Falconry Update!

Things are really coming together for E12's adventure into falconry. One of the first steps is to find a master falconer who is willing to apprentice the interested person in the sport. We have one of those! E12 gets to begin working around the bird at the end of September or early October when all of the red tail's flight feathers are back in business. It's unclear how often he'll be engaged with it to start, but he'll be working with two others this year.

We've been gathering information on this for a long time, but have now really nailed down the specifics and we are looking forward to seeing this unfold for E12. He'll need a small game hunting license and in order to get that he'll need a hunter's education class. We have that schedule and hopefully this fall he and Dan will take the class. The summer class was full already. Imagine that! He'll need to take a falconry exam as well. With those in place, he can apply for his falconer's license. Though the federal guideline allows a falconer's license at age 12, NY State says 14! So...this time next year he can apply for the license which is actually a full falconer's license not really an apprentice license. He'll be able to fully work with certain birds of prey and, in fact, he will be required to have a mews in order to get the license! So, it's really a "beginner's license" and we are considering this next year the real apprenticeship as he gets close to the bird and gets a feel for what it's like to take care of a raptor! 

Our falconry packet arrived the other day straight from the DEC in Albany, NY! We are all set to begin the process and it's very exciting!

This is the exam booklet. E12 has already taken a look and he'll be studying the 300 questions while he works with his master falconer this year. In April, he'll take the test. He needs to pass 80 out of 100 questions to apply for the license next summer.

I had a chance to speak with the DEC staff person in charge of the falconry program here in NY and he is excited about this opportunity for E12. I was very encouraged that he was so eager to see him be successful and he let me know that he would be as helpful as he could as we get E12 prepared for the license. Dan is looking forward to hunter education class! And he is considering getting the falconer's license himself so he and E12 can work together. That is not set in stone, but it's a possibility. Hunter education for Dan is happening for sure- a father/son outing.

I think my biggest "concern" is that once E12 gets a chance to help clean after a bird, prepare the prey for the bird to eat and all those "messy" reality items, he may be less enchanted with the sport! However, we remain hopeful that this will be "his gig" for the teen years and that it will serve him well for a long time.

Coaching the Writing Process

My newest article is up over at Heart of the Matter and I'd love for you to take a peek! It's called Coaching the Writing Process and it's all about how to work with your children and their current skill set to help them to be better writers- without a lot of curriculum!



I think it’s fair to say we all want our kids to be good writers. Some children are natural writers and some are not. They will do anything to get out of writing even one sentence. Have you ever given much thought as to why we want our kids to write well? Is it because our jobs will be easier as homeschooling parents? Is it so they can pass tests and do well in school? Is it so they can excel in college or another vocation? What makes writing so important? Homeschooling parents try lots of different resources and struggle to find just the thing that will best help their children to write. Surely, there will be something out there that will do the trick!

Today I’d like to share with you the goal I have for my kids in writing and how we have purposed to reach that goal over the years with each individual child without a lot of formal programming. The one writing goal I have for my children is that they will be good written communicators. What does it mean to be a good written communicator? It means that when the intended audience reads your writing, it will be effective in its purpose- to persuade, to explain, or to tell a story.

Often, when people ask me how we do grammar, spelling and writing in our homeschool, they are surprised and somewhat skeptical when I say we just forge ahead meeting goals without using a curriculum. We do a lot of writing within the context of our unit studies which gives us a great wealth of authentic writing practice. Most people though, want the nuts and bolts of how we improve mechanics and spelling. They seem disappointed when I tell them that it is through these more authentic experiences that we focus on the building blocks of writing...

{Read More...}

Mr. Science {J6}

Most of the birthday treasures for J6 involved science stuff. You didn't forget his mad scientist party, did you? We took him to our local sciencenter on his birthday and he loved it! He loves any chance to get over there and tinker with exhibits.

Does he look into it or what?

He builds complete circuits with the snap circuits. This set has some fun options including the volt meter which he LOVES to use. This is the green snap circuits kit.

This has some wind, solar, and crank powers sources in it so you don't really need a battery so much like the other sets. This has been a great addition to our snap circuit collection.

He also got a set to take the 300 to the 700 kit and it came with a computer interface. Yes. It's that cool.

Does this make you smile or what? Ok...maybe it's just me. But he loves to read the circuit maps and try out different configurations. Yes...he's really reading. He has just taken off over the last month and there's no catching him at this point.

Check out that solar panel! He's been standing by the window trying to charge his battery.

Other than these electronic pieces of fun, he received glow in the dark hex bugs, a nerf gun and Wii game (just like his brother and yes...there are two different Wii nerf games if you've never seen them), and the Myth Busters water kit which he's been asking for since Christmas!

Baseball Season

E12 played baseball again this season in the majors league. He had a great season. The team finished in second place after a tough played game on Thursday evening. Games were Tuesday and Thursday nights and sometimes they were held in the next town. Which we called stinky field because it was adjacent to the village sewage treatment plant. Usually games are played a few blocks away at the school fields, but we only had two teams this year and they wanted to mix things up.

E12 typically played right or left field (more often left) and third base. Last year he played mostly short stop. In the championship game last week, E12 ran a guy down to tag him out before he slid into home! It was spectacular to watch- the catcher sent him the ball and the runner took off for home so E12 chased him DOWN. Got him!

While E12 plays ball, we entertain ourselves. On this night we had Nerf guns and watercolors. Of course!

I washed some pages with color. I'm using this little bitty journal for the One Thousand Gifts project.

R11 works with plain watercolor and watercolor pencils.

Then she watered over all the pages where she'd used water color pencils. Here you might notice she always prefers brushes only. E12 likes the detail you can provide with the pencils before you brush it with water.

This brings to a close E12's athletic career in the youth program. NY State Law does not allow homeschoolers to play school sports. Bummer. He had a great run in both soccer and baseball and he is looking forward to falconry starting this fall. Update coming soon!

The Big Book of Animal Devotions

I picked up The Big Book of Animal Devotions last summer at the MOPS Convention.What a great book! It's coming in handy as Dan and I teach children's church at our church this month. Let's take a look at one of the 250 Daily Readings about God's Amazing Creation.

Recently, we did the porcupine. Each week, I give the kids a craft project to go with the animal. What else but tooth picks and a modeling compound would do the trick?

I always have a map and our DK Encyclopedia of Animals on hand to show off where our critter is from! That particular atlas is one of our favorites, the National Geographic World Atlas for Young Explorers.

R11 has been helping us out and as always she takes a project to the next level. I love how she darkened the ends of the quills.

I9's porcupine

Each reading comes with a Bible verse and focuses on a character trait. This lesson was about how to recognize what NOT to get into. I was so tempted to share a bit of Hank the Cowdog, the original where Hank gets in a tangle with a porcupine he swears is a raccoon. I can just hear Slim now, "Hank when are ya gonna learn about porcupines?" Classic stuff there....that little porcupine belongs to J6.

Another fine porcupine from class. Everyone loves to color with marker on model magic.

This has been a really good experience and I look forward to doing more with our kids at home. Instead of a craft for my oldest, I may choose a research project of some sort related to the animal. What I do know is that each week the kids are eager to find out which animal we'll be doing next!

Sewing News: The Ruffler Attachment

I've been dying to share this little piece of mechanics with you for a while. This was a really fun thing we picked up for R11 for her birthday. A ruffler attachment for her Bernette 82e sewing machine! It does some cool tricks- it can gather fabric and make a ruffle at varying intervals and it can even do that while sewing the whole thing to another piece of fabric. What's not to love? R11 had the chance to use one at a friend's house and has been excited about it ever since. It was the next logical step for our budding seamstress!

It's a special foot that you attach and it gathers fabric at 1, 6, and every 12th stitch. Pretty cool.

She's only just begun! I can't wait to see what she creates with this marvelous little tool and let me tell you how amazing this thing is to watch!

In full disclosure, we've hit a snaffoo with it. We had some trouble figuring it out and it started bunching up on us. So, although we made a few cute runs, we had to send out the machine to get it fixed. We are hopeful it will return to us good as new and with a working ruffler. The moving parts seemed a little too stiff to me so my hope is that it will work even better when it returns- which could be a bit. The shop is very busy! Until then, mine is back from its first tune up in 13 years and we can use that for our creative endeavors.

Game Time: Dominion!

A new game for us since Christmas, Dominion is well loved and frequently played. Amazon.com reviews are correct- the game is addicting! We can all play this one with varying amounts of experience and success. I like that the game changes depending upon what you choose for actions as you set up the game.

Essentially, without a lot of interactive cards, you are playing against the deck and you are trying to amass a lot of cards and particularly a lot of victory points. The person who has the most- wins!

It really is a card game and there are many choices to make for the action cards you will play that game.

Our two newest editions are Prosperity, Intrigue and Seaside! Don't forget you need to buy the basic Dominion game as well.

Seaside lets you have tokens for victory points and duration cards which allow the benefit to linger to your next turn. Pretty cool.

One of the things I LOVE about this game is that it really is a different game each time you play depending on the cards you choose to play with that round. Having caboodles of expansions means we can pick lots of different cards which changes the game strategy. Of course, as our mathematician friend explains, once you know how certain powerful cards play, if they are in the game then you know what to do. It appears we are missing just two (one is a brand new version) small expansions and as luck would have it another birthday coming in September. This summer we are trying to achieve a game streak, but we have not yet decided on the parameters. One different game each day? Just a game of our choice each day? Two games a day? So many possibilities...

Strawberry Season

It's finally strawberry picking time in NY! Instead of picking this year (because no one really enjoys it), I decided just to buy the flats and save my energy for processing these beautiful berries! I bought them one at a time and I have just a half flat to go to end the season and finish "putting up" the strawberries. Friday and Saturday we made lots and lots of jam!

Mmmm...fresh farm berries just ripe for action!

Hulled berries ready for duty!

Berries get mashed with a potato masher before getting combined with sugar...4 cups of sugar in case you like to count stuff like that.

E12 likes to make jam and R11 is always willing to help in the kitchen. I have to admit with their help in making the jam, it really cut down my time. We all had a job to do with multiple timers going. Good time!

This jam is ready to jar up!

We made about 20 half pints of strawberry freezer jam.

The remainder of this flat and just about all of the second one were sliced and put in ziploc bags into the freezer. Throughout the year, we pull them out to make fruit smoothies and it is sooooo worth the work! If you've never made freezer jam, there's nothing quite like opening a jar of  jam in the middle of winter and getting a blast of summer time right out of there! The smell takes you right to the of month June. Amazing!

Crazy Clay!

Sometimes R11 will just page through an activity book looking for some fun things to do. This time she picked up the Kid Concoctions book by John and Danita Thomas. These two have a neat story which I've heard at the MOPS Convention. Basically, when their children were too involved with video games and TV and they saw how their family was spending time apart, they shut everything down and made up these recipes as part of spending time together as a family. Pretty cool. And we get to benefit from their experimentation! All I need to do is be willing to go along with her inspiration. Enter CraZy Clay!

First we added cornstarch and baking soda to some water and began to heat it.

The recipe...when you make these know that sometimes you need to make a note of how you'd adjust it. In this case, I didn't let the clay cool all the way before kneading it and I think that would make a big difference.

There are four or so Concoctions Books. This one is a bind up of four titles- I think only available at workshops and conventions (at least it used to be that way). They have a lot of great ideas in there.

We added some color!

Just getting started with uniform color...

Lime green and red glitter...oh  yeah...

Now we're cooking!

Here we are...not a bad texture but way to sticky when it's warm.

Just makes you want to put your hands in that, right?

Just too sticky...we added flower.

See the glitter? I didn't add enough I don't think. Glitter comes back on you way too easily so I hardly ever unleash loose glitter. This was an exception to my typical rule of "no loose glitter"!

After this moment, I packed up the leftovers and completely cool it's not nearly as sticky. Live and learn. She made lots of doll house furniture and got her brothers involved the next day.

I wonder what we'll do next. She has an affinity for papier mache so maybe we'll try that. I think she also wants to try some window clings, but not sure I'm not sure I'm up for them going on my window. Sometimes that stuff doesn't come off! What summer adventures are you having so far?

Art Journal

Part of R11's birthday present from us was a whole gathering of art books. She loves to craft and create and had asked for materials and books. As I was thinking of what to get her, I realized she has a lot of crafty books for girls and I thought it might be fun for her to branch out and have fun with collage, mixed media, and watercolor. I found a bunch of great books and settled on these three.

Very fun book with a video tutorial- this is meant to be a life journal sort of thing and gives ideas for prompts. I could do without the angst filled sort of topics, but it's ok. She pretty much ignores those.

Fabulous book! Teaches some watercolor techniques we can perfect and has been a lot of fun to page through. R11 loves watercolor and I thought this would be fun for her to read and try on her own.

Last year R11 took a collage class at our homeschool co-op and she LOVES to work with doodads on the page. I thought this book (and there are dozens like it) might be inspiring to her.

We added this to the pile so she'd have something to work in for an art journal. I wanted to make sure it could handle wet media. This is 9 x 12, but they make an 11 x 14 size that was very tempting!

A glimpse at her start- some stamping and leaf printing

So far, this has been a fantastic hit. She takes the journal a lot of places and adds to it often and she even puts the date on the page! With her sewing journal that has not always been so successful. I have some other entries to share at this point which she has given me permission to do. We did some watercolor that will be fun for you all to see. So, stay tuned!