Last Sunday: Journal Writing
I love coming home from church and having a bit of quiet time. My kids settle down with their journals first thing. I can’t believe how quiet and peaceful it is: Everyone thinking over the blessings of the week and favorite memories. Everyone enjoying some down time. I help the 3 younger ones with spelling or remembering what we did. I love Sundays!
Monday: Nature Camp
I did another nature camp and we had so much fun! The boys that came wanted to build something so we built a little chicken shelter for the chicks to run into when it rains. I notice they usually stay out in the rain while the big chickens run into the barn. The chicken shelter was the perfect building project!! The boys loved it! They cut a few slats off 2 pallets and used them to nail the two pallets together teepee style. Then we put a tarp over the top and used stakes in logs to hold it down.
After the shelter was finished it did start to rain and we enjoyed the brief storm by having storytime on the deck.
Tuesday: School outside
We love to do a lot of our school outside. At the very least I read our chapter book outloud to the kids on the grass. Right now we’re reading The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. It is sooo good! Very historically accurate, challenging vocabulary, fun family, and lots of science thrown in. I wrote a novel study guide on it if you’re interested. Buy it here! (Or email me and I’m happy to send it to you for free!)
Anderson sketches his pet like how Calpurnia sketches and writes about her pets in the first chapter. I try to do as many things as the characters in the books we read do to truly make them come alive and be more memorable.
Tuesday and Wednesday: Stacking Firewood For A Friend
A friend asked me to stack piles of firewood she had scattered around her yard. I said YES!! Stacking firewood is my favorite job ever. Any part of it: Cutting down the tree, cutting it up, hauling it, stacking it. Oh it’s so much fun!!
The wood was pretty old so lots of it was rotten and it was all irregular. Some long, some short, some huge, lots of logs still needing to be split, lots of flat construction pieces, piles of bark. It was fun organizing it all.
This was was how we finished Tuesday night when it was time to go get the kids from rehearsal. Samuel was my helper because he’s not in this play.
We worked non-stop for 2 hours Wednesday night and this is how it looked when it was time to get the kids. It was 4 layers deep and taller than Samuel. He had to climb on the logs I piled in the back to see over it.
Thursday: Cascade Falls Field Trip
We’re reading The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate for read aloud this week. She often takes cheese and onion sandwiches to the river. She also takes pecans in wax paper and a jar of lemonade. So that’s what we did! We have a creek on our property we could have walked to but I wanted to go some place new for a field trip so we found a waterfall to play in. It was a pretty nice day.
The kids had fun playing with a butterfly that landed on them.
Friday: Bread, Jam and Yogurt Making
My loaf rising next to cucumbers I picked and chopped while the bread was rising. The little kids’s breads were under the towel.
Ready to dig in! Nothin better than homemade bread hot out of the oven with homemade butter and jam and cold raw milk.
The crumbs are evidence that it was good. The little kids ate their creations and the big kids ate a slice of mine.
Andy was the first to dig into his. I also made yogurt with our raw milk, which is delicious! I love it with our blueberries and some granola. I eat it every single afternoon and always have to have a couple of gallons of it in the fridge. As soon as it gets down to 1/2 gallon I make another 2-3 gallons.
When I came downstairs after tucking Tilly in bed I found a reading party going on. Totally unplanned. Someone made popcorn and everyone grabbed books and joined in the circle. What else are Friday nights for?