Day in the Life . . .

of a homeschooling family . . . 

(or "days" I should say)

Please excuse the unorganized order. I just threw them up here.  Always short on time around here!  ;)

A little PE and Outdoor Education at the end of a school day.  

Snow was sparce this year but we got a couple of skies in. Next year!

Valentine's Day
Breakfast!

Homeschool lunches. Quick black bean soup. 

I fit in a little project too. Valentine for the hubby!

This girl! She's always creating something!

The independent activities we've had for Mace for forever are finally coming in handy!

Mace tried out a pre-school class at our homeschool group last week and did great! I might just enroll
him in the class next year. Here's he's "signing" his Valentine's (using stickers) with Sage as his helper. 

Nutmeg and I playing store.  Counting money and making change for our money unit.  Basil working on a writing assignment. 

Painting his Valentines. 

Homeschool Lunch.   Not every day is like this. Maybe once or twice a week. 

Mace's Valentines. 

The kids are turning into avid bird watchers. Sometimes it get so bad that I threaten to close the blinds during Math lessons. Basil has been
using my camera to capture pics lately. 

Homeschool Lunch.  It tastes better than it looks. Promise!

Ms. Creativity trying out something she saw in a store and decided she could try the
same thing at home without buying the kit.

I printed out this prayer for a friend who is having brain surgery on Monday (8 hour surgery).  Please
pray hard for Kathy. I think this is a beautiful prayer applicable for all of us. 

Homeschool Lunch in the Middle of Winter

Here's a nice light refreshing lunch that comes together fairly quickly. It's a nice pick-me-up on a mid winter's day.  The kids did pretty well with it.  Even Mace gave it a try.

I found it here.   This lady always shares creative, nourishing vegan recipes. Some of the ingredients are not readily available for some of us. I often just use something similar but less exotic (sounding anyhow).  For example she calls for "arugula micro greens."  I just bought the arugula/spinach mix at Aldi and chopped it up a bit.  She often also calls for Maldon salt. I've never heard of this salt before reading her blog.  I may look it up sometime but in the meantime, I just grind some Himalayan Pink Salt from Aldi. 

My hurried presentation leaves something to be desired. You'll have to check out her blog if you are interested. 

Just Checking In . . .

The weather outside is . . . 
Momentarily improved. !!  This winter. Meh, not the best. At least for a mama who bought her girlie a set of cross country skis this year. I'm hopeful we'll get some snow yet but still . . . come on!  We did get a little bit just in time for Christmas.  Then it was cccoooolllddd for quite a while. Sub-zero. Then we got a decent amount but it melted by the weekend. Fortunately, as you saw, we were able to get out skiing before it melted.  Yesterday it rained and rained and rained. We had a river gushing out the culvert into our yard.  Today is a wee bit merrier with a light dusting.  Take it as it comes, I guess.

I'm listening to . . .
relative quiet.  Mace and Nutmeg are playing imaginatively together downstairs. Those two are such great playmates (usually!).  The boys are quiet.  Lately, they've been holing up in their room making "motion pictures."  They both have cameras now.  Sage got one from "Tall Grandma" for Christmas and Basil got my old one when I got a new one for Christmas.  So now they take hundreds of pictures of their Legos and then scroll through the pictures quickly to make a movie. It's pretty neat actually. I'll have to take a video of their pictures and share it sometime.

Around the house and in the garden . . . 
If you are not above praying for plants, you can pray for my baby garlic. I'm a little nervous that I didn't plant them early enough this fall. I'm not sure how things will pan out this summer. I would be sad for sure if they don't work out. In the house, Doug is getting around to putting a few decorative shelves in our bathroom. I've made my "honey do list" for the upcoming few months. Hopefully we can get a good start on things before summer.

Learning, learning, all the time. . . 
Overall things are clicking along at a decent pace. It has been a bit of slogging through some fraction work the past couple of weeks but we'll keep chipping away at it. There is always review.  Nutmeg is still my little math whiz. She's funny. Usually, she is impatient to listen to me explain the different methods for mental math.  She wants to do the teaching!  We are a bit behind in history; I just can't bring myself to hurry through these time periods. I guess no big deal though, it won't be the end of the world if we are reading U.S. history this summer. Right now we are in the midst of the American Revolution. We've been hitting a bit of a sweet spot with dinner table conversations over what we've learned throughout the day. It is enriches for the whole family in a multitude of ways. More on this later perhaps.

We are reading . . . 
Sage just recently finished the The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I'm not sure what he's found to read next. He mentioned the Father Brown Mysteries. For history, he is reading The Signers: 56 Stories Behind the Declaration of Independence. I should have checked in with the boys about what they are reading right now but I was in a hurry to get a post up that I didn't have a chance to get to that. I'm not sure what Basil is reading on his own, he picked up a number of Tolkien books but I'm not sure if he is reading one of those right now. He did just finish up The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis and enjoyed some great dinner table talk with Doug about it. Doug read the book first and then passed it on to Gabe. Basil is loving Rifles for Matie for literature/history as well.  Nutmeg and I are reading about Blessed Imelda Lambertini, patroness of First Communicants. We are also reading The Arabian Nights. I'm reading The Return of the King.  I'm joining the rest of my gang in loving this book. Such an extraordinary series. Wow! If you haven't read it, put it on your list! Don't be intimated by its length. I just check out one book at a time, so I don't have to hold the enormous triology all the same time. It's quite manageable that way.

In the kitchen . . .
Crockpot dinners, weeknight dinners, cooperative dinners with our family Bible study group at camp . . .  Here's today's homeschool lunch idea:

Salmon and veggie salad.

Chopped vegetables with canned salmon from Costco.  Sshh. Don't tell my family in Alaska. I know . . . its an abomination. CANNED PINK salmon. I have sunk low.  But hey, you got do what you gotta do to get those Omega 3 Fatty Acids on a budget. The veggies and salmon are tossed in olive oil, fresh lemon juice, salt and pepper. I had mine over a bed of lettuce. 3/4 out of 4 kids ate it. 2/4 kids said I should make it again. Half is good enough for me.

What else?
Sorry about the rush/sloppiness of this post. I'm running late for the afternoon but I so wanted to say 'hello' here for a few minutes. Here are a few pictures on a recent outing to Madison. We don't have our homeschool group in January, so we've been using those days as field trip days.  Last field trip coming up this week!

Last week we parked in downtown Madison. First we checked out the fantastic library there and then walked over to the capitol building. While in the capitol we noticed the governor's office. We walked over to peek around and the guard invited us in to check out the conference room. We love these days out and the adventures that they bring!

the children's section had some super creative "reading nooks"