We have been using Sonlight Curriculum ever since Esther was six years old. This week, I started using it with Mr. Sweetie. He was thrilled: Stories just for him (and Mr. Imagination, when he feels like joining us)! Today was our third day, and he was happy to have me take a picture with them holding the books we read from today. This is my fourth time through this level! You can tell that some of the books are pretty worn! The Boxcar Children is falling to pieces; I need to use some glue on it one of these days. It’s been quite a favorite. I love Sonlight because it gets me to spend time reading with the children when I otherwise would probably let it slide.
Fantails
In other words, flying flytraps! Since we leave the doors open for ventilation on warm days, and have no screens, we often have fantails in the house these days! They are such cheery little birds. They are so friendly they remind me of the chickadees we had in Michigan in the winter. They eat insects, though. As they swoop through the room, you can often hear a sharp little click as they catch another fly! That makes them welcome guests, you can imagine. I’ve been trying to get pictures of them in the house, but they move so fast it’s hard to catch them. That’s how I ended up with a picture of one taking off in flight. If you listen closely to the video of one, you can hear a faint twittering. It was a lot louder in real life, but apparently the sound capture isn’t real good on my camera. If you want to hear it better, go to this page, click on the sound icon, and choose “South Island fantail, male song.” Oh, and by the way, we’re studying birds, insects, bats and flying reptiles this year for science. We recently had a lesson about feathers, and one type of feathers is bristles. Bristles are found around the mouths of insect-eating birds. When we looked closely at the fantails in our house, we could see the bristles! They apparently help the bird to catch insects in flight. The bristles touch the insect and then the bird can turn to grab the insect.
Fossil Walk in the Waipara River
Two weeks ago, one of the dads in our homeschool group led a walk up the gorge of the Waipara River, to look for fossils. There are a lot of fossils in the rocks there, and they wash out in floods. He has an extensive collection of fossils, and has found some pretty interesting animals—one was even named after him!
We started with a picnic in the river bed. After everyone was done eating, we started walking. The first thing we did was cross the river in a place that was about a foot deep, then walked through a very rocky area. For a ways, we walked in the river, where it was only a few inches deep, then walked on the rocks again, then on a grassy area. Eventually, we came out at the base of a cliff littered with concretions, enormous round rocks. They are at all levels of the cliff, and as the cliff face erodes, they come down. Thankfully, none came down while we were there! Our leader didn’t allow the boys to climb as high as they wanted to, for their own safety. We only saw a few fossils, but had a beautiful walk with good friends!
The man in front center of this picture, wearing a backpack and gumboots, was our leader.
That tiny white object my finger is pointing to is a shark’s tooth!
In the one area we walked through, there were a lot of these shattered rocks.
This was a vertebrae from a marine reptile.
My Mr. Diligence found this greensand, a type of sandstone.
That’s my Mr. Handyman in the middle, helping carry one of the little children.
The first concretion I found. I sat on it to feed my baby, and the wife of our leader commented that she had sat there to feed her baby several years before!
The boys all had fun climbing up and sliding down this cliff!
One of the concretions, ready to come down (it was probably 50-100 feet above us).
Another fossil vertebrae.
More concretions.
Mr. Imagination on a concretion in the river.
This picture is for my Mom. I thought of you, Mom, when I saw this very unusual thistle here and there along our walk.
Mr. Handyman on a concretion!
The scenery along our drive was spectacular, too! Also, notice how dry everything is. We have only gotten about an inch of rain since New Year’s.
Yes, one place the road was really this steep!
Timaru, Part 2
Saturday night tea was a barbeque at the house we stayed at. The people we stayed with last year, the parents of the man of the house where we stayed this year, were there. He is a baby-lover, and I was amused when he shouldered me aside to take my baby from his wife when my baby was crying! She liked him and settled down on his shoulder several times, like she doesn’t do for very many people.
Sunday morning was a normal church service, then lunch at the parent’s house, followed by an afternoon service, tea at church, a gospel service in the evening, and then a singing at the parent’s house again. What a day! It was wonderful. These pictures are all of the singing in the evening.
Our hosts for the weekend:
Grandpa saves the evening again! I was so thankful for the help with our baby.
I think this one missed out on hearing what the point of the evening was! He had fun with the toys while we sang.
Monday we headed home! First, we got a picture of the family we stayed with. Their hospitality was amazing!
We stopped several times, and the last stop was a long one. We needed to pick up a rooster someone was giving us, and when that man and Gayle get together, they will talk a long time. We got home in time to unload and eat before bedtime, though. Mr. Sweetie got hold of my camera and used it to amuse himself all the way home. I deleted most of the pictures he took, but here are a few, including a selfie:
This little girl slept most of the way home, to everyone’s relief.
Timaru, Part 1
We went to Timaru over Easter weekend for a conference—a weekend of church meetings. The Assembly in Timaru had invited a number of speakers, and four came, two from Australia and two from the north part of the North Island. It was a wonderful weekend of Scripture teaching and fellowshipping! We went last year, and enjoyed it so much that we had been talking all year of going again. (And now, the boys are talking about NEXT year already! So, if anyone from Timaru reads this, know that some people will be very much disappointed if you don’t hold the Easter Conference again!)
We left here about 8:00 on Good Friday morning, and didn’t have to stop once! We made it to Timaru in time for lunch at noon, and attended both the services in the afternoon. After tea at church, we returned to the house at which we were staying, and got our camp set up. Esther and I and the baby slept in the pop-top camper we borrowed for the trip, that night, and Gayle and all the boys slept in three tents in the yard. After the tents were pitched we visited in the house for awhile, and then just as we were getting ready to send the children out to bed, they found a distraction—stories read by the man of the house!
Saturday, there was only one service, mid afternoon, so everyone who stayed at the house we did went to a park and the beach in the morning. Timaru is beautiful! There was a fire in the late 1800s that wiped out the business district, so everything was rebuilt with stone. The buildings are gorgeous!
The boys really enjoyed the park. A man was there with several miniature horses, which you could ride for $5. It was free to sit on them, though, and Mr. Imagination loved that.
The man in the red jersey here was one of the speakers. He had had to leave his wife and six children behind to come, and was missing them.
The boys loved the playground equipment, too. Left to right are the man with the horses, Gayle, Mr. Diligence, Mr. Intellectual, Mr. Sweetie, ?, Mr. Handy Man, and Mr. Inventor.
Mr. Sweetie on the swing.
Mr. Diligence and Mr. Imagination, upside down on the swings!
Left to right are Mr. Diligence, Mr. Inventor, ?, ?, and Mr. Handy Man.
One thing that fascinated me about the beach was how it is receding. When the port was built, it changed the currents. Now, sand is deposited in Caroline Bay.
When Europeans first came, the beach was at the base of the cliffs those buildings are on! Our host remembers when it was about halfway between there and where it is now, over a quarter mile out!
The port was at the edge of the park, clearly visible from where we were, so after we left the park, we drove through what we could of the port before we went back for lunch. They were loading a couple of huge freight liners. The four cranes you can see in the middle of this picture are all on one ship!
This is a view of the beach and town from the port.
After leaving the port, we drove past this row of old warehouses.
More March Pictures
Just a few more pictures I thought some of you might enjoy.
One morning, Esther looked out the window and thought she saw something white in the sheep’s water barrel. That seemed strange, so she called Mr. Intellectual to come see what he thought it was. They both had the same thought—a turkey—so he raced outside to see. Sure enough, one of the half-grown turkeys was in the water. It was still alive, so he pulled it out and they wrapped it in a towel, then put it in front of a heater for several hours till it recovered.
The eight baby turkeys only stayed in the house a few days, but we enjoyed them while they were there. It was nice to be able to send them out to the chicken coop after a week or two, though! That many babies fill up the box in a hurry.
A couple of the boys built a new bridge across the dry creek in the front yard, using gates. This is Mr. Diligence on the bridge and Mr. Inventor in the creek.
Mr. Imagination had a birthday in March! He’s now three. That is him, as well, beside a barrel—just a random shot his sister got.
This was the first pumpkin we picked this year. The boys had fun bringing it in and cutting it open. Unfortunately, it didn’t taste that good. We raised some Atlantic Giants last year, and obviously the pumpkin we saved seed from had cross-pollinated with the Atlantic Giant, which is watery and tasteless. The cow likes these, though!
Three Months Old!
I can’t believe my little girl is three months old already. How time flies! She’s really developing her own personality already. She has quite a repertoire of different tones of voice to get her point across—whether she’s sad, or feeling neglected, or hungry. Right now, she’s tired of sitting on her daddy’s knees and begging me, from across the room, to rescue her and give her some attention! She loves to cuddle, but she also likes to sit up straight so she can see around, and be held so she can stand up. She’d love to be able to get around by herself, but isn’t rolling yet. And, she keeps getting fatter and fatter!
Here she is at 2 1/2 months with her oldest brother, Mr. Handy Man.
She already loves books and stories.
Sleeping on her favorite chair…
enjoying a rare moment of peace with Mr. Imagination…
and a chat with Daddy…
coveting Daddy’s lunch…
and sharing an apple core with Mr. Diligence.
And now, a three months’ picture:
Giveaway! and, Announcing a New Website
I am excited to be able to announce the launch, today, of a brand-new website! Esther had the inspiration, last October, to build a website of book reviews to help people make decisions about books for their families, and help moms find books to go along with their history studies or just for their children to read. Building a website turns out to be a lot more work than I ever imagined, but Learning Resource Directory is finally ready to go! Have a look at the website and its companion blog, Purposeful Learning. You can even enter a giveaway Esther is holding in celebration.
This website seems to be unique—at least, we haven’t found anything quite like it. Each book featured on the site has a several-paragraph review, so you know what the book is about. Each book also has warnings attached to it, so that if you are concerned about books containing violence, bad language, or romance for your children you’ll know about it. Esther has also created a search feature that I think is really great. If you want a book set in Ancient Greece, you can find it. She has the books sorted by genre, as well as historical period, location, and reading age level. You can also do a keyword search to find more specific topics. There are only 48 books featured on the website right now, but more are coming very soon (I think, between the two of us, we have another 50-100 reviews written that she hasn’t had time to post!), so come back for another look. And, if there are books you’d like our opinion on, let us know through the contact form on the website and maybe we’ll be able to read and review it. We have somewhere around a thousand books in our house, and friends with a lot more that we have access to.
This also fulfills a long-time dream of mine! Many years ago, I read a few books of book lists (Honey for a Child’s Heart, Books Children Love, for example), but they all included books I didn’t like and left out books I loved! Of course, that’s to be expected. However, I wanted to write my own book of recommendations. Life, and children, got in the way of that dream, though, and I hadn’t even thought about it for years. Then when Esther came up with the idea for this website, I was excited! This is much better than a book, because it can constantly be added to. Esther was happy to let me write reviews for her, and I’m sure enjoying doing so. When you’ve enjoyed a book, it’s fun to share it with someone. So, go over to Learning Resource Directory and have a look! Esther’s reviews are a lot of fun to read. You might find a book you want to take a closer look at!
Happy April 8th Day!
You mean to say you have never heard of April 8th Day? Don’t worry, very few people have. Once upon a time, my dad decided we needed more celebration days. I think we had just read All of a Kind Family, about a Jewish family in New York City. They had a number of celebration days, and Dad thought we needed some. Therefore, he declared April 8th to be a family holiday! I’m not sure if we ever really celebrated, but it was a fun family joke.
On a different topic, I’ve been pondering for a long time how to refer to my boys on this blog. I don’t want to use their first names, to give them just a little more privacy, but for family and friend’s sake, I want some way to identify them. In the last several posts, I’ve said “Boy #1” or whatever, but it occured to me sometime since I last posted that I could say “Mr. Handy Man” or “Mr. Inventor”. Which would you like better? Please comment with your opinion.
And now I need to take care of a crying baby girl. Whenever I have time, I plan to post about our trip to Timaru over the weekend, and a walk up a river looking for fossils today. Sometime!
Encyclopedias
We had a good laugh at the dinner table tonight. We were discussing the fact that Esther’s boss just got another donkey yesterday, hoping to have a baby donkey eventually. That led to a discussion about how long various animals are pregnant, and when I mentioned that horses are pregnant for about a year, someone wondered how long elephants carry their babies. I said about two years, and then Esther asked about whales—five years, maybe? And what about mice? a month? Well, of course we had to check it out, so I suggested that someone get the encyclopedia to figure it out. We suggested looking under Gestation, so one of the boys ran to the other end of the house to fetch the G volume. It said, “See Pregnancy.” So, he ran to the other end of the house again to get the P encylopedia. It said, for animal gestation periods, “See Animals.” Bother! He ran to the other end of the house for a third time, to get the A encyclopedia! Finally, we had the information we needed. Did you know that a mouse produces babies after only 21-24 days? Elephants, on the other hand, take 20-22 months. We found this investigation very interesting.
I was reminded, when we had to keep getting a different volume of the encyclopedia, of a story my Dad once told. He would occasionally get in the mood to make up a story, and we would periodically get another installment of “The Great White Hunter.” I don’t remember much of these stories; the Great White Hunter would go around the world having adventures. The one story I do remember involved something about shooting a Snow Leopard out of season in Africa. This was a crime, and the Great White Hunter found himself clapped into jail. Now, an African jail is not a place you want to be. It’s terribly boring. The poor man was only allowed to order in one book a year! He wanted to figure out some way to get himself freed, so he decided he had to find out, first, if he really had shot a Snow Leopard, or if it was some other creature. So, the first year, he ordered the S encyclopedia, so he could look up Snow Leopard. Imagine his feelings when he got it and it said, “See Leopard, Snow.” And he had to wait an entire year before he could order the L encyclopedia! That’s all I remember of the Great White Hunter stories. What a fun memory of Dad, though!
And by the way, a whale’s gestation period is 12-17 months—but we still don’t know about Blue Whales, which was the particular species in question!