Art

I am totally in love with this art program. The kids really enjoy watching the videos then implementing the concepts. This lesson focused on line.

This is Maiden's practice sheet showing different types of line. The video suggested using a black marker for this lesson. I had Sharpie markers...I wouldn't suggest using them.

Prince Charming can never be left out. Driving his cars while the others are drawing.

Duchess and Maiden's assignment was to draw a caterpillar and then fill in the various circles with different types of line drawings.

The idea of drawing a bug caught Prince Charming's attention. He quickly abandoned his cars and picked up a marker. Did you know he was a lefty?

My other lefty. Duchess takes her schooling very seriously.

Prince Charming's finished drawing. I think he did pretty good for a three year old. Don't you love the look on his face? It fits his personality perfectly.

"Hey little buddy...give Mama that camera. No, don't push that button..."

The older boys' assignment was to have an outline of some type of animal and fill it in with various types of line. Here is Scribe's creation.

This is why I don't suggest using Sharpie's. They bled through the paper onto my dining room table...

in four different areas. It's been over a month and the marks are fading but are still quite visible. It's a good thing I didn't let The King buy that $4,500.00 dining room table set he was drooling over a few years ago. I think he's thankful too.

What do you think? The program is a little spendy, but the kids love art now. I love it too. Very little prep time, very little teaching time, plus they are learning. Now that's my kind of homeschooling.

Family Fun

Some of the perks of homeschooling include following The King around to his conferences. Last month he had one at the Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin Dells. He was able to join us in the water park for the first two hours of the three day trip and then spent the rest of his time working. I called it school. The Kalahari is an African themed resort, so we learned a little about Africa and it's Geography, animals of Africa which counted as Science, Health (why we shower before and after and don't pick up used bandages) and the rest of the time I penned in as Phy Ed (great exercise). Yes, as a homeschool parent I have the freedom to decide things like that!

I didn't think it would be a problem for me to have five kids in the water park alone, but I was sorely mistaken. First of all, the three little ones were too small to go on most of the water slides without me (or one of the older boys) and on most slides there was a two or three person limit. The math doesn't add up for me plus three. Secondly, Prince Charming didn't really like climbing the 90+ stairs to the tops of the slides, so I had to carry him. (Good exercise for mom.)

Keeping track of the three littles ones was a tad bit hard in a 125,000 square foot water park. I lost maiden four times. Once I had to call a code Adam. (Don't worry, I found her every time...she said she was never lost, but I was certainly panicked.)

A few times I forced talked the middle boys into taking the girls around the park so I could play with Prince Charming. His favorite place to be was anywhere water would shoot up out of the floor. He also liked floating down the lazy river with me. (I liked it too.)

This is where the boys took the girls when they were in charge. Yes, I freaked out when I saw my five year old on this. Then I got over it and pulled out the camera to document the fearlessness of my sweet little girl. I could not believe my little Maiden got on this ride.

And Duchess, well I had no doubt she would try it. She thought it was 'the best ride ever'!

Apparently Scribe is now an expert boogie boarder. I lost the pictures of Squire on this ride, so I'll share this one:

This was one of the times he was in charge of his little sister. I was thankful the middle boys were with me to help out with the girls. I don't think they were as thrilled as I.

Oh, and did I mention we had not one, not two, but three, TV's in our suite. Our kids were in TV heaven! Here they are enjoying cartoons by the fire in the living room area. Don't you love how all their necks are cranked up?

We upgraded to a Combination Suite so I would have a kitchen. This was taken our last morning there...yes, I was EXHAUSTED! (I don't like to post morning jammie photos of me--it's a pride thing--but I wanted you to see the kitchen.) I made breakfast burritos so the children would have full bellies for our last day of water park fun. I know, ideally we should have eaten out the entire trip, but it is really not fun for me to take five kids to a restaurant alone. This was so much more convenient. I had prepped most of the meals so I only had to pop them in the oven and serve in the room. Way easier than trying to keep the little ones contained at a restaurant.

Oh, and if you've followed my blog, you know my kids love arcades so they can redeem their coupons for cheap plastic junk. Maiden got purple (her favorite color) vampire teeth. (Don't tell her, but they have since disappeared from our home.) Scribe got these great sunglasses. I think they only cost him about $15.00, but who's counting? Can you really put a price tag on fun?

Have a blessed day my friends!

School is in Session!!

Hello, my friends. Summer break is officially over and school has begun here at Rivertree Academy. We completed our first week of school last week and it was blissful. I decided to go with Winter Promise Adventures of the Sea & Sky for the two older boys. It is a themed learning program with a Charlotte Mason approach. They are excited that their history is based on sailing, flight and space travel; and their science focuses on oceans, weather and outer space. For me it it nice to have them show some enthusiasm for learning.

I have been reading a lot about Charlotte Mason's teaching philosophy and am intrigued with the gentle art of learning. One idea I really liked was nature study. I was hoping I could incorporate it into our schooling. Nature cooperated the first day of school. Duchess rescued a cicada from a death grip of a cat out in our yard. She brought the injured creature into the house and we were all able to take a closer look.

We did some research about cicadas and the most interesting fact we found was that they live for 13-17 years. Isn't that amazing? I gave each of the children a clipboard with a piece of drawing paper attached and asked them to draw the bug. We then glued the drawings into their Nature Notebooks ($0.50 composition books from Target).

I asked the girls what they learned about cicadas (implemented narration--another Charlotte Mason approach) and I wrote what they said into their Nature Notebooks:

Maiden's is on the left. She said, "Cicadas lay eggs and sings not that good. They make a hole in a stick and lay eggs in it."

Duchess' is on the right and she had a little more to say, "A cicada sings if it's a male. A female doesn't sing. The mama makes holes in a branch to lay eggs to make babies. It doesn't fly but turns into a flying one after it molts. It lives underground before it can fly."

It was a fun day for us. I am thrilled to be giving our children a Charlotte Mason-style education. I'm sure I'll be telling you more about it in upcoming posts.

I am delighted to be back in the blogosphere. I have missed my blog friends and can't wait to see what's been happening in your lives.

Blessings,

Making Maple Syrup

After doing some research, and going on a maple syrup field trip, we decided to try tapping our own maple trees.  We have no real 'maple syruping' supplies so we purchased items we thought 'might' work at Menards and constructed our own.

This hole was drilled a little larger than the taps we made, so a lot of sap leaked out of the tree overnight.  The King found an alternate tap that fit the hole better so we won't lose as much sap.  This tree has been producing about two gallons of sap in a 24 hour period.

This is our old maple tree and because it is so large, we were able to tap it three times.  However, because it is old, it is not producing as much sap.  I think we have gotten about two gallons out of it in an entire week.

Being a homeschool mom, I had to make our syruping into a school lesson.  First, we had to figure out the diameter of trees.  A tree needs to be at least 10" in diameter to support one tap.  Diameter can be found by the circumference of the tree (at about 4½ feet from the ground) divided by pi (3.14).  

Next, I had them figure out how much syrup we would get from our 2½ gallons of sap.  The ratio is 40:1, so it was very easy for them to figure out the final amount.

The sap looks a lot like water coming out of the tree.  Here it is just beginning to boil.

Boiling after two hours.  Beginning to reduce and turn color.

It is a very steamy process.  I have a vented range hood and this is how it looked most of the time running on high.  I had to keep wiping it down to keep the condensation from dripping into the syrup.  One positive point:  My range hood hasn't been this clean since I purchased it.  We definitely need to make maple syrup once a year just for the benefit of a good cleaning.

This is after four hours of boiling.  Getting darker.

When it had reduced down to about 3-4 cups, I put transferred it over to a sauce pan.  This was the point I could not leave it. When we went on the field trip, the guide told us how quickly it could boil over at the end.  I didn't use a thermometer or a hydrometer to see when it was truly done.  I figured if Native Americans could make maple syrup without those items I could too.  Once the syrup started foaming uncontrollably, I turned it off.  The rules say that once the syrup is 7° over boiling, it is done.  My rules say when it gets really foamy, it's done.  

Here is our final product.  We ended up with 2 cups of syrup, making our ratio 20:1.  All the kids thought it was the greatest thing to make 'homemade' syrup from our own trees.  Even the oldest two, who prefer maple flavored corn syrup, thought it tasted mighty good.  When we finished, one of the younger ones said, "That really tastes like maple syrup!"  Hmm...I wonder why? 

Maple Syrup Field Trip

Today our homeschool group went to a local county park and learned how to make maple syrup.

First we had to hike out into the woods to find the maple trees.  Our guide told us that boxelder trees could also be tapped for sap to be made into syrup.

First he showed the kids how to drill a hole into the tree.  He said you could drill 1 ½ to 3 inches deep.  He showed us holes from last year and explained that he needed to stay about 6" away from those old holes.

The sap immediately started running out of the tree.  We were able to taste the sap to see if it was sweet.  It was tasteless and looked a lot like water.  But, after touching it, it did feel sticky on our fingers.

Next he hammered the tap into the tree.

Here is the bucket that catches the sap.  Just minutes after tapping the tree, there was about ½ cup of sap in the bucket.  40 gallons of sap will produce one gallon of syrup.

Here are two taps running into a bucket.  He told us if we wanted to tap our own trees we need to make sure we use food grade tubing and buckets.

Next we headed to the syrup shack where they cook the sap.  Duchess is in the dark purple coat on the right.

I had to run ahead of the girls to get a front shot.  I thought they looked so cute holding hands.

Squire is checking out the Gator.  This is what they use to haul the sap to the syrup shack.

In the shack, they cook it over a wood fire for the first part, then they move it into the next area to be cooked over gas.

This is the gas cooking area.  The reason they cook it over gas for the last part of cooking is so that when the syrup is done, they can turn off the heat immediately, stopping the cooking process.  When cooking over fire, they have no way to stop the fire, and could potentially burn it if it continues to cook. 

Here is our whole group of kids.  We had to do a little coersing and threatening to get them to all pose together.  They preferred gender segregated photos. 

Here I am with Squire, Scribe and Duchess.  I left Maiden and Prince Charming home.  (Not alone.)

Of course, we thought the best part was the free samples of maple syrup they handed out at the end!  We are maple syrup consumers in our house.  It costs about $16.00 a quart, so when I serve it I am always saying, "Don't be wasteful, this stuff is expensive."

Scribe couldn't believe that they would just 'give' everyone a 3.4 ounce bottle of syrup.  He said, "Boy, they spent a LOT of money on their free samples." and made sure everyone in the group knew it.  On the ride home the boys talked excitedly about being able to taste it the next time we made pancakes.  Duchess didn't bother waiting.  Hers is nearly gone.  She drank it right out of the bottle.