Why Homeschool is so good!

What's better than having your sweet kitty join you while you do your school work? Hmmm... maybe having homemade hot cocoa and chocolate chip cookies while you finish your work, too!

These photos were from Friday. Forest awoke from his afternoon nap to the smell of Mama's homemade cookies. 

On a side note, we had a scary thing happen yesterday. Forest threw a plate down from the table and it hit our sliding glass door. It ended up shattering into a million little pieces. We weren't sure what to do so we got some advice from my Uncle Mike, who told us how to get the glass to fall down and David vacuumed up the glass. The door was double paned so we temporarily have a one paned door until our new one comes. We ended up getting a very good deal at Lowe's on french doors (the doors were originally $700 and we got them for about half the price). Luckily Nana was over to help us and watch the wee ones. My Uncle Mike will be helping us install them on Saturday. Luckily, we are all okay and nobody was hurt. Forest thought the crackling sound the glass made was amazing. He kept saying, "Amazing." Well, not so amazing for us money wise, but it will be a story we can tell him one day!

Hello, Autumn!

It definitely feels as though Autumn has arrived to our little home. The past few days have been rainy with a little chill in the air. We have been collecting leaves and pinecones on our nature walks to add to our Autumn nature nook on the homeschool hutch.

The orange pumpkin is ours from our garden and the other one is from the market. Forest also had his own little pumpkin from the market, but threw it a few times like a ball in our kitchen. Sunshine ended up retrieving it and chewed it up a bit.

Yesterday afternoon a surprise arrived in the mail for Sienna! It was a Little House in the Big Woods paper doll book. There has been so much paper doll play at the table. It was such a sweet little book I thought I'd share.

And, while Sienna played with her paper dolls, Forest played with the barns and animals in the living room for a bit. It is a wonderful thing to have littles completely engaged in their play. He didn't even notice when I took the photos of him.

We moved some furniture around in the living room, because Forest kept diving off this little table onto the sofa. Now, it's found a perfect place below the windows in the play area for displaying our seasonal book basket.

Happy Autumn!

A Day in the Life

When I uploaded the photos from my phone I had a sweet, little collection of what our life looks like on a typical Friday. (minus the pizza and Sienna at dance class, of course.) 

In the morning the wee ones like to cuddle and watch The Magic School Bus on Netflix while I make them breakfast and briefly write what our day will look like on the whiteboard. We have a regular rhythm to our days, but I also like to write down in more detail what we will be learning about for the day. Forest has been waking Sienna and I up between 5-5:30 a.m. on most mornings. It is still quite dark outside when we begin our days.

On this particular morning, the kitties were playing with something on the floor in Forest's bedroom. I thought at first it might be a bug, but it turned out to be a frog! I captured "Hopper" as Sienna named him and put him in a mason jar. Sienna and Forest watched him for awhile and then, after it got lighter outside, we released him back into the wild.

 

We decided we would have bagels for breakfast from Haggen's, since we also had plans to drive and observe three different types of communities: suburban, urban and rural. Sienna is learning about these in her Social Studies class at the co-op we attend and had to do a project about it. 

I didn't know she snapped these photos of us in the car, but I was happy she did!

When we went home, we did some projects to go along with our read aloud Little House in the Big Woods. We read the first two books in the series a few years ago, but Sienna doesn't remember them very much. So, we are re-reading the whole series together and using them for our Language Arts curriculum. We are also doing writing, spelling/word study and independent reading during Language Arts. Sienna is working on a big project connecting her life today to Laura's as a pioneer. 

On Friday, she made a corn cob doll, just like Laura's first doll.

Of course, Sienna really gets into the learning. She had to dress up in her most pioneer style dress. This is Sienna with her corn cob doll, Susan. Laura's doll is also named Susan.

Later, Sienna worked on her Social Studies project.  

Forest likes to do "school work" with Sienna. He is finishing his bagel from breakfast and helping Sienna finish her work.

Between the next photos, many more things happened. Sienna hung some drawings of deer skins in our living room to play "Little House" and we ate our lunch together. Forest had his afternoon nap. I made pizza dough while Sienna finished up her school work. 

Then, we hurried off to dance class. Sienna is learning so much more this year in dance. She already knows the five positions in Ballet and she is learning lots of new Tap steps! We are also happy she is taking her dance class on Friday afternoon, so we have more freedom on our Saturdays.

 While Sienna is at her dance class, Forest plays across the street at the elementary school on their preschool playground. They have lots of slides and play houses. 

Then when we get home, Daddy has assembled our pizza and is just getting ready to bake it for dinner. The day is nearly over, but what a busy day each day is for Sienna and Forest!

Monday = Baking Day

Hello, friends. 

We are moving right along with our homeschool rhythm and loving it. Mondays are the busiest days in our little blue house. Along with Language Arts, Social Studies, Science and Math, we always do our baking for the week. We've discovered Forest isn't too fond of sandwiches, so we are now adding weekly muffins to the baking mix. That way we can bring along a few muffins when we head ever to Sienna's homeschool co-op on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (I am planning to do a few posts on homeschooling very soon. I would like to write a bit about our homeschool environment, our plans for the school year, what the co-op is like and share some of Sienna projects.) For now, on to the muffins...

Last week we made Maple Glazed Pumpkin muffins. They were so good, but a tad bit sticky. The recipe called for a mix of whole wheat flour and white flour. It also used olive oil rather than vegetable oil. Honey and maple syrup were the sweeteners instead of sugar. (We are looking for more recipes made with whole wheat flour instead of white flour.)

Sienna likes to put in our ingredients after I measure them out for her. 

 She also helps by stirring the ingredients together.

 Maple Glazed Pumpkin muffins!  

Forest approved! 

So did Sienna! 

Sunshine wanted to do a taste test. (She no longer has to wear her cone. She is all healed from being spayed now.) 

This morning, we made Apple Cinnamon muffins. This recipe used all whole wheat flour and honey for the sweetener.

Apple Cinnamon muffins

These muffins were quite tasty! Sienna had two muffins for lunch and Forest had a muffin and a half. 

Happy Baking!

Toothless Wonder

On Thursday night, Sienna lost her first top tooth! It was quite loose and while flossing her teeth, I accidentally bumped it. She had to wiggle it out, because it was just hanging on by a strand.

Since then, she's been doing a lot of this. I found this photo on my phone. 

She believes her tooth fairy must be a rock and gem fairy, because so far she's given Sienna two tiny glass bottles filled with special rocks. This time, her tooth fairy brought her this pink knitted bun holder with special little pearl-like beads woven in. She can't wait to wear it to her dance class!  

Thrifting, Again

We've been getting back into a thrifting rhythm on Saturdays, here in the little blue house. What are we on the look out for? Books, baskets, picture frames for art and anything else that may strike the fancy of one of us. Here are some of our finds from this weekend and last.

If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you already know my obsession with The Little House series and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Today we found two hardback Little House picture books!

From Goodwill - $0.79 

From Goodwill - $0.79 

This is a book of poetry, which has really beautiful illustrations. I am planning on doing a poetry study with Sienna soon!

From Goodwill - $0.79 

A fun, vintage book about Spring. It follows this boy and his dog as he explores how the season is changing nature around him.

From Goodwill - $0.79

I love Susan Branch books!

From Goodwill - $0.79

Sienna is loving the Junie B. Jones series, as she is now reading chapter books independently. We have quite a few from my teaching days. But, we found 3 today that we don't own. She is also reading The Babysitter's Club Little Sister series.  

From Goodwill - $0.79 each 

*The one she started reading is not pictured and is in the car where she left it. 

A spoon rest, handmade. 

 From Goodwill - $1.99

*Not pictured from today, David's National Geographic 100 years book, which was also left in the car where he started reading it.

From Goodwill - half off of $6.99

Last weekend, we thrifted at Goodwill, Value Village and few other places we don't usually go. 

I found these two Moosewood Cookbooks. If you're not familiar with it, The Moosewood Restaurant books are vegetarian.

From Goodwill and Value Village - $0.79 and $1.99 

I have another one of Sharon Lovejoy's books and I really love it. This one has lots of great ideas in it, too.

From Goodwill - $0.79

We also found a bunch of frames. I can't remember which thrift shops these came from, but we usually only buy frames that are less than $3.00 each. The artwork in the frames are all from my new favorite magazine, Taproot. (My old favorite was Mothering magazine.)

All of these pictures are hanging around on walls in our living room.

Sorry for the blurry photo! This is what I hope to look like one day.

 This one reminds me of David and Sienna when they are gardening together.

I can't wait to have chickens. Hopefully, next Spring!  

This one is in Forest's room. David's Aunt Carol drew the picture inside. We really love this one!

We found this basket to carry in our garden goodness to the kitchen table. The frames are some that are waiting to find new homes on our walls.

And lastly, is this little Hanna Andersson button down shirt I found for Sienna. It's a tad too big, but I like having clothes hanging in her closet for her to grow into someday. It makes me feel prepared, I guess.   

*And not pictures, but also found ::

-some new cd's for David - Rusted Root, Willie Nelson, Santana

-The Land Before Time 5, 6, 7 VHS's (I didn't even know that many existed, but Forest loves the characters in the movies!)

-a few of the books from The Babysitter's Club Little Sister series

I really love thrifting! It makes me feel like I am doing something good for the Earth by reusing something instead of buying it new. And, I love the feeling when I find one of the books I've been wanting from my wish list. I even saw a book by one of my favorite bloggers, Soulemama at the thrift store the other day. I would have totally bought it, but I already own it.

I know some folks are not buying anything new and only buying used or handmade. I wonder if our little family could commit to this challenge. David and I were talking about it the other night and we both agreed we would want to be well stocked on underwear and socks. (Ha, ha!)

Happy Thrifting!