Week of May 28

We started the week with a Memorial Day/Birthday party for my dad at our home.  The kids enjoyed running around with their cousins, while the women chatted and prepared food, and the men took turns holding the umbrella, grilling, and keeping an eye out for funnel clouds.  None spotted, luckily. 
I made this strawberry pie for my dad, which was a huge hit.  We make quite a few strawberry pies throughout the summer, along with jam as our strawberry plants expand every year. 

Our school books are finding some tough competition in the climbing tree and tire swing.  As the weather warms, we are cutting some subjects short to get outside and play. 

While the kidlets run and play, I keep busy hoeing and weeding my gardens.  My wonderful husband tilled a second garden for me which is already full of yummy vegetables.  We have a couple dozen kale plants, tomatoes, peppers, onions, pie pumpkins, cantaloupe and watermelon.  Our smaller garden is sprouting carrots, peas, lettuce, spinach and broccoli.  Check out our favorite recipe for kale here.  Yum!  In another month or two, our berries will start to ripen and we will have (in addition to our plethora of strawberries) raspberries, mulberries, black raspberries, blackberries, cherries and hopefully some blueberries from our new bush. 

We attended a memorial service yesterday for a relative of my husbands who had passed away.  He was 91 years old, and was born, farmed, raised his family, and died all within a 3 mile radius.  His oldest son gave a touching tribute to his dad including this little gem:

"Farms today are about making money, they are businesses.  When I was growing up a farm meant taking care of your family- providing food and being together, working along side each other."

I love this quote.  I am sure not all modern day farms are about making money, but I do agree that times are a 'changin.  I love that we can give our kids a flavor of 'living off the land' and working together to eat fresh and healthy foods we have grown. 

This is what we learned this week:

Math: J-Straco is working with fractions, converting improper fractions and Farm Boy has been working on area, perimeter and volume.

Grammar:  Only one grammar lesson this week, as we are almost to the end of the book.  We reviewed capitalization.

Spelling:  The boys completed the week's lesson in their workbooks. Farm Boy kept up with the Scripps National Spelling Bee.  He and I took this qualifying test to see if we could enter.  I won't tell you our scores- but I can guarantee you won't see our names in next year's Bee!  On the plus side, Farm Boy has been balking about taking Greek in the fall, so I was able to point out that a lot of the Spelling Bee words had Greek origins.

Latin:  We have been working with future tense verbs, and have been walking around the house chanting, "bo, bis, bit, bimus, bitis, bunt". 

Science:  Our gardening has been our science for the week.  The boys have been helping their dad test corn seed to find the germination rate.  Also, we spotted a hummingbird outside at the bird feeding station, so we did some research on what they like to eat.  We found a recipe for hummingbird food and made a batch to hang out in our hummingbird feeder.

History:  We have been reading about Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, and the first and second triumvirates of Rome.  Books we used for our research include: Famous Men of Rome, Augustus Caesar's World by Foster, The Life of Julius Casear by Dr. Nicholas Saunders, and Cleopatra by Diane Stanley.

Reading:  J-Straco finished 'Hugo Cabret' and started 'Wonderstruck', also by Brian Selznick.
Farm Boy is reading 'Farmer Boy' by Laura Ingalls Wilder. 

Bible:  We didn't do anything in our 'Names of God' book this week.  However, the boys do a nightly 'men's bible study' with their dad before bed each night.  We heard a shocking statistic on the radio- People who read the bible less than 4 times a week, exhibit behavior identical to athiests. That is a huge motivating factor for us to keep up with our bible studies!
*disclaimer: we have nothing against athiests, we know some very nice non-believers and enjoy spending time with them.  However, as Christians we feel it is our responsibility to be an example to those around us, by spreading the word of God, and living a life so that others can see Christ in us.

The Princess has been busy at the school table as well.  She does a page or two from her Rod & Staff preschool book each day, and is working through the phonogram cards.  She has about half of the phonograms memorized.  I also showed her a cursive writing app on my iPad, and she practiced making cursive, lowercase letters 'a', 'b', and 'c'.  I ordered another set of cuisenaire rods and some base ten blocks and have been trying to get her familiar with those so we can start Miquon Math in the fall.