Happy Chickens

We have owned chickens for almost three years. They have always been in coops and runs due to predators in the area. We finally decided to fence in more of the backyard and let them be somewhat free range during the day. Our backyard has lots of tree coverage so we are not as worried as we once were about hawks, owls, and such. Today was their first afternoon out and about.

I was very curious to see where all the birds would end up tonight for roosting. Would they go back to their own coop or elsewhere, because we do have three coops. Well once nightfall came everybody went back to their original coop for roosting except for the rooster in the top picture. He found himself a new girlfriend in Betty the black easter egg layer and roosted with her instead. 

A Few of my Favorite New Things

Something that is very new to me is drinking hot tea. A couple of weeks ago when we went to some flea markets in North Carolina I came the Herb Lady. She wholesales herbs and tea mixtures from Herbs by Merlin. I picked up the Slim II tea and love. I have a cup every afternoon. I will soon be purchasing more teas (hormone mixture and merlin's best) in a couple of days. The best part is no calories.

Next favorite on my list is Weight Watchers meals. I eat these a few times a week. Sometimes I prepare something for the family for dinner that will just have too many points for me. I eat one of these little burgers with some baked chips and an apple for lunch a couple of times a week. 

We started our Shakespeare Unit and it is going swimmingly. Art journaling our information about Shakespeare and the Twelfth Night play is a real breakthrough for us. The page above is a bio page about Shakespeare.

Here we have a cast page with all the characters from Twelfth Night.

This page so what Grace is really good at in art. Twelfth Night is about a lot of confusion and a girl disguised as a guy. People falling in love and all the comedy that goes along with it. Today we did the page above which summarizes Act One and a couple of the scenes. The character she drew is Viola/Cesairo.

Last but not least is Zumba. I attended my first class last night and love it. High paced, crazy music, and lots of people. Didn't get bored once. Me and my sister hope to attend two classes a week to add to what we already do at home for exercise. This morning when I woke up my knees and heels were really complaining. I will have to see how they hold up through two classes a week. 

Shakespeare Unit Study

A couple of days ago while perusing through a used book store I came upon this little gem. Shakespeare Plays in the Classroom Twelfth Night for grades 6-9. I am going to admit that neither myself or Grace care that much for Shakespeare but we do try to address one of his plays each year. Finding this little book for .99 has narrowed us down to Twelfth Night for this year. This book really got my creative juices flowing and decided to make a unit study to go along with it. Over the next couple of weeks we will put everything else on the back burner and just do our Shakespeare Study. Actually this comes at a great time because I only have to write one review and then the TOS Review Crew is on hiatus until January. This gives us lots of time to concentrate on some other avenues of learning. I also want to mention that all the information will be recorded by art journaling and notebooking. Here is what I have come up with so far for the unit study:

Where was Shakespeare born?
What do we know about his life?
His family?
What was English like during this time?
Were his plays popular then?
What was the life of an actor and playwright like in Elizabethan England?

Read pages 5 - 6 about The Life and Times of William Shakespeare. Create an art journal page for every couple of paragraphs of information.

Read pages 7-8 about The Elizabethan Stage. Create either journal pages of the stage or create a diorama.

Read pages 9 - 14 These pages deal with explaining each act of the Twelfth Night. Create art journal pages to depict each act of the play.

Create an art journal page with the cast list.

Read the play which is included in the book with easier to understand language. Between each act are activities we will do such as: Discussion questions, writing assignments, alternate endings, dialogue, etc.

Create Vocabulary Flash Cards from words in the play.

Watch a a dvd or on youtube the play Twelfth Night.

Talk about the language of Shakespeare. Pick lines from his play that are still used today, such as: Apple of her eye, One Fell Swoop, etc.

Build a replica of the globe theatre or create a board game about Shakespeare.

Create a How - Two Pamphlet - From Viola's perspective - How to convince others you are a man or From Duke Orsino's perspective - How to woo the woman of your dreams.

Create Scene Titles for each Act of the play.

Research the holiday, Twelfth Night, and answer the following questions:
Why do you think Shakespeare named his play "Twelfth Night"?
Does the play have anything to do with the holiday?
Why do you think Shakespeare wrote this type of play for the celebration?

Create a quarto Cover.

Create a depiction of The Four Elements that Sir Toby talks about in Act Two.

Create a poster for the play.

Research the Renaissance Feast and conduct a traditional one for the family.

As you can see all of this should keep us pretty busy until the Thanksgiving holidays. We will still cover math, a little science and her writing assignments for her essay class. Otherwise it will be all things Shakespeare. I will keep you posted on how it is going.

Don't forget about the upcoming giveaway of two math books. Visit here to enter.

New Thoughts For Teaching Science

We never get excited about Science. Nothing really interests Grace so normally I am just dragging her along for the ride. Recently I came across a list of Science topics that should be discussed and known by the age of 14. For the life of me I don't remember where I go the list otherwise I would give them the credit. Also sintce I am leaning more towards unschooling these days I don't hold  much stock in all the the topics needing to be covered, but it is a good place to start. I hope for us to cover a couple of topics a week. Still haven't decided if I will pick the topics or let her do it. I will ask Grace to do a little research about the topic then do an art journal page about the topic. Once she is finished with all the topics she will have a handy notebook/art journal to flip through and look up information for future reference. Without further ado, here is the list:

Habitats/Biomes/Ecosystems                        
Endangered Species
Zoology
Animal Taxonomy
Food Webs, decomposors, consumers, producers
Earth Science
Oceanography
Tides, Waves and Currents
Properties of ocean water
Ocean Floor
Layers of the ocean
Weather
Types of Clouds
Wind and wind speeds
Water Cycle
Types of Percipitation
Air Pressure
Atmosphere Layers
Moon and its phases
Eclipses
Rock Cycle
Earth's Layers
Scientific Method
Types of Sciences
Basic General Biology
Cell Structures
DNA
Genes
Human Body
Five senses and how they work
Basic Anatomy and Physiology
Nutrition
Germs and Wellness
Basic Hygiene
Basic Human Development
Human Reproduction
Seeds - types, characteristics and development
Trees - types and where found
Flowers - parts of a flower, plant reproduction
Leaves - types and characterization
Photosynthesis
Basics needs - food, water, soil, air, sunlight
Plant taxonomy
Simple machines
Friction and gravity
Forces and motion
Work and transfer of energy
Forms of Energy
Renewable and nonrenewable energy
Matter and its stages
Volume and mass
Density and buoyancy
Atoms
Sound waves and how they travel
Decibels and Hertz
Light
Spectrum and colors
Magnets
Poles
Electromagnets
Mixtures vs. Solutions
Compounds and elements
Atoms and molecules
Periodic Table
Acids and Bases
Chemical reactions
Chemical changes
Scientists - Edison, Pasteur, DaVinci, Galileo, Newton, Goodall, Nightingale, Curie, Archmides, and Galen

So I think this will keep us pretty busy for a good long time.

Weekly Wrap Up

Wow, did another week just go by. Each week just gets faster and faster. This week was a pretty normal one for us.

Math - Grace continued to work on percentage word problem. She is really understanding it and able to do everything independently. We are loving using Math Essentials. Almost finished with the book and moved on to Math Essentials Geometry.

Science - Working our way through a middle school Biology workbook. Finished up the chapter on digestion and started plant inventors. I found a list of items of all science topics that should be covered before 14. I think for the remainder of the year we may just work through this list and do a journal page in her science journal for each topic. This way she can easily go back and look something up when she doesn't remember.

Language Arts - Grace attended her essay writing class. She received an A on one of her papers and a check mark with a plus, plus on her in class paragraph writing. This is a very big deal for her. Writing is not a favorite in the household. But she is really enjoying this class. She started reading Fever 1793 for her literature book. We finished our read aloud Michael Vey and have started the new one, The Mark of Athena. We love reading just fun books for read alouds.

History - We finished up Pilgrim Story last week and have moved back to America The Beautiful by the Notgrass Company. Currently I have her read the chapter and given me a short oral narration so I know she understood what she read. Then there is a timeline activity that I have her post in her Book of Centuries.

Reviews - We finished three of the four final reviews of the year for TOS Review Crew. One left to post at the end of next week. I contacted Vision Forum and they graciously sent us two items to review. A two book series to read and a dvd collection about the Amazon. So this week our favorite item we are using is Into The Amazon, One Lost World, Thirty Men, Seven Mysteries. I hope to have a post and review up about this one in about a month.

Extras - Cooperative went on as planned on Tuesday and Thursday with Choir, Tone Chimes, Drama, and Art History. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is fast approaching. I definitely see extra practices in our future. Trying to get almost 40 kids to focus and quiet down is a real job. In Art History Grace learned and created ancient Kells. Grace had a friend go to Trunk or Treat with her on Sunday and spend the night, so no school on Monday. Acts of Faith practiced was canceled due to a couple of kids being sick. We were actually glad to spend an extra night around the homestead. Hubby has started working with Grace with marital arts and strength training. This also includes some boxing. It has been really hard to find an exercise routine for her to stick with. She doesn't like anything. So far this one is working pretty well.

Weightloss - This is moving along. In my first week on Weight Watchers I have lost 5 pounds. The point system is very easy to use. With that being said it is still a struggle to find items I can eat and still stay in my point range. Exercising daily helps because you earn more point to add to your daily total. I have started ordering exercise dvds from Netflix to see what I like before buying. I do have three Jazzercize dvds I am using as well as walking. It would be great if I could lose another 5 pounds this coming week but I know realistically it will be more like 1-3 pounds. Mostly I just want to fit into some of my clothes from last year which will be size 14. Currently I am in a size 16.

Shameless Plug - Also wanted to remind everyone that I have a giveaway going on this week for two Math Essential workbooks. Visit here to enter the giveaway.



Checkout what everybody else did this week at the Weekly Wrap-Up.

What We did for Prepping This Week

As I mentioned in a previous post, we purchased a bushel of apples this past weekend for $18.00. Our mission was to dry all of them for the winter.

Yesterday I cut up only 8-10 big Rome apples and they filled all the trays. I still have half of the bag left to dry.

Here is the finished product. Turned out just perfect. 

We also had to turn the small raised bed in to a green house this past weekend. Hurricane Sandy brought us much colder temperatures. Down in the low 30's at night. Hubby moved all the herbs including our Stevia to the raised bed for the winter.

TOS Review - Grace & Truth Books - Of Knights and Fair Maidens

Grace and Truth Books is an online christian bookstore. Only this is not your typical type of christian bookstore. The website states,"We know that the truth of our Lord Jesus Christ has nothing to do with fancy packaging or attempting to resemble secular literature or media. This online bookstore is built on a different approach: what will glorify God, strengthen His people in their walk, and call all peoples to find joy in knowing His gospel and following him". What a great statement and mission. Grace and Truth Books offers books and music for all ages in theology, history, education, biography and so much more!

We were given the opportunity to read and review of Knights and Fair Maidens. The name of the book alone is very intriguing. It brings to the mind life in medieval times and everything that encompasses. This book asks the simple question, "Is true romance possible in the 21st century"? Jeff and Danielle Myers originally wrote this book back in 1996. According to Grace and Truth Books, of Knights and Fair Maidens was one of their most requested out of print books. It is now back in a hard cover edition. of Knights and Fair Maidens lays out a plan for a radical new approach to developing relationships. Courting to be exact. Courting in place of dating. This concept is not that new or old for a lot of families in the homeschooling community. I am sure there are many teenagers out in society that would look at us like we had grown an extra head if we asked them to contemplate courting. I am not worried about the rest of the world, just my daughter. There are many aspects to courting I find appealing. At this point Grace does not care anything about courting, dating, or marriage. We read through the book together and she does understand the reasoning behind courting instead of dating. I plan to have her read the book again around 16 or 17. Jeff and Danielle did a good job with explaining their reason for courting and how they handled their relationship. There is also good advice throughout the book on how to handle a courting relationship. I really appreciated the fact that they both talked in depth about a person's character and how today's society really doesn't look at those type of qualities when deciding on a potential husband or wife. This book should be required reading for all teenagers - once when they turn 14 and again at 17 or 18 when contemplating getting serious about marriage.

of Knights and Fair Maidens retails for $9.75 coming to you as a hard back edition. This book is recommended for ages 14-19.

Please go take a visit to Grace and Truth Books. Take a look at of Knights and Fair Maidens and all the other wonderful products they have to offer.

To view the opinions of all the books and of Knights and Fair Maids visit TOS Review Crew.

Disclaimer: As a member of the TOS Review Crew, I received this product at no cost to me for my honest review. All opinions are mine.