Farm-Girl Essentials

With the shorter days and farm chores that can't be completed before it gets dark, a headlamp is so helpful. It's been added to my farm-girl essentials list, for sure.

Little Barn Academy: Our Kindergarten Schedule

  

This fall we officially started Kindergarten. I've been teaching Seth (and Silas) since they were two. Initially, I documented what we did every week. Then I documented every month. As much as I loved doing that, and I did, it just wasn't possible once we started homeschooling.
We started Kindergarten the last full week in August and it has been wonderful. Both boys love to learn, but I couldn't have imagined how peaceful teaching and learning would be. We stick to the same basic schedule Monday through Thursday, and only modify the time we start on Thursdays (I attend a women's Bible study on Thursday mornings so we do school after 12 and into the afternoon) or if some crazy event happens. Seth also attends a Kindergarten class at a local Co-Op on Fridays.

I chose Five in a Row for our guiding literacy curriculum. We've been learning sight words, working with word families, and working through First Language Lessons. We also try to read at least an hour a day. We already finished the Kindergarten Workbook A in Singapore Math and are working on Book B. We will work through the first grade book in the Spring. We also try to read a story from the Bible each day and I have been reading aloud the book The Story of the World. Next year, we will read through it again and will also work through the workbook/activity book that goes with it.  We do art and music and crafts and field trips as they fit in with what we are learning each week.

So here is our basic schedule:
-Prayer/Bible
-Read through our Five in a Row book of the week (we read the same story every day for 5 days)
-Do Five in a Row related crafts or activities
-Play Break  (outside if possible)
-Journal (Seth writes one sentence of his choice and draws a picture to go with it.)
-Handwriting Practice
-Play Break/Skill Building
-Math (calendar, counting to 100, math games, workbook practice, etc.)
-Reading The Story of the World
-Reading books aloud
-First Language Lessons
-Play (outside if possible)
-Read (we read off and on the entire day, everyday, even on weekends)
-Play

We begin our day between 8:30 and 9 and are usually done shortly after our lunch. Our entire schedule is flexible though. If we are working on an activity and we want to continue with that, we go with it. That is very different from my classroom teaching days! It is so nice to have the freedom to work on something all morning and not feel pressure to work on something else just because we have to follow a rigid schedule. We can work until we finish or need a break. If Seth catches on to something really quick (say in Math) we can move on to the next thing. If something needs to be cut from the day, the history and language lessons are the first to go. We try to cover everything else everyday.

The teacher in me will probably always worry about whether I am teaching everything that I need to be teaching, if I'm lacking anything, or if I'm doing too much. But my role as parent helps calm that fear and that's the beauty of homeschooling. I love the idea of unschooling but that really doesn't mesh well with my personality and teaching style. I also love the thoughts of Charlotte Mason and with a bit of tweaking I'm trying to lean more towards that.

Each year we will learn and figure out what's best for our family. If Kindergarten is any indicator of the years to come, I can't wait to teach these boys of mine. It always has and always will be the best job in the world!

{Gratitude} Lately

Every day I look around in amazement at all the 

beautiful, yet simple, things that I'm so thankful for.

Lately I've been grateful for...

Friday breakfast dates with this one

faces of amazement and a hermit crab named Speedy

 a new gluten free restaurant in town

 tooth powder and the special friend that made it

 an afternoon spent with a kindred spirit while 

popping garlic (for planting) and picking persimmons

 and time spent lounging in the hammock with a good book

HOME Sweet Homestead: A Property Tour

This evening I took the camera around with me to photograph our little homestead. We've cleared away enough trees and brush and bush hogged the fields so you can actually see the property now. Here's a little tour of the outside...

Our house is in the center of our property so we have fields all around us. It is also completely fenced. That's one of the reasons we loved it so much when we first saw it.

This is the view from the front corner of our property.

 We live at the intersection of two roads and you can see the two roads from our front porch. You can access our driveway from either road. It's really convenient. This is the view from the mailbox.

 The barn is in front of our house. You also see it from the driveway.

This is the back right part of our property, but you can see the house in relation to the barn. We also have a large shop that will hopefully one day be organized.

If you walk around the back of the house you will see another pasture, a cemetery (yes, I'm serious), the deck, and brick patio.  If you keep walking around you will see the other side where we have a side porch and solarium. (A few months ago, this was so grown up that you could barely see the house.)

This is a closer view of the side.  It has changed so much in the five and half months that we have been here. I kind of wish I would have taken the same walk that I took tonight when we first moved here to document the changes. I can't wait to see what it looks like in another few months.

Fall Fun at Just Piddlin' Farm

Today I put down my smart phone and picked up my camera. It felt good to be behind the camera again. In the last couple of months I had been relying on an iphone to capture our everyday moments. While it is definitely easier, it's just not the same. I'm going to try to reach for my camera first from now on.
Nana and Pop came to visit this weekend and we headed to Woodburn, KY for some fall fun at Just Piddlin' Farm.

It was an afternoon filled with corn box playing, pedal tractor riding, 

hayriding, and pickin' the perfect pumpkin. 

It was so much fun! I can't wait to do it all over again.

{Gratitude} Lately

Every day I look around in amazement at all the 

beautiful, yet simple, things that I'm so thankful for.

Lately I've been grateful for...

evenings picking muscadines

 and afternoons picking peas at the Dolan Farm

 

joining this church

and an afternoon celebrating at Fountain Fest 2014

 

 our last tomato harvest of the year

 

 little boys peeking through windows and more firewood

 

 gluten free Fridays at Gigi's Cupcakes

 and the discovery of a persimmon tree on the homestead

HOME Sweet Homestead

 Here's a glimpse at some of the fun going on around the homestead...

As I was cleaning up around the compost pile the other day, I grabbed a few vines that had grown out of the compost pile. They were covered with very tall grass and so I had no idea we had a bucket full of decorative gourds ready to be harvested. It was a pretty fun find.

 We are in the process of bush hogging the fields. 

(We are still in need of a tractor, but, thankfully, 

we have friends that don't mind if we borrow theirs for a few days.)

 The hole in the living room ceiling has been repaired. 

The walls are painted and we are taking a breather on the home improvements for a little while.

 We harvested sweet potatoes this past weekend.

 The ducks are growing and are becoming tamer each day.

 

It's fun to use things grown or found on the homestead for decorating. 

So I've been having a lot of fun decorating for fall lately.