Activities at Home

Last Part of July 2019

August 3, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

Here are the rest of my pictures from July. This month went by crazily fast! And, now that we’re in August, we’re very close to meeting the newest member of our family—hopefully, in about three more weeks.

Esther achieved a major goal in July—she passed the test for her full license! Now, she can take passengers with her. She also bought a car, a Honda Accord, which she’s quite happy with.

Mr. Intellectual finished this cup, made from four different types of wood. With all the glue that went into it, we advised him not to drink from it, so he’s using it for a pencil cup.

Another of Mr. Diligence’s pictures of big trucks! He saw this load of sheets of steel going past one day.

I asked the boys to recover the frame I used for starting seeds last year with new plastic. They decided to scrap it and build me a new one, twice the size, to better utilize the sheet of plastic they had available! It is now finished and waiting for baby plants.

Last weekend, Gayle and the younger boys dug the last of our potato crop. Mr. Imagination was delighted to find this enormous one, and brought it in to show me. See the weight?

Little Miss played with the potatoes in her own way. That big one is her; she’s the mother, sitting on stones, and her babies are on top of her. The other stack, just on the other side of her, is more of her children, also sitting on rocks.

We had nearly a bushel of potatoes that needed used quickly, so we cut a lot up Saturday night for Sunday dinner. They needed a lot of trimming, between stabs from the fork and the wireworms that our garden is infested with.

Grandma asked what Mr. Imagination has been building from legos. He took this picture for her, of his fire ship. See all the nozzles for spraying water?

Product Review—Early 19th Century American History

August 2, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Our normal school days have very little variety. We do math and language arts and Bible lessons, and read stories set in historical times, trying to get a grasp on what happened back then. When the chance came along to review a product from Home School In the Woods, I decided it would be good for all of us to do something different, so I requested The Early 19th Century from their Time Travelers U. S. History Studies line. I knew the school holidays were coming up, and while we don’t normally take any time off, a friend was coming to stay a week with the boys, so I thought we’d take time off our regular school and do this course during that time. Since it took longer than that to do the course, we just cut out other things from our normal days for a few weeks and spent a lot of time doing this.

When I received The Early 19th Century, it took a little while to figure out how to use it. There were so many different folders and PDF files I was confused! Finally, I figured out that the first step was to print the text and project PDF for a lesson, and then I would be able to figure out which masters we needed for the particular lesson. That made it much easier! I just printed, each evening, what we needed for the next day. The instructions for the projects are simple and easy to follow. Each morning when we did a lesson, I read the text aloud while the children started coloring and cutting out the day’s projects. We aimed to spend an hour a day on this course, although it often ended up being an hour and a half. This shows us, the night before we started, sorting pages out and getting ready to start.

The course is laid out in 25 daily lessons. Every 5^th lessson is a catch-up day, where you simply finish the projects for the week. Day 23 is another of those, and Day 24 is when you assemble a lot of the things you did into a lap-book. We did that yesterday. On Day 25, you are supposed to have a Chuck Wagon Dinner, and invite grandparents or friends to show off what you learned—we probably won’t do anything for that. We did most of the projects, although there were a few for which I couldn’t easily find the needed materials, so we just skipped them. Each of the catch-up days includes a few recipes for foods that would have been eaten in the first half of the 19^th Century. I’m keeping those in mind for possible future use.

Here we are, during the first lesson, figuring out what we’re doing.

A wide range of subjects were covered in this course. Some were fairly common topics, such as the war between Texas and Mexico, which included the Alamo, or the Erie Canal, and some were things I knew very little about—like the Tripolitan War with the Barbary Pirates. One lesson was devoted to learning about the presidents who held office during the early 1800s, and another briefly covered a number of other famous people from that era. One lesson talked about the mountain men, there were two lessons about the pioneers, and one talked about the gold prospectors. The last lesson talks about slavery in America up to 1850.

Every lesson has copywork, which is sentences from McGuffey’s reader. We didn’t do this, since the boys all have penmanship practice in their language arts books. Almost every day, we also put some pictures on our timeline. Throughout the course we added to a songbook of early American songs. Some were ones we read about in the Little House books, so it was fun to hear them (I looked the songs up on YouTube and we listened to them; if the words weren’t clear, I read the songs aloud.)

A lot of the projects are simply cutting out mini-books and pasting them together; of course, we read the text blocks together. I liked the ones where they had to write something about the topic, but the boys didn’t! We each put together a timeline of American history from 1790-1850, and made a map with different layers to show the growth of the United States from 1800-1850. That was fun; I’ve always liked the maps like that in the encyclopedia, and now we know how we can make them ourselves. We didn’t quite get this project finished; we may come back and do it yet. There were also a few projects like pretending to pan for gold or make a Mexican serape, which we didn’t do. Here is Little Miss’s version of the quilt pattern we colored in.

This project was fun. They each wrote several sentences about the mountain man/explorer inside the minibook, and then added something to the picture to make it 3-dimensional. The suggestion for Jedidiah Smith was to glue fur on, but we didn’t have any—so I grabbed the clippers and cut Mr. Sweetie’s hair!

By far the favorite project was the jumping jack. This was based on toys that early Americans would have made, and everyone had great fun putting theirs together and playing with it! The model log cabins were fun, too. The hardest project we did was a “Daguerrotype Photo Album.” It took us a week just to do that one project! The instructions said to print the pictures for it on ivory paper, but we didn’t have any, so we printed them on white paper. Then, we brewed some strong black tea, dipped the paper in it, and dried it on top of the wood stove. To make the pictures look old, we tore around them. Then, we were to glue them onto foil-covered card stock and into the album, and write about each of the people. Since there are 17 pictures, it took awhile!

There are pros and cons to using this course. Some of the pros, for us, would be that it gave us something different to do in the middle of the school year. The boys all liked that they had only math or language arts to do in a day, not both. They also enjoyed making things from paper. It gave us some art/craft time, which we don’t tend to get otherwise. We learned new techniques for making things from paper (I learned that none of them had heard of scoring cardstock for folding it!), and they practiced coloring and making things look as nice as possible. They also learned what two-sided tape is and how to use it.

We used a lot of 2-sided tape to put together these lapbooks, but it was worth it. The children are all happy with their final product.

See how thrilled she is to show off hers? I’m not sure who took this picture; I found it on the camera this morning!

As far as cons, the biggest one would be all the printing. I spent a lot of time at it, trying to get the cardstock printed correctly (I now know a lot more about the innards of the printer than I did before!). It also cost a lot to do that printing. We went through about a ream of paper, since I was making five copies of everything, and had to buy extra cardstock, which, where we live, is hard to find and expensive. I was glad when Esther found a place we could order it online!

One of the last projects was to make a game with which to review what we learned. We played it this morning for our history time.

Overall, I’m happy that we used this course. It’s not the way we normally do history, and we would have gotten more out of it if we had done it more slowly and read books to go along with the supplied text. However, we’ll be going through that era slowly within the next year, so we’ll be referring to our projects at times. If we hadn’t gone through it as fast as we did, we never would have finished it, knowing us! If you and your children enjoy hands-on activities to go along with historical studies, try out the Time Travelers line of products. They are well-done and we really enjoyed what we did. Or, if you’re not sure whether this type of study is for you, this would be a good way to find out! And, here’s an interesting blog post I found about this series, which explains why the publisher pulled it together and some of their thoughts about how to use it.

World History (Project Passport), U.S. History Studies (Time Travelers) and Timeline Collection: A Collection of Historical Timeline Figures {Home School in the Woods Reviews}

Photos From Early July 2019

July 27, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We’ve had a busy month! Here are a few photos from the first couple of weeks of the month.

We’ve had a few sunrises! It’s been a very rainy month, but here is proof that occasionally we see a little sunshine (actually, this week has been sunny). The person walking along the road is Mr. Intellectual, heading down to bring up the milk for me.

Esther went to the library one day, and the little ones spent a lot of time that evening reading library books!

Every time a pilot vehicle goes past, Mr. Diligence tries to grab my camera to get a photo of whatever big thing is passing this time.

This is a kayak going down the Nile River!

Something that makes me very happy! Mr. Diligence actually reads for fun sometimes now. This has taken a lot of years and much hard work to accomplish. He discovered he can enjoy reading when he was sick in the States in February and didn’t have an audio book to listen to, but couldn’t do anything else.

A few years ago, my boys found a huge ball of yarn at the dump. It was hand-spun, and fairly loose; I suspect it was actually roving, which was intended to be spun into better yarn. I crocheted it into a rough rectangle, and now I’m making it into the inner for a baby-sized duvet. It smells of lanolin—a smell I love! I’ve gotten as far as sewing a cover over it, and sort of quilting it together with the sewing machine, and cutting out fabric patches for another, removable cover.

So, we wash a tub and put it outside in the sun to dry—and what does Goofball do? Ensure that we have to wash it again! Doesn’t she look happy.

What We’re Reading—July 2019

July 24, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Note: Links in this post may be affiliate links, and if they are, they will benefit Esther.

We’ve been reading just as much as usual lately, but it doesn’t feel like we’ve gotten through as many books as normal. Some of them have been long! We are just finishing Uncle Arthur’s Bible Stories, Volume 10—now we need to choose a different Bible story book to read. We finished David Macaulay’s Cathedral, which we were reading when I wrote the last post like this, and followed that with his Pyramid. We found it quite fascinating! One sentence that Mr. Intellectual really liked said something about how this Pharoah (imaginary, by the way) built his pyramid 10 feet lower than the Great Pyramid, out of respect for the great Khufu—but built it on higher ground, which made the peak 10 feet higher than Khufu’s! One thing that made this book especially interesting was that we have been reading Genesis and Exodus lately for Family Worship, so we grabbed this book and referred to it when we read about Joseph being embalmed to see what was done with his body. Since we finished that one, we have started reading Pagoo, a delightful story about a hermit crab from hatching, on through the rest of his life. Our last book each morning has to do with history; the latest one is Drumbeats in Williamsburg. It has to do with the events around Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown. Of course, a lot of the story is predictable—as expected, the main character finds the spy! It’s pretty interesting, though.

After lunch is when we read the books the children choose. We’ve been reading through the Little House Series for over a year now, and to finish it off we’re going through The Three Faces of Nellie, about the three different people Laura based the character of Nellie Oleson on. I’m reading the interesting parts, and skipping over the repetitious genealogical bits. After that, we’re reading Gone-Away Lake, which has been a long-time favorite in our family. Two children who are exploring the woods near their home get lost and find themselves in a dried-up lake bed, then find a row of falling-down houses with only two people living in them. It’s quite a fun adventure! Our third book each day for the past couple of months has been Kayaks Down the Nile, about three men who kayaked from near the start of the Nile River to its mouth at the Mediterranean in the 1950s. This inspired Mr. Imagination to shape a kayak from a blanket, and make a “cataract” from bits of cardboard, which he helped Little Miss to kayak through. We finished it a couple of days ago and started The Great Brain, which seems like it will be a fun story. I’ve never read it, though. I let Little Miss choose our fourth story, since she’s been begging me to read her chapter books. She chose Olive, the story of a foster child, for her first book.

The only other afternoon book we read in the past month was A Pig for Pablo. This is a story about a little boy in Paraguay who rescues a runt piglet, and then works to earn money to buy it. I was rather surprised by the ending—it’s not the normal story you’d expect, with the pig living as a pet forever.

The other books we’ve read for history have all had to do with the American Revolution. Fourth of July Raid had to do with a surprise attack by the British on a small town in Connecticut. This Time, Tempe Wick? is a picture book about Washington’s troops and a mutiny during a hard winter—and a girl who outsmarts them. When I found Swamp Fox of the Revolution on Internet Archive, I wanted to read it to my boys. I remember getting it from the library when I was 9 or 10; it was the only book I had ever read about the Revolutionary War in the South. We found it very interesting—a piece of history that you rarely hear about! We followed that with Traitor, by Jean Fritz—the story of Benedict Arnold. She did a superb job of making us extremely disgusted with the man and his self-centered ways! After we finished that story, we read a picture book titled Bugle, A Puppy in Old Yorktown. It’s a cute story from 1958. We enjoyed the old illustrations.

And what have I been reading? Some very interesting books! Nobody’s Boy really captured my interest; it’s the story of a 3-year-old Mennonite boy who was kidnapped in Mexico in 1926, only a few years after his family had moved there from Canada. He had no idea who he really was for over 20 years. This is a true story, and quite gripping. At the moment, I’m reading another non-fiction, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be An Atheist. We have this book because I had downloaded the audio book several years ago when it was free, and when Gayle listened to it a year ago, he was so impressed he wanted us to have a print copy. It got loaned out before I had a chance to read it, and now that it’s back I’m quickly reading it before handing it on to another friend. It is amazing—the authors have pulled together many reasons, from all facets of science and life, to show that there has to be a God Who began and is in control of everything.

I also read a library book Esther brought home, Wonderland Creek. It was more a fluffy-style book, but I enjoyed it. The mystery woven through it kept me going till the end. I liked the theme of the story, that we need to live life, not just read books and live vicariously! The romance was nice, too, although I could have done without the distraction of a second man who courted the main character and was fairly physical with her.

Last week, I read The Inn at Hidden Run. I had read several reviews of it, and was intrigued by the differences in opinion about this story, so when I found it available for review, I thought I’d see what my opinion was. Well, it wasn’t a very fast-moving story, but it was certainly unique. There was no romance in it, which I liked. The premise of the story was that a girl showed up in town with some problems, and a genealogist helped her work through them by researching the girl’s family tree. There was a second timeline in the book, from the 1870s (the main story is modern). It felt a little forced to me to put the two stories together and have a family’s problems solved by discovering something from their past.

A couple of weeks ago, I read What a Pair! (Double Trouble Book 1) about a pair of twins in an Amish family. I have been seeing reviews of books by the author, and decided to see what her style is like. I’m frankly not impressed. Most Amish fiction feels fake to me, and this one, unfortunately, is no exception. It didn’t help that, several times, she had her characters stung by bumblebees and then pick out the stinger that was left behind.

Yesterday, I finished The Trouble With Nancy, by Chautona Havig. I wasn’t planning to read it till after the Atheist book, but then I had an afternoon/evening when I didn’t feel good and couldn’t do much. I decided some light reading would be nice, so picked up this one. It was fun, but another fluffy story. What I like about Chautona’s fluffy stories, though, is that I’m never disgusted with them. She does her research, and they are clean. Another thing I like about this one in particular is that, though it is about a girl disguising herself as a boy, she doesn’t “save the day.” She bumbles through what she’s doing and is very glad to get home and be herself again at the end.

June 2019 Photos Part 2

July 13, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the rest of June’s random photos.

Little Miss got hold of my camera one afternoon and took a bunch of pictures of the toys she was playing with. I saved a couple I thought were interesting!

One Saturday evening, Simon went with me to milk. Because of the steep hill down which we have to go to reach the cow right now, and the fact that I’m pregnant, I need help carrying the bucket back up, so the bigger three boys all help out. Simon rarely gets the privilege, because he’s usually not home from work yet when I head down. This time, though, he needed a piece of wood for a project he was working on, so he took his ax along and accompanied me. Just after we left our street, Esther and Mr. Sweetie came up towards us from a walk around the block, so she took our picture.

All seven children played a game of Skip-Bo Golf together one Sunday evening!

Mr. Imagination created this deer for his daddy’s birthday present!

I was amused when this happened one evening! I was helping Simon with a lesson for his apprenticeship, since he has trouble reading, and Esther wanted input on an order she was putting through for me with some company.

Princess is rather a spoiled cat. She thinks the space in front of the fire belongs to her. A lot of mornings, she will sleep there with her paw tightly clamped around her eyes, like this!

Mr. Sweetie built this train track one day, then wanted to document it.

June 2019 photos Part 1

July 6, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I have a lot of random photos this month! So many I’ll have to divide them into two posts, so watch for the next installment in a week.

One Sunday afternoon, around the beginning of the month, the mountains were covered in snow and so beautiful! All the children decided to go on a bike ride up the road and enjoy the beautiful winter sunshine. Esther took this picture.

Simon goes through a lot of mayonnaise. Every work morning, he fries two eggs for his breakfast, spreads mayo on two slices of bread and puts the eggs on top of that, then eats them with a large cup of creamy tea. Because he uses so much mayonnaise, he ends up making it for us quite often in the evening, to make sure he’ll have what he needs in the morning!When I took the children to Hokitika for the homeschooler’s art day, we had another gorgeous, sunny day. I asked Mr. Diligence, who was in the back seat of the car, to take some pictures for me. This is the bridge going out of our town; it’s scheduled to be replace within a year and a half.

Looking downstream from the bridge, down the Ahaura River. Its confluence with the Grey River is just downstream—the Grey is under the line of fog. See the snow on top of the Paparoa Mountains? The Tasman Sea is just the other side of those mountains.

Going on down the road towards Greymouth!

Another view of the Paparoas, across a dairy farm. The Grey, again, is under that line of fog.

This is the bridge my sons built me over a ditch in the paddock our house cow is currently living in. They built it strong enough that a couple of big boys standing on it can’t make it sag! I requested the chicken wire to be stapled on so I don’t slip on wet or frosty mornings—and I’ve been very glad for it! During the summer, I milked at about the place the fence turns, just above the end of the bridge, but the cow didn’t like crossing the ditch after the rains started, so I knew I would have to cross it myself. The new milking shed is just behind you, if you were standing where this picture is taken. By the way, I plan to get a photo of the cow in the shed sometime, but I’m milking before sunrise and after sunset right now, because our days are so short, so there isn’t enough light! It’s working well, though. She has learned to walk right in and put her head in the proper place, and the morning it was pouring, I was very thankful for the roof.

Midwinter harvest! I got the cabbage, leeks and carrots from the garden, and everything else came from the greenhouse. We are enjoying this feast.

One evening while we had family worship, Mr. Imagination was acting up, so I told him to do 5 push-ups. Mr. Intellectual and Simon couldn’t resist; they had to join in. Simon did 20, I believe, before he had to give up. Mr. Intellectual saw his brother grabbing the camera, and jumped up on his chair before the picture was taken.

Product Review—Dyslexia Gold

July 2, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Sometimes, we end up being assigned a review that I’m not very excited about. Dyslexia Gold was one of those—but I may end up being thankful for it, anyway. When I filled out the form to indicate my interest in a lifetime subscription for the Dyslexia Gold Full Bundle, I gave it a fairly low interest level, but said that I would be willing to do the review if they needed people. I suspect that Mr. Sweetie has a mild level of dyslexia, so I hoped that if we used this program it would help him. The biggest reason for my hesitation is the fact that it is hard for us to fit computer work into our homeschooling day!

Mr. Sweetie has been playing games on Dyslexia Gold most school days since the middle of April. There are four categories of games, Engaging Eyes, Fluency Builder, Spelling Tutor and Times Table Tutor. I told him to do Engaging Eyes every second time, and choose one of the others for the days in between. Engaging Eyes is supposed to help children’s eyes learn to track better, which is what I suspect to be his biggest struggle with reading. Before he started, I downloaded a couple of stories from his grade level and marked the errors as he read while I timed him. His reading speed at that time was 52 words per minute, with 8 errors per minute. I had him read the same story again yesterday, and his reading speed was 61 words per minute, with only 5 errors per minute. When he was tested by the Dyslexia Gold website, his reading speed on April 14 was 66 words per minute, but by May 27, when they tested him again with a different story, it was 71. So, it looks to me as though this program might be working! Also, I noticed yesterday that he sat down and read a story to Little Miss without any prompting. I am going to have him continue to use this program for awhile, and see if it helps.

Engaging Eyes has several different games to help children be able to read better. The one Mr. Sweetie has used the most is Target Practice. He wears 3-D glasses for this one, which were sent to us in the mail. They make red and blue circles converge and appear to be at different levels, and then he uses keyboard arrows to aim at them and move the “gun” up or down. Whack an Alien teaches children’s eyes to move quickly. Speed Fix flashes several sets of letters, and you are supposed to click if you have seen an “a” in the set. Eye Tracking has letters appearing across the screen, and you’re supposed to click when you see a certain one.

Fluency Builder is mostly a phonics program. It doesn’t seem to have been very helpful here, as I have already put Mr. Sweetie through a couple of intensive phonics programs. Spelling Tutor had him write a sentence on paper, then check it. If he missed a word he had to practice it several times. This didn’t seem very helpful to him, either. The Times Table Tutor, however, I believe, will be quite helpful. Mr. Sweetie is having trouble learning his multiplication facts, and this is a good way to practice them. The main point is to get faster, which is what he needs. I’m planning to have him do this frequently, too. (This photo is of Mr. Sweetie doing Fluency Builder.)

When you log on to Dyslexia Gold, you are given the choice of the four types of games. There is also a tab on that page for reports. That’s where I found Mr. Sweetie’s reading speed from the two times the website tested him. It also tells what level he has reached with each game and how often he has used it.

I don’t know if I can say this program is worth paying money for; I’ll have to have Mr. Sweetie use it longer to know that. I do know he doesn’t complain about doing it, and even seems to enjoy it, which is more than I can say for most of his schoolwork! If you suspect eye problems to be at the root of your child’s reading difficulties, this might be a good program to check into, however.

Dyslexia Gold Full Bundle {Dyslexia Gold Reviews}

Milking Shed!

June 22, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

For six months, while we lived at one particular rental house, I had a shed to milk my cow in. She hated it. Otherwise, I have milked out in the weather, except for a few times at a different house when it was raining and blowing and I took her into a shed. The most recent house we lived in had no shed that would work, and we didn’t have anything here, either. However, in this region it rains a lot! I have just been tying my cow to a fence to milk her anyway, because that was all I could do. There were some very frustrating milkings, with rain pouring down in sheets and the wind blowing. I got drenched, and the cow did not hold still. In case you’ve ever wondered, it’s hard to milk when the cow moves sideways every few squirts.

Then, Mr. Diligence came to my rescue! A few weeks ago, he got started building a portable milking shed. Portable, because part of our problem is that we are using someone else’s land for grazing the cows, and we shift them from one place to another every few months. His dad helped him with the design, and he used all recycled timber and roofing iron to build this masterpiece. Today, it was finished, and the fellows all worked together to take it down the hill to where the cows will be for the winter and secure it in place.

Here are Gayle and Mr. Diligence working on the first part of the frame.

This was a week ago, when they got most of it put together.

Yesterday or the day before, Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Diligence finished the roof.

Today, they loaded the shed onto the trailer and took it down the hill. Once down there, they chained it to a fence post and pulled it off the trailer.Here comes Poppy to see what is happening in her paddock!To prevent wind from blowing the shed away, they pounded a standard deep into the ground at each corner, and screwed the shed to it.Mr. Diligence built metal brackets so that boards can be slotted into the sides for times when we need to hold a cow from swinging back and forth.Poppy and Pansy investigating the car.Mr. Sweetie and Little Miss supervising.This is the view I get to enjoy while I milk!

The real test came tonight when I milked: Would Poppy accept the new place to milk? She did! We had to push her in, but she quickly relaxed and stood still better than she ever has before for me. She even started chewing her cud before I was halfway done milking, which she has never done before.

What We’re Reading—June 2019

June 19, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Note: Links in this post may be affiliate links, and if they are, they will benefit Esther.

As usual, we have been reading quite a variety of books! Since we finished Who Am I? from Apologia’s Worldview series, we only have three stories every morning. We start out with a story from Uncle Arthur’s Bible Stories; we’re currently in Volume 10, so I’ll soon have to find another Bible Story book to read from. We also read a couple of pages from David Macaulay’s Cathedral—what a fun way to learn a little of medieval history! For American History this week, we have been reading First Heroes for Freedom. It’s quite an interesting story about the Battle of Rhode Island, from the perspective of a teenage slave boy. We’re about 75% of the way through now, and it’s been good so far.

After lunch, we read four books each day. Right now, we’re reading Laura, a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Donald Zochert. We just finished the Little House Series, and decided we wanted to know what her life was really like. It’s been very interesting to compare the biography with what she chose to tell young readers about her life! Our next book is The Heart Changer, by Jarm Del Boccio. It’s a retelling of the story of Naaman’s servant girl, from the time of the kings of Israel. It is very well done—watch for my full review in a few weeks! After that, we read for about 10 minutes from Kayaks Down the Nile. I borrowed this book from my mother when we were in Michigan in January; she recommended it also when I asked if I could borrow The Ra Expeditions. It’s a fascinating account of three men kayaking down the Nile River in the 1950s. We’re really enjoying it—but I don’t think I’d enjoy a trip like that! Too many crocodile and hippos, not to mention the tipsy kayaks. Our last book each afternoon is Encounters With Animals. This is the only book by Gerald Durrell that I can recommend, unfortunately. All the others I’ve read by him feature immorality and a lot of evolutionary thinking.

So, that’s what we are reading aloud at the moment! We’ve read quite a few other books over the course of the past month, too. The two afternoon books we read were Treasure in an Oatmeal Box and A Flame Forever Bright. The first of these was one I found at a secondhand shop when we were in Ohio in February. I had seen the book advertised about 25 years ago, but never read it. What a gem! This story is about a girl coming to terms with having a mentally handicapped brother, and learning to love him. The ending caught us by surprise, though. The second is about Dirk Willems, probably the most famous Anabaptist martyr from the 16th century. It is told from the viewpoint of his (fictitious) younger sister, and is very good. I did learn one thing from reading these two books—Little Miss, though she is only four, is listening to and comprehending a lot of what I read!

We have read quite a few books for history in the mornings, as well. Obviously, we are still working through the American Revolution. Danbury’s Burning and Sybil Ludington’s Midnight Ride both tell the story of a teenage girl who rode much farther than Paul Revere, through bad weather, and yet is hardly known! Buttons for General Washington was a very interesting story of a family who spied for the Revolutionary cause. In Aaron and the Green Mountain Boys, a little boy learned that he could be of help even if he didn’t go out with the militia! Joseph Brant was an interesting biography of an Indian who worked for the British during the Revolution. We loved Saving the Liberty Bell—what fun pictures! John Paul Jones, Fighting Sailor was quite an interesting story, but we didn’t appreciate the battle scenes. One of them was fun; in his first sea battle, he outwitted the British Navy and saved an American ship, with no one getting hurt in the slightest. We also got to read The Winter At Valley Forge again.

So, that’s what I’ve been reading to the children. I’ve also read several books for myself. The ones that really stood out were The Pink Bonnet and Blessing Bentley. The Pink Bonnet is historical fiction about a woman who made a career, from the 1920s-1950s, of stealing children from the Memphis, Tennessee area and then selling them to the highest bidder. It was heartbreaking, and very hard to put down, as a mother and a lawyer tried to solve the mystery of what was happening. Bentley is an amazing new book by Chautona Havig. I found it very refreshing to read a romance that didn’t follow a formula! There are so many good things to think about in this book—I can’t say enough good about it! At the moment, I’m reading The Second Yes, a collection of five interlinked books which includes Something Borrowed, Someone Blue, which I mentioned in the last post about what we’re reading. I’m on the fourth book right now. I enjoyed Something Borrowed, and am enjoying this one; the first and third weren’t quite my cup of tea; but I’m looking forward to the last one, which will tie them all together. It’s by an author I always enjoy. Another book I read recently was The Deepest Waters. Even though I pretty well knew what the ending would be like, there were a lot of surprises along the way, and unexpected twists in this book based on a true story from the 1850s.

Little Children’s Fun

June 15, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

The little children got their legos back last week, after a month or so without them. When there is a dispute about legos, I take them away for a month—I refuse to arbitrate disputes such as, “He took my piece!” or “She has my man!” If they can’t work out these problems without my input, they don’t need to play with those toys. They have a lot more fun when they only have them periodically, anyway. This time, Simon remembered a website we used to use, which has plans for all sorts of lego creations. He got me to help him find it, and they printed out several different things to build. Little Miss is delighted with her train!

Mr. Imagination chose an airplane, and with help from a friend, got it put together.

Here are a couple of pictures that I asked Esther to take with her camera in March, when we were visiting friends in Canterbury. The children were playing on the hills and in the creek on the farm, and found these geckos. They had a lot of fun with them!