Aiden starts first grade

Aiden started school on August 17th and loves it! We have enrolled him in an independent study charter school and his teacher comes over to our house every few weeks to check his work and monitor progress. It seems to be working pretty well so far. Aiden loves his teacher and enjoys showing off his reading skills to her. She seems happy with his progress so far and thinks our curriculum is great. I LOVE the curriculum too; wished I could have learned all of this neat stuff when I was in first grade! For Language Arts we are reading Aesop's Fables, Parables from Nature, a poem a day (from A Child's Garden of Verses right now, AA Milne and others later this year), Just So Stories, Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare, and others later in the year. We also have a chapter book that we read each night (the original Peter Pan right now). For history/geography we are studying Paddle to the Sea, An Island Story, Fifty Famous Stories, Viking Tales, Ingri D'Aulaire books for American history (Ben Franklin, George Washington, etc). For science we read James Herriot's stories, Burgess bird and animal books, and do mostly field work studying nature with the Handbook of Nature Study as our guide. We just took a field trip to the Natural History Museum in PG where they got to see all of the birds they have seen in the field up close and ID them for sure which was so nice... We will be making many trips over there this year. At the moment I am trying to get my hands on a good dissecting scope to really study all the bugs and critters the boys collect. For phonics I am attempting to teach Aiden the Spalding method which includes his handwriting work. Next month he will start copying poems, sentences, and verses from great literature for practice in writing. For math, he is using Right Start math which is very hands on (lots of manipulatives and games). We have been learning Spanish phrases and singing Spanish songs for language for now. With the baby we are also learning a lot of sign language which has been fun for all. Once he has a good handle on reading and writing (later this year or next year) he will start Latin instruction. For art we have been using Drawing With Children which has been a great guide. Aiden is using the skills in there as he works on his painting for the fair next month. Aiden is also learning about the life and work of a few artists this term from the 1400s which has been interesting for us both. I found a site to download and print 8 x 10 prints for his art notebook for free. They look great and are useful for studying. For music, he has started piano lessons and he loves them! He is pounding away at Mary Had a Little Lamb as I type this. We are also learning a few classical composers this term, although I have not organized this study very well yet into our schedule. For Bible we simply are reading through the KJ Bible bit by bit and discussing. For handicrafts he is learning to thread yarn through plastic canvas to make ornaments. As for life skills, he is learning to set the table, fold laundry, vacuum, load the dishwasher, feed his animals, etc. He actually keeps really busy and when he is not inside, he loves to play outside with Liam building roads and dams using bricks, rocks, pipes, and the garden hose. They come in completely covered with mud. Oh, to be a kid again, right!?

Pruning Time

Summer here in Prunetucky equates to pruning time! Caleb runs the saw and I drag the branches/debris to the burn pile out in the field. The kids had great fun with this this year. Aiden helped out a lot as he stacked logs into the wheelbarrow for firewood and helped me stack it by the shed. Then he and Liam took rides in the wheelbarrow back to the pruning site. The kids had a blast. Of course, mom and dad were exhausted after 2 days of this! Liam cracked us up when he independently placed his earplugs behind his ear (like you would a pencil) and said, "Ready, ma!" Wishing I had a picture of that! We spotted many oak apples (mutation of the oak caused by gall wasp larva). My kids love cracking these (and the oak marbles) open to find the baby wasps! Good times...who needs Disneyland, right!?!

Harvest Time

Been enjoying snap peas and carrots at our dinner table and harvesting them is one of Aiden and Liam's favorite activities! Liam loves to point out the new pumpkins, "Ook, ma - punkin!"

Day at the Beach

Took the kids to Lover's Point on a sweltering day in Prunedale and it was pleasant and almost warm in PG! The kids loved building and collecting. Aiden organized a very nice seaweed collection that he and Liam pieced together. Budding naturalists! After watching surfers riding the waves Aiden now wants to surf!

Summer Vacation-Part 2

After our fun in Oregon we headed south back to CA to stay with Dad and D for 5 days in Hoopa. There we enjoyed more great company and lots of D's delicious food! Dad took Aiden and Caleb crabbing off the dock in Eureka using fish carcasses and a crab trap and caught 13 rock crabs and 4 dungeness crabs. Yummy! D and I and Liam shopped in Old Town, poking around in old bookstores, toy stores, galleries, and antique shops. Dad took us to play at several area parks and the river below the house. Every day the boys and I would forage in dad's garden for peas and blueberries. Liam LOVED the blueberries and could have sat there all day eating blueberries had he been left to himself. We had dinner and camped out at the campground (grandpa being the bravest of all of the adults sleeping on the hard ground with a very thin piece of foam beneath for 3 nights in a row with Aiden!). Caleb and I lasted 1 night out there and nestled our aching selves into the nice soft bed at the house thereafter. Mama rode on grandpa's motorcycle through the valley and had a lot of fun (to her surprise). The whole vacation was just incredible and it was so nice to visit with family again!

Our Summer Vacation- Part 1

Well, we stuffed the Subaru to the brim and beyond (storage shell atop) and headed up to Salem, Oregon to see Dad, Patty, and Erik for 5 days. We marveled at the lush green wonderland that is Oregon (reminds me of Plattsburgh, NY). Dad and Patty completely spoiled us with great meals, a trip to the cinema to see Up in 3-D - great movie!, a really unique children's museum (The Gilbert House), and the Portland Zoo which is the best zoo I have been to thus far. We also enjoyed spending some time with Erik over those few days and visiting him at the nursing home where he works. He is all grown up and getting ready to head off to nursing school in Portland. We are really proud of him!

Babies everywhere

Since the first part of May a female house finch decided to build a nest in our hanging flowerpot outside our front door. We noticed her frequent trips to the flowerpot with grass in her beak and worried that that spot was too busy and not very secure (and our plant in the flowerpot would probably die), so we moved the first bits of the nest to a nesting box Aiden built up higher in the rafters on the porch thinking we knew best (?). Sure enough the finch moved her nesting bits back to the flowerpot and continued her building there. After a few days we had 4 perfect light green eggs for a few weeks. Every time we would open our front door the mama would fly off and leave the eggs unattended, sometimes for quite long periods. Amazingly, the birds hatched out and they are doing well. They have grown so fast! We were able to snap a picture of 3 large babies (1 has already flown off)! The dad sits in a nearby yucca chirping while the mama feeds the babies. They have been so much fun to watch. The geranium in the hanging flowerpot has not fared so well (I have been sneaking an ice cube into the pot on the opposite side of the nest periodically when mama is gone), but all the organic matter (if you know what I mean) from the babies should make it grow beautifully very soon when the babies have all left!

We also have 6 new fuzzy additions to our flock of chickens. One of our Rhode Islands Reds had stopped laying and eating and drinking and just sat on the other hens' eggs all day. After much research I have learned that this is known as "brooding" and we used this opportunity to introduce new chicks with her as the surrogate mama. It worked! She is a great mama. They are so cute as they peek out from under her or jump up on her back! The mama (we call her 'Auntie Red') is very protective of her new babies and she attacked Aiden after he tried to pick up one of the chicks. Aiden is not very fond of this new chick-raising method as he really enjoyed raising the other chicks and the adults he raised are so tame they stop and kneel down when he walks behind them to pick them up. Anyway, all is well with the chicks and Aiden anticipates a boost in sales in his egg business in 6 months or so.

To add to all of this baby madness, yesterday we stumbled upon hundreds of baby toads at the park down our street that had just hatched from the pond and they were trapped between the concrete curbs and stuck in the road. We spent a good part of our morning there rescuing the babies and we brought 2 dozen to the wet part of our yard to cultivate a nice toad community here as well. Liam loved the toads and gingerly picked them up and kept 3 or 4 in the palm of his hand and gently dropped them where I directed him (so sweet!). I wished I had my camera handy to document that.

Enjoying the outdoors

Wow, this has been a marathon blogging day, but this is great closure to a really busy and fun spring our family has enjoyed. So, our main focus since March has really been rebuilding our dilapidated greenhouse and preparing the soil for our 2 big gardens. Aiden and I designed both gardens on graph paper and he really enjoyed coming up with symbols for the different veggies and making the key and compass rose. We purchased a used rotatiller which made digging up the soil much easier for me this year. Of course, we tilled a much larger area this year which has meant more work in the weeding/planting/watering department, but we don't mind. We built a fence to keep the chickens out of the big garden as they devoured our corn and tomatoes last year. We started the seeds in the greenhouse and just finished planting the last of the seedlings 2 days ago. Now we wait and water and weed and let God do the rest. Our iris garden (grandpa's irises) is blooming beautifully right now. The gophers love to eat those stalks just as they bloom out though so I am at war with them lately. Aiden and Liam have been helping me out in the yard, but they mostly enjoy the watering part and playing in the mud!

T-ball and Liam's Birthday Party

Aiden is playing T-ball for the first time and loving it! They are the Scrappers with 9 boys and 1 girl. They are so cute to watch. Often, the player on 1st base will forget to run and so you will see both players standing on the base. They forget they are even supposed to run. They'll start talking and goofing around until they hear the crowd yelling, "RUN!" and then one will push the other off the base in the direction of 2nd. Sometimes if a player is on 3rd and he/she is told to run home, he/she will just skip home plate and run straight into the dugout! When they are fielding they sit down and play in the sand or they'll pick up the bases and look under them. My aunt and uncle are huge baseball fans and they love coming to these t-ball games. The little girl on the team is quite good and she had to throw with Aiden the other day and turned to me with a wrinkled nose and said, "He has such a little throw!" (: Aiden works hard, but he hasn't had very much practice. He is learning a lot this year though. Liam is the unofficial mascot and hangs out in the dugout with the team. Caleb is the assistant coach and I'm team mom, so with 2 to 3 games a week for the last 2 months, we feel like we live at the field!

The first weekend in May we threw an official birthday party for Liam with guests and games and balloons and cake and ice cream. Rick and Deb came down. My aunt and uncle and cousin who all live in the area came. We also invited a few families with kiddos who are friends with Aiden and Liam to really make it fun! Aiden and I sewed up a bunch of bean bags a while ago and he wanted to make a bean bag toss for them. He painted Thomas the Train on an old cardboard box and cut holes in it and it made a great game for the kids to play with at the party. I bought little bottles of bubbles for the babies/toddlers and they loved the bubbles their moms blew! Liam thought he had to put the wand ON his lips and blow to get the bubble to come out! The little ones played with Liam's train set in his room and the older kids went outside and played in the fort. Liam loved his Thomas balloons and even recognized the pitiful free handed Thomas that mom piped on his cake! Liam got lots of great toys, but his favorites were the 3 Nerf balls he received as a set and his mulching lawn mower.

Wow, Liam is really growing up fast. The other day we pulled out the DVD of Cars (Pixar movie) and Liam exclaimed, "Oh cool mama!" I just about cried! He is a sweetheart though! His "okay mama" when I tell him to do something or "mmmm good mama" when I make a food he enjoys just melts my heart.

Historical field trip and Liam's official birthday

The weekend following Easter we drove up to Sacramento for a home school field trip to see where California's Gold Rush began. We started at John Sutter's fort in the heart of Sacramento. Our tour guide dressed up as a trapper and showed the kids furs, traps, old guns, and taught them to start a fire with flint and steel and twine. Aiden and Caleb came home with pieces of flint as souvenirs (they want to master that technique at home). They had a living history day at the fort with merchants dressed in period costume selling their wares and covered wagons and old brick ovens. We went inside an old jail cell. It was stinky and damp and dirty and very small. We then went to the Capitol building. The grounds were beautiful with many different kinds of trees, rose gardens, hedge sculptures, etc. The building itself was really lovely too with very ornate architecture inside the Senate and Assembly rooms. No wonder California has such a deficit! We stayed the night at my cousin's house and we had a very informal birthday celebration for Liam after dinner. The next morning, we went into the foothills to Coloma which was where gold was first discovered and most of the gold was found between 1848 and 1849. A replica of Sutter's mill is there next to the American River. Caleb and I really loved the country up there with lots of oaks and rolling hills. We then ended in Old Sacramento to visit where the Pony Express ended their route and see an old one-room school house. We also went to see the Railroad Museum, but we ran out of time and did not see much in there. That museum is supposed to be one of the best or even the best train museum in the country. We will definitely need to take that trip again when Liam is old enough to learn the history behind it. We had a blast and it was nice to get away from mowing and the weeds and day-to-day at home.

Easter

This was Liam's first real Easter that he could really participate in and understand and he loved it. We dyed eggs with basic store bought dye. We used rubber bands and crayons and stickers to add interest. Aiden really loved making patterns with the bands; Liam loved coloring on the eggs with crayons. When the boys woke up on Easter morning there were plastic eggs hidden all over the front yard filled with candy and coins. After we came home from church they hunted for them and filled their baskets. We had to keep Aiden from finding them all and give Liam a chance to find a few. Liam was so cute. We would point one out, and he would squat down and look and look. Often we would have to point it out a second time before he would spot it and pick it up. He is going to have to learn fast if he wants to keep up with big brother next year! Liam's favorite part was eating the goodies inside of course! Grandma D had given me some old cake pans in the shape of an Easter egg, so Aiden and I thought it would be fun to bake and decorate an egg-shaped cake. We did and layered in our homemade strawberry jam in 4 layers. We had fun with that little project while the baby was napping, and it tasted great after dinner.

April Trips

Okay, I am on a roll here-gotta get caught up before Liam wakes up from his nap.

In April, we went to Discovery Kingdom with another family and got to ride on a lot of rides and see Shouka, the killer whale, and watch a really fun sea lion and seal show. Those animals are amazingly smart! Aiden rode on his first big boy roller coaster (Tony Hawk) and he loved it. I think he was a little scared, but with his friend Asher and daddy and Mr. Cheek with him, he acted very brave. We all rode down the water rafting ride which totally drenched us in our jeans and socks and sneakers! That was a great day!

We also went on a homeschool field trip to Elkhorn Slough in April. The older kids went back to the lab and looked at water samples they took from the slough under the microscopes. Aiden really loved using the scopes. We also went into the big old barn there and found remains of small rodents and owl pellets below the barn owl nesting boxes. The boys just loved poking at the bones and dissecting the pellets with sticks.

Catching up! Let's start with March!

Wow, we have been on the go and living outside planting the garden, working on the greenhouse, weeding and mowing every spare moment since the end of March and well, I have a lot to catch up on here!

Let's start with St. Patrick's Day. Aiden and his buddies got together for games and a party and worked heartily building leprechaun traps out of our junk supply bin (boxes, toilet paper rolls, yarn, packing materials, etc..). Each child had a totally different design and they were just amazing structures! Digging through a supply bin to design a trap is every little boy's dream, right!? Aiden's leprechaun escaped, but he left a gold coin in his stead! Mischievous little sprite! Aiden is already planning next year's trap. (:

At the end of March we also went tidepooling with some homeschool friends. It was an extremely foggy and windy day, but the kids enjoyed climbing all over the rocks and poking around in all of the little pools at low tide. Liam's favorite animal was the sea anenome. He would touch it with his finger and it would squirt out water at him. He giggled and laughed! The kids all wanted to take home crabs, shells, and sea stars, but we gently explained the concept of poaching and that they could not. They were bummed, but we want to protect this really amazing habitat we are so blessed to explore here.