We observed Passover and the Feast Week of Unleavened Bread. That's been a month ago now. The kids usually like the different foods we eat during that week, because we do not eat yeasted/fermented foods (with the exception of wine). I go a step further and do not use baking powder in my foods, as we eat more quick breads than yeasted ones, anyway, so leaving the baking powder out of the quick breads (like muffins) reminds us of the theme of the week, which is that we're meditating on our sin weaknesses and working to rid them out of our lives (leaven representing sin). I took a few pictures of some of the foods we ate:
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| Baking powder-free muffins, tortilla sandwich, tortilla pizza |
We had to catch up on reading our periodicals. We didn't really read anything from January through March, which is strange for us, but so much else was going on. By the middle of March we had 22 magazines and other periodicals to read (pictured below), but we are now caught up:
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| Ranger Rick; Your Big Backyard; Weeky Reader; WR News; WR Science Spin; Arbor Day |
We learned so much, which we always do, but we crammed a lot into a short space of time. Here is how the kids looked one day while waiting for me to sit down with them for our reading time (with Liz on the floor getting her tummy time):
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| Yeah, the "twins" Trust and Liv are real characters |
We also planted a garden. I only took pictures of the cucumber plants I transplanted. I need to take new pictures of everything that is growing now. This is experimental. Nathan used his tractor and dumped a lot of loose soil into a bed, but it's our soil, so though it's loose, it's full of rocks. We're curious to see how well it does.
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| Young cucumber plants |
Some pictures during one of our walks:
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| Some sort of growths on the leaves, not yet determined |
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| Wildflowers! |
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| Scenery on our walk, including neighbor's horses |
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| Eastern tent caterpillars |
Nathan and Jade found an interesting flower during a walk they took in the woods:
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| Not yet identified...does anyone know what it is? |
Jaden completed a mosaics class. I love his art. He was trying to make a butterfly in part of one of his creations, though, and I guess he miscalculated the number of pieces he had. I still wonder whether he couldn't have rearranged some pieces. I love that he chose some red tile in the mix, though! I love that color! The larger mosaic has a chalkboard included, and he added the green paint to the wooden edges after he got home with it.
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| Happy boy and his tool bag |
The old A/C's that Nathan replaces are stored back on our property again (after a few years of Casey doing it, before he moved), and Jaden scrapped all the ones so far, all by himself. Nathan paid him $100. Though it's a small fraction of what the metal will bring, that's good money for a boy his age. He is doing quite well on his goal to save up $1000 (and then do I'm-not-sure-what).
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| Jade with A/Cs and scrap metal |
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| Jade with coils |
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| Copper |
Jade also recently planted some wheat:
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| Wheat grass |
He started it in the pot, and I guess it may stay there until it seeds, if it will do so in the pot. It's much taller now. Grass grows so quickly!
Jade found a stone that looks like a grounding stone, about two years ago, but he recently found another rock with which he decided to do some grinding. He actually did this during the week of Unleavened Bread. No, he didn't grind enough flour to make any bread. But it was a learning experience. He learned how difficult it would have been for people in more ancient times.
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| Jade's grinding stones with some wheat berries |
It was after that when he decided to plant some of the wheat seeds. I guess it's the first time any of us have actually tried. Like Nathan said, it's good to know our grain stores are truly made of viable seed. Not only does that mean we're eating the best, but if we needed to plant some, we could. I grind all my grains with my Wolfgang electric grain mill, but I also have a manual mill. Trust and Liv get out the latter quite often, but they don't really know anything about it. I've decided I'll put some grain in it and let them mill it into flour. Jade did so at that age. It's a good time to bring out The Little Red Hen book again, one of our favorites. I think they will all enjoy seeing the wheat grass come to fruition. Moving on...
We got to enjoy a cool wolf spider and her babies on the front porch:
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| Check out the eyes on this wolf spider |
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| Can you see the baby spider who fell off its mother's back? |
Earthworms are always exciting. He found one that was especially swollen-looking, so we reviewed how an earthworm reproduces, the function of the clitellum, etc.
Here are a couple pics of Jade, one showing his taking apart contactors (from A/Cs), and another of him enjoying his chow mein (yum!) after we read about early Chinese civilation:
A snail:
My daddy bought the kids some new books:
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| Usborne has some good books |
My momma gave me some wildflower seeds to plant:
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| A nice variety of wildflower seeds! |
Jade took off with my camera to photograph some sort of caterpillar. I just remembered we didn't try to identify it.
Trusten and I started making a potholder. My mother bought the kit for Trusten.
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| He's deeply concentrating |
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| His progress |
After we started the cross-weaving, it wasn't long before he wanted to quit for the day. I had to help him do that part, whereas the first part was pretty easy for him. We're finished with the cross-weaving now, but I'm not understanding how to finish it. The picture isn't helpful, and when it comes to putting threads, yarns, or other such things together to make a finished product, I'm pretty useless! I'll get it figured out, and we'll finish it once I do. I think I need to ask Nathan, because he's actually better at doing stuff like that than I am. Yeah, I know, this is one of those easy-to-do kits, but I'm still pretty clueless!
As far as other things go:
Jaden is going along fine in his Grade 4 grammar book, he's doing well on his spelling, he's always reading something (one of the latest things he's reading is a big illustrated Q&A book on USA history, and he took off with my book about the Titanic, but I'm not sure he's reading it. It could be boring to him; I thought it was interesting, but I was 15 or 16 when I bought it), and he just finished practicing the cursive alphabet. He's still doing Grade 3 math and going slowly through that.
Trusten has started the Rocket Readers Learn-to-Read Bible that I used for Jaden. I'm teaching him to read, starting with that. He understands phonics pretty well and can recognize many sight words. He's working on writing.
That's it for now. Until next time...
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