Favorite Homeschool websites

 Our school year got off to a late beginning this year due to an ac leak.We ended up having to replace the kitchen,laundry room,one closet and bathroom floors.It was very loud(due to the wall drying fans) and messy.But now we are back on track and finally getting into the groove of school.One of my favorite things and downfalls about homeschooling with the internet is that there is so much out there
to get lost in.I have so many sites saved that I get overwhelmed looking at them. I decided to make a folder of just the main websites we will use this year'

One of the new ones I found this year is Spelling City,http://www.spellingcity.com. On this site you can make lists of the spelling words your kids are using or use the ones already on the site. There are games to play for each word list and when your child is ready they can take the tests to see how many words they have learned. This week we have been doing the compound word lists and the girls are flying thru it.
CK-12,http://www.ck12.org/teacher/, is another great free resource for so many subjects.I plan on using it for earth science and writing with the girls this year.
Khan Academy,http://www.khanacademy.org/,is on our list every year and is a wonderful resource!
For history we will be checking out
HyperHistory,http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html , Have Fun with History,http://www.havefunwithhistory.com/,American History Games,http://gamequarium.com/americanhistory.html,and Best of History website,http://besthistorysites.net/,

Pics4Learning website,http://besthistorysites.net/, has wonderful pictures to print out for timelines and for anything else you might need them for.
Another great resource is a blog that I follow,Joybilee Farm,http://fiberarts.ca/blog/free-kindle-books-for-homesteaders-and-homeschoolers-september-21-edition/,everyday she puts up free Kindle books that can be downloaded to your kindle or computer,homesteading,homeschooling,craft and several more subjects.Be sure to check her out.

We also plan on using Life of Fred books for math and Netflix for all the wonderful documentaries they have.

What are your favorite websites to use in homeschooling?

Blessed Be!

Oak Meadow Give away!

Hey everyone,Oak Meadow  and The Secular Homeschool Community have joined together for another great giveaway.Please go and check them both out,they are both a great resource for your homeschool needs!http://www.secularhomeschool.com/content/780-september-giveaway-oak-meadow-curriculum-school/?postid=101145

Blessed Be!                                               

The journey to the food we eat,

 
          

     "Farmers are the only indispensable people on the face of the earth."

  Lately we have had many discussions about what is actually in our food,where and how all that we eat is processed. Label reading happens with everything and discussions about what the ingredients actually are has become the norm lately.We watched the movie Fresh last night with our girls (10 and 12) http://www.freshthemovie.com/.%20This This  movie is about change, changing the way we raise the meat we eat and the food we grow. Now I have been talking about these ideas for awhile now and the kids listened with half an ear, thinking mom was on another health kick. Watching how the animals were treated in the movie last night and learning what was injected/fed to them must have really hit home, I could actually see the light bulb go on over their heads,lol. They asked where we could find meat that wasn't processed in the ways shown. They were really furious seeing how the chicks were thrown and crowded into the chicken houses. We talked about the pesticides that were sprayed on the crops and watched How stuff works in the food and beverages. We watched how corn, salt and wheat were processed, the spraying of chemicals on the corn and the genetic modification of both wheat and corn.

  There are several movies in our netflix queue for use to watch exploring more on this subject. Fed Up, What's on your plate, Ingredients and Food Matters are on the list. Tomorrow we will visit a local fresh bread store and a meat market, comparing prices and ingredients. This morning Piper looked at the ingredients for the granola cereal she was eating and asked why there was sugar,honey and dextrose in it. So we talked about what we wanted in our granola and plan on making some this weekend. Zoe was ranting(she tends to do that) about potato starch in the shredded cheese we had for dinner so we are going to learn about making cheese and why potato starch might be put in there.They have about decided that if they can't read or understand the ingredient when it is looked up then maybe it didn't need to be there. We are looking for different ideas for meals using the least amount of processed ingredients possible. I feel like they are coming to understand why gardening and raising our own animals are so important. It also helps that several of their friends parents are going thru the same process with their kids, I love listening to some of the conversations they have about the food that they are eating. The next read aloud book will be Animal,Vegatable,Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I want to explore how many of the foods we eat are grown close to home(50 to 100 miles).
 Somtimes I really feel that the girls aren't learning anything in our homeschooling journey and then there are times like this where I am drowning in the wave of information they are processing. Homeschooling Rocks!!

                               Blessed Be,      

Pinterest

   Have you heard of Pinterest yet?  To me it's a great place to keep and organize ideas. You can collect pins for gardening, kids, books, whatever you want. On your page you will have as many boards as you want,named with whatever appeals to you. If you find something out on the web or make something you want to share, copy/upload a picture of it and add it to the appropriate board. Keeping recipes with pictures is a snap, ideas for your garden, fun things to build/make with the kids, a honey build list with ideas for the house. This is a place to store so many fun things without clogging up files in you computer or risk loosing them when your computer crashes(as mine does frequently). You can follow your favorite boards and friends.Hit the Pinterest button on the right side of the blog and come play!

These are just a few pins from my boards, come stretch your imminagition!



Blessed Be,

Old Mill, treasure that we found!

   After our trip to Bloomin'Acres Farm we decided to go to a nearby park for lunch. As I was driving I saw a huge wheel next to a skeleton of a rock building just begging to be explored. We pulled in and were followed by the rest of our group. All were excited to find such an interesting looking place to explore!It was decided that it must have been a mill at one time.Here is the info that one mom found after they got home.
   "A prominent landmark in the Cane Hill area is the water-powered mill known variously as the Pyeatte-Moore Mill and the Moore-Buchanan Mill. Built during the 1830s, the mill was used to grind wheat for flour and corn for corn meal, to saw logs, and even to card wool. It appears to have been moved to its present location on Jordan Creek in 1902 and was used until the 1930s. The remains of the thirty-six-foot diameter draw wheel can still be seen, and the mill is in the process of being restored. "

   The kids want to go back to explore more and maybe see what is under the building.

Blessed Be,

Bloomin'Acres field trip

  Yesterday a group of our homeschoolers went on a field trip. We went to Bloomin"Acres Farm, they have Icelandic sheep. Zoe has been doing her research on sheep that she wants to raise. She decided on the Icelandic breed and we found a local farm that raises them so of course we had to go visit. We met Marilyn Miles who showed us around her beautiful farm. The kids(and moms) had a good time learning about this breed of sheep, meeting the guard donkey and Blossom the guard dog, watching the ducks run around and finding eggs in the hen house.

 Icelandic sheep are one of the oldest breeds on record, dating back over 1,100 years, and they still account for more than 25% of Iceland’s agricultural output.  This makes them one of the oldest and purest breeds in the world today. They are a mid-sized breed and an excellent choice for small or large farm operations.  Ewes typically average between 130 and 150 pounds, with rams weighing in between 175 and 200 pounds.  They have wonderful conformation and their stocky build makes them a great selection for meat, milk and wool production.

The ewes come into heat in late October and cycle through May, if they are not bred. Rams can begin breeding at 5-6 months of age.  Ewes begin breeding at 6-7 months and can lamb before they are a year old!  This is a very rapid return on investment.

• Gestation ranges from 142-144 days.
• Rams are mature by 6 months and can service 20 ewes.
• The Icelandic are excellent mothers with lots of milk and will nurse triplets without assistance.
• Icelandic have been known to be productive until 12-13 years of age.
• They have a good prolifically rate, averaging 175-225%.
• Lambs reach market size in 4-5 months on good pasture.

I think this will be a wonderful breed for us to raise along with the other fiber animals we find.

 

The trip was a great success and I hope to visit again soon(maybe to pick out our own!)

Bloomin'Acres Farm

http://www.bloominacresfarm.com/index.php

Blessed Be,

Information about Icelandic sheep on this page was found on the Bloomin'Acres website.

A Homeschoolers Prerogative!

  This year the girls and I decided to try the ACE program out of the local school system. ACE provides the books from K12 then we work in them and online for about 4hrs a day to complete so many lessons by a certain time. Started out real good, loved getting all the boxes of books from K12. Piper loved the art and science, math and spelling not so much. Literature was Zoe's favorite with math and science running last for her. They both liked the history books also. With this program you set up a schedule of what lessons you would do every day of the week. I realized pretty quick the it took longer to do some of the lessons than they allowed for(math) and once we really got into a subject (like history) we would have to stop and do the assessments which would interrupt our rhythm. I started feeling the pressure of not getting all the lessons on the schedule done and so we tried the block schedule which helped a lot. One of the concerns I had was what to do when the girls got sick. When Zoe gets sick she is usually out for a week and then when one gets something, the other one gets it a few days later, we are dealing with that now. The teacher we are working with said to work ahead as much as possible so we wouldn't get behind, so on Sundays we would get out the books and try to get ahead as much  as we could. I started to feel like we couldn't spend enough time on subjects they really liked because if we did they would fall behind in others. I felt I was teaching to the test (major pet peeve about schools), that they were learning just enough to pass the assessments at the end of the lessons.In Sept. we had started our classes with our co-op and this also took time away from ACE but could be counted as supplemental.

 Number one reason we started not liking what we were doing was the learning was no longer fun! Befor this

we played board games for math, history, spelling, all kinds of games. We would watch documentaries and videos on everything. Do projects with our friends and pretty much had a lot of fun learning for the sake of learning. When I started telling the girls that they had to learn a certain subject on certain days they started resisting. We tried letting them pick what they wanted to do for the day, history, lit.science and art were always done with math and writing falling behind.During this time I had started reading a book called Feel-Bad Education by Alfie Kohn. Maybe this wasn't the best book to be reading at the moment as it just emphasised all I felt I was doing wrong in teaching our kids. Here is a video about the book.

I truly believe that anyone who is in the process of educating children should read this book. If anyone has read it I would like to hear your oppionions on it.

I finally sat the girls down and we had a long talk about what they liked about the program we were using and what wasn't working at all. The decision was to no longer be part of the ACE program and go back to the way we had been doing things.Everyone felt very relieved and started looking forward to not being on such a tight schedual again. Maybe we can keep the books we liked and work out them the rest of the year.

This is what I really like about homeschooling, if we find that something we are doing is not working for our kids we have the prerogative to change the direction we are going.

                                                  Making a timeline for Ozark Tapestry class

                                                            Learning to make sushi,

                                                            Hanging out together,

                                                                         Yoga class,

                                                                         Blessed Be,