We do school work around here

We have our school time daily, but often I only post about the fun stuff or the outdoor time we have, so without further ado..... A History salt map of Israel's divided kingdoms

Gluing the map to cardboard.

Mix the salt dough.... 1 cup salt, 1 cup white flour(a good use for white flour) and water until a mud consistency.

See that stack of chex and other various goodies? We made Chex mix today (reading and math)

Onlooking sisters, everyone in this family wears a hat but me.

Mixing the three colors needed... blue for the seas and rivers, green for Israel and orange for Judah, the divided kingdoms. This is one reason I love homeschooling, I can teach Biblical history.

Getting it all in place.

A finished map to be set aside to dry before labeling.

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

Finally a signature repair

It took me a few attempts but I got that signature and everything else in the correct place, I think.  I have a request, three weeks ago my husband was rear ended on his way to work. (It was -46 degrees and very ice foggy) My husband was given a citation, yes, I know he was rear ended but that is a whole other story.  I just have not felt at peace to share this information until today. Please pray for wisdom for us, my husband will be going to court in March as he will not plead guilty and just pay the fine, he is not that way. Also, pray for us as the insurance companies make decisions. Also, please pray that this gentleman will not seek to gain undue financial monies,i.e. a lawsuit, or any other false medical claims, in other words, pray that he will be truthful in all things. Also, we finally received a copy of the police report and the police officer had about three facts about the accident wrong. I have faith that all will come out as it should in the end but I have very little comfort about the law enforcement in our area at this time.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Feb. 26, 2008 - Composting in Alaska

As some of you may or may not know, we have a little challenge with everything we do here in Alaska. I am very interested in composting to amend our garden soil, cheap and very effective, right up my alley. I had an idea abou a month or so ago that I would keep all of our food scraps, egg shells, etc. in a 5 gallon bucket with a lid and then when garden rototilling time comes we can get it into the garden and let the rototiller finish breaking it down a little. Will it work? I have no idea! There is a lady here locally that writes gardening articles in the Sunday newspaper and I noticed a couple of weeks ago that she has started for the season, so maybe she will address composting soon. The stuff that is already in the bucket is beginning to decompose. I also plan to keep a pile cooking in the yard all summer using yard clippings and black plastic. I will continue to study and find any more effective methods of amending our soil. I do have to say that I am a cheapo gardener. Thus the evidence of an unlandscaped yard, coupled with the fact that my husband does not enjoy landscaping but he does like to grow a garden.I am slowly enlarging and landscaping the beds at the front of our home and I plan to do it myself which means lots of me digging with a shovel. I may finish those beds by the year 2038. Plus, I only buy half off perinneals at the end of the season when I can find them. The rest I grab from all the wild perinneals surrounding our yard. I am not posting a picture of my yucky bucket but I will keep posting on this little nature project of mine as time progresses.

Beauty in the every day

For those of you who have young and emerging readers, I came across Jan Brett's printable dolch word lists. These are the word lists with Jan Brett's beautiful art work on the page. These would be so cute printed on cardstock and laminated and put in  a notebook.

Just thought I would share.

May the Lord find us faithful.

If you can make any sense of this post, you must know me very well

I have to admit that art is one subject I have a difficult time putting on the schedule. I really don't know why this is so but it is. (I also do not do science experiments very well either) Enough confessions here.  A very dear, experienced homeschool mom friend of mine suggested Art Adventures at Home when I questioned her about art for my blesings.  I filed that information in the back of my mind and went on with life. Last spring I found Level 1 and 2 at the used curriculum fair, I was thrilled. I love a good deal (We found quite a bit of clearance clothes tonight with an extra 70% off the lowest price). Wow, I am very babbly tonight and very choppy, sorry.

I decided to schedule art for Thursday afternoons since it is the last day of our school week. This week's lesson was to have the student gather five of their favorite belongings and then pick the one that is their favorite and draw that item large and draw the other items smaller, thus learning to make the most important item in their picture the largest. Here is our little art lesson.

 

This is her blanket. Pa-Pa, this one has a rip in it now, remember her blanket that she loved that was K's? I only have a shred of it left in her baby box.

I thought this was interesting, I walked past this outside one day this week. When I was uploading pictures tonight I found out that blessing #3 did this.

Here is picture of my open window from one day this week. What a wonderful week it was with windows open and the wood stove going to keep the house extra warm and a little solar gain thrown in there as well. Fresh air was wonderful. It has cooled down a little this weekend but it is still above zero.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Friday

I have no pictures in my photobucket account that have not been posted so I am at a loss as to what to post. Sweetheart and blessing #1 have gone somewhere to get some firewood and the girls and I are home and we have had a way too lazy morning. I am not going to fret though because we rarely have these mornings and generally when we do I accomplish far more the rest of the day because of a little unexpected down time.

I was able to go to Bible Study last night and was blessed greatly by the study. I was also blessed because of the attendance. I am generally not able to attend every month so I was thrilled at the ladies that are attending this year's study. I look forward to see what this year has to hold for us all.

May the Lord find us faithful.

All this talk of Mother Culture...

...is just what I have needed.  (Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival) I am working through Home Education for a little while now (I read volume 6 first) and I have been amazed at how comprehensive her teachings are.  More on that later.

Now to the purpose of this post. I spent some time outside playing with my blessings. Well, okay, I took them sledding at the gravel pit by our house and I took pictures. But....

1. They could not have gone sledding if I had not gone out, too far away.


2. I got some exercise and fresh air.


3. It was about 30 above and I needed to get out side as well.

Now for the pictures.

The climb, it was two steps forward, slid back a little.

Then, one blessing figured out that the sled could help make climbing a little easier.

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

-I wore my black bunny boots.

Now our gear is drying by the wood stove and I can't say we are as it just wasn't that cold and we did not get chilled.

Looking, searching, planning

As I look around the world, the less I want to be a part of it. There are so many things that are "out there" that I do not want to try, see or even know about. My husband says I live in a small world here at home and I gladly live here.

Just take last night, we went to Fred Meyer (walmart supercenter with better quality clothing and furniture) to look at the clearance clothing (which is take an extra 60%off clearance prices). Oh,my! How awful the clothing is for boys and girls. I have always been a bit pick as to what my blessings wear. No character clothing, minus a few winnie-the-pooh exceptions here and there. I have other criteria but I won't go into that right now. I have a boy blessing age 9 who is very skinny and sometimes still wears an 8 in things but some larger sizes are fitting into his wardrobe, a girl, 7, also very thin and wears a seven in most things and a 6 year old blessing who is not skinny but not chunky either, she is like baby bear's bed, just right! That puts us in a horrible clothing arena, I only found one spring/summer/fall athletic style jacket for blessing #2 (7) and a hand full of shirts and the like for blessing #1. The clothing choices were pathetic. Thankfully, I can sew for the girls and I see more of that in my/our future. I guess I will have to be a more frequent shopper. I have just really began shopping in earnest for my blessings as when they were younger I had lots of hand me downs passed on but that slows as the years go by and the amount of clothing sent from relatives slows down as well. There are decent clothes out there I know, I just need to find them. But I have passed on my "pickyness" to blessing #2 and she is very particular about what she wears and it is all good and fine by me as it fits into my same particulars.

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

Valentine's Day

I hope you all had an enjoyable Valentine's Day, we started with opening our Valentines from each other then on to heart shaped pancakes and proceeded with school work as normal.

Sweetheart came home with these for me. I love this color of rose!

He brought cards for all of us and candy for the blessings.

I made a fantastic dinner of moose tenderloin with bodacious butter(that was yummy), loaded baked potatoes, salad, rolls and hershey kiss shaped rice krispie treats. Sweetheart and I really enjoyed that meal.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Daddy's brithday

I have just not taken much time to post this week. No real reason, just my mind has been elsewhere. I did not even turn the computer on at all on Wednesday.

We had a fun day last Friday with Daddy's birthday, he had a  homemade football cake (I had to get a little more milage out of that football cake pan I bought for blessing #1's birthday this summer.)

We played a lot of games, it was about -35 to -40 all day so we were pretty much in all day. Clue was a Christmas present for blessing #2 and it is just about everyone's favorite game right now.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Feb. 15, 2008 - More on Ravens

Ravens are very common here, in fact, our blessings call them black trash bags. They frequent store parking lots, where there is always plenty of trash(especially trash trucks that just through trash in the back of the truck and drive around with it for a while before taking it to the dump, and also road kill sites, and anywhere else there is edible debris. Manly, they are the garbage disposals of the area. I guess someone has got to do it.

From grain to bread and air flow

I received a much waited for gift for Christmas this year, this grain mill. (Thank you Mom)

 

Here is the grain (Prairie Gold)

Freshly milled flour

Rising and almost ready for the oven, these loaves have ground flax seed added

That is the last picture in the process. I guess when these loaves came out of the oven I had moved on to something else and forgot about more pictures.

Now for a little science, we are using Apologia Elementary Science Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day and we had an experiment to learn about air flow/bird wings, etc. Here are the pictures.

It took a few tries to get the angle correct but they got it and soon water was coming up out of the straw that was in the water (and all over the table and dining room/computer room/music room/sewing room (that is one busy room)).

I know, I know, I said in the Thursday post I would post pictures from sweetheart's birthday, the camera has yet to be emptied of pictures and we have just had "bigger fish to fry" this weekend. So, maybe soon. These pictures were already downloaded and waiting to be posted.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Do you see my temperature?

We warmed up overnight!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yahoo!!!!!!!!!!!!! The blessings and I will get to go outside today and we will all enjoy every minute of that.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Blogger Friend School #13 Meet my Bible

1. 
   
   
   
   1. How old is your Bible?  I am only going to choose one here, I have many. This Bible is about 10 years old
   
   
   2. Why did you chose this Bible? Recommended by my then Pastor's wife
   
   
   3. Do you highlight/mark passages in your Bible? Yes
   
   
   4. If so, what is your system for marking passages? There really isn't one, I do have a few marked specifically with explainations in the front
   
   
   5. Do you have notebooks to record things? Yes
   
   
   6. If so, how many and what do you record? One for Bible reading notes and prayer requests. I have one I carry to church to take notes.
   
   
   7. Where is your favourite spot to read your Bible? My chair in the family room
   
   
   8. Are there any special thoughts about your Bible you want to share?  This Bible is well used and falling apart so I keep it at home for my daily Bible reading. This is the Bible I began using when we started attending the church we are in now. (Before that time I was backsliden and apathetic, ya know,  just not serving the Lord, living for self, etc. I don't ever want to go there again. It is an empty place.)Therefore it is marked from many Sunday School lesson verses taught by Aunt Sue, who taught me to study my Bible and know the Word for myself. So, it is very dear to me as she is no longer teaching Sunday School.  I would love to have at least two more of these Bibles over the years to mark up and to be able to leave a well worn marked up Bible for each of my blessings to have.
      
   
   
   
   
   

   Hop on over to Nancy's Nook to pick up your assignment and post to Mr. Linky, class is back in session!!
   

   
   
   

May the Lord find us faithful.

Four days of waking up to -45 degrees...

made me none too anxious for school work, so if I feel that way, the blessings must feel the same way!!!! They didn't complain. BUT, in an uschooling kind of way, learning occurred. There was math, reading, writing, and spelling going on here today. Tomorrow is Daddy's birthday so we had to get ready.

Our woodstove is in the family room so when it stays cold this long we eat in the family room instead of our normal eating all meals in the dining room. We started by watching Tom Sawyer on TCM while eating breakfast.

Blessing number three does not like that genre of movie so she went into the cooler dining room after eating breakfast (only 69 degrees as opposed to the 77 deg. of the family room) for a math computer game.

Next, after Mom got herself ready for the day we moved on to card finishing,

Look at this outfit, purple pants, pink shirt, pink gun and green cabela's hat... she chose that one for sure.

After the card mess was cleaned up we moved on to preparing decorations. All the blessings mastered balloon blowing today!! (Science?)

I thought I would share this plate rack in my dining room. I purschased it years ago to use it as an art display. The same art has been in these frames the whole time. I now have a few pieces of replacement art and will get it into the frames next week.

We made a cake but all hands were busy with helping and no one took any pictures. Blessing number 1 did 90% of the cake making, I just made sure the measurements were correct and poured into the football pan.

More pictures tomorrow. Dad is getting a full on birthday day just like the blessings get. He has requested a big southern breakfast (his favorite) and moose burgers for dinner. The blessings chose his birthday theme of football so he did not get any choice there. He has also requested playing games, which has become our almost nightly pasttime this past month. Clue and Dutch Blitz have been the most played games.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Quiet around here

It has been quiet here at my blog this week, maybe I just needed the quiet. Please pray for us over the next couple of weeks, we have some things going on that I just don't feel like sharing, so please just pray, the Lord knows what it is.

Now, here is an Alaska show and tell type picture. (My apologies to those who live here or have lived here, but inquiring lower 48 minds want to know!)

What is this?

It is a bunny boot. My husband has worn these for 18 years and they are his favorite. He does not get cold feet even at cold temps. Of course if he is outside at -40 degrees, he isn't standing around, he is moving. It was difficult to find a good link to refer to these boots. As you can tell, these are well used boots for him. I have a black pair but the black ones are not as "good" as the white ones for some reason. But they are good enough for my, I am a hibernator when it is extremely cold, but they are great for slipping on if I do need to go outside or for when we snowmachine. When it is extremely cold I slip them on to ride to and from church with no socks, just my hose.

I had some one ask me a while back when we had a cold snap (and I am reminded because we are smack in the middle of another one) if we go to church when it is -40 or colder, my answer, yes. If my husband is home we go to church no matter what. If he is not home(sometimes he has to work on Wednesday evenings)  the blessings and I stay home at -30 degrees or colder. We do not plug in our van while at church, it simply isn't a long enough time to need to plug in. For us the only reason we do not attend church services is if some one is sick and then there is some one from our family who goes, one of us stays home with the sick or one of us is sick and the rest go to church. I have never had my children as me if we were going back to church on a Sunday evening or Wednesday night. In fact, if we have to miss due to sweetheart working and the temp. is lower than our cut off, or they are sick, they are not happy, they want to go to church.

May the Lord find us faithful.

• Feb. 7, 2008 - Ants and a Raven

Well, the cold is lingering longer than I would like and we were getting weather reports that the weather would improve Friday or Saturday but now I think that has changed.

Update on the ants... one escaped and I paniced and threw them away. Most of them had perished by that time. They did finally eat the spinach but I feel we were not providing them with the best living conditions and it was for the best.

Today's nature viewing was this, A common raven corvus corax . Alaska department of fish and game has a really good notebook series, that I purchased years ago as a set (before we even owned a computer and could access this type of information or even had blessings.)
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Corvidae
Genus: Corvus
Species: Corvus corax

January2008123.jpg picture by kaysmarmey

This picture is of our dog attempting to make the raven go away, the raven was not intimidated.

January2008124.jpg picture by kaysmarmey

Blog Carnival

 

The Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival "Love"liness Edition is up, go check it out.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Tuesday, I am posting finally!

I have gotten a couple of emails that have "hinted" to the fact that I need to post. So, here it is. I was busy all day yesterday with getting back on track from the weekend (aka. a little house clean up), school and making meals to take to some who need meals from our church.  Then we were gone all evening delivering meals and we had a couple of errands that needed to be done while we were in "town". Plus I went to bed early last night and slept a long ten hours! I was amazed when I woke up. One question, why is it that I have a tough time waking up? I always have, even after ten hours I have  a tough time waking up. I still pushed snooze this morning (which went off at the 9 1/2 hour mark) now, I should have woke up easily. Easy waking up never happens for me. I have to lay there for a while before I can get up. My sweetheart just sits up and gets out of bed, he also falls asleep in about 15 seconds!  At least I can sleep, some have a rough time doing that. Let's move on....

This weekend was fairly uneventful. We will take that and enjoy it.  I did get a little more reorganization work accomplished in a couple of areas, still more to do but it will happen. I rarely have time to complete this during the week and use Friday and Saturday for this type of work.

Sunday was Church and Super Bowl, then back to Church. We were glad New York won, if nothing more for moral and ethical reasons.

Hopefully tomorrow I will have a better post prepared. Oh, is my crock pot working, you bet. I had salmon quiche on the menu but that did not work for me today, so we are having soup, which is cooking away in the crock pot. Then tonight I am going to put some moose ribs into the crock pot for tomorrow's dinner. We found out that they need a longer cooking time for the best taste. Can you believe that in all these years we have never eated moose ribs? We ground the meat for burger. We had someone tell us they were good so we tried it once, so far so good. This will only be our second attempt. The ribs are out in the -30 freezer.

It has been cold and I have been in cold mode, just wanting to stay by the fire (especially today, actually 10 hours of sleep is too much for me and I am feeling the consequences today). I must go do some laundry so I must  get moving.

May the Lord find us faithful.