Foraging for Wild Edibles

About a year and a half ago we moved into our new house, a 70’s contemporary on 1.25 acres. We have lots of trees, a large rocky hill and even a yard. This past year we realized that we also have wild edibles. Last summer we enjoyed the wild wine berries that were growing and…

Lessons from LEGOs

http://www.flickr.com/photos/huladancer22/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 This weekend I finally convinced the girls to give up their large bin of LEGO Quatros. They donated that and ten other toys to Goodwill. So I decided to treat them and purchased them some regular small LEGOs. I went to the store looking for a plain old box of…

Open Source Curricula for Homeschoolers

http://www.flickr.com/photos/revdancatt/ / CC BY-SA 2.0 As someone who is just getting started at (secular) homeschooling I’m constantly looking at various curricula and other materials that are out there. I’m pretty sure that no one curriculum will fit our needs nor do I plan on having my kids do worksheets constantly. Because of this I am…

Potatoes and Rainbows

I had a wonderful opportunity the other day to go with a friend to harvest potatoes at her friends farm. The farmer was worried about late blight so he was pulling the potatoes early. As we were in the field cutting down the plants with the machete and clearing the row a huge storm blew…

Hiring a Nanny

Photo courtesy of sylvar via CC A few years ago we had just had our second child and my husband/stay at home dad had just decided to re-enter the workforce so that we could get buy a house. With that we were at a loss for childcare and needed to find someone to watch the…

Family Creative Workshop

I just recently came across this wonderful set of crafting books from the 70s on Apartment Therapy. The web is a great resource for crafts of all kinds but it’s great to have an actual book in hand sometimes. I’ve ordered a used set on Amazon at a not too unreasonable price, about 5$ per…

My new amazon homeschooling resource center!

My new amazon homeschooling resource center! Amazon now allows you to create an area with many different products sorted into categories. I am going to use this to catalog the various homeschooling supplies and item’s I’m interested in and to share them with you.

Discounted Homeschooling Materials

I just picked up some new books from amazon today, using my handy dandy Amazon discount bookmarks, to aid us in our homeschooling adventure.  One I have been eyeing for quite some time is The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections this book looks like it has a great deal of information…

Homeschooling

So we are planning on homeschooling the girls and since S.I. would be in kindergarten this year I thought it best to start looking at kindergarten curriculums and seeing what it is that she would be learning in conventional school this year. I’m happy to see that some f the things she would be learning…

Geocaching, fun for the whole family!

A rusted out tractor deteriorated to barely recognizable parts, crossing a stream on large stepping stones, climbing a steep embankment, these are things we’ve seen or done recently while participating in a new hobby as a family, geocaching. For those who don’t know geocaching is a sport/hobby/activity in which you use a GPS device to…