Remembering what's important

 We ended last week with a trip to a local museum on Friday with our Co-op.  Although we are not currently studying American History, I always try to attend as many field trips as our schedule allows.  It's a wonderful time for fellowship for the kids and myself and they always learn something whether we are in that cycle or not.  
The day was beautiful here, the humidity gone, the wind a gentle breeze, and great light from the sun.  I took advantage of the weather and the crowd-less downtown area to get some photos of my kids.  I haven't had the time (or taken the time maybe?) to do sessions with them for awhile and we really enjoyed it.  They wanted to keep going when it was time to get home and start dinner.  I realized I did too. 

It was an awesome reminder of the important things in my life and why I began to home educate my children.  I want to spend time with them, not just time teaching them, but time enjoying them and getting to know them and their personalities.  



  As I have been reviewing our schedules, I am pleased with the educational work we are accomplishing but not as pleased with the "quality" time we are spending together.  All of us (myself included) have seemed a bit more easily frustrated and tired the past couple of weeks.  I wondered if we just need to adjust to "school" being full time or if I need to adjust our schedule. 

Of course, this means leaning on the Lord and praying about it.  I have found myself so incredibly busy that I forget that it's not my decisions to make- that I must take time out to TRULY pray and TRULY lean on the Lord for His wisdom and understand that it is He that is in control, not I. 
 

My twin girls.

  With that, I leave you with scripture I often find encouraging and some beautiful photos from our peaceful afternoon. 

Remember why we homeschool and enjoy your children today!

More photos of our walk.

Robins & Virginia's Worst Blizzards

100s of robins feasting on our holly tree.  Fighting to survive in the blizzard.

Surprising to us, we observed two sea gulls flying through the snow also.

Robin tracks.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #30 - Weeds & Seeds

Outdoor Hour Challenge - #30 - Weeds & Seeds
(This post was actually typed up several days ago but just now being completed and published) :)
I was excited about this challenge because it fit us so well. We've had so many things going on and also been down with a "cold bug" so we've really missed our outdoor time. We are so use to having it almost daily. The Lord really set it up nice for us today. The weather couldn't have been better. A nice, balmy day but with a cool breeze blowing. It was amazing and so refreshing to be BACK in our gardens.

"The heavens are telling the glory of
God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.," ~Psalm 19:1 NRSV

Charlotte Mason wrote (volume 1, page 43):

"For we are an overwrought generation, running to nerves as a
cabbage runs to seed; and every hour spent in the open is a clear gain, tending to the increase of brain power and bodily vigour, and to the lengthening of life itself. They who know what it is to have fevered skin and throbbing brain deliciously soothed by the cool touch of the air are inclined to make a new rule of life, Never be within doors when you can rightly be without."

This held so true for us today :). AND our flower gardens, having been neglected the past two weeks - had PLENTY of weeds for us to study AND plenty of SEEDS to harvest as I have not been outside "dead heading" them as normal! :) What a blessing to have a nature study challenge that worked SO well in our life at the moment! It was such a good fit, in fact, I decided to break this challenge into 3 seperate lessons on 3 seperate days. So bear with me as I take you through our study of this wonderful challenge!

We started out by having the kids look around the yard and gardens for plants/flowers that they thought were weeds. I had them bring their "collection" of weeds to me.

We sorted through them at our outdoor pation table.
This was the collection of weeds my son picked up. My daughters both picked several dandelions.

I had read the HNS pages 512-514 as Barb suggested.
On page 512 of the HNS, Miss Comstock gives a definition of a weed:

"A weed is a plant growing where we wish something else to grow, and a plant may, therefore, be a weed in some locations and not in others."

I wanted to ensure the children really understood this concept. My first example of this was with the dandelions. My daughters adore them! What little girl has not spent time in her childhood blowing on their seed spheres? I explained that they were a weed and quite a ferocious one but that they may not be a weed to THEM.

I continued talking to them about other plants that may be a weed to others but not to them or vice versa. The first plant that came to mind was our glorious morning glories! We looked at our morning glories and discussed why we love them so:

1 - They grow FAST!

2- They are a vine that climbs - which WE were actually looking for to cover our fence.
3- We didn't have to worry about them spreading wildly because we spend so much time in our garden that we had the time to "train" them to grow where we wanted.

4- Their huge colorful flowers of several colors that greet us every morning with delight.

I then brought their attention to the fact that the very same characteristics we love about them may be the characteristic that make others despise them and consider them weeds! They couldn't imagine this so we went to look at our neighbor's yard.

Their yard is neat, well cared for. They created a very smart landscape design. Since they do not prefer to spend a lot of their outdoor time caring for their plants, they chose more of a shrub type landscape. They chose plants that rarely needed watering or pruning. They do not have any flowers whatsover - no color at all other than the few berries and such from the evergreens. It suits them. It is nice looking - very well "manicured".

I asked the children if they thought our neighbors would be happy with a morning glory in their yard. The children thought for a moment and agreed they would not. It was like an A-HA moment!! :) You know those when it's like, "OH!!! I understand!" :) We LOVE color and flowers and climbers and spending our outdoor time (and indoor actually) tending to our gardens, plants, flowers, animals, all of God's beautiful creation! But I have several dear friends that told me I was absolutely MAD when I allowed the girls to plant morning glory sees throughout my rose garden right under the fence! :) It's worked wonders - we Love it. But my friends will complain about those pestering weeds (morning glories) that are choking out their little shrubs! :)

We returned to looking at plants that were weeds in OUR yard. This vine to the left is a vine that my kids KNOW is a weed. l am constantly fighting this weed. I have not identified it but we have "studied" it so to speak all summer. It appears to be in every one of the older garden beds that were here before. When I created a "rose bed" near this little fence/flower bed type area I had no idea what issues these little vines create!

One of my 5yo daughter's suprised me by saying, "Mom, this is the weed that takes the roses' water!" I was impressed :) This vine is fast and vigorous- it quickly wraps itself around the plants and chokes them out. It completely covered a mature azalea bush and killed it when we first moved in.

On page 512 of the HNS it says:

"A weed may crowd out our cultivated plants, by
stealing the moisture and nourishment in th soil which they should have; or it may shade them out by putting out broad leaves and shutting off their sunlight."

It seems no matter how often I weed - this vine continuously comes back. We have been watching and fighting it all summer. The only sure help we've found is to ensure when we pull these weeds we get ALL of the root and to be incredibly persistent in trying to tackle them. I have found the only relief is to tackle them daily. I showed the kids how to pull the vines so that they would be able to pull up the root with it. They thought it would be much easier than it is and I giggled as (especially my son) was surprised at the strength of these tiny plants!!
HNS page 513 ~

"Each weed has its own way of winning in the struggle with our crops, and it behooves us to find that way as soon as possible
in order to circumvent it."

They can become difficult to get the full root once they are even slightly established

Here they are showing me what they were able pull up. They were so happy when they were finally able to get "some root."

We spoke about why I try to at least do a quick weeding each day. How it is SO much easier to pull up a young weed than a weed that even has established for a short time. I showed them the differences and allowed them to try both young weeds and the more established and they quickly realized what I meant! For this reason- we talked about HNS page 513 "Especially, every one who plants a garden should know how the weeds look when young, for seedlings of all kinds are delicate and easy to kill before their roots are well established."

Afterwards - I also browse through the Lesson section of the book and choose a few questions to discuss with my children. I never do them all and I do it all orally and very casually as we discuss our nature study from the day. For this time outdoors, I had chosen some discussion questions from Lesson 135 on page 513 in the HNS.

1- Why do we call a plant a weed? (When it grows where the gardener wants something else to grow) Is a weed a weed wherever it grows? (No) How did this weed plant itself where it is growing? (The dandelions are from seed speres that are blown by wind, children, other things. The vines seem to make their way from roots established years ago and we have yet to "get them all")

2- Where did they find their weeds? (in the lawn for the dandelions and in the rose garden for the vines) By what agency was its seed brought and dropped? (We talked about the different ways seeds travel - birds, wind, people, squirrels, etc. A great book to read about this is The Usborne First Book of Nature. We take it slow - only a 2 page layout per day but its colorful and informative and my children seem to really like it. If you want to supplement - I would recommend this book.)

3- Why must we study the habits of a weed before we know how to fight it? (Each weed has its own way of taking over our beloved gardens so we must study it in order to defeat it)

The children created their nature journal pages and sketches.

HNS p. 512~ "(God) is the great farmer. Continually (He) sows and reaps, making all the forces of the universe the plants' tools and helpers; the sun's rays, wind, rain and snow, insects and birds, animals small and great, even to the humble burrowing worms of the earth..."

Poetry - FREE schedule, copywork, etc -Christina Rossetti

I started this blog in order to complete Barb's wonderful "Outdoor Hour Challenges". I fell in love with blogging and all of the other wonderful homeschooling families who enjoy Nature Study as much as we do! I have also found an AMAZING bond with other families who use the Charlotte Mason style of education in their homes.

With that - I have decided to combine my website and 2 blogs into one. I wanted to share more of our homeschool, Charlotte Mason "ish" ideas and plans, my faith in the Lord, and in general, the lifestyle that comes along with all of it. I also wanted to make things easier on myself ;) so I'm going to have it all here on one blog. I didn't want to change the name of the blog entirely and get lost by those families we enjoy so much so I'm just adding, "...and more..." to the title and off we go with it. :)

The first new things I'm adding/transferring over are forms, schedules, ideas, and curriculum/literature we are using in our homeschool. I wanted to start with poetry since this is a piece I was working on last week. I hope you find the poetry schedule and forms helpful! :)

Here please find a guideline idea sheet/ 5 day plan for poetry that we use.

Here I have placed our schedule for poets and poems - Term 1 & 2 are complete.

"It is good to store a child’s memory with a good deal of poetry
learnt without labour." Charlotte Mason

During our first term we are going to study Christina Rossetti. My children love her poetry about nature and I love how her faith in the Lord is apparent. Please feel to use my free Christina Rossetti notebook page -find it here.

Here is a photographic version of Rossetti's, "The Rose"

Copywork for, "The Caterpillar" is found here. I tried to leave enough room in between each line/stanza for the student to copy the line above. I hope you enjoy it.

For younger students- you may want to try this copywork form of, "The Caterpillar". It has the hollow style font which allows them to trace within the words rather than copying on their own. I am breaking this down for my kiddos by a few lines a day. Simply give them a few lines or delete the rest of the poem or copy and paste into different word documents to provide the appropriate amount of work for that day.

Biographical Information on Rosetti is here.

Here is a portrait of Rossetti by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

I will add more Rossetti copywork and links as we come to them in our studies. I hope these help you in your own homeschool! :)

Outdoor Hour Challenge #4 - Focus on Insects

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew vi, 19).

Outdoor Hour Challenge #4 - Choosing a Focus Area - Insects

Once again, I feel as if we are "out of order" with our Outdoor Hour Challenges but I want the children to be able to enjoy them all and not miss out on any of Barb's wonderful ideas. This worked great for us because we started "school" last week and our first term's nature study "focus" is going to be insects. I love Barb's ideas so much - we essentially created our term "focuses" based on what she had planned :).

So - we have been focusing on insects. You can see from our last few blogs about the squash bugs, butterflies, and moths - we've been QUITE enjoying it! I can NOT wait to work on this week's Bee's Challenge! They are fascinating to me so I'm excited. I think today will be a library trip for more books on bees since our Outdoor Hour Challenge happened accidentally last night!

If you read many of my posts - you will see that I prefer the Charlotte Mason method of homeschool. And the more I pray on my homeschool decisions and topics - the more natural things seem to occur. As a mom who feels "called" to homeschool - this only encourages me and I LOVE IT! There is nothing better than feeling the Lord's presence in important things that you do! And for all homeschooling moms -- what WE do to me - is one of THE most important things that women can be called to do!

What does this have to do with our Virgin Tiger Moth? Not much :) but since I have been so incredibly blessed to have these challenges fall into our laps almost - I wanted to give praise to our Creator for making things so clear to me - and hope that helps someone else!

Our focus then is going to be insects and we have been blessed to have Barb's challenges every week for an extra "umph" to help us out! The kids have really enjoyed it and just like with every other Nature Study term - hop right in! I'm always amazed at the knowledge they soak up when we do indeed use the CM methods! From my son identifying the squash bug nymphs to all three of them narrating to me the differences between arachnids and insects during our nature study on the golden orb spider last week simply because the Lord put the beautiful creature there so we caught him to sketch and observe and then it NATURALLY led right into the discussion about the differences in our spider and the insects we'd been learning about.
I can not express to you (especially those that have never tried the CM method before) the joy and peace that I find when they absorb so much information from the "gentle art of learning" style!

Objective #3 for this challenge states, "Be alert to ideas for further research in your focus area." I think (I'm very long winded as you know) my point is that the good Lord seems to be making this SO easy for us lately that I just KNOW we are on the right track.


As my husband is getting a drink last night, he looks out of our kitchen windows and exclaims, "What is that big bug on your van?" I (of course lol) take off to the window PRAYING its a NEW insect to study!! Afterall - this is our FOCUS area! Sure enough it was. And it was rather large - I'd say a good 3 inches. I immediately (to my husband shaking his head as if to say, "I should have known better." lol) take off outside in my bare feet to my van and WOW! I was so glad I did!

Here was a BEAUTIFUL moth! And large to me - at least larger then the others we'd been watching around our lights at night. It was just striking. I grabbed the bug jar and brought it in so I could WAKE UP ;) my children to see it! They were ecstatic and not at all upset to be awaken.

It's a great feeling to get "Wow! Thanks mom!" at the end of the day over a part of our Creator's world.

Again- I feel so inclined to say - letting me know in MY HEART that the Lord is at work in our studies! After they were able to look at it- it began to flutter around in the jar and we were PLEASANTLY surprised by a brillant red color on its hind wings and body. It was quite an amazing moth. Probably the most attractive we've seen. I allowed them a few minutes to ooh and aah and talk about it then told them I'd get pictures so they could sketch it in the morning and put them back to bed.

The children's nature journal pages.

I could not find this moth in the HNS but I did find some fairly generic moth observation ideas on page 324 which I used to discuss it with the children.

1. Where did you find this moth? Was it flying by daylight or in the dusk?

2. What is the shape of the moth's body? Is it stout or slender? What colors has it? How is it marked?

Since my children are so young (5, 5, & 6 yo) I used these to get us started in our conversation as they are sketching their journals and we went from there. I had downloaded a free lapbook about butterflies just yesterday from Homeschool Free Share for those of you that enjoy lapbooks. I have never used a lapbook but had been contemplating one over the weekend to add to our studies - we normally notebook but I thought it might be fun and considered giving it a try. We used the Venn diagram to discuss the differences in butterflies and moths.

The kids really enjoyed it! I think we will continue to use this lapbook as we work on our butterfly and moth studies. Here is the excerpt from Homeschool Free Share for this topic:

Butterflies Versus Moths

Butterflies and moths may look alike, but they are very different insects.

-most butterflies fly during the day while most moths will be out and about at night

-butterflies have knobs at the end of their feelers (on their antenna), but a moth's antenna end is feather like or plain

-most butterflies rest with their wings held up above their bodies while moths rest with wings spread out flat

-butterflies usually have bright wings and moths usually have dull colored wings

-most butterflies have slender bodies; most moths have fat abdomens

-butterflies are usually hairless; moths are furry

-butterflies form a chrysalis during the pupa stage of their lives; a moth's chrysalis is usually contained inside a cocoon

-insects, birds and spiders eat butterflies; bats eat moths

Lapbook Component: Butterfly vs. Moth Venn Diagram

I also created an insect "running list" sheet for the back of my kids' nature notebooks. I created one for my son and another for my daughters. I do not have the latin names on here although there is a space for "information". This is more for younger children as mine are 5, 5, and 6 yo's. Please feel free to use it as a running tally for your own kids. :)

http://www.savefile.com/files/1748912

my_insect_list_boys.doc -

Thanks, Barb, for another great study!!!!

Outdoor Hour Challenge #25 - Squash Bugs

Outdoor Hour Challenge #25- Initially this Outdoor Hour Challenge was scheduled to be about houseflies and we will complete a study on houseflies once we catch one ;). In the meantime - we had the opportunity to witness something else that was interesting to us so we "ran" with it!

SQUASH BUGS!

I could not find any information in the HNS about these particular bugs (and they actually are a bug - one of the 4500 true bugs found) so we began researching elsewhere. Initially we thought they were Stink Bugs but quickly learned otherwise. My dear mother in law was joking around with my DS and DH and bravely picked one up to prove that they didn't let off a stink when "harrassed". I, on the other hand, took a safer route and came inside and found a basic field guide. Peterson First Guides - Insects. This book is not terribly detailed and certainly not enough information for most insect identifications but we were lucky and right on pages 36 & 37 we found exactly what we needed - Squash Bugs.

http://www.vegedge.umn.edu/vegpest/cucs/squabug.htm here is a great website about squash bugs. It gives all of the basic information we needed.

It CERTAINLY explained why our squash plants are wilted and dying. The website details EXACTLY what was happening to our squash plants and I found these pests purely on accident. I went out to water my DH's squash plants for him and suddenly these black bugs were crawling everywhere! Well - of course I yelled for the kids to bring me bug jars! Ha! Ha! My DH says, "Most moms would yell for a fly swatter or broom - you yell for bug jars!" And tell the children, "Catch one! Quickly!" Oh - the joys of being a CM homeschool mom!! :) I'm not boring!

So - once we have them contained - we bid a good night and awaken this morning with a nature study on our table :).

The children get out the magnifying glass and begin observing and sketching these insects. As they sketch - I casually provide them with information I found from the website above and information from the field guide above. The children's nature journals were not just about the squash bug but also the differences between arachnids and insects that they've been learning about (another post lol). Their journal entries turned out rather nice:

Alyssa's Nature Journal Page- you can see she drew a "squash bug" and then some eggs on a squash leaf. We learned that the adults lay eggs on the underside of the squash leaf in V patterns.

Chance did 2 pages. On one page he shows the Squash Bug on squash and on the 2nd its a closer look at the bug with the triangular "sheild" they have that protects their wings.

Briana's nature journal page. She also remembered they had a protective shield.

The bad part is these squash bugs are agricultural pests and the reason for our squash plants demise. They suck the nutrients from the plant foliage (and fruit later in the summer). This causes the plants to wilt and turn black because the bugs are taking all of the plants' water and nutrients. Here is the damage to our squash plants.

The amazing thing happens when I go to release them back outside. First - I'm unsure what to do because they are KILLING my squash. But - as usual - my son reminds me of his favorite "Hurt No Living Thing" poem so he says to let them in the yard and "take care of them in the morning before he has to see it." lol. I'm thinking - sevin dust TONIGHT. Horrible, I know. But as I take them outside, I decide to see if I can get some better pictures of them (before I sevin dust them) and WOW! I was able to catch a female adult laying eggs right then.

Don't you just LOVE - LOVE when your nature studies seem to fall in place? It gives me such a joy and feeling of our Lord watching over me and nodding in approval of the children's studies. It feels so natural and warm!

Once we saw this - we decided to turn over some more squash leaves and WOW again- we're swimming in the eggs!


The next thing we saw were TINY little white bugs. I thought - maybe aphids? Then my dear 6 year old son says, "Maybe its the babies- what are they called again, mom? NNY--" And I shouted, "NYMPHS! Goodness, I bet you're right." Then I ran inside and sure enough - they were the squash bug nymphs!! Another amazing AND natural part of the lesson - the next stage of their life cycle after eggs is the nymphs! Yeah for a vocabulary word learned through nature study the natural way!!!

Although the excitement over our finds were balanced with a GOODNESS we have a mess of pests here - it was a GREAT OUTDOOR HOUR CHALLENGE. As usual!!!! Here are some pictures of the eggs we found and more close ups of the Squash Bugs as they suck my squash dry! :)