Beauty and the (really cute) Beasts

Sydney got to go to a friend's house on Sunday with my mom (aka Grams). This friend happened to have two four month old Labrador puppies, unbeknownst to my daughter. I must add here that Sydney absolutely LOVES dogs and wants to pet every one she sees, even though we have four of our own. Needless to say, she and the puppies got along great and completely wore each other out. I had to include the small video my mom made when they first let the puppies out of the house.

Cost of two Labrador puppies - $100
Cost of gas to make round trip to visit them - $50
Look on girl's face when she sees the puppies - Priceless!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Links

I have saved hundreds of educational links over the years, but here are some of the ones we use the most:

Nature/Science
Encyclopedia of Life (under construction, but will be up sometime in 2008)
eNature: America's Wildlife Resource
What's That Bug? (this is one we use almost daily)
Steve Spangler's Science Secrets
Voices in the Sea (some great whale videos)
HowStuffWorks.com
Human Anatomy Online
The Yuckiest Site on the Internet

History
EyeWitness to History
Bio4Kids.com
The Civil War Homepage
Kids Dig Reed

Math
Number and Operations (Virtual manipulatives related to the NCTM Number & Operations standard for grades 3 - 5)
Math Advantage
BBC Education - Maths
Visual Math Learning
Teaching Treasures
Math Worksheet Site

General/Misc
Smithsonian Education (includes both history and science)
A to Z Home's Cool (I use this site a lot)
iKnowthat.com
Starfall.com (primarily for 1st grade)
Discovery Education

Worksheets/Printouts
LearningPage.com
edHelper.com
Jan Brett Alphabet
Enchanted Learning

Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival

On Saturday, the kids and I met up with three other homeschool moms and their kids at the Renaissance Festival in Pittsburgh (just over an hour's drive from our farm). We went to the festival a couple years ago, but were unable to go last year because the owners of the property sold it. The new owners have kept it pretty much the same, but better in many ways. It seemed like everything was laid out better and there were more shows to see.

Some of the activities we did included:

• shooting bows and arrows at hay bales and a couple of sorry-looking, arrow-infested foam deer
• shooting ping pong balls with faux crossbows at holes made in a sheet of particle board (I don't remember what the target was supposed to be)
• the strong man mallet game (you know, where you hit the target with a mallet to make the bell ding at the top)
• throwing leather balls at milk jugs
• riding several human-powered rides (see pictures below)
• watching jousting event
• visiting the many arts and crafts stalls
• watching a glass blowing demonstration
• getting to see a dragon egg hatch
• a really good magician act which ended with him swallowing a long balloon and then popping it, much to the delight of the kids. They talked about how he did that long after the show ended
• a really funny pair of comedians called Puke & Snot (the kids loved the tame, but PG nature of this show)
• carillon bells which could be heard throughout the day wherever you happened to be
• it was also Celtic week so, much to our delight (our being us moms, lol), there were lots of men in kilts running around playing bagpipes
  

The overwhelming favorite activity was the jousting event. The kids loved cheering for the knights and watching them sword fight at the end. It looked real enough that Dylan asked me (with a big grin on his face, I might add) if the guy really died at the end. He knew deep inside that it was all an act, but it was such a good show he swore the guy really did get hit in the eye with a dagger. Many of the kids even said they saw an eye pop out, but this was just their wonderfully active imaginations kicking in.

Glass blowing demonstration

One of the human-powered rides

This was Sydney's favorite ride because of all the spinning (that's her...blondie on the left)

Dylan testing his strength

Sir Tucker

Pirate Day...Arrrrrrrrr!

Sorry I have been MIA all week. I have no idea why...I guess I was busy, though really no busier then usual. I think we are settled into our routine now and it has become, shall we say, routine.

Today was the pirate-themed day, I mentioned about in my last blog, at the learning co-op we go to every Thursday. The kids and I dressed up like pirates and they had various pirate activities set up. We even learned a couple pirate songs, one of which I am posting below for fun:

A Children's Pirate Shanty

By Mark "Cap'n Slappy" Summers (can be sung to the tune of Monty Python's "I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK" - or make up your own!) International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Chorus
I'm a pirate! That I be!

I sail me ship upon the sea!

I stay up late - till half past three!

And that's a peg below me knee!

Yo Ho, my friends I have a tale

Of treasure, plunder, sea and sail

My story's bigger than a whale

It gets so deep, ye'll have to bail.

Chorus

I'm a pirate! That I be!

I sail me ship upon the sea!

I stay up late - till half past three!

And that's a peg below me knee!

I like to fish, I like to fight

I like to stay up half the night

When I say "starboard" ye go right!

Me ma, she says, "Ye look a fright!"

Chorus

I'm a pirate! That I be!

I sail me ship upon the sea!

I stay up late - till half past three!

And that's a peg below me knee!

I've got no hand but that's me hook!

I pillage stuff but I'm no crook.

Me booty's in this chest I took.

They'll write about me in a book!

Chorus

I'm a pirate! That I be!

I sail me ship upon the sea!

I stay up late - till half past three!

And that's a peg below me knee!

And that's all there is to this song.

I hope it hasn't been too long.

A pirate's life might just be wrong
So grow up nice and big and strong!

Chorus

I'm a pirate! That I be!

I sail me ship upon the sea!

I stay up late - till half past three!

And that's a peg below me knee!

Spray-Dye Shirts and the Snapping Turtle Who Went for a Swim

We decided to try attending this homeschool learning co-op today that meets every Thursday in the next town over. Several homeschoolers from our group are members and I have been wanting to go for a couple years now, but our schedule hasn't allowed it until this year. While we were there, the kids got to tie dye t-shirts (my daughter dyed a dress) outside in the neatest way. Instead of tying knots and dipping the shirts in dye, the dye was in spray bottles. The kids really had fun spraying their shirts with the colors they picked out and they could put the colors wherever they wanted them. The shirts (and dress) turned out great!

Today was mainly a planning session and the kids were split up into groups to decide what activities they wanted to do for the year. They also got to play with a big parachute and run around in the adjoining park. There was an area set up inside for dress-up play (complete with various costumes and cast-off clothes), which my daughter did just about the entire time we were there. Next week they will be having a pirate theme, so I want to track down some pirate activities to suggest to the group.

While we were there, some of the kids there noticed a common snapping turtle swimming around in the Wave Tech pool, which is right next to the building the co-op meets in. I took several pictures of it because it was one of the biggest snapping turtles I have seen around here. We were initially afraid he was stuck in the pool, but he did eventually come out and try to squeeze through the fence. He is really hard to see in the pictures I took of him swimming in the pool, so I just posted a couple of the ones I took of him walking around. I have no idea how he got in there, but hope he figures a way back out soon!





Common snapping turtle websites:
Common Snapping Turtle - Wikipedia
Snapping Turtle Page
Common Snapping Turtle, Cheldyra serpentina

These Sticks are Made for Walking

My daughter found a Northern walking stick earlier today. He had fun crawling around on her (ok, he was frantically trying to climb his way to freedom while she had fun holding him) while I tried to get pictures and then we released him in the woods behind our house.




Walking stick websites:

What's That Bug: Phasmids (BTW, this is a wonderful website which we use a lot for identifying insects we find around the farm)
Gordon's Phasmida Page
Lithe Lumber

Meet Myrtle

Last summer we found an Eastern box turtle beside the creek that runs through our property. She had been severely injured by something (I suspect a fox, coyote, dog or possibly a raccoon) and was obviously in shock because she hardly reacted when I picked her up. One of her hind legs had been chewed off and the back part of her shell had places that had been chewed on as well.

I honestly thought she was going to die based on the condition we found her in. My kids wanted to bring her inside, but I explained to them that she was a wild turtle and would be very unhappy in a tank. We came back to the house and chopped up some berries and tofu to see if she would eat something. We also found some earthworms and snails to add to the mix. She immediately gobbled up the food we left, so we continued to bring food out to her 2-3 times a day. Often she would be out waiting for us and became quite tame, even taking food from our hands.

Eventually her injuries healed and she began going off for days at a time, showing up less and less for the food we still left out for her. I was really worried that since she was missing a hind leg she was going to have problems digging down in the dirt when it came time for her to hybernate. Because of this, we almost brought her inside, but once again I decided that she would be happier and better off in the wild.

A few weeks ago we were coming home from a trip to town, when we saw a box turtle crossing the road, right at the beginning of our property. We see this a lot, so I pulled over and got out to move it. Of course, any time I move a _____ (insert name of critter...turtle in this case) from the road, the kids have to get out of their seats and come out to hold said creature. Being on a quiet country lane, we get to do this quite often in the summer as snakes, turtles, toads and frogs come out on the road to warm up. As soon as I picked this turtle up, I wondered if it was our turtle. I looked her over and sure enough, it was Myrtle! She started to hide back in her shell, but then changed her mind (maybe remembered us?) and did the mid-air turtle crawl. She still had scars on her shell, but they were completely healed over and her hind leg, though now just a stump, looked great.

The pictures I have posted here are ones I took when we first found her last summer. It must have felt good to soak her injuries in the creek because that's where we would find for the first few days. Unfortunately I did not have my camera with me to get pictures of her when we found her crossing the road this summer.

This last picture (below) I took last week of a male Eastern box turtle out in our yard by the creek. Oddly enough, when I picked him up (good way to check the turtle's weight), he kept that front leg sticking out. I happened to notice a fresh injury along the bottom side of his shell, so it's possible he was unable to tuck that leg in. He was very healthy, good size and weight, and had no trouble moving that leg, so I put him back down where I found him and haven't seen him since. Ain't he a beauty, though?!



Here are some box turtle links:
Eastern Box Turtle
Box Turtle Fact Sheet
Box Turtle, Wikipedia
Eastern Box Turtle

This Old Farmhouse

We didn't build the original farmhouse on our property, but we are doing so much work to it that it probably would have been easier for us to tear the place down and start over again from scratch. The original house, however, is very solid and built from hand cut oak beams. Many of the nails we have come across have been hand cut as well (we suspect maybe they were homemade, but they are definitely not machine cut).

My husband is a licensed general contractor, so has been doing all the remodeling himself. With the house being so solidly build, he decided we could live in it and add on to the existing structure as needed. Having three young kids around made it hard to do much work on the house other then to make it livable. Our first winter there (when I was pregnant with my oldest son, Tucker) we could see daylight between the cracks on the wall. The house used to be heated with small gas heaters until we put a forced air furnace in. The combination of ineffective heat combined with the cracks in the wall allowed ice to build up inside on the walls on cold nights. While we did not have an outhouse, the sewage all emptied into the creek that runs through the property. Yuck! So putting in a septic tank was one of the first things we did before moving in.

The upstairs had lights, but no electric outlets, so we initially had to live in the downstairs part of the house. The downstairs consisted of two main rooms (we used as bedroom and living room) and two rooms on the back addition (we used as kitchen and laundry room). Even with just the two of us and Tucker as a baby, it was really crowded. The bathroom was a creepy, closet-sized room under the steps that barely had enough room to move around in. You could almost take a shower and sit on the toilet at the same time!

Thankfully my mom moved to Indianapolis for a period of time, so we were able to temporarily move into her house and get the upstairs "livable" and a new temporary kitchen put in (where our old living room was). When we first moved back (right after Sydney was born), we all shared one big bedroom and used the other upstairs room as a living room. The following year we finished our temporary living room downstairs and were able to make the upstairs room into a bedroom for the boys. So now we only have Sydney's bed in one corner of our room, but everyone will have their own room as soon as the two additions are finished. Yay!

Despite all it's headaches, being over 100 years old the house has allowed us many fascinating discoveries. When we tore the walls down inside, we found old newspapers that were being used as insulation. The wood floors in front of the old chimneys have several burn marks where sparks escaped the wood stoves that used to be used to heat the house. The built-in shelves in each room had to be bashed out with a heavy mallet because they were so solidly hammered into place and the hardwood used to build them with refused to budge otherwise. The glass in the original windows were warped with age and would rattle whenever the wind would blow.

Unfortunately I do not have any digital pictures to post of the house when we first moved in. All I have now are pictures of the construction we have going on now. (Sorry no pictures of my daughter. She is way too young to be trusted around sharp digging tools, so she took on the important job of site forewoman and was sitting up where I was taking the pictures.)

(That is NOT a dead body under that tarp...honest! And I know it looks suspiciously like we are running a chain gang here, but the boys both coincidentally wore green shirts.)

Little House on the Lake

We have friends, fellow homeschoolers, who live on a lake up in the mountains. Well, they don't actually live on the lake...they are beside it, but I'm sure you figured that out. Anyway, several times a year, they invite all the area homeschoolers over for the afternoon. This is something my kids always look forward to and they literally count down the minutes once they hear we will be going there. I must say that I look forward to it as well because I actually get a chance to speak with real, honest-to-goodness adults with very few interruptions from the kids. Then again, I think the kids like it because they get few interruptions from the adults!

The lake this family lives on is actually more of a modified farm pond, which consists of about 36 inches of water and a foot of smelly, slimy mud. Yes, kid heaven! I have pictures of my kids kayaking (such as the one I posted above) and it looks like they are in deep water, so it's rather surprising to see them hop out of their boats way out on the lake in only chest-deep water. They are in the process of dredging the lake, but the mud keeps moving in faster then they can push it out. After two years of dredging, they have a couple deep-ish channels but most of the water is still rather shallow.

Any clothes and/or swim suits worn in this water end up with a semi-permanent swampy smell and turn a permanent, slightly dingy color. You also must wash things the very moment you get home or they smell downright awful and often become destined for the garbage. We have a creek going through our property and plenty of mud and dirt to go with it, but I guess our mud just isn't 'muddy' enough. No, my kids prefer the exotic lure of strange mud...the mud being muddier on the other side definitely holds true for these mud connoisseurs. Is it no wonder my kids are so excited to go over there?

(Those are fake tattoos on my daughter's arm...NOT leeches! lol)

Time Flies!

It's been a crazy summer, so for the next few days I will post some stories and pictures to get everyone caught up.

My daughter, Sydney, found a baby praying mantis at some point over the summer. She has always had an affinity for insects of any kind...this includes spiders and any number of creepy crawly bugs. I managed to get a picture of her holding it right before she released it: