A What Day?

The school boards in Annapolis and King's county declared it a snow day yesterday. Last week we had a rain day.

Here's what a snow day looks like in NS. Try not to laugh.

Infestation

Last week, I spotted a wee little mouse on a shelf in my pantry.  When it noticed me watching, it darted off into a hole in the wall, next to the shelf.

When we did the dining room reno in 2010 there were a bunch of mice nests in the ceiling.  We set traps then and haven't seen a mouse since.  Last summer when we got Tootsie Noodles, he proved to be an excellent mouser so I didn't think we'd have a problem with mice again.

No such luck.  Tootsie has been neglecting his duties.  That lazy cat has spent the entire winter passed out behind the wood stove.  Limey set up a bunch of traps in the pantry the other day and we've since caught eight mice.   I guess Tootsie must have felt insulted because we heard him chasing something in the bathroom last night and this morning I found him snacking on his catch in the kitchen.  All he left was the tail.

Hopefully he won't be neglecting his duties any longer.  Now if I could only get him to clean up after himself.

Friday Bullets

• Limey bought an outfit just so he could reenact a scene from Love Actually.
• Toilet spontaneously fixed itself. 
• Tire spontaneously busted.
• Snow day today for lots of people.  So much for an 8C day.  
• I can't wait to start gardening.  Dreaming about sunny days and fragrant flowers.
• I'm wearing yellow jeans right now and they are fabulous.
• Limey sampled his beer and was very impressed.  He was also very giggly.

Friday Bullets

• The toilet is broken.  I'm flushing with a bucket.
• We need 3 cords of uncut firewood.  Spam me with local phone numbers.
• Mr Q is having a sale on science curriculum.  50% off.
• Currently reading Seven Princes but not really enjoying it.
• The beer has been bottled.  Should be ready for drinking in two weeks.
• I need a fabulous cupcake and frosting (not chocolate) recipe.
• Looks like we're going with pirates for dd2's birthday this year.  Anyone have a fridge box?
• Vesey's is trying to tempt me with a $50 off a $100 purchase coupon code.  I will resist.
• The kids are officially sick of bowling.  Hopefully we won't miss soccer registration this year.
• Officially pining for spring.  Soon, soon.

Too Comfortable

The animals are starting to walk all over me.  The geese are constantly trying to open the front door and every time I open it the ducks try to fly in.

Today I had an uninvited visitor.

Maybe I should post a list of rules on the front door.

Homestead Brew

For Christmas, I bought Limey a home brew kit and some books on brewing and gardening with beer in mind.

I didn't really pay attention to the process.  I think he boiled some water and mixed some stuff together and popped it into the keg.   The beer is due to be bottled on the 16th but I think Limey is going to leave it longer.  The longer it sits the better it gets apparently.  You can buy refill kits for the beer and hard cider.

We would like to grow some of the ingredients ourselves.  Limey planted hop seeds last year but they didn't grow.  He's going to try again but I'm looking into tracking down some hops rhizomes to make it a little easier.

Have you done any home brewing or hop growing?

Friday Bullets

• My glasses are falling apart.  Going to have to make a trip into town.  
• 3 weeks left of wood, then what?
• Sherlock starts again this weekend.
• Recommend me a French curriculum for kids.  Not liking Rosetta Stone.
• Limey is awaiting his first home-brewed beer.  
• Veg in cold room are still in great condition.  Apples are still good as well.
• The kids want to know when we're going to get a horse.  Um, the 22nd of never sound okay?
• My favourite non-homesteading blog of the moment is this one.  Check out her greatest hits page.

Neverending Story

I received an e-reader for Christmas.  It took me awhile to jump on that train but I finally started to covet one about 2 months ago.  Limey got me a cute little lavender Kobo.  Unfortunately it lived up to it's reputation when it started freezing several days after I started using.  I ended up taking it back and getting the Sony Touch instead.  It was on sale for the same price which is great and it's not defective but it's not as nice looking either.  I really liked the Mac vibe the Kobo was giving me.

For some reason, I find it easier to read with my Sony than with regular novels.  I'm a fast reader already, but I can really zoom through my epubs.  I'm on a YA dystopia kick these days and this is what I've read in the past week.

Divergent was my favourite. Delirium, which has a very similar theme to the movie Equilibrium, came in at a close second. Enclave was okay but I probably won't continue the series. Solstice was not quite on theme but still a fun read. Uglies was a decent read but not as good as the first two.

I think I'm going to read The Maze Runner next. Have you read any good novels lately?

Shrooms

Because I'm Captain Awesome, I put oyster mushroom plugs in Limey's stocking. They arrived in the mail a couple of weeks before Christmas so I had to store them in the fridge. He thought it was a food gift until I pretended to let slip "I hope they're still alive" while peeking in the fridge. That really threw him off.

Anyway. Oyster mushrooms plugs are cool. I purchased them from a UK seller on Ebay. All you have to do is drill holes 2" apart, into hardwood logs that are around 6-8' in diameter. The wood can't be freshly cut. It needs to be between 3-12 weeks old.

Once the holes are drilled, hammer the plugs in and seal them with wax. Put logs in a cool, damp spot for about 12 weeks. After that point you can spritz the logs periodically with water to encourage mushroom growth. The logs should produce two crops a year and can continue to fruit for 5 years.

I can easily see this becoming an addictive hobby.

Fun Times

I finally, after years of trying, got Limey hooked on a board game. Video games and movies are entertaining and all but are pretty useless when the power goes out. The winning game is called Carcassonne. It is a tile laying game and is said to be similar to Settlers of Catan. The reason we went with Carcassonne over Catan is because you can play it with two players. SOC needs at least three.

After playing it at least a dozen times last week, I decided to make it even more fun by picking up a couple of expansion packs. The packs give you more tiles and more options for scoring. The base game took us about 30-45 minutes to play. With the expansions it takes about an hour. It is so much fun and I admit that we're totally addicted.

Rio Grande Games makes a lot of cool board games that are a little more interesting than the standard fare that you find at Walmart.  Unfortunately they can be hard to come by if you're rural and/or can't order them from Amazon.com. 

What's your favourite board game?

Mid-Year Homeschool Update

Due to illness and holiday fun, we've been slacking on the homeschool front for the past month.  We're going to get back into the swing of things on Wednesday after Limey picks up a boxful of books from the library.

I thought I'd post a little update of dd1's progress.  Here's the original plan I posted in the fall.  Progress updates are in red.

Math:  I was going to purchase RightStart Math Beta but I don't want to spend the money. Lol no, it's just that now that she has the basics down it's really easy to teach her without the formal stuff.  It would be a pointless expense. Instead we'll teach her from life as well as read some fun math books from the library like; A Dollar For Penny, Sir Cumference and Mummy Math.  She also likes the Khan Academy videos.  The first 4 Life of Fred elementary series books.

From reading, Khan Academy and a couple of practice worksheets, dd1 has learned how to borrow and carry.  A friend dropped off a bunch of books a couple of weeks ago and one of them was a multiplication sticker book so I let her complete that.  I also downloaded the free version of this game which she's also enjoying.

LA: We're going to delve into writing stories and poems this year.  I purchased this book from Amazon as a jumping off point for my poetry plan.  For the writing part, we'll go over parts of speech, how to write a sentence, paragraph etc.  I've also started a list of writing prompts for her to work with and bought a couple of Mad Libs books.

I ditched my lesson plan for LA in favor of the Winning With Writing workbook level 1.  Luckily I had purchased level 2 as well for next year because she has burned through the first one already.  

Shakespeare:  It's never to early to start them on the Bard.  We're going to read three plays from this series of books and watch the corresponding BBC Animated Tale.  I'm going to find some related activities to do and maybe a short performance or two.  

Haven't got to this yet.  I'll add it in when we hit the Shakespeare chapter in SOTW 2.

Reading:  I started a book list for dd1 to read next year but she blew through it in the past couple of weeks.  Instead I'm going to stock up on novels and get her to keep a list of what she's read.  I need recommendations for books though.  She's currently reading Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. She's currently reading Little House in the Big Woods.

Dd1's reading choices are all over the place.  She's currently reading The Hobbit.  Last week she read James and the Giant Peach and The Witches by Roald Dahl.  She also really loves Geronimo Stilton and the graphic novel Bones.

Science:  We're going to finish up the rest of Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding and read related books from the library.  I also picked up The Usborne Science Encyclopedia which is fab.

We're almost done BFSU for the year.  I think we have about a dozen lessons left.

History:  History was our big subject last year.  We used my writeup of History Odyssey: Ancients.  This year we're going to continue learning about the subjects we covered by watching documentaries and the millions of books the library has. As an offshoot of the Ancient Greek portion of our studies, we're also going to read D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths.   I purchased SOTW 2 so we'll also be covering the Middle Ages.  Hopefully that'll take us to June.

We finished the first half of the history curriculum and will move on to the second this week.  Our first unit of study?  Vikings!

Geography:  Did I mention that I love the library?  What I've been doing with all these subjects is searching the library for related books.  I'll put them all on hold in September and read them as they come in.  Our main spine for Geography is going to be The Usborne Geography Encyclopedia with Complete World Atlas. 


I think we're about two thirds the way through geography.  Volcanoes and other natural disasters is coming up for the next couple of weeks.

French:  Dd1 has already started on Rosetta Stone for French.  I think it's (learning French) a tad bit pointless myself.  If at some point we have to put the kids in school (hopefully never) at least she
won't be behind in it.  


She very occasionally does French anymore.  I'm not feeling Rosetta Stone at all.  She does it and passes each lesson but then retains nothing from it.  I need to find a different program but I've been having a hard time coming up with anything.

Art:  I'm excited about this subject.  We're still playing around with Creativity Express but I've been eying up Meet the Masters and Artistic Pursuits.  This is another of those boxed curriculum that I look at and think "I could totally write that myself".  So that's what I'm doing.  We're going to study three artists, read about them with some lovely books like this one and do a bit of painting.  


I feel bad about this one.  It's her favourite subject but we hardly ever do it.  This is entirely the baby's fault...lol.  It is really difficult to do art when there is a grabby baby constantly interrupting.  At the moment I'm just happy that dd1 reads and enjoys her Getting to Know The World's Greatest Artists books.

Health and PE:  Curriculum based on Basher's Human Body. Both kids want to take dance classes in the fall.  We're still doing Yoga. 


Almost finished this curriculum.  We were unable to find a nearby dance class so she's back in bowling.  Dd2 joined the class as well and they both enjoy it.
Logic: She'll be doing Logic Safari. 

She pulls out this workbook periodically to work on the puzzles.

Cursive:  Cursive worksheets.


She hasn't done any cursive.  Just haven't added it in yet.  I might push it to next year or do it over the summer.


That's where we're at.