It has been snowing all day. Just a real light snow. The kind where you really have to look to see the flakes as they float and dance to the ground. Right now we are at our daytime high of 29 degrees.
We finally got the deep freezer my parents gave me two weeks ago unloaded from the pickup today. This is the second nonworking deep freeze I have collected for the purpose of storing grain and feed in the barn. Since I put the chicken and rabbit feed in the first one that I got a few months ago (found it on craigslist.org) I have noticed a decrease of birds in the barn. It was a small freezer. This one we unloaded today is a larger freezer that will house the cracked corn and sweet feed. The small one I have now is holding both rabbit and chicken, so I need to find another small one so I can split that feed up. This system is working well to eliminate fee waste. It is also driving the chickens nuts. We have a few hens that in the past liked to spend the entire day in the chicken feed barrel sitting. At least 5 did this, as on the average day we would find 5 eggs in the chicken barrel. Can't blame them, who wouldn't want to sit all day surrounded by food.
The weather forecasters keep predicting an ice storm. We had one light one, and missed two that we were supposed to have gotten. We are about out of firewood (we have probably enough for a six hour long fire), so today we broke down and ordered some. I am getting a cord of oak, split, delivered and stacked for $150. That was not only the closest source, but also by far the cheapest source. Some in our area are wanting up towards $300 for a cord of mixed woods. Had we picked a different wood and went to pick it up, we could have gotten it for a low as $120. But for only $30 more to have oak, and have them deliver and stack it, it is worth it.
I had someone ask me what type of curriculum we use in our homeschooling. We actually use several. Our math is Saxon. Health, Science and Language are Abekka. For history we do a lot of history channel, free reading and some Abeka. Reading comprehension is from Instructional Fair. Our free reading and videos come from our rather large personal library and also from the Mid Continent Library.
We suppliment a lot with video and books. We are about to finish a unit on Pearl Harbour. We do have an old public school history book that I use as a guide, but it only devoted 2 pages to Pearl Harbour. So, in addition, we checked out videos from the library and a few books to go along with the books from our library.
In addition, we have several on going projects. Each girl has an "animal notebook" that she is making. Each week they are to add at least one new animal to their book and insert it under the proper classification in the animal kingdom. We also watch the weather and are making a weather station. We have taken storm tracker classes as part of our weather study. Each girl also has a voculabory book, and daily they have to look up their word, write the defination, and use the word in a sentence.
Often we overlap studies. In our *reading comprehension we may read a story about lake Superior. If that fits in with our social studies or history, we will use that one assignment for both history or social studies and our reading.
*Reading Comprehension is where we read a non fictional story or article and then take a short quiz at the end.
Of course we also supliment with homeschool classes at the library and with the internet. There are lots of free worksheets and such on line.
2 comments:
Are you liking Saxon math? I just had someone recommend that I look into it.
We love saxon math. Right now the twins are using Saxon 54 (for 5th and 4th grades, in one book) and Emily is using and almost done with 65. She has 1 more chapter and then will start 76.
The books constantly throw review work at them. They may be learning fractions, but have a problem on telling time or numeric patterns or division.
There are some CD's now, but I have not gotten any yet, but am keeping my eye out for some on ebay.
I plan to keep using the saxon, but am also going to have each of the girls go through another math book I have, called "Life Skills Math". It deals with every day math in a more practical way, such a balancing a checkbook, doubling a recipe, determining how much carpet is needed for a room, credit cards, loans and interest rates. It tells them more or less why they need to know these things.
So, starting in January, we will be doing "double math", one lesson from each book.
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