Currencies, Plants, Swans and Friendship

In addition to his interest in precious metals and in metals in general, Jaden has been interested in finding older coins that have silver in them and looking for flaws, knowing if he found any that some silly person out there would actually buy them for hefty prices.  He also sent some U.S. currency to his friend Young (in Kenya), along with some seashells and coral that he'd collected from our trip to the VIs, and he got back some currency from Young last week.  We used a currency converter so that he could understand how their currency compares to ours.  The fifty Kenyan shillings note pictured below currently equals about 59 or 60 US cents.

Ten Kenyan shillings coin, five shillings coin, fifty shillings note, and Kenyan postage stamps (coffee and ground nuts, as they call what we call peanuts)

One of the things we read about in a recent issue of Ranger Rick magazine was whooper swans.  The pictures of the cygnets (baby swans) reminded me immediately of the story of The Ugly Duckling, the story of which is included in one of My Fun With Reading books that I’ve had since I was a little girl.  I remember reading it to Jaden William at least once several years ago but have not read it to the other children.  So after reading about the swans, I read that story to them, too, which ended in a good moral lesson.

L: Cynets in Ranger Rick; R: The cygnet in The Ugly Duckling

It was heartbreaking to read about how the the "ugly duckling" was treated by his supposed mother, siblings, and others on the pond.  So the "duckling" swam away on his own.  He saw some swans one day:

After this he was lonely for many months, getting lost in the woods, being found by a farmer, staying in a shed with corn, and then leaving in the spring and finally coming upon a pond again:

He realized, when he saw his reflection, that he had become a beautiful swan, and he thought back to how the little ducklings had said he was so ugly.  He was not only accepted by the fellow swans in the pond, but he was thought to be the prettiest one of all:

In the end, the "Ugly Duckling" didn't even care how beautiful he appeared on the outside, but he was happy that he had friend who liked him for who he was.  The End. 

When I went out to pull grass and weeds out of the garden, I took updated pictures of some of our plants.  The cucumbers have grown, and everything else has come up.  I didn’t take any pictures of the bibb lettuce, though.  I think I may have accidentally pulled some before I realized what I was doing.  The rain had also washed out many of our squash plants, but some of them germinated elsewhere.  I think we lost half our corn or more.  Anyway, things seem to be fine so far among all the Ozark rocks.

Cucumbers in the upper left (before the surrounding grass was pulled); squash in upper right, pumpkin in lower left; tomato in center; corn in lower right

Jade found some sort of insect larva or a parasite (hoping not the latter) underneath a board that was left lying in the backyard.  It was amongst the many pill bugs (aka roly-polies).  We’re not sure what it is...yet, anyway.

What is this?? 

There are some things I can now say I know what are.  I identified a few more plants (all  lovely wildflowers) last week, some of which I’ve been unsuccessful for years to identify.  I’ll post the info I collect on each of them this week, on next week’s post.  This will be the fourth year since I started our plant binder to identify and collect information on local plants, but the last two years I have not been very serious about it.  We’ve not spent enough time or interest on it, sadly.  This year my interest has been significantly renewed.  I was greatly inspired in many ways recently by reading The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins.  In addition to renewing a more serious interest in our plant project, it’s also renewed an interest in traditional archery, so much so that I am going to sell a gun I have to buy a long bow and some arrows.  Nathan has already been looking at bows for me.  My interest has also seemed to spark renewed interest by both him and Jaden, too.  I’m so excited!  I’m really looking forward to shooting again.  I believe it’s not only a great skill to have, but I think it will be a great outlet to release stress. 

Wildflowers are pictured below.  Stay tuned to learn more about them next week.

Left still unididentified; upper right is Fire pink (Silene virginica); not for certain yet on lower right

Left is yellow pimpernel (Taenidia integerrima)-; upper right is black medic (Medicago lupulina), lower right is Venus' looking glass (Triodanis perfoliata)

Jade took these of me with Liv and Liz

Liv with Ohio spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis)

L: Some bloomed spiderwort; UR: Venus' looking glass; LR: Rough-fruited cinquefoil (Potentilla recta)

Spit and spittle bug in wild grasses (which I hope to finally properly identify this year; looks edible)

Ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgar); ox-eye daisies; daisy fleabane (Erigeron strigosus)

All these I knew prior:  blackberry (Rubus fruticosus), Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria), and black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia triloba)

Butterflies and dragonfly

Until next time...

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