Unleavened Bread, Gardening, Nature, and More

Well, I got behind again, because our computer was in the repair store for over two weeks!  This post will have a lot of pictures.  It's hard to narrow them down, and even so there are still quite a few.

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:

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:

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):

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.

Young cucumber plants

Some pictures during one of our walks:

Some sort of growths on the leaves, not yet determined

Wildflowers!

Scenery on our walk, including neighbor's horses

Eastern tent caterpillars

Nathan and Jade found an interesting flower during a walk they took in the woods:

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.

Jaden also reorganized his tool bag.  It was a disastrous mess!

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).

Jade with A/Cs and scrap metal

Jade with coils

Copper

Jade also recently planted some wheat:

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.

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:

Check out the eyes on this wolf spider

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:

Usborne has some good books

My momma gave me some wildflower seeds to plant:

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.

He's deeply concentrating

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...

Outdoor Discoveries, Trusten's Reading and Writing Prep

I'd saved where I'd worked on my last post, and the way I'd left it gave me trouble with adding more, so I just published it, and now I'm starting a new post.

Some other highlights of the last few months:

A Slight Flood...

Jade and Liv at top, then all three below after the water greatly increased

Nature Discoveries...

Butterflies loving my lilac bush

Jade with a tiger swallowtail butterfly, a salamander, inspecting caterpillar nest, climbing deer stand

More butterflies in our yard; Nathan holding a grass snake rescued from the cats

Some of Jaden's Latest Projects...

Jaden took apart the iron that stopped working.  He always enjoys taking apart things, trying to diagnose the problem(s), and keeping things he thinks he might can use for other applications.  He also sets aside recyclable things and adds them to our stuff to take to be recycled.

We read about ancient Egypt and clay-and-straw bricks.  He loves working with clay and so enjoyed making another clay and grass brick, but he left it in an unwise location, so on two separate occasions Trust and Liv (different one each time) messed with his brick.  I took a picture of it the way it was before it was completely ruined.  As for the hole in the center, that was intentional by Jaden, because he said he wanted a brick that he could fill with mortar. 

I was very pleased that he finished making a compost box for me.  He's so sweet!  He used materials Nathan let him have, left over from his own projects.  Some of that is just paneling that was left over from when Nathan put new paneling up in parts of the house.  Considering, I think Jade did a great job!  He started to paint it, but he said that Nathan told him he was afraid he wouldn't have enough paint left to finish painting the storage building if he painted the compost box.  Jade also hauled it himself beyond the yard to where I normally throw out scraps.

Trusten's Prep to Read and Write...

 Trusten has started the books preparing him for Explode the Code.  I used Explode the Code with William and loved it, but he did not do the Get Ready, Get Set, and Go books (A, B, and C) that I bought for Trusten.  Trusten is on the first book, book A, right now.  It works on phonics and letter-writing.

Well, believe it or not, Trusten doesn't always make faces like the one above.  As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure why it looks as if he's angry in that picture, because he seemed content.  He'd just finished making the 'f' sound and saying the name of the picture he is pictured circling.  Sometimes, though, he really does get mad about his work.  He does a good job sounding things out, circling the right pictures, etc., but he is frustrated about writing most letters.  


No Child Left Behind...

Olivia naturally wants to do what the boys are doing.  She has scribbled countless times in Jaden's workbooks he's left lying open unattended. When it's time for Trusten to do his work, I  normally give her a piece of paper and a pencil so that she can free-scribble, but on this day she wanted to cut.

Well, I'll probably leave my catch-up updating at this.  I'll try better to keep up with it now.  

Until next time...

Virgin Islands Trip

It's been over three months since I've updated, and in order to catch up I have narrowed down my selection of pictures, made several collages, and I will summarily update with as few words as possible and will probably still leave out things I would liked to have shared with everyone reading this.  Things have been so busy that I've not updated as I would have liked.  I've gotten a lot done over the past three months, though!

I was behind on putting pictures in albums all the way back to the end of 2008.  I used Shutterfly photo books for 2010-2011 (two books for the latter) and separate photo books for our Tabernacles trip to the Yellowstone area and this year's trip to the Virgin Islands.  I filled what was left in my last album, too, and the pictures I'd printed forever ago for 2009 are the only ones I have left to catch up on.  I also am in the process of catching up on the children's baby books.  I've planted some seeds for our garden (not finished with this, though) and more!

Nathan is nearly finished with a new chicken house so that we can get chickens again.  He's been super busy with his business, but he's been working on things like this when he gets a chance.

Jaden has had new art classes.  This spring he chose a mosaics class.  He's had two sessions and has two left.  There are only two other children--both boys half a year older than he--in his class, and I arrived early to pick him up this week, and I realized he wasn't dumb-acting sometimes as I thought he was compared to others.

I've also been busy taking Elizabeth, now 3.5 months old, to the chiropractor weekly for various adjustments, including cranial therapy.  She has a condition known as congenital muscular torticollis, which has also led to a mild case of positional plagiocephaly.  Basically she has a tight neck muscle caused from injury while positioned wrongly in the womb and/or birth.  She doesn't turn her head to the left, and it's caused slight flattening on the back of the right side of her head.  She is set to have an evaluation soon with a physical therapist so that she can start physical therapy which will stretch the muscle.  We're hoping this will correct the problem to avoid surgery, which is necessary in a minority of cases.

We took a family trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands--St. Thomas and St. John.  Our friend Casey also accompanied us.  Nathan and I went alone last year (while I was pregnant with Elizabeth).  It was a fun trip for us all, but it was also a very educating experience for the kids.  They learned about airport and security operations, more about airplanes, different traffic set-up in different places (they drive on the left side of the road there), many different species of plants and animals they've never seen, seeing and swimming in the ocean for the first time, and so much more.  Here are some pics:

Iguanas, American kestrel, banaquits, white-cheeked pintails (ducks), sea stars and sea cucumber

Coconut palms, Reef Bay on St. John, termite nest, sea plant, Christmas palm, rainbow

Jaden and Trusten with coconuts, Nathan and kids in ocean, Liz on my lap

Reef Bay sugar mill ruins

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crab and its tracks and the hole it was digging; cruise ship docked

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Updates--History, Tintin, Walks

So much to say, so little time...

Quick updates on the kids:

Jade:  He's almost finished with Gr. 3 grammar and would be already if I hadn't cut out nearly two months because of late pregnancy and early postpartum.  He's doing well on his spelling, is about to transition to cursive in handwriting about three or four weeks from now, is about to start on his regular Horizons math lessons again (since I finally went through with him all his math word problems he'd done on his own for awhile, some of which he got right, some almost right, and some undone which we did together), is enjoying daily devotionals, science lessons, and history lessons.  He bought more Hardy Boys books and a Tintin video game.  Did I mention before that Nathan took the boys to see the Tintin movie back in December?  Well, he did.  Jade's already read some of the Tintin books a second time.  I wonder sometimes whether he's too obsessed with Tintin.  I had worked up some reward dollars with Timberdoodle, so yesterday I ordered Gr. 4 grammar for Jade, and I had enough left to buy one graphic novel.  The latter is a surprise for him.

He got his bird house back, finished:

He made a pretty surprise rock craft for me:

In history we read about Stonehenge, the early Egyptians, and the Minoans.  Jade found some rocks that looked good to make his own Stonehenge look-alike, but he said it was harder to actually put together than it looked.  He couldn't get any glue to hold the stuff together well enough, so he did something slightly different.  I also wrapped him like a mummy, and he labeled a map in the Greece area where the Minoans lived.  We steeped some tea and dipped the map in it and used a lighter on it after it dried to try to make it look aged.  It didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped it would, but I think he had fun doing it anyway.

 He's been helping with many things as usual.  We went on a trip to the post office last week, and I couldn't roll my window or the window behind me down, and Jade said it must be a fuse.  Well, when I went into the post office he got out and went around and opened my fuse box and had the problem fixed by the time I got back out.  I started the Sub and pressed the window buttons, and they worked!  I love that boy!  Then one whole day and night and part of the next day Nathan was gone, because he had to go do some work for his dad, and Jade is the one who built a fire and kept it going for us so that we'd stay warm.  He's also helping Nathan build a new chicken house and work on some other projects.

Trusten:  He's doing a great job learning phonics and sight words.  He excitedly points to words he knows and tells me what they are.  He also is doing well as far as his tracing is concerned.  He's done mazes, circles, and squares recently.  I plan to soon teach him how to play some Funschool games online.  Jade was playing computer games much earlier than this.

Olivia:  She is so smart, perhaps too smart for her britches in some ways.  She seems to possess good problem-solving abilities.  Now as far as some other things are concerned, it's currently funny.  For example, a few nights ago Nathan and I were talking about chickens, and she roared like some sort of carnivore, and I laughed so hard.  I told her chickens did not make that noise and asked Nathan to make proper chicken sounds for her.  I'm excited, because I think we are truly going to get chickens again this spring.  It has been three years!  Nathan says we're going to get turkeys, too.  Anyway, I'm wondering how well Liv knows the alphabet, because I've not actively been teaching her, but she apparently recognizes at least some letters.  She likes the magnet letters on the refrigerator, and an example is last night, she picked up a lowercase 'y' off the living room floor, and said it was a 'y.'  I talk about colors a lot.  Like I normally do, the main way I use to teach colors is just talk about colors throughout the day, like, "Your shirt today is pink.  Look, I'm wearing some pink, too, right here.  That letter is green.  This pillow is brown."

Elizabeth:  Well, who knows what all is going on in her brain right now, but she sure likes to eat a lot of brain-healthy breast milk!  :-)

A picture before my first walk with all four of my precious babies...should have been a little more in the shade of the tree:

I'd regretted not taking my camera (and knew I would) on our first walk.  Everything is so beautiful around here, even in the winter.  For our second walk, I decided to take the camera.  You can see how busy the older three children stay during our walk.  It's not just walking.  It's exploring, climbing, running, digging, etc.  And what a beautiful walk!

The kids have spent a lot of time lately in the creek in our front yard, Jade busting away at the dirt with a rock hammer and finding all sorts of things:

I couldn't resist not taking some pictures of Jaden and Olivia early one morning (before Liv was dressed) of them together in the computer chair.  Jade was reading a book, and Liv wanted to snuggle up next to him and get him to spin the chair around.  So there they sat, Jade spinning the chair with his feet for Liv while he read his book.

Oh, I have so many wonderful pictures, but I can't post them all on this blog.  One more, a picture of Olivia and Elizabeth:

Oh, wait, one more thing to share!  Our friend Casey gave us a strange stone probably a year and a half ago.  He found it in his yard.  We've wondered off and on what it could be.  It looks like a petrified something.  It almost looks like a peach pit to me.  Casey said it looks like a rose, and it does.  Anyway, a few weeks ago Jade and I were looking at it again, and he said he wondered what it was, and I said I didn't know, but it did look like a rose.  Well, after I said that, he ran to get his rock guide and said he knew what it was.  It's a form of barite called desert rose!  Wow, finally the mystery is solved!

Our rock is placed on the page beside the book's picture

Until next time...

New Baby, Owls, and Ancient Sumerians

I had started this post two days ago, exactly one month since my last post, but I lost it, though I thought it was saved.  After my last post I dropped Jaden's book work down to only his 5-day-a-week handwriting and two pages almost-daily out of his math Daily Word Problems book, then later the latter was also dropped.  His work around the house increased, though, in order to give me a rest.

We stopped our almost-daily walks together, but I started walking by myself; the kids stayed at home with Nathan.  My walking stopped, though, six days before the baby was born, because I fell and hurt my knee when I was nearly home that day.

I continued reading to the kids most days.  I read to them their daily devotionals from Bible Study Planet, except on the days I didn't approve the overall message (which is rare), a chapter from Proverbs, their nature magazines, and Weekly Readers.

One of the things we studied was owls.  We've read about a few different types of owls in their magazines over time, but last month we learned about snowy owls:

I read aloud about different kinds of owls in one of our encyclopedias and showed them pictures, and I made a playlist of owl Youtube videos for them to watch while I folded laundry, including some fun ones…I always throw in something animated, preferably a moral tale or a song.

The featured treat for the month in Big Backyard was of snowy owls. I changed up the ingredients only slightly.  I made them owl treats with apple cinnamon rice cakes, melted marshmallows (b/c marshmallow cream was unavailable), peanut butter, raisins, and blood orange-flavored hard candies (I substituted the latter with banana slices for Liv's, not pictured):

Jaden's, w/o peanut butter (Oops!  Sorry about the camera strap!)

Trusten's, w/ peanut butter

We concluded our owl study by dissecting owl pellets, which are balls of hair and bones that owls hack up after eating their prey.  We could tell the "pellets" we dissected were mice:

Loupes, owl pellets, and nitrile gloves

Jade carefully inspecting the outside of a pellet with a loupe

Mouse bones!

Skull is still whole, along with the teeth

Mouse teeth still attached to the skull

Stinky!  I commented to the kids that it was a real lesson in how brutal things were in the wild and reminded them that animals will not behave that way when God's Kingdom is established on this earth.  Owls will eat plants then.

 Six days after I injured my knee (thankful I had somewhat of a healing time), I gave birth to my fifth-born child, my second girl—Elizabeth Annmarie.  Jaden, Trusten, and Olivia all love her very much!  She's a sweet little blessing.  So far she has seemed more like Jaden William as a baby (or Asher, as he was also pleasant) than last two.  Here are a couple pictures of her:

Elizabeth, two days old

Elizabeth, nine days old

Before Elizabeth was born, we read about the Tower of Babel in a Mystery of History lesson.  We looked at ziggurats on Google Images, and he built one of his own with wooden blocks.  Since she was born we've picked back up on history and read about the ancient Sumerians and the Epic of Gilgamesh.  When Jaden is a bit older I'll allow him to read or listen to that Babylonian story.  It has been just over a year since Nathan and I listened to the entire epic on Youtube.  What a strange tale!  There were some things that I found would be inappropriate for Jade at his age.  Of course, I guess some would say the same thing of some things in the holy scriptures, but the wording of the things (sexual content) in Gilgamesh I don't like for an eight-year-old. 

We read about the Sumerians' written language—cuneiform.  I encouraged Jaden to write real cuneiform symbols in clay, but Jade did his own made-up written language on a small clay piece he made (from clay he found outside and then dried afterward to keep; he didn't want to use modeling clay):

I also reminded him of the time he wrote his name William in Chinese.  We then went to Google Images and looked at cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Korean, Hebrew, Greek, Telugu, Arabic, and perhaps some other non-Roman-alphabet languages that I can't recall.  I reminded him of the bible study articles I've written that our brother Manasseh in India has had translated into Telugu to distribute throughout his region in India.  Manasseh sent some copies once, one of which I gave to Jaden to keep:

Manasseh has also sent us newspaper clippings in Telugu:

I finally explained to Jaden that all languages evolve as well, and our Modern English has changed from Middle English, Old English, etc.  I showed him what English looked like exactly four-hundred years ago by pulling our copy of the 1611 Edition of the King James Bible…

…and opened it to compare the chapter in Proverbs we had just read from the modern King James bible.  The u's were v's and the v's u's, the s's were f's, there are more e's on the ends of words and doubles of many other letters, etc. and I also pointed out that their chapter headings were done in Roman numerals, rather than Arabic numerals:

I'm now easing back into our [new] normal routine, and I'll soon have more to report about all the three oldest children, but this is it for now, except a couple fun shots of Olivia in her new dress-up dress that my momma got for her (and her play silk that I got for her a quite some time ago):

Until next time...