A Fruitful Harvest...our Blessings are Manyfull.

We've had a bountiful harvest (except for greenbeans) this year.








It's not a lovely garden, but it did the job and we have yummy veggies for the autumn and maybe winter eating.  Oh how we love  winter squash.  We got lots of butternut, spaghetti, and pumpkin squashes this year.

We used black plastic to help keep weeds under control for our tomatoes this year.  It seemed to help produce a bountiful harvest of tomatoes too.

Photo Bomb!

 
The peppers were abundant  this year too.  Liam particularly like to eat the banana peppers straight from the garden....Brianne enjoyed the sweet peppers and ate them like an apple.

Our First Pear Harvest

We planted these trees about 5 or so years ago....and we finally got our first harvest this year!  Yeah!!  Mmmmm, they were so yummy and juicy.  Can't wait for more lovely fruit.

History Group fun in September

Learning all about the beginning of the Muslim people, religion and  some of their culture.

 Medieval Illuminations....we tried our hand at creating illuminations using quill and various natural inks.  The poke-berry ink won hands down at creating the best writing value....did that make sense?  We liked writing with the poke berry ink the best.  It was quite pretty in color.

Love having Cailin home in time to join us for the art crafty time of the day!

Our first book group meeting of the year.  We read The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare.  W found it to be a tough read as a "read-aloud", but the lessons learned and story were great.

Here we reenacted the Maccabees War, which is why the Jewish people celebrate Hanukkah.  this story gave us understanding of why some of the Jews at the time of Christ didn't accept him as their Savior.  They were expecting another great battle win like Jacob Maccabees gave them over the Greeks, who 60 or so years before the time of Christ had ruled over the Jewish people, just as the Romans did at the time of Christ.

The Best Part of Homeschooling.......Freedom!!

Freedom to choose for ourselves what our day will entail.

I love that we choose what we learn, how we learn, and most assuredly when we learn!

The day was so beautiful.  After a wonderful morning getting our core studies in, we headed off to Claytor Lake.  Ahhh, what a wonderful time we had.  Even though Connor was busy with many math problems to solve we convinced him to take 2 hours of his time and join us on the sandy beaches of the lake.  

Delaney and Liam enjoyed how much he interacted with them....."just like Dad did with me when I was your age"....which meant pushing them down in the water or throwing them out into the deeper end of the lake.

Another benefit is that the beach was practically empty!  Love that!!  Next time we go I will bring Cailin, we sure did miss her.

I love homeschooling for many, many reasons.....this just happens to be one of the fun ones.

 

An English Tea and a 100 Point Celebration

While traveling through the European countries during our armchair travels this year, our first stop was at The United Kingdom.  We've been learning about what countries comprise the UK (Wales, England, Northern Ireland and Scotland--not the Republic of Ireland).

We enjoyed a lovely tea and learned more about the Royal Family.  We're also enjoying reading great books that were written by English authors--namely A.A. Milne and Beatrix Potter.

We will do more map work and then head west across the Irish Sea to visit Ireland and relive some of Dad's old missionary days before we head to the mainland.

 Brianne's hard at work learning her letters--the sounds they make and how to write them!

 The big celebration of the week was that these two finally achieved they 100 stickers for a trip to Bubble Cake!!  Yea!!

They have a few ways to earn these:  1pt. each for a great school day where they have completed all                                                               their lessons.
Each complete reading lesson for Liam get 3 points for Liam (these lessons usually take 3 or 5 days to complete.)  When he's completed the entire first book (49 lessons) I'll get Liam a science kit of his choice too.  He's really looking forward to that!
For each chapter book that Delaney reads she gets 10 points or stickers.  She had two books per month that I want her to read.  Any more than that is optional, however, I love that she's become a book worm and I find her reading often.
Delaney also gets 3 points for a perfect spelling test.

This first trip to Bubble Cake took them 6 weeks to complete.  I have a feeling that with this first success the next trip will probably be achieved in less time.

Science Fun.....The Milky Way Galaxy.

Astronomy is the topic for the next few months in our science classes.  We've talked about Copernicus, Galileo and the immense universe.  We are now closer to home and talking about our galaxy, the Milky Way.

We made these cute embroidery floss representations of each planet (including Pluto--even though it's a dwarf planet, Liam insists that we include it!)

They are all positioned around the center--our Sun.  Liam and Brianne worked hard one day this past week to make glittery stars.  We've learned that there are 5 different types of stars: dwarf, giant, variable, novas, neutrons....we also realized that these are also different stages in the life of  various stars.

Oh what do you do on a rainy day?

The local weather was suppose to be horrendous.....so before conference started I wanted to get the basement in tip-top, ship shape Bristol fashion (to quote a talk from conference) before the rain storm with lots of wind might come. (just in case the electricity goes out and thus the sump pump doesn't work and we have another lovely (not) flood in the basement and lose lots of stuff....like Christmas ornaments (again)!

Our water storage was many, many years old (and gross with bits of mold in some of the bottles) so we cleaned it out.....and what do my lovelies do with these water containers?  Have a water fight of course!!  Mind you it's in the low 50's but that didn't stop them.  This was much to fun to worry about nippy cold temperatures.....did I tell you it was raining too!  :)

They had lots of wet, wet fun.  To quote Connor  "That was weirdly fun!!"  How I love these guys!

The Addams Family

Hi, it's Cailin. I was in the play The Addam's Family, and I was an ancestor. It was kind of fun. I got to dance in some numbers, which was good.