How Now Brown Cow

Today, we continued to read stories from Clara Dillingham Pierson's "Among the Farmyard People". Today's story was called "The Oxen Talk with the Calves". I was so surprised how much scientific information is packed into these stories. It told in good detail how the cow digests it's food, that it has four "stomachs" (now considered 4 digestive compartments contained in one stomach) and what it means to "chew cud". Lillie Anna had a great time demonstrating how the cow sounds when it "regurgitates" it's food. The story also had a great moral to it as well. The Baldwin Project has all of Mrs. Pierson's books on animals and they are delightful to say the least. We made a cow puppet out of paper plates.


Lillie played two computer games, one for reading practice and one for math.

Boy Meets Bovine

This is Cow. Cow is the object of affection for Jackson. Lillie recieved Cow on her 2nd birthday and , in Cow's younger days, she sang "Old Macdonald Had A Farm". But as she grew older, Lillie tired of her. Enter Jackson Cole. He sorta adopted Cow. Jody, in a desperate attempt to keep his sanity on vacation, did emergency surgery in the car to remove her voice box. I stitched her up as best I could. But she has been thrown into the washing machine so much, that she has lost most of her fluff. But, true love is blind and Jackson doesn't seem to mind that she isn't what she used to be. The relationship between Jackson and Cow is... cute. One morning, I caught him laying in front of the door in the sunlight telling Cow how much he loved her and that she was a good "buddy". He was so charming, Cow was rendered speechless. Cow eats with Jack, sleeps with Jack,rides in the car with Jack. They are inseparable. And if you think I'm exagerating... check out these pictures.







See, told you it was cute!

Some Good Books About the CM Method

I thought I'd do a short post for anyone who might be interested in locating some books that instruct how to apply the CM Method into your homeschool. Several of these I have read, the last two, I have not, but have visited these ladies websites and they seem to be noteworthy also. These links take you to Half.com which is the only place I will buy a book these days. They have almost everything known to mankind at great prices, alot less than bookstores. Check out the links and enjoy!

A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola
A Charlotte Mason Education: A How To Manual by Catherine Levinson
More Charlotte Mason Education by Catherine Levinson
When Children Love to Learn by Elaine Cooper

What a Hoot!

I am going to combine what should have been yesterday's post with today's because, not a whole lot went on yesterday and I slacked. Lillie Anna didn't do anything really structured yesterday. She played her games on the computer. I did let her play with her foam beads. I got a bucket of 250 of them at the Dollar Tree. I gave her a barbecue skewer and printed off a page that had sequences of the beads and she had to thread them onto the skewer in the order that they were shown on the worksheet. She liked it and it was fairly simple to put together. It gave her some practice on patterns and sequencing.
I can't even remember if we did anything else school related (shame on me). Jackson got busted doing something I can't stand...
And here is a picture of Jackson with his Daddy.
Now, onto today's happenings. Lillie did some reading practice and did a math activity book I downloaded off of Nick Jr. Then Jack joined us for a game of Spell Fun, which I found on clearance at Wal-Mart last month for $3.00! It gives Lillie some needed phonics practice and Jack gets to work on his letter recognition. You may notice in this picture that Lillie Anna looks mad. You're right, she was. Jack was trying to help her and nothing makes her madder than Jack thinking he could possibly do something she can't.

After the "school work" was completed, I read them a story by Thornton Burgess I got off the Munsey's website I discovered the other day. It was called "How the Eyes of Old Mr. Owl Became Fixed". It was a delightful little story that was just packed with zoological information about owls. I didn't know that owls couldn't roll their eyes and that in order to look around they have to swivel their heads and that they can turn their heads all the way around. Freaky. Go to Munsey's and download the book "Mother West Wind How Stories" to find this little gem. Well, then we made an owl craft from DLTK-Kids using their hands as the wings of the owl. The project called to use construction paper cutouts of their hands, but I thought it would be more interesting to use their hand prints. The owl on the left is Lillie's and the owl on the right (with it's foot where it's wings are) is Jack's.

Nature Walk

Friday I got the rare chance to take Lillie and Jack on a picnic and a nature walk. With Chloe being so little, that's hard to do by myself, but my mother-in-law took Chloe for a couple of days so I bit the bullet and took the two oldest out. We had a great time! Nature walks have become kind of a tradition in our family, a tradition that I hope to continue as long as we can. It really teaches the kids appreciation for God's creation and the looks of wonder on their faces when they pick up a feather or an acorn (something so simple, us grown-ups don't even pay attention to most of the time)just brings a simple sense of joy to me. I packed us a picnic lunch and we headed off to the state park in hopes of seeing our duck and geese friends again. The lake was way down. So much so that there wasn't a whole lot of water for the ducks to swim around in. I have never seen it that low and it was a bit disturbing. I don't think I realized how scarce water is getting around here until I saw that. Well, we ate and meandered down to the shore. We didn't have to wait long until a big goose waddled up on shore. He scared us awful good, though. He had a hard time waddling up the incline close to the shore where we were sitting. All we could see was the top of its head over the shore line. Then, it flapped it's wings and flew up , right in front of us. I'm sure Jack was so scared he wet his diaper, I know I would've if I had been wearing one. I mean, it was close. I gave the kids some day old hot dog buns and showed them how to break little pieces and throw it to the goose. Jack broke his bun in half and threw both pieces to the bird at the same time. He has no patience. Here are the pictures I took.

Rising Out of the Ashes

Today, we did some workbook pages and Lillie continued to practice reading her new memory verse. I also had her do a CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant) worksheet for some letter sound practice. Jack worked on his number caterpillar
Okay, now I am totally convinced that DLTK-Kids has a craft project for every topic known to man. You think I'm kidding. I read the kids "The Firebird" by Jane Yolen and was having no luck finding an easy craft to go along. I finally, in a last ditch effort, checked DLTK and , guess what! Those guys can make a toilet paper roll into anything. They had a section devoted solely to the firebird (or phoenix). I highly recommend you check them out if you are not familiar with their site.
This is Lillie's TP Roll Firebird.

This is Jack's cut and paste firebird.

I was never quite sure of what a firebird actually was (aside from a car). For those of you who don't know, it is a mythilogical bird that , when ready to die, builds a nest (as legend goes)of cinnamon twigs and sets itself on fire. It burns to ashes and a new firebird is born out of the ashes. I learn something new everyday. I love school!
Here is a picture that shows what Jack did while we did workbook pages. I tell you, they'll ship anything these days!

Come Visit the Magic Doublewide!

Where toys fly off the shelf and onto the floor, where food and car keys dissappear...
Where baby quilts sprout arms and play the piano...
And little boys fall into deep sleeps standing up in chairs...
It's like a bad fairytale...