Chickens and Eggs

I worried that the baby might disrupt school this year, but other than a bit of fussiness and screeching when she is ready for her morning nap, she does quite well overall. She often plays happily in the pack-n-play or eats her breakfast in the high chair while I teach. Even better, once she goes to sleep in the morning, she sleeps through almost our entire school day before waking up for the afternoon and evening. I have even been able to run between 1.25 and 1.75 miles each day after lunch while the kids have their recess time, and it helps me feel refreshed and ready to finish out the school day.

No, the baby has been quite compliant this year so far. Instead, our biggest distraction has been our chickens! They like to come to our front door and peck at it to get our attention. If we are working in our school room in the basement, they actually peer in our basement window at us!

Poor Kitty

In addition, we began getting our first eggs this week. Elsa, the biggest barred rock, laid us a perfect little egg around lunch time on Monday.

Just a tiny egg - they will get bigger, though

Amazingly, Rosie, one of our black australorps, also laid her first egg on Monday afternoon. She came to the front door squawking anxiously at me, but then ran back to the woods. When I went for my run a little later, she was hanging out alone by the coop. I talked to her softly and showed her the fake eggs in the nest boxes, and she climbed in to inspect them. By the end of my run, she came running out of the coop, leaving a tiny egg in the nest box behind her.

On Tuesday, we only got one egg, but Wednesday through Friday, we got two eggs each day. Now, the kids are obsessed with checking for eggs, which would cause enough of a distraction by itself. However, the hens cause an even bigger distraction with the ruckus they make every time they lay. I had heard of the egg song, but I had no idea just how loudly those hens could sing. We can often hear them squawking in the coop, while we are working down in the basement.

Adding to the noise, Rosie and Elsa had quite the battle over the favored nest box. Elsa has staked her claim on the nest box in the darkest corner, and she will often lay in there for an hour before she gets around to depositing her egg. However, Rosie prefers this box too. On Tuesday, Rosie ended up not laying because Elsa refused to vacate the box. On Wednesday, we spent the day at Cedar Point and left the chickens in the coop all day. Both hens somehow managed to lay in the same box, so I assumed they had worked out their dispute. I was wrong.

On Thursday, we heard such a disturbance that we rushed out to make sure nothing was attacking the flock. We found Elsa in the nest box with Rosie yelling at her frantically at the top of her lungs. We came back inside, only to hear the egg song a moment later. Thinking Elsa had finally finished, the kids went out to check, but Elsa was still in the nest box, working on her egg. Rosie, on the other hand, had finally given up and laid her egg in a neighboring box. Silly hens! We have six nest boxes and six hens, and yet, they fight over the same box!

With all the noise and distractions, I have to fight with the chickens to keep my kids’ attention on their school work. On a positive note, though, they are learning quite a bit about chickens and where food comes from. As I was making dinner yesterday, Ben asked me if I was going to use chicken eggs or store-bought eggs in my recipe. He realized his mistake immediately, and we both laughed. Before this year, however, eggs only came from the store. Now, through the crazy distraction of our little flock of happy hens, our kids know the joy of getting their breakfast straight from its source. And, I suppose, that is part of a good education as well.

Chore Cards

In the past year or so, we have started giving the kids an allowance, which we tied to their chores. They have "morning chores" and "day chores." Every morning, all three kids must make their beds, clean their rooms, and put away any of their own folded laundry. During the day, Hannah feeds one of the bearded dragons, Ben feeds the cat, and Becca sets the table and organizes the shoes on the shelves by the back door. Hannah and Ben also alternate washing the dishes from breakfast and lunch and sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor. I keep a weekly calendar listing their chores on a white board, which hangs on the door leading to our basement. At the end of each week, the kids receive their allowance. For each day that they complete all of their chores, they earn $0.25, and they get an extra $0.25 bonus if they do their chores every day that week.

This system has worked well, with just one drawback - I did not have an adequate method for keeping track of which days they did their chores. At first, I tried making them put a check mark next to each chore on the white board, but they often forgot and then argued about each quarter they thought they should have earned. I also tried giving them their allowance each evening, but I prefer to distribute it weekly. Finally, one night, I had a sudden inspiration.

Using Photoshop, I created punch cards, modeled after time cards a person might use at work. The middle of each card has the child's name, a place for me to write the date, and the terms for redeeming the card for their allowance. Then, along each side of the card, I put black dots the size of a hole punch, with the days of the week listed next to them - one side for morning chores and one side for day chores.

Each day, the kids use a hole punch to punch out the dots for that day when they complete their chores. At the end of the week, the kids turn in their chore cards in exchange for their allowance. So far this system works quite well. The kids have fun punching the holes, so they are not as likely to forget, and they have a visible reminder of what they must do each day. Plus, I have no more haggling over how much money they should receive. I love ideas that make our daily duties easier (and more fun)!

And the First Month Flies By...

As I write this blog post, I cannot believe that we have already completed more than a month and a half of school! The year has been both fun and frustrating at times, filled with lessons from life and not just lessons from books.

We have traveled quite a bit - to the zoo, the children's museum, Cedar Point, and COSI. Josh took Hannah and Ben to see a football game at Virginia Tech, and I took Becca on an autumn excursion to my parents' cabin. We even drove to Grove City College for a friend's wedding and spent some time with a wonderful family near Pittsburgh. Somehow, I still managed to squeeze in a few photo shoots as well!

During this crazy month, we lost our sweet kitty, Barky, to an illness called FIP. He was young, and his sickness and death were sudden and unexpected. We took some time off of school to love him for a couple of days and then grieve our loss. The kids made memory boxes and have learned a lot about death and loss and sadness - life lessons I never expected to teach them this year.

Through all of this, we are actually making progress with school work, too. Hannah is flying through her math again, and Ben has finally mastered his addition and subtraction facts and is moving on to more difficult problems. He spent the first few weeks making and practicing flashcards from + and - 0 through + and - 9. Now, he is doing much better with his math because he has the facts memorized and no longer needs to calculate each problem in his head. Both kids like Spelling Power, although I have to keep reassuring Ben that he is supposed to get words on the pretests wrong - otherwise, he would never learn anything new!

Social Studies and Science remain the kids' favorite subjects (I will share more of those lessons in later posts), and they love doing Spanish a couple days a week, too.

For reading and language arts, we are working our way through First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind. Ben just began Level One, and Hannah just completed that book. They love the simplicity and repetition and are learning quite a bit. They especially love memorizing the poems in the book. We have been reading longer chapter books together, too. We just finished reading The Secret Garden and then listened to the Focus on the Family Radio Theatre version and watched the movie. I ordered James and the Giant Peach yesterday and hope to begin it in a week or so. I think it will appeal a little more to my adventurous Ben, though he also appreciated the lovely story in The Secret Garden.

I love our Bible curriculum this year. We are using a book called Our 24 Family Ways. Each "family way" is a kind of rule for the family follow, though really, they are more like ways of living. Each "way" has five daily lessons, a coloring page, a brief story intro, a character quality, and a Bible verse to memorize. The lessons are short enough to hold the kids' interest, but deep enough to make them think. Even my littlest has memorized the verses, and the verses are often fairly long - 2 or 3 verses at a time. Still, with repetition, they have learned the verses and the family ways very well. I also posted the family ways on our wall where everyone can read them, and when a child needs a "break" (like a time out), he or she sits and reads through the ways and then tells me which ones were not followed. I love that they are specific and thorough and well-grounded in Scripture. We begin each day with the Bible lesson and prayer, focusing on God right from the start.

Finally, with a few exceptions, I have designated Fridays as "Project Fridays." Each Friday, we put aside our regular school work and tackle a project, either together or separately. All three kids created beautiful lapbooks on the animals of their choosing, and we have begun working on making our own movie together. Our next project will likely be a "Space" lapbook, inspired by the content of the story they wrote for our movie script. These Fridays have been the most fun and educational school days, and I hope we can continue them all year!

So, as the first months of the school year fly by, hopefully I will more faithfully update this blog and share what we are studying and experiencing. As the blog's title proclaims, "learning is life" - and we are certainly spending most of our time living and learning together!

Gardening Season Begins

This year, I got an early start on my garden, and I have been very pleased so far. In early spring, I planted peas, onions, carrots, radishes, spinach, broccoli transplants, cauliflower transplants, and brussels sprouts transplants. Oh, and lettuce... lots of lettuce. Actually, I attempted to remove the seeds from the packet and slipped, spilling the tiny seeds into the dirt. I sighed, decided not even to try extracting the nearly invisible seeds from the soil, and waited to see what would come up. As the picture shows, I will be doing quite a bit of thinning, but at least I can tell which kind is which, so we will have a variety of lettuces this year. I also planted strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries in various locations around my house and yard.

This weekend, Josh built me a second box garden next to the one we built last year. We even used some of our worm compost when filling the garden! I have so much more space now, and I also have more opportunity to rotate crops a bit to reduce pests and diseases. I could not believe how easily I filled the extra 32 square feet of space, though! I added butternut squash and two kinds of bush beans to the side garden, and I planted cucumbers, swiss chard, and celery in the old box garden with my spring veggies. I also put one asparagus plant along the side of my house, to see if it does well there. I would love fresh asparagus in the spring, but I do not want such a large perennial plant in my box gardens! In the new garden, I transplanted three kinds of tomatoes, two kinds of bell peppers, swiss chard, and a bunch of herbs, leaving myself plenty of space for a few more staggered plantings of bush beans.

Before we put in the side garden last year, weeds abounded in that spot next to our garage. Once I pulled out all the weeds and put in the veggies, however, I noticed something that was not visible before. The water run-off from our garage roof poured right into the middle of that garden, leaving a trench that eroded the soil from around any plants in that location. On Saturday, as I shopped for herbs at my favorite local greenhouse, I noticed watercress for sale. The sign said that the plants propagate themselves well in wet locations. I explained my garden situation to a person on staff, and he told me that his watercress has grown into a small waterfall in his yard and that it loves water! So, now I have watercress growing all along the edge of the trench in that garden. I hope that it will utilize previously unusable garden space, as well as hold the soil in place to prevent erosion during heavy rains. I really hope it works!

The kids, of course, love the garden and willingly eat anything we harvest - including onions, radishes, and leafy vegetables! They already love raw veggies, but they will even eat food that they typically dislike, as long as it comes from our own garden. I cannot wait to see how everything grows this year. I chose plants more wisely this year, after seeing what pests and diseases struck last year, and I think we will have a better harvest because of that. In a society in which many kids cannot even identify common vegetables, I love that my kids beg for things like eggplant and radishes! I cannot imagine a better way to teach kids about healthy eating than allowing them to harvest their own food directly from the family garden. Now, if only we lived in a neighborhood that allowed me to raise chickens...

Learning Life Skills

I would like to take credit for this bit of learning, and I typically do this job, but Josh gets credit for passing the skill on to our kids. Too often, I avoid allowing the kids to help with chores, because I can do them better or more quickly. Unfortunately, as a result, I ultimately end up doing everything without help.

Last Monday, I went to a day-long training seminar to help me with my business. While I was gone, Josh tackled the too-large mound of laundry that I had been ignoring for weeks. In fact, he washed and folded every piece of dirty laundry he could find in the house! And he did this in between shuttling kids to and from school and soccer as well. I could not believe everything he accomplished! Anyway, when I asked the kids how Daddy managed to do all of the laundry on such a crazy day, Ben told me that he and Becca had helped him fold the laundry. I smiled knowingly, imagining that their "help" probably kept them from fighting and getting into trouble, but likely did not make the work go more quickly.

The next evening, Josh brought a load of towels up from the dryer and placed them on the couch in the living room. He and I were talking in the dining room, when I looked into the other room and saw this:

While we had been discussing dinner, Becca had folded nearly all of the towels, and she did a fairly good job, too! She noticed the shocked look on my face and began grinning and pointing at her work. "It's amazing," she said, over and over again.

I asked her to show me how she folded them, and she happily gave me a demonstration.

After laying the towel out flat on the floor, she folded the sides over and lined them up nicely.

I never imagined that my three year old would be capable of folding towels. Yet, my husband recognized an opportunity to pass on an important life skill. I have been pondering this for a week now, and I wonder what other jobs the kids could learn to accomplish if I gave them the chance. They already pick up their toys and clear their dishes from the table, but I bet they could do so much more! When we begin homeschooling full-time next year, I plan to integrate chores into our daily schedule - making beds, straightening their rooms, and organizing their school work and supplies. But, now I may include them in my household tasks, too, like laundry, mopping, dishes, and dusting. If we make a game out of it, they may even find it fun! And eventually, I will appreciate the help from kids who have already learned the importance of working together as a family.

Ladybugs and Litterbugs

Though I am a global warming skeptic, I believe very strongly in keeping the environment clean, reducing pollution, and leaving the earth beautiful for the next generation. Whether or not global warming exists, I do not like the idea of pumping the planet full of energy bi-products and waste. I like to do whatever I can to reduce the amount of waste our family produces. However, adding recycling to our garbage service costs significantly extra per month, so I felt thrilled this year when I discovered something called "SCRAP" in our community.

Each elementary school has a day assigned to it - for example, the second Tuesday of each month. On that day, a recycling trailer visits the school in the afternoon for a couple of hours to collect recycling, and the school gets any proceeds from the materials collected that day. So, once a month, I load plastic bins full of cans, newspapers, and plastics into the back of my van when I go to pick up Hannah. Before I get her, I go through the recycling lane, and the workers unload all of my recycling for me. It only takes a few minutes, and I do not even have to get out of my car. Could recycling be any more convenient?

In order to organize the recyclables, Josh purchased a set of large plastic drawers/removable bins to keep on our back porch. I can separate out the various items and save them for the monthly drop-off without having them take over my house or garage. Often, as I cook, I rinse out empty cans, remove the labels, and then ask one of the kids to put them in the bin on the porch. Though I viewed this as a "chore" initially, the kids actually fight over the job.

Ben especially enjoys recycling and often comes into the kitchen to ask if I have anything for him to put outside. Because of this interest, I decided to do a small unit on waste and recycling with him.

One day, as I was looking up the SCRAP schedule, I stumbled across this educational page on Richland County's Solid Waste Management Authority website. The elementary unit, "Windows on Waste," seems like an exceptional educational tool. The pdf file consists of 335 pages of lesson plans, worksheets, information, and resources to teach a very involved unit on waste, trash disposal, recycling, and the environment. I think the unit is slightly above Ben's level right now, but I plan to teach it sometime in the future.

This time, however, I chose the preschool/kindergarten level activity book called "Lucky the Ladybug." This book contains fun activities and games and tells the story of Lucky the Ladybug as she tried to save Bugville from becoming Litterville. With a small amount of extra teaching and guidance, Ben learned quite a bit of basic information about recycling and keeping the community clean. I printed the pdf, punched holes in it, and put it in a folder to make a little book.

I intend to add more activities as we explore recycling in more depth. Perhaps we will weigh our trash and our recycling and figure out what fraction of our trash we recycle. Or, maybe we will just count the bags we put out and see how many more bags we would use if we didn't recycle. We can also visit the worm bin again and see how we recycle our food waste as well.

Regardless of how we study this, I am glad that my kids are actively involved in helping me recycle. Hopefully, as they grow older, this will help them develop the habits and attitudes necessary for them to care for the earth as well. I do not want to raise "litterbugs," who think nothing of their waste and view it as someone else's problem. Instead, just like Lucky the Ladybug, I want them to care about their community and about the planet God gave them, and to focus on using its resources carefully and wisely, so they can leave a healthy, thriving planet to their own children. Maybe the small steps today will start them down the path to living carefully and sustainably for the rest of their lives.

Dabbling in the Domestic Arts

As part of the holiday celebrations at Hannah's school, the students are learning about gift giving. Each student has a "heart partner" for social studies (the school pairs kindergarteners with first graders), and the kids have to make gifts for their heart partners only using items they already have at home. Well, I had several sheets of red felt left over from making Hannah's lobster costume for Halloween, so we decided to sew a heart pillow for her heart partner.

At first, I did not think that Hannah could handle sewing at her age, but then I remembered Little House on the Prairie and imagined that Laura Ingalls was already sewing quite a bit by the age of six. So, we decided to tackle the project together.

First, I cut out two hearts from the red felt, and, since I had no stuffing in the house, we cut tiny strips of felt to use for the heart's filling. I pinned the whole project together, threaded the needle, and then showed Hannah how to do a simple running stitch - up and down through both layers of fabric. As I suspected, she needed quite a bit of help and her stitches followed a somewhat crooked path along the edge of the fabric, but overall she did a great job.

At first, I alternated with her, sewing a little when she needed a break. By the end, though, she sewed for a good length of time without my help, and when she got tired, I pushed the needle through the correct spot, and she pulled the thread out on the other side. Finally, as we neared completion, she excitedly took the heart and decided to finish all by herself. She really impressed me with her ability and determination, and she got to experience the satisfaction of completing a difficult project.

In attempting this project, I expected that Hannah might get excited about sewing and creating useful items, but I did not anticipate the effect it would have on the other children. Ben and Becca remained glued to our sides as Hannah and I worked, eagerly watching each tiny stitch. I explained to Hannah, to help her understand how to sew, that she should do the running stitch in the same way that she would work the laces through her lacing cards. As a result, the lacing cards have become a new favorite toy in our house. Ben and Becca spent the morning working on this:

"Look!" they exclaimed again and again, "I'm sewing a stop sign pillow! I'm making a stuffed orange!" They enthusiastically practiced, hoping that they, too, would be able to sew someday.

Little did I know, when taking on this school project for Hannah, that it would become a practical lesson in domestic arts, a chance for fine motor development, and an inspiration for all three kids to learn a new skill! Now, if only I could teach them to repair their own clothes... I guess I have to wait a few more years for that!

A Little Yeast

Today began as a plan-less day at home, but the kids quickly began bickering and getting into mischief with nothing to do, so I did a quick inventory of my cabinets and then asked, "Who wants to help me bake bread?"

"Me! Me! Me!" they all exclaimed.

I brought them all into the kitchen and then carefully measured the yeast into a tiny cup. I explained to them that yeast is alive and that it "eats" the sugar and creates bubbles that cause the bread to rise. Ben carefully studied the tiny, beige grains and seemed very disappointed when I stirred them into the warm water. When I questioned him, he told me that he was upset because he did not get to see the "bugs" moving! I had to convince him first that the yeast was not "bugs," and second, that living things are not always moving things.

Once I had combined the ingredients in the bowl and added enough flour to make the dough the right consistency, I allowed the kids to take turns helping me mix and knead the dough.

They enjoyed helping very much and patiently stayed with me through the whole kneading process. Finally, I shaped the dough into a nice ball and placed it in an oiled bowl to rise.

While we waited, I opened my Bible to a verse about yeast. I told them that a small amount of yeast mixed through the dough makes the whole thing rise. Similarly, sin in our lives, such as anger or selfishness, is like yeast - even a small amount can have a large effect on who we are and what our lives will be like. I explained that we want to work on becoming pure, meaning without "yeast" in our lives that will keep us from being who God wants us to be.

Two hours later, I lifted the towel and showed the kids the much larger ball of dough. "Wow!" they squealed, amazed at the difference in size.

In the afternoon, I took Ben to get his new glasses frames. When we were driving home, he began talking about the yeast again.

"Do you remember what I said that yeast is like?" I asked him.

"Sin," he replied.

"Yes," I said, "Just like a small amount of yeast can make bread rise, a small amount of sin can affect our whole lives. Do you remember our Bible time the other night, when we were talking about the tongue and said that it was like a small spark?"

"Uh, huh," he answered, "and a small spark can set a whole forest on fire."

"Right, Ben," I said, "and little words or lies that we say can hurt other people a lot or cause big lies to get out of control. That little spark is just like the yeast we were talking about before, how something small can do big things, so we have to be careful about what we say and do."

Ben nodded and agreed with me, and I think he really understood. I try very hard to use everyday activities and examples to teach spiritual lessons, just as Jesus used parables to convey larger spiritual truths. I hope that even if the kids never fall in love with making healthy, local, homemade foods, that they do fall in love with Jesus and His truth and that they learn to live "yeast-free" lives of integrity.

Understanding Food

In a previous post, I wrote about my desire for my kids to know more about their food and its origins. In the past few weeks, we have experimented with food in several exciting ways, and the kids are experiencing the joy of eating food we have produced instead of food bought at a store.

We began by trying a new whole wheat bread recipe. My last recipe turned out quite bland, and the bread was only slightly edible when loaded with jelly or peanut butter. This recipe, however, resulted in two wonderfully light and tasty loaves of whole wheat bread. The kids enjoyed watching the whole process and look forward to helping out more next time, now that I know that the recipe works.

Additionally, I had a bunch of mushy apples and plums that we accidentally froze by turning down the temperature in the fridge drawer too far. I found a delicious recipe for Plum-Apple Butter and made some of that as well. I cut the sugar in half and estimated the amount of apples and plums because I do not have a food scale, and it was very yummy - much better than any apple butter I have purchased at the store. The kids love it with peanut butter on a sandwich instead of jelly.

I also splurged and bought myself supplies for making yogurt, mozzarella and ricotta cheese, and sour cream. I have not attempted the cheese or sour cream yet, mostly because of a lack of ingredients, but I have already made two batches of yogurt. Hannah and Ben love the homemade yogurt, even plain or sweetened just with fruit, like bananas, berries, cherries, or peaches. Becca will eat it in small amounts, but she has never liked yogurt much. She does eat more of my yogurt than she does of store-bought yogurt, but it still is not her favorite food. I made the first batch while the kids were sleeping, but I encouraged them to watch me make the second batch. They were amazed that simply heating milk, adding a small amount of plain yogurt or yogurt culture, and then letting the mixture sit in an insulated container all day resulted in a fresh batch of plain yogurt. I am still learning the best way to culture the yogurt, as my second attempt came out a bit more sour than the first, but I am excited about the health benefits (and cost benefits) of making my own yogurt instead of buying it in the store.

Finally, after a productive trip to the farmers' market, I taught Hannah and Ben about preserving an abundance of food. I began by measuring a bit more than four cups of blueberries into a bowl. Then, I handed Hannah a potato masher and told her to crush the blueberries as much as possible. When she was finished, I gave Ben a turn and then did the last little bit myself. When we had four cups of mashed berries, I combined sugar and pectin in a bowl and then mixed that with the berries. Following the recipe on the back of the pectin, I stirred for the required length of time, poured the mixture into plastic "jars" and allowed it to rest and thicken for 30 minutes. Voila! Freezer jam! The kids love the taste and enjoy eating something that they made on their toast and sandwiches each day. I also found an excellent recipe for freezer pickles, which Hannah and Ben also helped me make and love to eat.

So, now the kids have a bit more understanding of what goes into the jars of food on supermarket shelves, and I have begun having healthier and cheaper options for our family by making a lot of it myself. Amazingly, the recipes are very simple and tastier too! Not bad for a couple of fun and productive summer afternoons...

Summer in the Garden

Apparently, I am too busy in the summer to update my blog much. We have traveled and played and camped and explored, and through it all, we have learned. The overarching theme of this summer, however, has been gardening.

At the beginning of last school year, I wrote out a wonderful plan of all of the units and activities I would do with the kids that year. In reality, we did more informal units, based around their interests and activities, while focusing on reading, writing, and math. One of the last units I had planned for the year was "plants and seeds," and I felt disappointed that we never studied it. Then, a few weeks ago, I realized that we have completed nearly the entire unit in the course of our summer gardening adventures. And, the kids likely learned more from their hands-on experience than they would have learned from formal instruction.

Our project began with the construction of a 4'x8' raised bed garden in our backyard.

Josh used a rented sod-cutter to remove the grass, while bug-loving Hannah rescued earthworms and white grubs from the dirt below.

Then, we measured, cut, and assembled the boards, and Josh gave each child, including Becca, a turn to help him drill holes for the screws.

Finally, we filled the box with topsoil, compost, and peat moss, and planted vegetable transplants and seeds.

Because the sod-cutter was so easy to use, we decided to create a second 4'x12' garden next to the garage.

We planted a lot of veggies throughout the summer: slicing tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, green/red bell peppers, sweet orange peppers, cucumbers, pole beans, purple and yellow onions, red and orange carrots, turnips, broccoli, romaine, zucchini, summer squash, butternut squash, and pumpkins. The kids have helped me plant and harvest and weed and have seen tiny seedlings develop into large and bushy plants, covered in ripening vegetables.

Romaine:

Tomatoes:

Pepper:

Onions:

Cucumber:

Broccoli:

Pole Beans:

In addition to this experiential education, the kids and I have read several books to complement what they are learning. One of their favorite books, Muncha Muncha Muncha, has taken on new meaning to them, in light of them having their own garden. They have become much more sympathetic to poor Mr. McGreely, who keeps losing his vegetables, and they dislike the "bad bunnies" who keep stealing them. They also love the book The Carrot Seed, in which a little boy plants a carrot seed and cares for it, even though everyone tells him that the seed won't come up. In the end, of course, a huge carrot comes up and proves everyone else wrong.

Finally, our Bible times have reflected our gardening theme as well. The kids' new knowledge of gardening helped them understand two parables on a deeper level then they have in the past - the parable of the sower and the parable of the weeds. Isn't it amazing how Jesus uses common experiences and objects to explain his Kingdom, so ordinary people, even children, can begin to comprehend the mysteries of faith and eternity?

I do not think I could have planned a better unit on seeds and plants! I may pull out a few of the worksheets I have from a science book I purchased, but overall, I am amazed at what my children have learned this summer simply by being included in my gardening project. I think this is further proof that "Learning is Life."

The Fix-It Family

My husband is Mr. Fix-It. Apparently now, so are my kids...

Last week, Becca's toy vacuum broke. The ends of the yarn frayed and wrapped around the part that spins, which caused the gears to lock up and make a loud clicking noise whenever Becca pushed the vacuum. Josh had to take the vacuum apart and remove the frayed yarn.

He had quite a team of assistants:

Because it was Becca's vacuum, Becca got to be the primary helper. First, they laid out all of the screws.

Then, Becca put each screw in the hole.

Finally, Josh tightened the screws. The kids jumped up and down with joy as they told me how they fixed the vacuum!

Making Butter

I asked Hannah about her kindergarten screening the other day, and she could not remember most of the questions.

"Oh, I know!" she exclaimed. "She asked me what french fries are made out of, but I didn't know, but then she told me it's potatoes!"

"Hmmmm," I thought, "perhaps my kids need to know a little more about where their food comes from... other than the grocery store!"

Josh is out on Wednesday nights, so I often look for activities to reign in some of the wildness that bubbles out of the kids in the evenings. As they began to bounce around the living room, I announced, "I'm making butter! Who wants to help?" Instantly, three kids hopped up and down at my side, yelling, "Me! Me! Me!"

I grabbed a glass jar and poured about a cup of heavy whipping cream into it. Then, sealing it tightly, I handed it to Hannah. "Here, shake this!" As she gently wiggled it back and forth, I laughed, "No, like this," and I grasped her hands and the jar together and shook as hard as I could. Giggling loudly, she began jumping and shaking all over the living room.

After a minute or two, she handed the jar to Ben, and he took a turn.

Then, Becca shook the jar for a while.

As the cream became stiffer, the kids passed the jar to each other more frequently. Soon, I opened the jar and showed the kids how the cream had become whipped cream.

Of course, everyone needed a taste!

Eventually, I did most of the work, as the whipped cream was much harder to shake. The kids and I sat on opposite sides of the room and rolled the jar back and forth. The cream became thicker and thicker, until suddenly it separated into a solid clump of butter surrounded by buttermilk.

I removed the butter from the liquid and pressed the remaining liquid out into the sink, shaping the butter into a pretty pale yellow lump.

With the kids circling my legs, I grabbed a couple slices of bread and spread the fresh butter on each slice.

The kids loved the taste of the creamy, slightly sweet-tasting butter on the bread.

I explained to the kids that the cream had fat in it, like tiny floating balls of play dough. As they shook the cream, the little balls of fat stuck together, like balls of play dough would, until eventually they formed one big ball.

Hannah finished the evening by writing a beautiful journal entry about making butter. In case you can't read it, it says (with the spelling corrected), "We once made butter. We took a can and poured some milk in the can. We shook it. It turned into whipped cream and then butter. We had toast."

How Stuff Works: Heaters 101

I discovered another benefit of having a husband who loves to fix things and take everything apart. The kids learn some interesting lessons about how appliances and household items work.

On Monday, after Josh fixed the heater (it was an igniter, not an ignition coil, I think), he brought all of the kids downstairs into the basement, removed the cover from the side of the heater, and asked me to turn up the heat. Then, keeping them at a safe distance, he explained to them exactly how the furnace worked as they watched.

This morning, the kids were running around and playing a game.

Hannah: "Oh, the igniter is broken! Quick! We have have to fix it!"
Ben: " OK, now turn the heat on. See - the igniter is glowing orange. Sssssssss... here comes the gas! Whoosh! Now the pipes are blowing blue fire. Yay! It's fixed!"

Josh and I just laughed.