Lots of Helpers

Our family's life in New Zealand

Cone Creek

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A few weeks ago, all five of our boys, as well as two friends of theirs, went on a tramp. That Friday was a holiday, so they took off fairly early in the morning and headed up into the mountains. Their destination was a hut the older boys had been to, coming in from the opposite direction, a couple of years ago. Some friends of ours tried to go to the hut last year and couldn’t find it, so the boys wanted to be sure to arrive in the vicinity with plenty of daylight–and Elijah also downloaded an app onto his phone with topographical maps of the entire country. They found the hut with no trouble, and spent a few hours chopping firewood to replenish what they used.

On the way up the river, the boys spotted this wild sheep, off by itself.

They also spotted a pair of blue ducks.

A view up the misty valley!

When the boys reached the hut, they found snow on the ground.

Inside the hut. They said that the open fire didn’t heat the hut very well, but they were out of the weather and comfortable.

The front of Cone Creek Hut.

Elijah was trying to focus on the river here, but I liked the horizontal tree in the middle.

I’ve never seen a bright blue mushroom like this before! (This picture is for you, Mom.)

A stop for lunch on the way back down on the Saturday.

The boys loved their tramp and want to go again!

Product Review–Bible Blueprints

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Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Do you ever struggle to get the gist of a book of the Bible? It can be helpful to have a resource that tells you, in a few sentences, what each section of a book is about. A Bible study tool we have been using lately, for our family devotions, is Bible Blueprints, from Teach Sunday School. We have found these pages quite helpful, just to get a quick overview of a book, chapter, or section of chapters.

Each page of Bible Blueprints has several sections. At the top of the page is some general information. At a glance, you will know the book’s order in either the Old or New Testament, how many chapters are included, and what type of book it is (historical, prophecy, etc.). Next on the page is an overview of the entire books and its author. This line also gives information about when the book was written and the time period covered in the book.

The heart of the page is the lower half. Here, the book is divided into sections, according to the themes of each group of chapters. Sometimes only one chapter is summarized, or there may be several chapters put together. The heading for each group is a different color, making it attractive and easy to use. Each section has a heading and a several-sentence summary. For example, I’m looking at Judges right now. There are six headings, with from one to five chapters per heading. The first section gives an overview of chapters 1-3; the second, which groups Deborah and Gideon together, describes chapters 4-8, and then Chapter 9, which tells the story of Abimelech, is by itself. I just learned something I didn’t know about the book of Judges: it is believed that the prophet Samuel wrote it!

Right now, for our family devotions, we are reading through the Minor Prophets. I printed the pages for the next several books we’ll be reading, and gave them to Gayle. As we start a new section of chapters, he has been reading the summary of that section to us, and it has helped us to understand the passages a little better. We just finished the book of Joel. I have always struggled to understand the imagery in this book, but now it is much clearer.

There are many Bible study tools available; this is just one. However, it is a tool that is easy to use and very clear. The way it is laid out makes it easy to lay eyes on just what you need at the moment. I believe we’ll be using Bible Blueprints for a long time for our family devotional time.

Click on the image below to see what a number of other families have said about this book! I’m sure they will have a lot of creative ideas for putting this Bible study tool to good use.

Click here to read more reviews!

Flooding!

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We had quite a storm yesterday. In less than 24 hours, we got at least 4, possibly as much as 6, inches of rain. Late in the afternoon, as the rain started slacking off, the boys discovered that the creeks were overflowing into the paddock our cows, chickens and turkeys live in. The cows were locked onto higher ground in one corner, and the chickens are on high enough ground to be safe; the turkeys free-range, and they were all fine. Mr. Imagination came running home as soon as they saw the water, to get his camera, and when Elijah went down, he took some pictures with his camera. Several locals said they had never seen the water this high. Part of the problem was that gravel had washed under the bridge, backing up the water into the paddock on the other side of the highway from us. There were also several log jams downstream, which also backed up the water.

The water in this picture is usually several meters away from where the cows are standing. This is a small creek that comes from a culvert that goes under the highway just to the right of the picture. It’s usually a wide, flowing pool of beautiful, clear, shallow water.

The cows are on the high ground at the right of this picture. Normally, there is no water flowing across there! You can see, about in the middle of the picture, where our little creek flows into Orwell Creek. There was a log jam across the mouth of our little creek, which diverted some of the water from Orwell Creek and directed it into our paddock, as well as the little creek having a lot of water of its own. The other two times we’ve seen that overflow, both within the last year, all the water has gone into a drainage ditch that starts just there, near the left side of this picture.

To the right is the normal channel of the creek. The drainage ditch is just left of the middle of this picture. This time, the water went right across the paddock to the left!

Look at all that water! The drainage ditch to the far right normally flows with a couple of inches of water at the bottom of a 2-meter ditch. The other drainage ditch, on the left, is normally just a swampy strip of water that might flow a little but not much. It got a good clean-out this time, though!

The turkeys are unimpressed with the weather. See what looks like a small lake in the distance? Some of our neighbors have fences set up there and have been grazing three ponies there this winter. We were glad to see they got the ponies out and up here to their house before that area was flooded too badly.

This is just across the highway from the gate to “our” paddock. Because of the gravel built up under the bridge, Orwell Creek was backed up into the paddock and around the neighbor’s house.

The boys were pretty impressed with this whirlpool. It goes down into the culvert that goes through into our paddock. They said the mouth of the culvert was about a meter, maybe three feet, below the surface of the water.

After checking out our paddock, the boys went around the block to where Orwell Creek crosses a road at the bottom of the hill on which Ahaura is built. The railroad parallels the road at this point, and this is what they saw at the two bridges:

Two hours later, this is what they saw:

By this time, the water was over the road bridge, and level with the train bridge–and a spot downstream just a little ways was washing out. There is normally no gap under the track here, but the water that went over the road washed it out pretty badly. Simon called Kiwirail to report the washout, and they sent a crew out this morning to fix it. We went past on our way home from church this afternoon and the track was safe again!

Several of the boys took video clips of what they saw, so I’ve put them together here. The power of moving water is amazing! There’s a little bit of fun here, too, at the end; Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination rode their bikes at top speed past James, through puddles.

Product Review–American Coaching Academy

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Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Incentive charts can be hard to design. When I make one, I tend to end up with a very basic grid. These work, but they sure aren’t attractive. Sometimes, it’s nice to have something pretty and fun, though. It’s great, for non-techy, uninspired people like me, when someone else does the hard work and designs a pretty, fun chart. I was offered the use of the Healthy Habit Trackers from American Coaching Academy last month, in order to write a review.

The Healthy Habit Trackers were designed to get children off screens and moving. Each of the 12 pages that come in one PDF has a list of five or six habits, with a 30-day checklist to help get these habits established in the life of the user. Most of them focus on exercise, while a few involve healthy eating. One even has common household chores! One page is a yoga challenge; I didn’t even print that one.

Quite a variety of exercises are included. The Flexibility Challenge includes 30 seconds each, doing a quad stretch, touching toes, a hamstring stretch, butterfly stretch, neck stretch, and v-stretch. The muscular endurance challenge includes one minute each of wall sit, run in place, high plank, crab bridge, and wall pushups.

I also like the Kindness Challenge, which encourages giving a compliment, sending a text or email to a friend, giving a hug to someone, or holding the door open for someone. There is also a Nutrition Challenge. To fill in this chart, a child would need to drink five glasses of water, and eat two servings each of fruit, vegetables, lean protein, and grains. This chart has fun drawings of various foods from each of these groups to fill in.

Each chart is shaped differently. Some are spirals, some are calendar pages. One is a rainbow, and one is shaped like honeycomb. Each chart is colorful; Miss Joy badly wants to cut the pictures out of each one!

Now, how did we use this? Well, I’ll have to admit that we didn’t use it very well. I printed all the pages (except yoga, of course), and had the school children look them over. Each of them chose a page, as did I, and we did the exercises on our page that day. It was rather fun, doing exercises all together. Miss Joy positioned herself right in front of me, and imitated my every move! For several days, the children kept doing their exercises and filling in their charts, but then life happened. Our children get a lot of exercise anyway, caring for the animals, so I’m not too concerned about getting them off screens (which they don’t get much of, anyway).

More useful than the Healthy Habit Trackers is the bonus that came along: a set of blank habit trackers! They are just as pretty as the main set, but I can fill in any habits I want to establish. We’ll definitely be using those at times. I like having incentive charts I don’t have to design myself.

If you are in need of a physical education program for your homeschool, definitely have a look at the Healthy Habit Tracker from American Coaching Academy. This might be just what you need. And, be sure to click on the image below to read reviews from other families. I’m sure some of them found this product much more useful than we did.

Click here to read more reviews!

May 2022 Photos, Part 2

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Here are the rest of our photos from May!

Esther made peanut butter one evening, from 5 kg of peanuts, and forgot to put salt in one lot of it. She put it all in a big bowl to stir the salt in, and was pretty amazed at how that much peanut butter looks. We normally put it in 2-litre buckets as we make each batch in the food processor, so we don’t see it like this.

We had a hailstorm one afternoon. The younger children were thrilled and ran outside to play in the ice that was coming out of the sky.

They scraped up some hail from the trailer bed and brought it in to show me!

James and Princess, enjoying the warmth from the fire. That’s one spoiled cat.

We killed a beef the end of the month, and Esther and I spent three days cutting it up. Lots of meat! This was everything from the two hindquarters, which we mostly made into roasts and steaks. We saved all the bones to make into broth, and all the fat, to render into tallow. We enjoy doing the work ourselves and being able to use everything.

Little sister, delighted to be joining her big brothers for breakfast; they usually leave before she gets up in the morning.

Miss Joy helped her daddy mow lawn one afternoon!

Big River 4WD Trip Part 2

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After we ate our picnic lunch, we decided to cross the river and walk up to the restored winding house, then on up the mountain to the old poppet head. Some of us had worn shoes rather than boots, so one man kindly let us ride across the river. Here we are loading up–several people clung to the running boards to get across!

We walked up the track on the other side to the old winding house, through dense bush. One place opened out into this little meadow cut through with several narrow creeks. I’ve never seen anything quite like this!

This is inside the winding house. This steam engine used to power a huge winch that pulled a cable which ran up the hill to the poppet head. From there, the cable dropped down underground in the the mine shaft. I think it went down about 600 meters–that’s around a quarter of a mile. The original winding house was vandalized after the mine was abandoned, but then rebuilt recently and the machinery restored to its present condition.

Next, we walked up another track to get to the poppet head. This is the foot of the pile of tailings that cascades down from the top. We walked around to the left on a foot path.

Along the way, we passed a drilling platform. A gold mining company based in Reefton is exploring for gold. They set up a drilling platform at likely locations and drill multiple holes for core samples, at all angles from this platform. The platform and all equipment was brought in and placed by helicopter, and it is resupplied by helicopter, as well. The men live in a hut down the mountain a little ways; they are able to drive to it and up to the base of the pile of tailings with a 4WD, and then walk to and from the platform. One man in our group works for that mining company, and on this particular Saturday he had to visit this platform to check on their core sample, so he was able to drive his family up to Big River with a company vehicle. He took off within a few minutes of arriving at the car park to do his job, and Simon went with him. Simon got to spend a couple of hours, before we got there, talking to the men doing the drilling and learning all about it. He happened to know the man in charge, so that was pretty exciting for him. Our friend snapped this photo on the drilling platform with his phone.

When we arrived, our friend (the man in the orange camo shirt) explained the entire process and brought up a box of core samples to show us. This hole had just passed 300 meters, so it was time to pull the drill out of it and start a new one.

The core samples are brought up three meters at a time, and laid out carefully in these boxes so that they can be reconstructed in the shed later. Our friend analyzes them to see what type of rock is present, looking for signs that gold might be present. The blue numbers on the samples represent the levels of arsenic–more arsenic means more likelihood of gold. The white streaks are quartz or fools gold, both of which indicate gold may be present.

Our next stop was at the top of the mountain, where the poppet head still stands over the old mine shaft. This tower used to be covered with boards to protect against the weather. The cable from the winding house came up here to a huge pulley, and then down into the shaft to pull men and rocks up, and lower supplies and men down.

The view from the top is incredible!

Our friend the geologist handed out cloth sample bags to the children and challenged them to find a rock with gold in it. They were each to find a likely-looking rock and give it to him, and he would analyze the rocks to see who was closest. The tailings contain a lot of gold-bearing rocks, since the technology at the time that this mine was in operation couldn’t recover nearly as much gold as we can today.

The children scrambled all over the mountain of tailings on their way down, searching for the perfect rock!

The rest of us carefully picked our way down this very steep slope, holding on to trees most of the way to keep our balance.

After we got off the mountain, we loaded up again and headed out the track, trying to get out before it got fully dark. We made it–just! Then, all except one family gathered at the home of the family who live in Reefton, and enjoyed fish and chips before going home. It was a great day!

Here is a short video I put together from several clips that Esther recorded. The parts of driving on the track were on the tamest stretches. If she had been recording on the worst parts, it would make you carsick to watch!

Product Review–The Language Mechanic

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Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

I enjoy using products from The Critical Thinking Co.™. This time, I chose to use and review The Language Mechanic, which is designed for use by children ages 9-13, in grades 4-7. I received a PDF of this book, and have been printing sections of it for Mr. Sweetie (grade 7) and Mr. Imagination (grade 5) to work their way through. That’s something I really like about these digital books—I am allowed to print them as many times as I want to for as many of my own children. 

The Language Mechanic is intended to be used as a supplementary Language Arts resource, to help children learn grammar and punctuation. The first few lessons cover capitalization, run-ons, and sentence fragments, and then the lessons move on into using parts of speech correctly. During the past few days, my boys have been working on making sure pronouns agree with the nouns they replace, in both number and gender. The next section we’ll do discusses unnecessary words, and then we’ll start on a number of lessons about punctuation. Near the end of the book, there is a series of lessons about friendly letters, and then some work with spelling and vocabulary.

Each lesson begins with a funny mistake that could be made with writing a sentence. If you leave out a comma, or use the wrong pronoun, you can easily mislead your readers. Did the man really dive into the ice cream? Maybe a period would be helpful to break up a run-on sentence and make it make sense! Or, do you know babies who weigh 85 pounds?! It might sound better if you use the correct verb tense. Some of the sentences make us laugh. 

Next, the logic behind the rule under discussion is explained. Why do we need to use the correct verb tense? This is followed by two or three pages of practice sentences, in which the student needs to choose the correct word, or choose the sentence that matches up best with the given clues. Sometimes the child gets to choose a word for themselves. At the end of the lesson is a challenge, where they need to find the mistakes in a paragraph and correct them. After several lessons is a review, which covers the entire section. 

I have been reading the introduction to each lesson to my boys, although it is set up so that students should be able to understand it on their own. My boys have read it themselves a few times, when I was too busy to take the time for them, but they understand it better if I read over it with them. I usually watch them do the first couple of exercises, to make sure they understand what they are doing, and then they are on their own. They are both doing very well with this book. It is not thorough enough to be a stand-alone Language Arts course, but as a review or brush-up resource, I really like it. The silly sentences make it fun and keep the boys’ interest up. 

The Review Crew has been using several other products from The Critical Thinking Co.™. Click on the image below to read reviews of several other books! Or, if you would like to read my previous reviews of their products, go here. And, if you would like to try out some of their products before buying, they offer free PDFs of Math and Critical Thinking Worksheets. Just go here to find them!

Click here to read more reviews!

Big River 4WD Trip Part 1

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Several young men from across the island came to spend a weekend with a good friend of theirs here, who is attending our church now and is a good friend of our boys. They were discussing what to do with these young men when they came, and Simon came up with the idea of a four wheel drive trip. It was decided to go up to Big River, which had a thriving gold mine around 1900. Today it is a ghost town, with the old “poppet head” standing guard at the top of a mountain with tailings from the mine flowing down the slope below it. There is still gold in the mountain, and the company that our friend over here works for is exploring for the seams of gold to decide if they can justify mining for it. Anyway, by the time the day came, we had 41 people and 7 vehicles on the expedition. We met up at the beginning of the four wheel drive track that goes to the mine site. From that point, it is only 15 kilometers (not quite 10 miles), but it takes at least an hour and a half to drive it! Only a 4WD vehicle, preferably one that is jacked up a bit, can navigate that track, although one man in our party drove a ute, and made it through.

I really enjoyed watching the mist rising from the valleys between hills on our way to Reefton to start the drive. I rarely get away from home, and especially not so early in the morning. It was a perfect day to be out, the first clear day after a week or two of rain, and I thoroughly enjoyed the beauty of the morning.

This was on the way up the road to the start of the track. Simon was driving a friend’s Land Rover in front of us. I was in Simon’s Pajero, with Elijah driving.

We regrouped at the start of the track, when everyone had arrived. Two boys rode motorbikes up, although one of the bikes didn’t do very well and rode back on a ute. As you can see, it was quite frosty at this point–brr!

On the track!

We stopped briefly at this creek. There was a sign pointing to a historic mine, and a number of the boys explored a few tunnels. I walked on ahead, because I didn’t have gumboots and didn’t want to go through the mud.

We stopped again here, briefly, to fix a motorbike. Again, I walked on ahead until Elijah caught up. The closest truck here is the Pajero, with Elijah in the driver’s seat. Simon is standing next to it, in the blue coat, and Mr. Imagination to the far left in the photo.

Because we were the lead vehicles, we arrived at the end of the track first and waited for everyone else. They stopped to explore another mine, but we were just far enough ahead that we didn’t see them stop, so it took another 10 minutes or so before the other vehicles arrived. We enjoyed the sunshine and the scenery from the carpark halfway up the mountain, overlooking the former township of Big River. In this picture, Simon is sitting on the bonnet of the Land Rover.

Watching the other vehicles arrive.

Here they come! The second vehicle is what everyone calls the “Troopie.” It has bench seats facing each other in the back, troop carrier style. Simon’s boss owns it.

We all parked in the small parking area, and ate our picnic lunches in the sunshine.

Miss Joy and one of her friends found the mud!

This is the only house left in Big River. Apparently, an elderly lady lived in it until recently–although I don’t know how recently! People brought food in to her every week until she died.

Part of the view from a little higher up the hill from the carpark. There is a DOC hut up at the top, and the views are astounding!

I’ll post more pictures of the rest of our day, and a short video, another day. I have a lot to sort through!

Late April/May 2022 Photos

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Whew! Finally I found a chance to sit down and work on this blog. Between visitors on the day I normally blog (two weeks in a row), a three-day migraine, internet issues, driving lessons for James (worthwhile: he passed his test!), and butchering a cow, it’s been an intense couple of weeks. And, the wonderful busyness continues, since we have more company coming this weekend. We are blessed! For the moment, though, I have a bit of peace. The younger children are finishing their schoolwork for the week by doing a small craft project, and then they’ll finish cleaning the house. I need to make a big pot of chili for tonight, when we’ll be feeding 4-5 extra young men plus a man from our church, and start on food for the weekend, and cut up the steaks from the cow, but that can all wait till after lunch. So, what did we do the end of April and in May?

Gayle took this photo on his phone from the top of the hill across the road, where we often graze animals. I like that he has the ability to take pictures, as that way special times like this are captured!

Gayle’s health is much better than it has been for many years, and he has a lot more energy, which means he can do things like take Little Miss for a walk after work. One afternoon they walked down to the river, and he took this picture under the train bridge.

The younger boys took two of their boats down to the paddock in which we keep our cows, and they love to play in the little creek that flows through one corner. Miss Joy loved a ride with Mr. Sweetie! This is a kayak that a neighbor gave the boys. They patched up a hole in it, and it works!

This is a boat that Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie made. It works pretty well.

Gayle liked these toadstools, and of course the little beauty in front of them.

Elijah snapped this picture one evening when he was taking care of the chickens on top of the hill across the road, at sunset. Living between two mountain ranges means shorter days in winter, but we sure have some gorgeous scenery!

This was one of our huge pumpkins. It weighed over 9 kg (20 pounds), and had very thick, sweet flesh. If anyone wants seeds, just ask!

Some friends came for food and fellowship one Sunday evening, on the spur of the moment. After we ate, we enjoyed a lively game of dice. No gambling–just a lot of fun!

Jo-Jo is getting much better at flying. He isn’t loose often enough to be really good yet, so one day he found himself in this predicament when he landed on a blind and had to use every tail feather to keep himself balanced. As soon as she took the picture, Esther took pity on him and helped him down; he couldn’t figure out how to get off the blind by himself.

Roofing Simon’s House

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A week ago, Saturday’s project was reroofing Simon’s house. Simon had ordered the roofing iron, and it was delivered on the Monday before that day. Simon was hoping to get half the house finished in one day, and he had a lot of people who offered to help him. When Esther and I arrived over there with a pot of soup for lunch, this is what we saw–both sides of the roof ripped off!

Several of the younger helpers were scooping birds’ nests out of the roof cavity. It was apparently quite full!

Elijah and a friend were measuring the metal.

Poor Simon was supposed to be in charge!

They laid netting down over the purlins (after they replaced them all, as well as adding new timber to the sides of the rafters to extend and level the roof), and then put building paper over that before putting the new roof on.

They were still working after dark. The job was finished about 7:30. While we were eating lunch, it had started to rain, and looked like it might keep on all day. I was praying, as I drove home, that the rain would stop and they would be able to finish the job without the house getting soaked. As you can see from some of these pictures, the sun came out again! We were thankful. We’re pretty happy that the roof got finished before the new ceilings got damaged from rain. This weekend, the boys got the chimney installed, so now there is heat in the house.