Elizabeth's First Birthday

The week of December 16 thru 22, 2012:

We started Prepare and Pray again, from the beginning, and it is my desire that we work on that for mainly learning survival skills on the first day of each week.

Jaden played a lot of Bookworm on my laptop, and he did some work in his workbooks.

Trusten did a lot of work in his workbooks one day.  He did a little reading in the Learn-to-Read

We read about the Phoenicians in Mystery of History, and we finished A Street Thru Time with "The Street Today."  I think it will be good to go through that once every year.  I'm sure the kids would enthusiastically agree.  We read in the Proverbs, a chapter in A Child's Life of Christ, a Science Spin issue where the main article was about solar storms, about clouds and snow in Usborne's Weather and Climate Change book (after Trusten asked about the clouds and snow, as he's really been on a roll asking weather, climate, and geological questions).  I don't remember what all else we read.

But the biggest excitement during that week was Elizabeth's turning a year of age.  She finally pulled up completely just three days before her birth anniversary.  My sweet sister Meg, my brother-in-law Chris, and my niece Layla came to visit.  I was so happy to see them...just wish it was for longer.

We don't go all out, but I did fix cupcakes and let Elizabeth eat part of a cupcake, and the kids helped her open some presents.

Some pictures:

Opening presents

Wrapping paper must taste good.

Cupcakes that I made with coconut flour(which I later iced with homemade chocolate frosting)

Elizabeth's first cupcake

The first tastes

Mmmmm....

All my sweet babies eating their cupcakes

Two silly girls with chocolate on their faces

Sweet birthday girl!

My sweet Liv

My sweet Trusten with his juniper berries on branch (he loves to eat them)

Until next time...

Nature Fun Walk, First Kings of Israel, and Hibernating Animals

For the week of December 9-15, 2012:

The first day of the week we did not do any survival learning.  Instead it was a free day.  I really wanted to write a long email to a beloved friend, and Nathan wanted to go to Kansas to hunt on a client's property for which he got a year's lease in return for installing a thermostat.  Pretty good deal!  So the kids watched several Care Bears episodes.  There are at least two seasons worth that are Amazon Prime eligible.  I like the Care Bears, because they teach morals and how to be loving and kind even to your enemies.

The kids did free drawing, painting, etc., especially William.  He traced his hand for one picture and then made a chicken out of it:

He has some pen sketches in one of his journals that I really like.  He drew various birds, and he drew a couple pretty good drawings of trucks.  He worked a lot on drawing inventions this week, too.  He goes through phases where he does a lot of that.  He has a very inventive mind.

I found Trusten producing a page of various interesting irregular shapes, which is something I remember doing quite a bit of as a child.  I remember one time when I was ten I made a page of them and handed the page to my best friend Lindsey for her to name.  She then wrote names beside each shape. I wonder whether I still have that.  I know I kept it for a good while, anyway. 

We read about the first three kings of Israel, covering three chapters in Mystery of History, and we read "Town to City, the Late 1800s" in A Street Through Time. 

During a nature walk, we took a route I'd never gone before (only Jade has with Nathan) on one of our good neighbors' property, up a trail to the top of a hill.  Before heading out I wrapped tape inside-out on the older kids' wrists so that they could make nature bracelets (idea from Big Backyard magazine), and we took along Jaden William's autumn fundana to find everything on the game squares.

Fundanas are fun!

The start of Liv's nature bracelet

Still on the road, the kids posed for me:

Happy was snuggled up to me, as usual:

Can you tell the wind is blowing?  Sadly, this picture came out blurred.  I forgot my hat, so I used the fundana (and Elizabeth usually pulls of her hat, silly girl, but she snuggles against me, anyway).  If you look closely, you can see a dirt mound in the distant background, which is where Nathan is working on digging a pond.

The boys found two bones, believed to be from a donkey or perhaps a cattle. 

Starting up the trail, the boys are happy to show off their newly-found animal bones

We were pleasantly surprised to make a discovery of two puffballs in our pathway:

Jaden William releases spores from a puffball with his bone tool

We reviewed how fungi reproduce by spores and how the puffballs release their spores in a cloud when disturbed.

After we reached the top of the hill and walked out of the woods to the clearing where the high-lines are, we then turned and went back home to eat but not before I snapped another picture:

Our road is between this hill and the one next one you see behind the kids

 On the way back we noticed how one of the trees that was injured a few months ago by the tree-trimmer the county sent down our road has filled its wound with sap:

I'm pulling for this tree to make a full recovery

When we got home I sealed the kids' nature bracelets with another layer of tape.  I'm glad I'd taken a picture of Liv's bracelet early on, because a couple of those goodies were lost somewhere along the way.

These were fun, but the kids were ready for me to cut them off immediately.

We did some reading throughout the week from a book called God's Children.  It's Jaden William's, and we used it a lot when he was younger.  I like most of it, though there are a few things I skip, because it's Catholic stuff.  We read from Proverbs and some from Matthew.  Jaden played a lot of Bookworm on my laptop, and Trust and Liv also played on "their iPod" (my old iPhone).  Liv loves to take pictures with it.  They have little games on there, too.  Trust and Liv watched sight words videos.  Jaden worked on grammar, spelling, etc.  We read some books, but we hardly touched our periodicals.  We did go through some of Trusten's and Liv's Weekly Reader/Scholastic News that discussed animals in the winter and how some hibernate, and they learned about different habitats for animals (mountain, desert, rainforest, etc.).

Trust and Liv get separate issues for one thing, but their Science Spin is the same for their levels.

Overall, we had a pretty good week!  Until next time...

Kids' Status Update

For the week of December 2 through December 8 of 2012:

The first day of the week I got some much-needed alone time--2 hours--in the woods.  All the children stayed at the house with Nathan, and he fixed chicken fajitas for a late lunch and had them ready when I got back.  It was a great day.

The second day of the week I worked on flash cards with Jaden and Trusten, addition and subtraction and then counting, respectively.  I looked a shapes book with Liv.

The third day of the week a friend came over and spent several hours, which threw things off, but it was a great day.  It was very beautiful and nice outside, so we wandered around outside, and then Nathan spent a lot of time with the kids, letting them play on the Sycamore limb that serves as a natural jumper/swing for the kids.  Jaden discovered that himself a few weeks ago.  The following picture was not from that day, but rather from a day back in November.  Nathan took a lot of video, and I took video from that other day, too.  They LOVE this thing:

God's built-in swing/jumper

The fourth of the week we read in Mystery of History about Samuel the prophet and about 1800s industry in A Street Thru Time.  For video time I played John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." 

Fifth day of the week Jaden and I finished our working through Ecclesiastes together and discussing it.  He played Poptropica on the computer for the first time in quite some time, and he watched a video on black and white holes (he had inquired the previous night more about black holes) from the History Channel's Universe dvd set. 

The sixth day of the week was just a busy day of cleaning, but we read some as we do every day.

The Sabbath was a bit strange for this week.  We went on a bit of a trip.  I took my bible along and read from it aloud while Nathan drove.  He got permission to hunt on a property in Kansas and wanted to just go look around on it and to take us.  So we went, and we were blessed to see nearly a dozen deer driving around and on that property.  (No hunting that day, just sight-seeing.)  We took trail mix to snack on, and we got out and walked around.  The downside to this is that it was a cold and gloomy day.  The drive was longer than I like to endure on a Sabbath, but the day overall was a good one with family.

A look at the periodicals we read during the week:

Status update on the kids:


Jaden has been sketching a lot of invention ideas, playing word games on his iPod, been reading some books {recently finished one on Abraham Lincoln}, has made it nearly halfway through his Grade 4 grammar (and that's working every other day, which he alternates with Language Lessons), is only halfway through his Grade 3 math (which as I've said before, is fine, as he's like me in that he's not a big math person, so he'll work as slowly as necessary to get good at the basics, and that's all is expected of him), breezing through spelling lessons, exploring outside and busting ice in the mornings and taking care of the chickens, writing letters, sometimes writing in his journal….

I LOVE the scientist in him, as I do his love of reading, because those are two of the things that are so dear to me, too.  He's always making interesting observations, and he even explains some things to us.  For example, not too long ago he told us about the process of the chickens growing their feathers back and how the quill fills up with liquid, and then afterward things harden, and there is left an outer layer that falls off.  Well, I'd  have never known that.  He also brought one of the chickens to me so that I could feel the rocks in its gizzard, as you can feel them through its chest!

Trusten is finished with the three Pre-Code books.  He did so well.  He hardly got anything wrong, and he breezed through most of it with no help.  He's nearly finished with the first of four Developing Early Learning books.  He's doing all right with the Learn to Read bible.  He enjoys all the rhyming stuff, so I incorporate as much rhyming things into our reading as I can.  He likes to sing and make up rhymes.  I hear him singing little songs he's made up, as well as songs he's learned.  He likes to use my old iPhone that I let him and Liv use to record songs and rhymes.  We're still deciding together what instrument to get him signed up for lessons on.  He said the other day he wants to play the drums, and with as much energy as he's got and how he jumps around all the time and with the very complex tics he's recently developed, I think that might be a very good idea.  If he ends up with good singing and/or songwriting abilities, I'm just afraid he might not be able to sing and play drums.  It's so rare.  But he might could go on to play multiple instruments and possess all sorts of musical ability.  Also he's historically my pickiest eater, though he's always loved carrots.  Recently, though, he's been making more healthful choices a lot more frequently, and he voices his understanding of how certain components in certain foods will help his health in various ways (like spinach's calcium to make his bones strong, for example).

Olivia is a mother-in-training already.  It's funny, first of all, that she's at that time where she's obsessed with gender differences. She is always pointing out how Daddy and the boys are boys and that she, Elizabeth, and I are girls, and that when she grows up she's going to be a woman like I am and a mother when she gets a baby in her belly and then she'll have milk.  She keeps talking about having long hair like I do, too, but that child recently took some of JW's art scissors to her hair.  I wonder whether she'll EVER have long hair!  She pulled her hair out by the handfuls when she was a year and a half of age, so much that I decided to clip it all down.  I've let it be this time.  I don't think she'll try to get scissors to clip it again.  She's seen herself in the mirror and understands the consequences.  She loves helping me with the baby and with doing other things.  She loves when I let her help me wash the dishes.  She also likes to sing. 

Elizabeth is finally trying to pull up.  She's so behind all the others.  She's about to turn a year old.  She's doing well, though.  She even signed "milk" recently.  She's the sweetest little soul I know, and I just hope she stays that way.  I love having her around.  She smiles all the time and loves everyone.  She waves hi and says five or six words.  That's about it for now.

All is well.

Until next time...

Lemurs, Ears, Surviving Siblings, and Kitchen Helpers

 First, before I post the highlights of what we did last week, I'd like to clear up any confusion some readers may have concerning my last post, as it was brought to my attention by one of my reading friends that there was some confusion.  She asked me why I only did art on one day of the week, so then I got to thinking that perhaps my post led people to believe that just because I have now labeled my days "science day," "history...day," "art..." day, etc. that we do not engage in any science, history, or other subjects on any of the other days of the week or that possibly we do not engage in any spelling, math, grammar, or other workbook work during the week.  This is not the case!  I do not wish to give an in-depth explanation here, but I will summarily say that:

1. Years ago when I had just one child, it was very easy to do just about everything every day of the week, do lots of science experiments and exploration, do arts and crafts and play with puzzles and Play-Doh, read many books, talk one-on-one, and keep the house spic and span, among other things...and still have ample free time for myself. That is not the case now.  It has become quite complicated. 

2. As for art specifically, while I did quite a few really fun projects with William when he was much younger, I've done very little art-wise with the children over the last few years.  Although I used to do some neat things with Jaden William on a regular basis (like Play-Doh figures, painting rocks, nature collages, etc.), I'm not really an artsy person, and even when William was younger we didn't do a lot of coloring pages.  So it shouldn't be any surprise that art stuff has been the biggest back burner area in our lifestyle of learning.  So as shocking as it may seem to some, assigning the third day of each week as "Art, Music, and Poetry Day" will greatly increase the amount of art that we do, not decrease it. 

3. We learn science, history, and geography stuff nearly every day, as well as cooking, health, environmental, musical, etc. things constantly.  We truly live a lifestyle of learning, and I answer a lot of questions that the children pose to me on a daily basis, and I'm continually learning with them.  When I don't know something, we investigate it.  We live on 18 acres and are surrounded by many, many more acres of neighbors' land that we may freely access, as well as live in close proximity to several state or national forests and parks.  There are many museums, caves,  animal parks, etc. in our area.  Our home has several bookcases full of books.  We own many documentaries and university lectures, and I have an Amazon Prime membership that allows access to many educational documentaries for no extra charge.  We also use Youtube, Wikipedia, and many other educational resources online.  Jaden owns his own iPod that is restricted to allow for safe web surfing, and he plays educational word games.  We have a microscope, a night sky in the country.  I could go on and on.  Even Nathan and I, in our own time together, continually seek to learn by sharing, observing, watching documentaries together, etc.

4. The reasons I have assigned the days with certain labels is because I've decided to give primary focus to those topics on those days.  Reading is not listed, because we read something every day.  It's a bad day if reading goes undone.  Workbook work such as language and grammar, spelling, and math, as well as journaling and flash cards and other things are done almost daily...usually not all these things on most days, but if one things gets left out for days, then we make sure that is prioritized for a day or more rather than the others.  Also this will make it easier for me to blog the highlights of our week.  There's no way possible to record or share even close to everything we do and learn.

I won't be doing a day-by-day breakdown from now on.  I'll just simply share the highlights from those labeled days in my weekly posts.

So now for the week of Nov. 25-Dec. 1:

From October 2012 issue of Big Backyard, we learned to draw a ring-tailed lemur.  I drew one myself, as did Jaden.  I helped Liv draw one, and I talked Trusten through drawing his.  I assisted him with the body and with one of the triangles around its eyes.  Trusten and I missed the third and fourth legs of our lemurs.  I realized it much later.  Oops!

How to draw a Ring-tailed Lemur; Trusten holding his finished product

 Jaden's "Drawing Landscapes" class concluded.  Of the three art classes he's taken, this one was his least favorite, and he said he can't draw well at all.  Well, I can't, either, so I told him not to worry about it.  I'm not posting his framed picture but rather one of the others, which I personally like better.  It does appear that he tired of drawing and just scribbled every which way on the path, but other than that, I thought it looked nice.

Jaden William's landscape drawing

 Just a few of the things we read during the week included Surviving Fights with Your Brothers and Sisters" by Joy Wilt (much-needed), a book passed down from Nathan; Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss (one of Trusten's favorites, because of all the rhyming, and yes, if you see it, I wrote "Turkey" in front of "Ham" many years ago when William was very little--LOL); and the October 2012 issue of Big Backyard.

Reading about lemurs, overcoming sibling rivalry, and rhyming with Dr. Seuss

We played with the Inchimals again last week.  Trusten cleverly started stacking Inchimals together in a way where they would all be level, so I took the opportunity to demonstrate how different numbers add up to equal the same end number.

5+7, 11+1, 9+3, 12+0, and 8+4 all equal 12.

While JW loves to often cook and bake things on his own in the kitchen, Trust and Liv often like to help me in the kitchen or just watch.  Liv loves to sit on the kitchen counter to watch or help.  I let her do things like put baking cups in the muffin pans for our breakfast muffins.

Liv putting baking cups in a muffin pan

We learned about the Zhou Dynasty (pronounced JOE) in China from Mystery of History last week.  We learned that it started about the same time Boaz and Ruth (from the bible) were getting married.  We then went on to read a few more things about China in our recently-acquired Famous Places book.  From that book we read some interesting things about the Great Wall of China, the Silk Road (we learned not long ago that China farmed silkworms for silk during the Shang Dynasty), and the hills of Guilin.

Jaden with his own "Great Wall" model, with little tower places.  It's nearly three feet long (which doesn't account for the true length when curve(s) is/are accounted for, just as is the case with the Great Wall of China.  Nathan called Jade's wall "The Great Wall of Willy."

We read more about eyes and sight (and also did some fun things the week previous which I didn't mention, including optical illusions), and we read about ears and sound.  We used God's Design series book The Human Body, as well as Judith Hann's book How Science Works and the Reader's Digest book Every Day Science to learn everything from what sound is, how the ear works, pitch/frequency, resonance, music, ultrasound, etc.

Felt board with eye and ear diagrams

After nearly three years of using a dishwasher for dishes, I'm happy to announce I'm back to handwashing...and glad!  I have always liked to  hand-wash my dishes.  We've lived several places where a dishwasher has been available for use, and I've still chosen to hand-wash our dishes.  Shortly after Olivia was born I opted to use our dishwasher to save some time.  One of my goals this year has been to go back to handwashing.  I was so kindly reminded of my goal when the dishwasher started acting up.  It still sort of works, but I'm sick of the thing, and the way I look at it, its messing up just makes my goal that easier to obtain.  ;-)  I now use the dishwasher as a dish drainer, as our counter dish drainer is not big enough now to hold all our dishes.

Trust and Liv were delighted to sign on as dishwashing helpers.  Sometimes I do it alone, and sometimes Liv helps me. 

On the Sabbath the children's devotional was on spiritual food and how easy it is to get distracted by everything else.  As I mentioned on a recent blog post, it's especially easy when one's routine gets thrown off, like it did during the FOT week when we had company (even though it was a religious festival week).  I noticed on a friend's blog recently that she experienced the same trouble when she had company for the U.S. Thanksgiving week (which holiday we don't keep, as the FOT is our Thanksgiving).

They also watched a bible video of Saul being the physical nation of Israel's first king, how it was evil in God's sight for them to ask for a king to reign over them, because it rejects God as their authority.  God warned them, but they still chose the king, then later Saul was rejected by God.  How it is still the same today with the physical descendants of Israel.  The United States, the descendants of Joseph's Manasseh still ask for a man to reign over them so that they can be like the other nations, rather than come together in humbleness to let God solely reign over them. It's due to a lack of faith and a rejection of his rule.

Trusten wanted to listen to some rap music, so I played "The Ten Commandments" by Truheat.  His wife contacted me via email a few years ago, and since then she has sent me several copies of her husband's rap cd to give away.  Even though they have a Christian message, and I also like some rap tunes (certainly not the majority of such that is played today...ugh!), I'm not hip on most of the songs, and the way he says his music name over and over at the intros to the songs just like mainstream rappists often do turns me off, but I do think the song about the Ten Commandments is ok.  I like the beat, and I like the message.  Just wish one could understand him better.

The week ended with a beautiful Sabbath day, and we had a very nice time outside to enjoy creation.

Until next time...

Seven Day Cycles vs. 8th Day Eternity, Brainstorming and Charting, Eyes, and Staghorn Sumac

Seven-Day Time Cycle vs. "8th Day" Eternity

Note: Confusion later arose from the following post, brought to my attention by one reader.  I was asked why I do art only day a week (which is mostly true for art), but just because I labeled the days "science day" or "art day" doesn't mean we don't learn anything scientific on the other days of the week or do not do any spelling, grammar, or math workbook work.  Quite the contrary.  This is explained more in my following post.

So the poster project I earlier spoke of for the Feast of Tabernacles that we did not do right before or during Feast of Tabernacles, but rather afterward, was basically a project getting us back on track with a better schedule...for everything.  Last year, especially, so much fell apart.  Plus, there have been some new ways I've wanted to try things.  I wanted to take the seven-day week and talk about it with the children and then also talk about the 8th Day (which is a feast of God that immediately follows the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles) that symbolizes eternity, which is when--or should I rather say where--there is no time.  Time comes from the same etymological root as the word temporary.  The seven day cycle just continues on and on, and Jaden talks often with Nathan and me about how quickly the days and weeks go by, so this was a good lesson.

I also do not like to use names the Romans gave to the days of the week which are names of Roman and Nordic pagan gods.  I still sometimes say those names to people outside the Body of Christ, but I'm very conscious of it.  It doesn't seem right to me to say "Sunday" (Sun's day or day of the sun) or "Monday" (Moon's day or day of the moon), etc.  It seems rather silly, if nothing else.  When I speak to the children or to a dear brother or sister of the household of God, I typically say, "First day, second day, etc." and "Sabbath" for the seventh day, which is the only day of the week that the Eternal God sanctified and made holy.

Now you may have heard those in the Christianity religion trying to justify keeping "Sunday," the first day of the week, as the weekly holy day by saying it's the "8th day" and commemorates Christ's resurrection (which God never tells us to commemorate, anyway).

But we can't keep the 8th day as a weekly cycle.  We are living in a death cycle in a temporary body.  When people observe Easter (a feast that bears the name of pagan fertility goddess) and participate in their sunrise service, they are taking part in worshiping an ongoing temporary cycle of creation.

The only "8th day" we should be keeping is the annual Eighth Day feast that the Eternal has commanded us to keep which foreshadows the conclusion of the true plan of salvation and eternity.

So in this way I taught a spiritual lesson while also reinforcing the fact that we are given six days to do our work, and the seventh day is the holy Sabbath day.  On the posterboard I named the days of week by number and assigned those days certain tasks, not just for learning (the picture shows a limited part of the whole), but for everything in our lives, including the day we get groceries, for example. Before making a chart for this, though, we used the one side of the poster board for brainstorming using a web, and this was their introduction to this.  I used pencil, so it doesn't show up too well, but I wanted to use something we could easily erase and change, if need be.  "Lifestyle of Learning" is the center hub.

There's much more to our 7-day chart, and even for our learning, there are certain things we do every day, like reading.  But for main concentrations, we focus on:

Day 1: Survival skills, learning as a family day
Day 2: Math day
Day 3: Art, music, and poetry day
Day 4: History and geography day
Day 5: Science, health, and environment day
Day 6: Sabbath prep, extra reading and make-up day
Day 7: Sabbath--rest, extra bible study and prayer, family time

Then at the bottom in a space smaller than the other seven days (nice how that worked out perfectly like that; it was meant to be), I put an "8" and wrote that it doesn't exist in this world and that it's symbolic of eternity.  I like how on the Sabbath day we can focus MORE on thinking about that now-non-existent day of the week, because it DOESN'T come the following day (but rather the first day of a new week), but we can MEDITATE on what 8th Day is truly coming, which is eternity when the Empire of God will have Kingdom headquarters on the new earth, and the Family of God will reign over the entire universe.  We can MEDITATE on how good things will be when we no longer are living in this temporary world/age where the days fly by, and so many things are left undone, and so many things don't work out the way we want, and there is so much war and affliction, and, and, and...We can REST and MEDITATE and PRAY so that we can walk out our lives each day of the next temporary seven-day week cycle FOCUSED on the end goal, on entering the Kingdom of God that is foreshadowed by that little slot at the bottom of our posterboard with the "8" label.

So last week, the week of the Roman month of November 18-24, 2012:

Math day:

We had fun with the Inchimals. We worked out some addition problems in the book, and the kids decided to measure everyone's heights. 

Liv getting measured by Inchimals

Art, Music, and Poetry Day:

We started reading Look Again, a Childcraft book about art.  Jaden also attended his third of four sessions of art class.  This fall he took "Drawing Landscapes."  He has not enjoyed it as much as his previous two classes ("Birdhouses in Clay" and "Mosaics") and has decided he cannot draw well (neither can I), but he did like going and did learn some things.

History and Geography Day:

Jaden did some testing and pretesting in Mystery of History.  We read about Samson, the Israelite judge in the same book. We also resumed where we'd left off in A Street Through Time.  Over the previous weeks we watched several documentaries that covered the eras that we'd already covered in that book.  I did not keep a list written down, so I won't be posting it here.  

Science, Health, and Environment Day:

We read about eyes in The Human Body science book from the God's Design... series. Then we read in Nature Got There First about how the eye inspired the invention of cameras and how there are different types of vision/eyes/cameras.  Finally we read the October issue of Ranger Rick magazine, including a feature on animal eyes.  We also read in the latter about various types of seeds and how they travel to reproduce.  We then went outside and collected a few of the different types.

"The Eye" from The Human Body and "Eye to Camera" from Nature Got There First

How eye position affects animals (Ranger Rick, October 2012 issue)

Eye size and eye protection

"Oddball Eyes"  and "Know Your Pupils" from Ranger Rick (October 2012)

Top: "Seeds Get Around" from Ranger Rick magazine (October 2012 issue); Bottom: Seeds we collected from our yard and labeled

 
 Sabbath:

We read from the bible, listened and sang to hymns, and the children's devotional was on the subject of being special and how each is important to God.  This was perfect, because I really have suspected some struggling from my children with feeling like their siblings are more important, feeling left out, etc.  It's ironic how they can all feel that way about each other.  I think this lesson really helped.

During a short family drive I had Nathan stop so I could hop out and collect some gorgeous berries from the shrub/small tree pictured below.  I've identified the tree as Staghorn Suman (Rhus typhina).

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhus_typhina:

Some beekeepers use dried sumac bobs as a source of fuel for their smokers.
The fruit of sumacs can be collected, soaked and washed in cold water, strained, sweetened and made into a pink lemonade. This should not be done with the related plant, poison sumac. The leaves and berries of staghorn sumac have been mixed with tobacco and other herbs and smoked by Native American tribes. This practice continues to a small degree to this day.

All parts of the staghorn sumac, except the roots, can be used as both a natural dye and as a mordant. The plant is rich in tannins and can be added to other dye baths to improve light fastness. Harvest the leaves in the summer and the bark all year round. 

Staghorn Sumac

Some other pictures from the week:

A few of the books we got from Nathan's momma and stepdad when they came to visit us

To this graph, Jaden exclaimed that the kids were foolish, that the environment (the issue with the fewest votes of what they thought was most important) should have been the MOST important, and I was SO PROUD of him and praised him greatly. I SO very much agree.  What difference do all the other issues make if we can no longer even live here to work on the other issues?!

Jade's newly acquired pistol bb gun (a gift from his "Papaw Ken"), about its workings he explained to me in great detail

 Until next time...

Before and After FOT 2012

So much has happened both before and after the Feast of Tabernacles 2012 and its post (the one immediately previous to this post), but I'm going to make it ultra-short, considering.  Then my plan is to get back to weekly blogging, and I've come up with a much better and organized way for us doing things.  It will be the best since Jaden William was an only child.  The outline was actually planned for a poster board project for the kids for the FOT, tying in a spiritual lesson dealing with the seven days of the week and then the following 8th Day (which is the day following the seven-day FOT and symbolizes eternity).  It didn't work out for that week, though, and ironically, even though it was a religious festival week, the kids and I didn't even read our bible, etc. together as much as a normal week.  Just too much distraction.  I did manage to have alone prayer time and write in my prayer journal, shut in my bedroom after nursing the baby.  It's hard to maintain one's routine with company.  Overall, though, it was a great feast, and we really enjoyed all the company and fellowship.

I'll share the poster board (which we've since done) in the next post, which I'm hoping to be tomorrow, but if not, then sometime this week.

So for a SUPER-CUT summary with a few photos of what went on right before the FOT and what has happened since. Oh hey, look how I also updated our blog photos, both my profile picture and the picture of the kids on the front page.  The latter now includes our Sweet E. 

Here goes...

The pictures above were taken of Jaden William when he went for a week to stay with my parents to help out with the White County Fair in Arkansas.  Both my parents are on the fair board, and my daddy is the fairgrounds manager.  Jaden William loves to go to work with him whenever we visit, but this was the first time he got to go help out during fair week.  The girl watching the monster truck show with him is the daughter of a police captain or something.  Jaden told me that she liked to follow him around, but he's not looking for any girlfriend, because he loves Kaia.

Helping at the fair was a good experience for him.  He learned a lot, plus he had fun.

Meanwhile the other three kids and I were still back at home.

Believe it or not, this was the first time I'd ever seen the really big yellow hornets.  I've only ever seen the white "baldfaced" hornets.  These things are huge, and after this I saw them a few more times during the summer and early fall.  To the right is flowering spearmint.

Trust and Liv with wild plums.  They weren't too tasty.  What do you think of Trusten's hairdo? 

The kids and I went to drop off a bunch of stuff at Helping Hands while Jade was gone, and we decided to go in to buy some books.  I got a few for Trust and Liv, letting them help pick out.  The ones pictured above are the ones I picked out for Jaden William.  He took a long break from reading books (as in two or three months), but he just started it up again.  He broke his break with the Abraham Lincoln book seen above, and he said he was loving it.  I'm hoping the historical fiction books about the royal women are not real girly.  They looked really interesting.

The picture above I found in Google Images.  This one came from the Wikipedia entry for "beef."  I looked it up for Jaden after a visit to The Fresh Market to get some meat.  He had asked about the different cuts of meat.  Different countries do it a little differently, though.  The above picture is how the U.S. typically labels and uses the different cuts pictured. 

These were some of the things we've read lately.  (Periodicals pictured twice mean that we didn't finish it one day.)  There has been a lot more, including storybooks.  Jaden William really hates politics.  I was reading one of the election articles from the Weekly Reader, and he got rather agitated and finally just said something about how he really didn't care about it, didn't understand why we needed to finish it, who cared, etc.  He was very sick of hearing about Romney and Obama (who can blame him?). I think we'd reached the questions at the end of the article, and he usually does superbly at reading comprehension, but he wasn't getting anything right on that.  I realized it was a waste of time, and quite truthfully I don't care, either.  I want him to know what's going on in the world, but he's right that we don't have to waste so much time on it.  He answered all the questions from the article after that one quickly and correctly, just as he usually does.

I've been getting Trusten to read some of his Weekly Reader issues aloud, and a lot of the stuff he gets without any help.

The above picture shows what is in the Inchimals math set I bought for the kids.  This is perfect for Trusten and Liv now, but it will also still be helpful for Jaden who is a bit slow in math.

Okay, this is it for pictures for now.  I'm hoping I'll get the next post up before this week is over.

Until next time...