden.  I rolled it into my relatively finished compost and then spread that mixture over and into all my garden beds and around my fruit trees. 

Sad news for this week. Baby S was very quiet and so I went to see what he was up to now... He answered me by asking me to help him wash his hands and face which were black. And then I saw the huge mess behind him...

I don't usually cry when the kids break things, but baby S started to cry too when he saw my reaction. My poor little seedlings.  The front line took most of the damage, but oh my! what a mess - all over that whole corner of the basement.  Peppers and ground cherries all decimated as well as most of the cabbages.  I probably should have been more calm and thoughtful and asked questions about what he was thinking... oh well.  Luckily the weather is getting warmer and the sandbox will soon become available again.