Garden Starting Update

Our indoor "garden" is coming along nicely. The sweet potato has some good root growth, though no sprouts have appeared yet. We've also added an avacado pit, but it hasn't shown any signs of life yet. I was afraid our celery experiment was going to turn out to be a failure. Our first snowstorm of the season (in February??) hit the night we put the celery in the water to soak and there was no way to get any dirt from the garden to plant it. So, we kept it in the bowl of water and waited for the weather to warm up. It started wilting and turning brown, and I was thinking we would have to throw it out. But then . . . leaves started peaking out of the center and after about a week, we finally had growth!

This morning I noticed that the new growth had a little bit of brown on the edges, so I sent my son to the garden to get some dirt. While he was digging, he found a flint arrow head! It's funny how you can mix history into a botany lesson.



Indian arrow head

Here is our celery plant in its new home, waiting for the time when it can be transplanted to its summer garden home.

Re-grown celery in a fancy Modge-Podged pot

Getting Ready For Spring Planting

I've recently joined the Pinterest fad and while I was poking around over there, I found a couple of neat things to try out in the garden this year. I decided last fall that I wanted to grow sweet potatoes, so I was thrilled to find a link to an article explaining how to start your own sweet potato slips. It seemed like a good project for an 11 year old boy. 



starting sweet potato slips

 Then I came across another pin to an article telling how to re-grow celery from the end of a store-bought stalk. My grandpa grew up on a celery farm, and I grew listening to his stories. I've tried (and failed) growing celery from seed, so I'm excited to see if this will work. {Edited to say: despite what is claimed by the author of the post I linked to, re-growing celery does NOT produce more celery. However, if you want celery seed, you may decide to try it anyway.}

a garden on our window sill



My favorite part about homeschooling is teaching my children that education doesn't have to stop once you graduate. You can continue to learn new things all your life. Really cool things like how to start a garden on your window sill. I'll try to post an update in a week or two showing how our plants are growing.

Giving Your Kids The Credit They Are Due

fresh home canned beans

I am currently homeschooling three highschoolers and, as if the high level courses weren't enough to keep up with, I am spending a significant amount of time putting together transcripts for my two college-bound sons. One of the most exciting dicoveries I've made through this process is that many public highschools have their course descriptions posted online. It's exciting because I've come to see how many of the things my children are learning outside of their normal studies are being taught for credit in the classrooms of these highschools.

Now, let me clarify that I am not one of those mothers who tries to count every normal childhood experience as a "learning experience." I do believe that they are learning experiences, but I'm not writing them all down on their transcripts. But if students in the public schools are earning credit for classes in agricultural science, carpentry, and food prep, I think it is fair for my children to also get credit if they are doing the same work.


onions drying on the sidewalk

My children have planted and cared for two HUGE gardens in the past two years. And, due to pregnancies and births, I haven't been able to give them much help. They have learned about insect pests, plant diseases, and how to improve the soil. And they have also done quite a bit of canning, freezing, and drying. They have all been helping with meal preparation from a young age and are accomplished bakers and cooks.

My husband grew up in a family that hunted and raised their own meat and he has passed this knowledge on to his children. They have all participated in the butchering and processing of deer, cows, and pigs. They've hunted and skinned small game, and cooked things that I was too squeemish to prepare. They have butchered chickens for our own family and they have helped friends butcher for their commercial enterprises. They have seen calves being birthed, they have bottle fed goats, and they have helped castrate calves and pigs. The older boys even researched tanning and attempted to produce their own leather.

My husband is a trim carpenter by trade (one of the best!) and he has also passed those skills on to his children. The older ones have helped him with various projects and know more about wood, stain, and joinery than some adults who make their living in construction. They've completed projects which were far more complex than what is taught in a highschool shop class, and they've had a wider variety of experiences than could be offered in a classroom.

In researching how to transfer this experience to their transcripts, I came across a simple formula for determining how much credit to award. (I wish I could credit a source, but I've lost track of where I saw it.)

1 credit= approximately 120-180 hours of work

Lab science courses are usually closer to 180 hours, while English and history classes average 150 hours for a year-long class. 120 hours is usually considered sufficient for an elective class (art, music, sewing, carpentry, web page design, etc.)

I would also recommend that in planning "classes" for your child, you mix hands on learning with research (assign books or articles to read) and at least one written project to demonstrate mastery of the material covered.

Credit Log Sheets {free printable}

Edited 2/6/12 to add: Cindy Downes of Oaklaholma Homeschool also has some good information on  transcripts and giving credit for extracurricular activities.

Who Owns Your Image?

Innocent fun or free photo op?

In this age of digital media, it is easy to get confused about things like copyrights and rights to privacy. For instance, imagine you're out in public and someone snaps a picture of you or one of your adorable little offspring. In the space of one click your image became someone else's property, which they can post all over the web or turn into marketable merchandise without your consent. Or can they? Before you start cutting eye holes in paper bags, check out this article on The Rights of Publicity and Privacy. It may not keep Uncle Herb from posting snapshots to Facebook, but can keep your child from becoming "Mr. May" in the Cutest Kids Wall Calendar.

o is for owl

I usually spend Saturdays preparing meals for Sunday. But, since I got most of my cooking done yesterday, I had time to do a craft with CJ instead. I printed out the parts for a cute little owl using free templates from the Lakeshore Learning website. When my oldest daughter saw what we were doing, she said, "He's up to o already?"

I explained to her that this not for his abc notebook, it was a different project. But then I thought, "Why not?" So our owl got glued to a notebook page. I used the scraps cut from the owl's body as a stencil to draw an o, making it about 1 cm. smaller around the outside edge. We glued the o on top of the owl and our notebook page was done!




 My "stencil." Can you see the cuts along
 the edges where CJ was practicing his
scissors skills?

The owl was a bit big for the page, but I think it is still cute.



Jamestown Study

Our homeschool co-op is studying Virginia history this year. Since the co-op mothers also wanted to give our children a chance to improve their writing and speaking skills, we set things up a little differently this year. Rather than having one of the mothers teach the class, we are having the older children (11 and up) take turns giving a presentation to both their class and the younger class.

This Friday it was my 11 year old son's turn and his topic was Jamestown. He is the youngest in the class, and I have not had him do a lot of formal writing yet, so he needed my help to prepare his speech. While I was gathering information for him on the internet, I came across some great websites.

The most informative was The Jamestown Settlement & Yorktown Victory Center Visitor's Site. My son and I enjoyed watching The Jamestown Chronicles, a series of short video biographies about some of the people related to the settlement of Jamestown. They also have some nice educational downloads. The National Parks Service site for Historic Jamestowne also looked interesting, although I didn't take the time to explore it.

We were also looking for some ideas to make his presentation more interesting. Since he was planning to show off the model of Jamestown  that he had built using our Revolutionary War Time Traveler's CD, we thought it would be fun to have the older students make their own Jamestown forts using graham crackers. We ended up splitting the class into two groups and having each group build a fort.

But the idea of passing out cookies, pretzels, and frosting to twenty-one children between the ages of 5 and 10 was a bit frightening. So I came up with a craft for the little ones based on the diet of the Jamestown settlers during the winter of 1609-1610, also known as the "Starving Time."

The colony had suffered many setbacks, but finally began to prosper under the strict leadership of Captain John Smith. Most of the original colonists had come to America in search of wealth and refused to help grow food or build shelters. Smith insisted that if a man didn't work, he shouldn't eat. But after Smith was injured in a gunpowder accident and returned to England, the colonists lost all concern for growing food.  There wasn't much set aside for winter, and relations with the native tribes had gotten hostile that they were afraid to leave the fort to look for food. They were forced to eat whatever they could find including dogs, cats, horses, snakes, and old shoes. Some of them even dug up bodies to eat, and one man was discovered to have murdered his wife and was eating her!

Jamestown During The Starving Time craft

Jamestown
by RTT (11 years old)

In December of 1607, the Virginia Company of London sponsored a settlement in North America so they could make money. This colony was chartered by King James I, who hoped to increase English holdings in the New World and convert the natives to Christianity. It was settled by 104 men and boys, who sailed to Virginia on the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery. The site for Jamestown was chosen because it was surrounded by water on three sides and easy to defend, the water there was deep enough to anchor their ships, and there were native nearby who they could trade with. By June 15, they had built a fort on the site. The fort was triangular with a bulwark at each corner.

It wasn't long until the colony began to have problems. The colony had been built on traditional Powhatan hunting grounds and relationships between the settlers and the natives were not always very good. Although the location of the settlement gave them protection from attacks, the swampy climate caused many diseases. Also, since many of the colonists were upper-class Englishmen who were only there to get richer, they refused to help with the work. By the winter of 1607, only 38 of the original 104 settlers were still alive.

As food shortages got worse, it looked like the colony was going to collapse. Then Captain John Smith came up with an idea to get food from the natives by trade. Chief Powhatan sent gifts, which allowed the colony to survive. For the next year, Smith ruled the colony with a strict hand. He insisted that his people work, or they would not eat. He burned villages and stole food if the natives refused to trade. He was feared and hated by both the English and the natives, but Jamestown flourished under his rule. However, in the fall of 1609, he was injured in a gunpowder accident and returned to England.

With John Smith gone, the settlers once again stopped working. Powhatan also saw his opportunity to get rid of the English once and for all, and ordered his warriors to stop trading with them. Trading parties that went out from the fort, never returned and were presumed dead. The settlers were afraid to leave to look for food, and the winter of 1609-1610 became known as the starving time. The colonists ate whatever they could find to stay alive, including rats and boot leather. They even dug up dead bodies to eat, and one man even killed his wife and ate part of her before he was caught. The colony almost ceased to exist.

Then, in the Spring of 1610, more settlers and supplies arrived from England. This new group of settlers came under a new charter issued by King James, which provided for stronger leadership under a governor and a period of military law with strict punishment for those who did not obey. Those who broke the laws were shot, burned at the stake, or hung. Offenses such as cursing were punished with physical torture or public humiliation. The settlers were still dependant on the Powhatans for food, and became more violent in their attempts to get it. The natives responded with equal violence and relations between the two cultures got worse.

During the winter of 1612-1613, Samuel Argall came up with a plan to kidnap Powhatan's favorite daughter, Pocahontas, and hold her for ransom. However, Powhatan refused to give in to the demands. So, Pocahontas remained with the English for more than a year and became used to their ways. She was baptized and fell in love with a planter named John Rolfe, who had introduced tobacco as a cash crop to the colony. She and John were married in 1618, which brought a truce between the English and the natives. Although Powhatan was not happy with the marriage or the truce, he was tired of fighting and felt powerless to stop it. But even with this truce, Jamestown still suffered from food shortages and disease. Colonists who wished to make money began growing tobacco, and not enough corn was planted.

Tobacco cultivation required large amounts of land and labor. Settlers moved onto lands occupied by Powhatan natives, and an increased number of indentured servants were sent to the colony. The first documented Africans arrived in 1619, and the number of African slaves increased significantly in the second half of the 17th century.

In 1622, Powhatan's successor, Opechancanough, attacked the white settlements in order to prevent them from taking more land for tobacco. 347 settlers were killed, including John Rolfe. The attacks came as a surprise because their had been peace for many years. Although the natives were driven back and completely defeated, King James revoked the colony's charter in 1624, as a result of the high death rates and the colony's poor financial state, and Virginia became a royal colony.

Christmas Cookies Like Grandma Made

 

Baking cookies can be a messy and time consuming activity. By making them ahead of time and stashing them in the freezer, you will avoid the stress of trying to fit "one more thing" into those hectic days right before Christmas and you will have more time to enjoy creating delicious tasting and visually appealing treats.

While it is OK to add one or two of your everyday favorites to your Christmas cookie plates, they should not be allowed to dominate. Remember these are CHRISTMAS cookies. They are special once a year delicacies. A plate of Christmas cookies should be a work of art, colorful and varied in size and shape. A plate of six different flavors of round, flat cookies is not a plate of Christmas cookies. And while colorfully frosted sugar cookie cut-outs will do in a pinch, they also leave much to be desired.

Here are just a few of the recipes my grandma used to make each year. Now that she is gone, I bake them with my children. Most of them are pretty easy to make and all of them are approved by four generations of family members and friends. If you make all of these recipes, your cookie plates will be coveted by everyone who knows you. And that's good, because you will have a ton of extras to give away. 

Russian Tea Cakes 

Teatime Toffees

Cathedral Windows

Molasses Spice Cookies

Candy Cane Cookies

Thumbprints 

Carmelita Bars

What's your favorite Christmas cookie?