Home Schooling This year

A new homeschooling year is about to begin, and once again, I seem to be behind on scheduling and deciding what we will be doing. I started a couple months ago by talking to a friend of mine, but as soon as I start to pull things out to look them over , I get "distracted" and find myself somewhere else not even close to where I started. I know I am easily distracted so it takes an extra effort to get me back on track, which is, hopefully, what I will try to accomplish over the next week or so. Since  I am not a very good schedule person,  I have to try harder to be better, but it just eludes me most of the time. 

One of the bigger decisions I will be making this year, is what time will I start. I have found that there are no hard fast rules for this, which means if you want to start in the morning great, if you would rather start in the afternoon, that's okay also. I'm pretty sure we will start sometime in the morning, because by the time afternoon rolls around, no one really wants to do anything anyway. Well, actually, they don't really seem to want to do anything at anytime, but that is besides the point, because they ARE going to do something if I have to tie them to the chairs :)

This is how our typical morning goes:

Me: Time to get up kids, we have chores and things to get done!

15 minutes later...

Me: Come on kids, it REALLY is time to get out of bed, I know its cold, but we still have things to get done today...

15 minutes later.....

Me: Come on guys, don't make me come in there again....

15 minutes later.....

Me: That is it!!! I'm bringing in the water gun if you guys don't get out of bed right now!!!!!!

15 minutes later....

And it goes on and on for about an hour or so...

I am thinking I may need to find another way to get them up...

As I said before, I had a couple discussions with a friend about it, and she gave me some good ideas for my homeschool plan. The first thing I did was, ask the kids what they would like to learn about this year. BIG MISTAKE! My children of course said "OH man, we have to have school this year???" To which I replied, YES, whether you like it or not! After several minutes of debating this point they all concluded that they would like to learn a foreign language. I found a really cool FREE online language course that they could all do, however they all managed to pick different languages, go figure. We will just have to wait and see how that one goes.

Here is the link for the free online language course. They have French, Italian, German and Spanish.  BBC Steps Languages

Well, that's about it really, we have Bible, Chemistry, American History, Math,  and Geography all planned, and I use that term loosely,  with a little bit of a twist to each one, since I recently discovered these things called "Lap Books".  I have all the materials for these, so they will definitely be in the mix this year, and I think the kids will like doing them.

And here is some information on Lap Books: Lap Book Information 

There were over 450,000 hits on Google for Lap Books, I just picked one.

So this is my home-school schedule, subject to change without a moments notice, because I am, after all, a women:)

Happy Fourth Of July From Idaho

This year we were invited to celebrate Independence Day with several other families from our church. Now usually when you think of a church outing you would think nice, mellow people, everyone relaxing, kids playing quietly, maybe some hymn music playing in the background. Not so with our little group of party goers! The email I received stated this:

Happy 4th of July,

Just a couple of things in preparation for our celebration this afternoon. 

1. Parking... please drive on in to the house, unload, and then either you, I or John will take your vehicle back up the hill and park on the taxiway.  The trail down to the house has been trimmed, so its not quite like a jungle.  Consider it your very infrequent opportunity to enjoy valet parking .
2. We intend on celebrating our liberty by exercising our 2nd amendment rights to own and bear arms.  We will have a range of sorts set up away from things... so bring your firearms that you are itching to shoot... ammo would be good too.
3. Fireworks.  Feel free to bring fireworks if you would like.  When it is about dark we will restrain the children... with force if necessary... and combine our forces for a firework show!!

We look forward to celebrating with you!!

Soooo, with these guidelines in mind, we loaded the Suburban and went on our way to what was sure to be an awesome party, loaded with food and fun. Instead of writing about it though,  I am piling on the pictures and yes, some videos of the action. Hope everyone had a great 4th, I know we did

And then, let the shooting begin!

And then there were fireworks, nothing like a little total chaos to end the day !

The children ran around lighting everything they could get their hands on.

I have lots and lots of pictures of the action and want to thank the 

Primers for having us out to celebrate with them, and on that note,

Happy Independence Day America !!!!!

P.S. I will be uploading videos to Facebook in the near future so keep and eye for that!

The Saga of The Never-ending Project.....Part 1

Ever feel like what should have been a quick and easy project has turned into something else?? Well thats whats been going on at my house for the past couple months. In March, despite several warnings that "goats can read", we decided to take the giant leap of buying meat goats and chickens to help supplement our normal food shopping. I mean really, with hamburger going over 3 bucks a pound and a dozen eggs topping out at 2 dollars , it only makes sense to try and be more self-sufficient in someway, why not meat and eggs? Our intentions were of course pure, provide for our family, reduce our monthly food costs, eat healthier, all good principles, principles worth exploring. So, first things first. As with any animal project, you should make sure you have shelter and a fenced in area, after all, these animals will be providing you with food, they should have proper homes. Everyone tried their hand at ideas for the new goat pen and chicken hutch and in a short amount of time we had enough designs to begin implementing our building plans. First though, we had to go pick up our does. We opted for a shelter built into an old chain link dog kennel that we had received from someone my husband knows.

Dog Kennel with built in shelter

Dale and the girls drove over by Cataldo to pick up our breeder does so that we could start our own little mini-farm. When they arrived home, they had the cutest little girl goats! They were very very upset about having to leave their previous life. The boys carried them into their new home and wow did they raise a ruckus! You would have thought we were killing them the way they were screaming, silly goats. The girls named them Claire Bear and Chloe.

Chloe is in the red and Claire is in the green

At this point we had already started the bigger pen for the wethers and the buck we would be picking up in the next couple weeks. Here are some pictures:

floor foundation

Joshua Helping

Hand mixed concrete pour

finished floor joist system

We finished the foundation and floor joists all in one day which in itself was a minor miracle as it hadn't stopped raining for at least a month. The ground was totally soggy, like an over full sponge that can't take anymore water..squish squish squish. A short side note for you: I don't know if you can tell or not, but my husband is a contractor....this goat barn is very very well built and will not be going anywhere, EVER. I think it would take a major earthquake to move this thing. Anyway we got enough of the goat barn done to be able to pick up the 3 wether goats and a baby buck for our breeding stock. I cant seem to find any pictures at the moment oh well.

We have been working on the goat barn/ chicken pen off and on for 2 months now.  The chickens are very happy running around the yard eating bugs and mice, and the goats stripped every branch they had in their pen. The baby chicks are still in a tub, being way to small to let out to roam right now, and all is well on our mini farm. The chicken coop part of the barn is in the process of being built and is moving right along. We painted the floor a white vinyl paint to make rinsing off easier.  At this moment we have 49 animals if you count the dog,  cats and horses, oh wait we have a turtle also, that makes 50!

Part 2 Coming soon...