More Fun School Stuff

We have been having so much fun with school lately. We read about the enslavement of the Isrealites and how they made bricks, so we made our own mud bricks. We used a little bit of flour, some dirt and grass, and enough water to make a paste. They baked at 200 degrees for a long time. We shaped them into bricks and decided that we would like to have a mold if we were going to be doing this every day. Here is a picture of Sister Sue making a wall with the bricks we made


Next we read about the Phoenecians. One of the things that these brave explorers were known for was the purple dye they made. We made our own purple dye from blueberries. We put them in a pot with water and boiled them for a half an hour then soaked our fabric for at least 5 minutes and now we have purple fabric. Here are the girls holding up their fabric, now we have to decide what we are going to make with it.


Today as we studied about explorers who discovered America we talked about what it was like to be a sailor. One of the things they did for fun and function is tie knots. We learned to tie a bowline knot. This is a rescue knot so it should come in handy. Here is a picture of them rescuing their dolls from after they had fallen off the ship at sea.


Miss M tied hers all by herself, Miss Mae tied hers with my help, and I tied Sister Sue's knot.

I love homeschool. We have so much fun.

Here is another random picture. This is one of the reasons that I taught Miss M to read....


So I would only have to read Green Eggs and Ham once a day instead of multiple times.

This is a well used book at our house!

Fun music finds

For music this year we are studying "The Story of the Orchestra" where we isolate individual orchestral instruments and learn to hear their sounds. I am amazed at how we are able to hear the different instruments when listening to a whole orchestra after isolating it for a whole week. In our quest to vary the songs we use to learn the instruments I have found some really fun videos on youtube that I thought I would share
This one is just weird:


This one is so pretty:



Did you know that if the french horn was stretched out it would be 12 feet long?

I fell in love with the oboe:


I also now love the bassoon:


If the contra-bassoon were stretched out it would be 16 feet long!!!

This song is beautiful and the dancing/skating is amazing:


There are many more, but I am short on time and you don't watch to sit and watch videos all days. We are having so much fun with this. I love to hear my children in the car trying to pick out the different instruments as we drive down the road listening to music. I would rather hear an argument about oboe vs. bassoon than about the toys they would like to bring.

Finished a McGuffey's book!!!

Miss M finished another McGuffey's Reader. There are six books total; a pictoral primer, a primer, then first through fourth. She started learning to read with these about six months ago. We learn phonograms and then read short stories or sentences that utilize them. Sometimes there are lists of words that I assume are supposed to be spelling words, but I didn't use them as spelling words. She is slowly learning the rules of spelling and didn't want to put any pressure on her. Nevertheless, she learned to read all of the words and to read with out using monotone. She was so excited to have a reading lesson today because she got to use the first reader which she thinks is the first "real" reading book.

Family Proclamation Photo

We declare that God's commandment to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force.

Four children may not seem like a large family to some, but to many of the people we know, we are crazy. When we announced that we were having our first everyone was happy, our second people thought it was o.k., but when it came to the third and fourth we endured many comments along the lines of why? and how are you going to afford another baby? These made us very sad because we know that each and every child is a miracle and a sacred trust from God. I feel privileged that he has entrusted us with four daughters to guide through this life safely back home to him. We will gladly accept any blessings He chooses to send our way (yes I have come to terms with having another baby) and will be excited to meet any other members of our family.

Family Weekend

We had a great family weekend. My husband went on a trip to the temple with the youth in our ward, they met at the church at 6:30 am. I love this time and the only way it could be better is if it were earlier. My girls love it when they wake up and their daddy is home, they miss him so much when he is at work. Even though he wasn't there when they woke up, they knew he would be there for lunch.

We did nothing the rest of the time. We sat around and played with each other Saturday afternoon, ate dinner with Grandma, then had church today. I even got my husband to read a scene from Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew with me. He was Petruchio and I was Kate. I think he really liked pretending to throw food around and be mean. We do not have very many weekends like this. Usually my husband has some youth commitment or work or we have so many errands to run on Saturday that we can't wait for Monday so that life can slow down again.

I used to want to be going somewhere all the time, but now I just want to stay home. I love being here at my house especially if I can just relax with my family. After spending so much time having to be somewhere, I am incredibly grateful for my time at home and really look forward to weekends like this.

Beauty and the Beast

We are really into fairy tales at our house. This may be an understatement. We read fairy tales, we draw fairy tales, we act out fairy tales, we even live a fairy tale sometimes (many days I really feel like Cinderella with all my work and somedays like the Step-Mother with all my barking). Most every day we are watching the clock and the driveway for our handsome prince to come and take us away to our happily every after, usually just the backyard, but it seems much more fun when we are entertaining him rather than just each other....but I digress, back to the post.



We read multiple versions of each fairy tale and usually pick a favorite to keep as "our" telling of the story. I have only read two Beauty and the Beast stories and that is because I did not read this one first. I can't bring myself to read another one. This one is not easy to read and it is very long, we usually spend three or four days reading it, but we are never disappointed. I know the story and how it ends, yet I still cry every time I read it. Beans (aka Miss Mae, more on this later) is especially touched when I read this book. She tells me that she is not scard of the Beast anymore just sad for him. My girls always beg me to start it over again as soon as we finish, so we will take a long time to look at all of the gorgeous paintings that illustrate the book. We just finished reading this book again this week.



The Beast in this story is very mean and very scary, but the more time we spend with him, the more we see that he is really just very sad and very lonely. He has learned to be kind and loving despite his curse, but has been rejected so much because of how he looks and how he used to act that he is feels that no one will ever know the real him because no one wants to anymore. He is very hard on himself.



Luckily for the Beast he meets Beauty Fortune. He falls in love with her and eventually she grows to care for him as well, just not romantically because she is waiting for a prince to come along for her. By the time that she realizes that she does love him it may be too late.



I have been this Beast at times in my life and sometimes I still find him creeping into my thoughts from time to time. Luckily for me I have five Beauty Fortunes who love me no matter what I sound like, look like, or if I act crazy sometimes.



Families are like that though, at least they should be. A good friend of mine always tells me that "home should be the safest place for people to make mistakes." This is because it is a wonderful place to learn from mistakes without having to feel humiliated because we make them. This is my goal everyday, that my home can be a place where those who are here feel safe making mistakes and then learning from them, including myself.

One sentence that's it!

I started off my month long celebration of the family by using the Proclamation in our devotional. I was so excited to share this with my children because they have heard us talk about this document, but I don't think that we had ever taken the time to explain what it is, where it came from, and why it is important. We spent much more time this morning doing the "spiritual message" portion of our school morning and we only got through one line. I am not really surprised by this because it is about my girls' second favorite topic, marriage (first is princesses).

They are still young enough that they think that they can marry their daddy. I had to explain to them this morning that he was already married to me and that they would have to find another man to marry. We talked a little bit about the kind of man that they should look for to marry; they don't know any boys right now that they could marry, none of them have jobs. I was able to testify of the importance of not just marriage, but marrying right, in the temple and to the right person. It was a great experience and I am so excited to study this with my girls.