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Weather: Cloudy and damp after a hard rain overnight. 42 degrees at 8:30 and I don't think the temperature is going to budge too much over the course of the day.
At the feeder: We're late in getting our feeders set up this year, but Katydid managed to clean and fill most of them a few days ago. We finally hung a collapsible feeder that holds 5 lbs of sunflower seeds. The birds love it. Right now I can count at least 6 goldfinches clinging just to the sides I can see. A downy woodpecker flew away a few seconds ago, and yesterday we had a female cardinal. The chickadees have also been out in force, 5 or 6 at a time, and our tufted titmice are back as well. We need to get our suet feeders set up for the woodpeckers now.
In the garden: In spite of it being November, we are still eating from the garden a little. Well, brussels sprouts actually.
Here's what the plants look like "in the field".
And on the stalk. When we went to the farm store last week, I was pleased to see that our brussel sprouts compared very favorably to theirs. In fact, ours looked better. (Ok, shameless bragging, but it was such a hard gardening year that I ought to be allowed to wallow in what few successes there were.)
(A brief feeder update... I need Katydid's binoculars... are those goldfinches or pine siskins out there???)
However, most of the garden is now planted to cover crop. I think Andy used crimson clover, which stands up to our winters pretty well. In the summer, the crop of choice is buckwheat, which he mows when it flowers so that it doesn't go to seed and become a weed. We rotate our beds and try to leave some fallow every year. After four years of cover cropping, adding compost, and 2 seasons of chickens, the soil has become a lot softer and easier to work. (Not now, of course. The ground freezes a little overnight, then thaws every morning so it's always a little muddy.) The cover crop comes most in handy in the spring time when the snowmelt comes rushing down the hill. Having a cover crop down instead of exposing bare dirt helps to retain our soil.
An exciting photo of a mat of young crimson clover. In the spring time, it blooms a vivid crimson. It can be a little hard to get rid of, but it's not as invasive as, say, rye.
Or mint. This is my own fault. In desperation, because bugs and everything else were ruining my squash plants, I set out a chocolate mint plant beside them. Now the plant itself is nowhere to be found, but I discovered this healthy specimen about 10 feet away in a different bed.
In the pantry:
This is how I bake pumpkin and winter squash: with butter and maple syrup. The butter and maple syrup form the stickiest candy ever on the bottom of the pan. So it's important to spoon that up while it's still so hot that you burn your tongue on the spoon as you lean over the stove. Not that I would ever do such a thing, of course.
In the coop:
There are a lot fewer chickens in the coop these days.
But the ones in my freezer make really, really good chicken soup.
Using heritage breed chickens for meat was kind of a toss-up. On the one hand, they were all small, the biggest not quite 5 lbs, and they took a long time just to get to that weight. On the other hand, the taste is so much better even than the Cornish x Rock broilers raised on pasture. The meat is firmer (probably because our chickens were free-range, not raised in chicken tractors, and breeds that were not bred to sit by the feeder and eat), the dark meat darker, and just in general, more flavorful. But because it took so long to get them to butchering weight (such as it was), I'm not sure it was economical, and it was a lot of work.
If you're keeping track at home, we used White Rocks and Delawares. The Delawares were, in general, nicer than the White Rocks, which even Katydid looked forward to eating.
The turkeys turned out a little better in the weight department -- or at least the Naragansetts did. They were butchered at the beginning of the week and are currently all jammed into the freezer ( all 6 of them.) Everyone is a little sad that the turkeys are gone, I think, which was not the case with the meat chickens. The Naragansett tom dressed out at 17 lbs, so he will be our Thanksgiving turkey. Will we raise turkeys again? I don't know. The learning curve is pretty steep with turkeys. They break your heart the way they die as poults, then they get interesting and curious personalities and the thought of eating them does not make you happy, and if you really want to pasture them, you have to clip their wings or they will fly 20 feet up in the trees at night or disappear with the wild turkeys. But heritage turkeys are so much more beautiful and impressive than the typical Broad-Breasted White. So -- I don't know. I think we are going to take an animal breather next summer and just worry about the 23 laying hens we've got right now.
None of which are really laying at this point, however. The old hens are moulting and should probably be turned into stewing hens, but they have all been named. (Don't name your chickens.) The new hens are not laying yet, or are laying in some incredibly out of the way spot I haven't discovered yet. I've been buying "free-range" eggs to make up the difference, but their idea of "free-range" and my idea of "free-range" are obviously different:
The orange yolks taste better, too, if you've never eaten an orange-yolked egg and you're wondering.
We're having a relatively warm November, which means that last week we were outside a lot. The question here is not if it will get cold soon, but which day. Our forecast doesn't look bad, but usually the snow moves in around Thanksgiving and stays until... oh... April... May... a long time anyway. So I think we can be forgiven for ditching some academics to take advantage of the occasional warm spell. It's a really long winter.
Anyway, the little boys spent a lot of time this week digging.
In a Montessori classroom, I guess "digging" would count as practical life. The boys actually dug their deep holes so they could be "cities". I have had a hard time making "cities" into a formal project, but I think that's because it's really a game. They don't really want too much interference from me, because this is a kid universe. So they dug deep holes and tunnels all week, and built up "volcanoes" and "cliffs", and told each other how people got around their cities, whether they could use cars or not because there were or weren't roads.
One day I was trying to keep the little boys occupied while we read in the morning and I suggested they might like to draw a picture of their cities. Somehow this became drawing planets and imaginary solar systems.
N. started it, and soon all the other boys (including Gareth) were doing their own solar system pictures.
(My camera lens seems to have a tiny scratch on it which sometimes shows up as a smudge. I dropped the camera a while ago and smashed the viewfinder, too, so I may be in the market for a new camera soon.)
The solar system pictures aren't finished yet, because the boys wanted to add background and didn't have time. I'm hoping to give them time to finish their pictures this week in the midst of all our Thanksgiving cleaning. Or maybe next week while I cook. Farmerboy started painting a model solar system, too, but hasn't finished it yet.
When I said we "ditched" academics, I meant that we didn't spend long hours on them. The big kids did still actually do some academic work. The One Year Adventure Novel kit arrived and Gareth and Katydid actually gave up playing outside to go inside and start working on it. So far, so good. Gareth also finished his Life of Fred: Fractions book and is preparing to get started on the second half of the pre-algebra sequence, Decimals. Life of Fred hasn't magically cured his math frustration, but he did like it more than Saxon. Life of Fred is much less rote learning than Saxon, and much more application. He covered all the fraction topics included in Saxon's Algebra 1/2 , but in a much more informal, applied way. My only quibble with the book is that there's not enough practice available on topics that students stumble on (say, unit analysis).
And Katydid started working on long division. As with most things mathematical, she is not doing this the traditional way. Which I suppose only proves the maxim that in order to really understand a concept, you have to teach it. I'm 37 years old and have gotten through the last 20 years breezing through long division problems with aboslutely no idea why the method works. Katydid has to know the why's and wherefore's, though, before she gets a concept. Which means I have had to do a little thinking. In the future, I'll try and detail our process, just in case anyone else out there needs a non-traditional approach to long division.
Our history reading in the morning continued to go well this week. We began Beowulf: the Warrior, which is one of the best boy read-alouds ever. This re-telling is awesome. It remains faithful to the poetry of the original, and also -- for the boys in your family -- it still retains the scene where Beowulf rips off Grendel's arm. So there you go.
And just in case you want to envision me and all my kids snuggled on the couch while we read aloud...
You probably shouldn't. (Make sure you look underneath the table. Also, I am sure that even the kind people who said they didn't notice the clutter in the other photos will notice the clutter in these pictures. Why does decluttering always make my house look so bad?)
Not enough picture books this week to make a nifty widget, so I'll just have to list them...
(illustrated by Steven Kellogg, one of my kids' favorites)
We made an unscheduled trip to Honesdale, PA with Andy Tuesday. It's not one of the great vacation destinations most people know (although, if you're a New Yorker you may know where it is because it's an area populated by summer camps for New Yorkers), but it was an interesting trip nevertheless. Andy was headed down there to visit a small bank. We went with him because right as he was getting ready to leave, a coworker sent him a link about a murder that had been committed overnight in our tiny little town. The killer was still at large and details were sketchy. Andy decided he would have no peace of mind if he were to go out of town (even on a day trip three hours away) and leave us at home with a murderer on the loose, so we all piled in the van for an improvised vacation.
(Police did actually find the murderer while we were gone. In Connecticut. It turned out that the man he murdered was his father. In my experience -- having grown up in a small town -- most small town murders fit in this vein, and are big news because they are so rare. I know that people who live in cities debate whether or not moving to the country to "get away from the crime" is worth it, because "there's crime everywhere." There is crime everywhere, but events like this are very, very rare here.)
The drive down to Honesdale was gorgeous. About half the trip, we followed the Delaware River, and even crossed it once or twice, so that we can now say that like Washington, we crossed the Delaware. Once in Honesdale, we dropped Andy off at his meeting and visited the Dorflinger-Suydam Nature Reserve. (We did NOT visit the glass museum. For obvious reasons.)
Katydid brought the camera and took some pictures while I herded boys. I'll just say right now that I was glad we were the only visitors at that particular time, because I am sure we scared off any wildlife in a 5 mile radius. Boys who have been cooped up in a van for 3 hours can be a little loud and boisterous when you finally let them out.
In any case, here are some of Katydid's photos...
Porcupine damage?
Making the best of a difficult situation.
All photos by Katydid.
November 1-8
Katydid and Gareth were sick for at least part of week 12. When Katydid first came down with whatever it was, it sure seemed like it was flu because it had all the classic "flu" symptoms: chills, sudden onset, fever, sore throat, upset stomach, body aches. But it didn't spread to any of the little boys, really (although Farmerboy took a nap every afternoon that week.). So I have no idea what it was. The big kids all had their seasonal flu shots and the little boys didn't, so it seems odd that the kids who got flu shots would come down with a flu and and the kids who got no shots would avoid it. H1N1 was aboslutely rampant in our area that week, bad enough that several schools were closed, but... who knows. It was a mystery virus.
Anyway, because the big kids were sick, the week was mainly focused on little kids. We did manage to finally finish The Hobbit, and to start reading Our Island Story and The Story of Europe, both by H.E. Marshall. It felt good to get back to some history again. We're continuing to read A Life of Our Lord for Children
I'm afraid that we haven't done much that's special to mark any feast days lately, though... We make a point of praying for the Poor Souls every day, which I hope is enough.
Monday
The twins did a lot of "matching cards". I actually had to invent some on the spur of the moment, because they would go through a set and demand more. This is a Bug Bingo game. Technically, it's supposed to be played like bingo, but for our purposes, I gave them the boards and let them match the cards to the pictures on the boards.
Chipmunk liked searching for O's in the Alphabet Zoop cards. (He'd also already drawn on himself that morning, as you can see by the green on his cheek.)
In the afternoon we headed outside to play on the logs:
Which are useful as forts, ships, and also sometimes nature study...
Tuesday:
Tuesday morning was devoted to all things dinosaur. I got down a puzzle and the boys argued cooperated to put it together. I also printed out some matching cards and coloring sheets from this Homeschool Share dinosaur unit.
In the afternoon, the boys shifted gears and concentrated on coloring King Arthur paper dolls from Paper Dali. (HT: Jessica, who shared the Paper Dali link in her Google Shared Items.)
Farmerboy has been on a King Arthur kick lately, thanks to Jim Weiss, and was excited when we encountered Merlin, Uther Pendragon, and Arthur in Our Island Story (in Week 13).
Katydid colored many saint paper dolls, but she immediately whisked them off to her room so I don't have any pictures.
Tuesday also happened to be Daddy's birthday, which he celebrated by making a business day trip and getting home late to eat cheesecake.
Wednesday:
Daddy celebrated the day after his birthday by making a trip to Boston. The boys demanded American Revolution paper dolls. They also complained that they couldn't build really good castles because there weren't enough wall blocks for all 4 of them to use at the same time. I took a deep breath and offered to go down to the basement and bring up all the blocks I had taken away a few months ago because they were not being picked up in a -- shall we say -- timely and cheerful fashion. We spent the morning sorting and building with the "new" blocks:
That's what it looked like on Wednesday of last week. By Friday night, all the "new" blocks had been put up in a closet out of reach again, because that was the deal: If I bring these blocks out, you have to pick them up when you're told to, or I will have to put them away again. Oh, yes, Mommy, we'll pick them up, can we pleeeeese play with the blocks? Unfortunately, there was a breach of contract, proving yet again that home is not like school. Many of the Reggio books you read have fantastic block creations and/or block areas, or at the very least inform you that you are to include lots of different kinds of blocks and other materials for children to build and dramatize with. Personally, I agree. It is hard to build big castles if someone has used all the wall blocks. But at home with a large family, reality must be negotiated. I don't have time to pick up millions of blocks every day, and I shouldn't have to. (The two year old is actually far better at picking up than his brothers.) So at some point the environment must be used to teach responsibility, respect, and obedience instead of science, math, or anything else. In my experience anyway.
I do hope I can try again with the blocks, though, because I really like some of them, and so do the boys.
Thursday
Thursday we went outside. We had been stuck inside for two days, which is not good for active young boys. (Can you hear my fear of winter?) Anyway, it was a bit chilly -- temperatures down around 40 -- so we put on our bigger coats and headed outside while the nearly-recovered big kids stayed inside where it was warm and read books.
Did you notice N's new glasses in the block picture? It turns out his eyesight is really bad, and that's the reason he has always seemed so clumsy (which is why we took him to our developmental optometrist at just barely 4 years old.) Now, his brother, J., has never seemed to trip as much or run into things as much, so I didn't schedule a screening for him. When N. got his glasses, J. was most upset. He therefore decided that he would wear his sunglasses just like N. wore his real glasses. So he put them on in the morning and took them off at night. I tried to comfort him by telling him that he does have an eye appointment scheduled in January, but of course that might as well be twenty years from now if you're 4.
(And, yes, we do still think they're identical. How identical is identical often depends on conditions for each in the womb, and N had to deal with an improperly implanted cord while J did not.)
Anyway, while we were out, we decided to take a short nature walk in the field, which was cut short by J being accidentally hit in the eye by Farmerboy. On our way back we stopped near the house to investigate the milkweed seeds by the deck. (J was feeling better by then.)
The boys called the seeds "parachute guys" and brought some inside to play with.
Friday
Friday is extra chore day, so mostly we clean. But in the morning, the boys set up some domino rallies...
That's N, who should have his glasses on. Confusing, I know. And actually, Friday morning went kind of like this:
8:30 AM -- the little boys have already watched Curious George, a Dinosaur Train episode about poop, been banned from playing monkeys (an old rule) and orangutans (a new rule), searched through a stack of old copies of Ranger Rick and Your Big Backyard to find animals they are allowed to play ("We could play worms, Mommy!"), requested a stack of books about "jungles", moved on to dinosaur books, asked if I could go downstairs to find the dominoes and what about "that number matching game?" (Triominos), set up domino rallies, argued about who has more dominoes, and received instruction in both counting and social skills. Can I take my shower now, please?
I was going to do a 7 Quick Takes post, but never got the chance.
So that was our week, with the exception of the picture books, of course...
Wow! I can't tell you how surprised I was to wake up this morning and find that Three Plus Two was nominated for Best Nitty Gritty Homeschool Blog. In fact, I am so surprised I'm almost speechless! But not so speechless that I can't say THANK YOU VERY MUCH. It's nice to know that my blog made even one person feel "that it is OK that we aren't perfect." Because that's what I'd like my blog to be. Kind of a virtual, "Honey, I've been there."
Well! Now that you've made my day, head on over to the polls and check out the nominated blogs in all the other categories, too!
Just the highlights... I imagine everyone in the US is either tired of pumpkins by now or has at least moved on to turkeys. Our turkeys are spending their last days out in the field eating pumpkin seeds, which gives one a completely different perspective on the usual turkey crafts that crop up during the month of November. But, back to Halloween. This is what we did during Halloween week:
course. He spent quite a bit of time with it, actually. The new grammar book he's using, Our Mother Tongue: An Introductory Guide to English Grammar
by Nancy Wilson, also contains some neat little sidebars about the history of English. One of those sidebars happens to be The Our Father in Old English. I have to admit that I like languages, and when I was in college I took a "History of English" class from an excellent professor and studied a bit (a wee bit) of Old English. So I attempted to read the prayer out loud to Gareth in Old English. He, apparently, thought this was quite interesting, and so here we are. The grammar book itself is also going well, too. In addition to being much more interesting than your typical drill-and-kill grammar workbook, it also seems to be less... hmmm... condescending. This quality is hard to explain, but what I like about the book is that it seems to treat the subject manner in a much more adult way than most 7th grade grammar textbooks while also being easily understood by 7th/8th/9th graders. I think this, along with the historical selections and the use of real literature as examples, appeals to Gareth. The book is recommended in Ambleside Online's Year 7.
( I'm going to start calling the twins by their initials instead of "Pip and Pop". I considered more pseudonyms like "Tom and Huck" or "George (Curious) and Dennis (the Menace)", but finally I thought that they will grow up one day. So Pop -- pictured here -- will now be known as "J." and Pip will be "N." Not as colorful maybe, but easier for Mama.)
J. produced a whole menagerie of "good animals" using 2 lbs. of Model Magic.
Chipmunk found Duplos to be good for squishing Model Magic. Here he's also shining a flashlight onto the blocks. Flashlights were also a fascination this week, probably as much for the way they could be put together and taken apart as for their light.
Model Magic after it has been impressed by Duplos.
Chipmunk also informed me that he needed better activities on his shelves:
Yes, those are plastic counters (fish mostly). And, yes, he did stick them all, one by one, through the bars of the fan. I could hear the sound of the counters in the container and on the floor, and silly me, I thought he was pouring them. But instead he invented his own Montessori activity.
We also did some painting, because J. wanted to paint his "good animals". Farmerboy had some problems with the dinosaur painting he wanted to make, so I took a piece of paper and sketched out a painting in the style that Farmerboy had wanted, demonstrating how to sketch with a small brush, how to make drips of paint into something else (birds, in this case), how to hide lines I didn't want... My picture is at the top. After watching me paint my picture -- just meant to help him learn to calm down, really, and deal with "mistakes" -- he decided to copy it. We used acrylics. Chipmunk mixed the blue paint for us. ;-)
We did do some pumpkin related "stuff" as well.
One morning while I read -- well, actually Gareth ended up reading more than I did, which has become a common occurrence lately -- I set out some construction paper shapes so the boys could make pumpkins. I had tried to suggest earlier in the week that we paint pumpkins, but that suggestion went over like a lead balloon. Nobody wants to paint the same thing. So we just did collage pumpkins.
After they were done, I mounted them on construction paper and put them on the wall of their bedroom, by request. J. (Pop) did the yellow pumpkin face and the pumpkin on the very bottom right corner. N's (Pip's) are the pumpkin that looks like it is set on a pedastal and the one mounted on green paper. As you can see some of the pumpkins have arms and eyebrows, yarn hair, and -- because we are talking about boys -- "bottoms". However, you cannot see the "bottoms" (insert wild giggling) because they are appropriately located on the backside of the pumpkins.
Farmerboy (I'll probably be changing his name, too, as soon as I decide on something) whisked his pumpkins away and taped them to the wall by the bed before I could mount them. (The pumpkin on the left has a mustache and a beard.)
Katydid did her own version of pumpkin collages, but made the collaged illustrations into a Halloween book for the boys.
(She used oil pastel for the drawings.)
And we carved some pumpkins, too...
(It's not a knife. It's a spatula.)
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