Activities at Home

Happy Days

May 7, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

This is just a collection of random pictures of happy times over the past couple of months—pictures I never found a spot for before. Mr. Imagination was so happy to have puddles to splash in! This was one of our first rains in March, and was some of the first puddles he had the opportunity to play in for a couple of years.

All these lovely people, plus a few more, slept and ate at our house for a day and a half! We really enjoyed that weekend. One family had lived with us for two and a half months; they had to fly back to America a couple of days after the picture was taken, and the other family had come to say goodbye to them.

Mr. Intellectual was doing a science experiment, with help from Mr. Inventor and Esther. It had something to do with how pulleys work.

A friend came one day to say goodbye before she goes to America for a year. She loves children, and spent a lot of the day with the little ones. You can see how Little Miss loved her!

I believe this is a cup of hot chocolate from the friend in the picture above. Think Little Miss likes it?

We were given a big box of clothes, and Mr. Inventor had great fun dressing up and trying to look as ridiculous as possible! (And now I notice a cat enjoying the box!)

I came out of the bedroom after praying with Gayle at bedtime one night, and found that, not only had the boys not gone to bed, Mr. Inventor was busy tying Mr. Diligence up!

When we happen to have a Sunday afternoon at home, Daddy sometimes plays a game with the children. They love it!

NASA Super Balloon

April 26, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Yesterday evening when I was on my way home with the cow from where she grazes on the roadside during the day, I noticed a bright object in the sky off to the southwest of us. I thought that was an odd shape for a plane, and it didn’t seem to be moving, but I didn’t think much of it and soon forgot it. After I got home, I put the cow in the area where I milk, picked a few things from the garden, and headed for the house. The turkeys started fussing about then and ran for cover under the macrocarpa hedge. They were acting like there was a hawk, so I looked around, and saw a large flock of Canada geese coming toward us. Several of the boys ran out into the paddock to see them, and soon yelled that they saw a planet—maybe Venus or Mercury? I knew it wasn’t Venus, because I’ve been seeing it to the east in the morning shortly before sunrise, so I told them it must be Mercury, but went to see what they were seeing, because it didn’t seem likely that we’d actually see that small planet! They pointed out the same bright object I had seen a little bit earlier, and it was definitely not a planet. It was much brighter and larger than any heavenly body I’ve ever seen, except of course the Sun and the Moon. It was round, or oval, but we couldn’t make out what it was. Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Diligence ran for their binoculars, but that didn’t help much, so Mr. Inventor got the telescope. I went inside to look online and try to figure it out. First I looked for the International Space Station, but that was obviously not what we were seeing. I tried one or two other fruitless searches, and then thought of the NASA weather balloon we had heard was to be launched several weeks ago. I searched for that, and after one or two more dead ends, found an article that said the balloon had finally been launched today, after seven failed attempts. The accompanying video showed an object exactly like what we were able to see with the telescope!

This picture shows what we were able to see with the naked eye (this is very zoomed in):

This is a screenshot from the video in the article; this is what we could see through the telescope:

We were pretty excited to get to see this!

Little Miss and Her Bicycle

April 25, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence found a tiny bicycle with training wheels at the dump a few months ago. They brought it home and presented it to their favorite little sister; it was just the right size for her. She was thrilled to be able to ride it. I grabbed the chance to get this video one morning when she slipped out of the house still wearing her nightgown! She moves so fast it’s hard to capture a video like this.

Cats

April 25, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Our little kittens aren’t so little anymore! They are nearly full-grown now, but we’re enjoying them just as much. One problem they are running into, though, is that they don’t both fit on the same lap at the same time anymore. This morning, I was sitting on the couch reading my Bible, and Princess jumped onto my lap from one side. A second later, Bandit jumped on from the other side. He was on the inside, though, so she had to jump off while he curled up for a cozy sleep! She had to spend a minute washing herself to get over the disappointment.

We find them sleeping in all sorts of funny places; here are just a few pictures from the past couple of months. This first picture was when they could still both fit on my lap.

This was one of the first days this fall that we lit the fire in the coal range. They loved the heat, and spent most of the morning in front of it.

We found Princess asleep on my laptop one evening.

She also loved sleeping on the coal range a few hours after the fire went out, while the cast-iron top was still warm. One day, however, she decided to take a nap there while I had the fire going. I suddenly heard frantic skittering and turned around to see her running away from the stove! She raced into the other room and stood there looking very scared and offended. Her paws were slightly scorched. She has stayed away from that stove ever since!

Just a few days ago, we found her here—apparently there wasn’t a human lap around that suited her!

They don’t always sleep, though. Until the past week or so, there would be fierce fights every morning. Bandit got sick last week, though, and for several days didn’t do anything. He wouldn’t even eat for a day or more. We were pretty concerned about him, and prayed for him. Soon, he started eating again, and now he’s back to normal.

This was the first time we saw Princess on top of the garage roof. She couldn’t figure out how to get down. She would look down, scratch her shoulder, run a little way, give herself a few licks, run a little way, lick herself again…. We just cracked up watching her; it looked for all the world like a person scratching his head while he tried to figure out a puzzle! And sure enough, within half an hour she was down.

I had the boys clean out the garage one afternoon. They threw out this pile of boxes to be burned. The cats had great fun stalking each other through the pile before it was loaded up and taken out to the paddock.

We bought a couple of suitcases one day, in preparation for our trip to America. The cats thought we got them just for their benefit!

Little Miss did the same thing!

“Aw, I’m too late. The lap is already occupied.” So he started scrubbing his sister.

Salsa

April 21, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I started a batch of salsa a few days ago. I had nearly a bushel of tomatoes that were going bad, so I trimmed them all and ground them with the stick blender. It filled this 20-litre pot about 2/3 full! I boiled it that evening. Yesterday, I got a few peppers chopped and put in, and boiled it again. Tonight, I picked a dishpanful of tomatillos and chopped them and put them in…and brought it to a boil again! Maybe tomorrow I can finish the job. Think the pot is full enough?! I’m planning to divide it into two pots tomorrow before adding more peppers, jalapenos, onions, and some tomato paste. This is the second batch of salsa for the year, but the other wasn’t this big. Yes, we go through a lot of salsa around here.

Children—March 2017

April 1, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I’m not sure what her problem was, but she sure thought it was terrible!

I dehydrated some strips of zucchini one day. When I brought the dehydrator in that evening to empty it, the children started eating them—and didn’t stop till they had eaten about half of them!

One afternoon, the hot water heater was boiling, after the fire had been burning most of the day. I said that the little boys ought to have their bath. Later, I went looking for Mr. Imagination, and this is what I found! Obviously, he didn’t catch what I really intended. Of course, Little Miss soon let go of her dress and was soaking. They had fun for awhile.

It rained! The creek had some water in it, and the little children had a lot of fun for a few days. What a mess!

Mr. Inventor’s latest project. An old brother in our church died a little over a year ago, and Mr. Inventor recently asked his widow if he could buy the man’s three old motorbikes. None of them are working, although the motors will turn over on two of them. He’s hoping to put together one that works. They had to dig them out from under several year’s worth of grass and thistles, to load them on the trailer. I managed to grab this shot of the boys riding on them up to the house before we left to bring them home from Kaikoura. All five boys are on board; Mr. Sweetie’s head is just visible behind Mr. Intellectual’s shoulder. There wasn’t time for a better picture before they disembarked.

Mr. Diligence doing school while Princess naps. That cat sleeps in the funniest poses! I have several more pictures for another post.

Mr. Imagination was given a huge teddy bear at a secondhand shop we went to on his birthday. Little Miss loved it, so when a friend at whose house we were a few days ago mentioned that she was sending some teddy bears to the op shop, I said Little Miss would like one. Did she want the bears, though? No—she fell in love with this penguin!

Random Pictures from February and March, 2017

March 23, 2017 by NZ Filbruns 4 Comments

I often end up with an assortment of pictures that don’t seem to fit any theme, so here they are.

We see this rock wall every time we go to Kaikoura now. These rocks were stacked up to try to keep new rocks and dirt off the road if the slip slips again. I always think someone with a huge piece of equipment must have had fun stacking them up!

One of the boys found this cicada that died halfway out of the shell! They were quite intrigued with it.

We’re doing Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Astronomy this year for science. An assignment for the first chapter was to make a model of the solar system with balloons. From right to left are Mercury (black), Venus (orange), Earth (blue), Mars (red), Jupiter (orange), Saturn (pink with a green ring), Uranus (blue), and Neptune (purple). The yellow one represents the sun, although it would have had to be the size of half of our house. Jupiter and Saturn should have been twice as big as they are, but the balloons kept popping when we tried to get them bigger. And apparently, Pluto is no longer considered a planet! Even though this is quite out of scale, we had fun doing it.

I made tiny ponytails in Little Miss’s hair one day, just for fun. I think it will be awhile yet before we need to do any such thing again!

Our onion harvest this year.

We took the Inland Road to Kaikoura one Sunday when the coastal highway was closed due to slips from rain and fresh earthquakes. This is a church in Waiau, which was badly damaged in the November 14 quake. The bell tower is leaning pretty badly, although it’s hard to see in this photo.

One evening at the table, we were discussing how old each of us would be in Mercury years (Mercury goes around the sun four times for every Earth year). Someone got out our new abacus to figure out his daddy’s age. Multiplication is challenging with the abacus! We finally worked out how to get the answer, but it took awhile.

Mr. Intellectual drew this picture of a volcano, presumably in Hawaii, erupting into the ocean.

Garden Stuff

March 12, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I sliced a bunch of zucchini for the freezer one day, and decided to try dehydrating some. I sprinkled them with salt, and they are quite good! I did learn that it’s best to oil the trays before putting the zucchini on, or they stick tight. A couple of the children had fun putting the slices of zucchini on the first time.

I had never seen a head of cabbage like this one! It had many small heads growing out around the stem, between the leaves.

One of the little boys was quite impressed with the bumblebees on the sunflowers.

One day’s harvest of cucumbers and squash.

Little Miss helped me fill jars of green beans one day. She did a good job of it.

We did an experiment this year with the tomatoes. After reading on the blog of one of Gayle’s cousins how she fertilized her tomatoes with sour milk and had very good results, I decided to try diluting the whey from cheesemaking and the buttermilk we couldn’t use up from making butter, and water the tomatoes with it. To make it a good experiment, we only did that with half the patch. The tomatoes on the right came from the milk-fed tomatoes, and the ones on the left came from the others. I would say the experiment was a success!

Children and Kittens—February 2017

March 8, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One day when I was hanging out laundry, Little Miss found this headdress that her daddy wears at work to cover his hair and beard. She thought it was great fun to try on!

Little Miss wanted me to take a picture of Princess’s feet!

Bandit going out the living room window.

What fun! A box with a hole in the side!

Mr. Inventor bringing the little ones in for dinner.

One cool morning I lit the fire in the coal range. Princess spent a lot of the morning on this stool in front of it, soaking in the heat.

Little Miss was excited one morning to find a kitten asleep in the dirty laundry pile. She covered the kitten up, so I carefully picked up the pile of laundry and put it in a basket so no one would step on the invisible kitten. Then, both of them ended up in the soft “bed”.

Little Miss is playing with dolls more and more. Here, she was carefully covering up her baby’s toes. When I put her in bed at night, and she has a teddy bear with her, she wants me to cover its feet, too!

Mr. Inventor’s latest project: a recumbent bike. It’s still in the process of being made, but he rides it around a lot.

Trying to sync the front wheels so steering is easier, and fix the chain.

Product Review—Math Mammoth

March 1, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

It’s turning out to be an interesting school year, with the opportunity to review products for the Homeschool Review Crew! When Math Mammoth came up, after studying the available products, I decided to request a couple of titles from their Blue Series. I chose Subtraction 1 and New Zealand Money. I was especially happy for the money unit; the curriculum I’ve put all my children through and have no plans of switching away from uses American money. One thing I appreciated about this review is that these are digital downloads, which means I’ll be able to use them over and over as needed.

Mr. Sweetie has been working through these two books. I printed them, except for the answers at the back of each one, and had someone drill holes through the edge, then sewed them together. I put both books together, back-to-back, with one upside-down to the other. That has worked well. Since the last week of January, or so, I’ve been having him do a lesson in one of the books each day, alternating between them.

I chose the Subtraction 1 unit because Mr. Sweetie was having trouble last year with subtraction and I thought he could do with some reinforcement. I liked how this book started out very basic, defining what subtraction is and showing it with crossed-out pictures. The next lesson showed counting down on a number line to subtract, and then several lessons showed the relationship between addition and subtraction. There is a lot of drawing circles or shapes, then crossing out, and there is lots of illustrations with simple little pictures. I like all the story problems, which help math relate to the real world. Mr. Sweetie is about halfway through this book now, and I’ll have him continue working on a page or two most days, along with his regular math. It gives him some real good practice.

I also had Mr. Sweetie do the New Zealand Money unit. He knew the values of our money, but putting it together and praticing it was very good for him. One thing that was fun was counting out real coins to illustrate an amount on his page! He had the option of using real money or drawing it in the box, so we did it the easy way. Coins worth less than a dollar were introduced first, and then the dollar and 2-dollar coins, followed later by $5 and $10 notes. There are a lot of story problems, and exercises with making change. The most recent lesson we did had a picture of a number of coins, and he was to pretend to be buying certain things, then figuring out how much he had left. That was quite challenging, so we did the lesson over several days. I’m going to put this book aside for now, though, since we seem to have reached a point where he is having a hard time. The next lesson covers rounding when getting change at a shop, and I’m not sure he’ll be able to handle that yet.

I liked the way Math Mammoth is set up, and thought it was very thorough and good at getting the concepts across. If I wasn’t so happy with what we’ve been using for 12 years already, I would be tempted to switch. As it is, if I need something for extra reinforcement, I might well look to see whether there is a booklet about the specific topic we need. I’m also thrilled to have a resource to practice using our country’s money! One criticism of it, though, is that the picture of the 20c coin is wrong. The picture in the book shows the old 20c coin, which is no longer in use. Believe me, my children studied all the other pictures carefully to make sure they showed the new $5 and $10 notes! (They do!) Other than that, though, I was impressed with it.

Would you like to read what about 50 other reviewers have to say about Math Mammoth? Click on the image below to find their reviews: