Our Homeschool Electronics Class

One of the careers that Nicholas is interested in is Electrical Engineering.  He has always had a pretty strong knack for engineering.  He is always tinkering, creating, and building things.  It just seems to come naturally for him.  He enjoys working with electrical circuits and understands some basics about electricity but we wanted him to go a little deeper and learn more so he can really see if this is a field he would want to go into.  The beauty of homeschooling is that we have more flexibility in our schedule to let our children really explore their passions.  It also helps that our children are not allowed to have "screen time" during the school week so that allows for more free time for sparking their imaginations and interests.

One day when we were at Tanner's Electronics store just playing around with electrical components, we asked the owner if he happened to know of local classes or even curriculum to teach electronics to kids.  I'm so glad that we talked to him because we learned that they homeschool their children as well!  He gave us a great resource for a book which can be found for free on MIT's website.  It is called MAKE Electronics by Charles Platt.  It isn't a curriculum, per se, but it has lessons that build upon each other.  We even found kits that come with all of the supplies needed for the electronics lab exercises.  We even found a homeschool friend that wanted to do the course too so Stuart works through the book and the projects with Nicholas and his friend every Thursday night.  The two boys love this class and they get excited about the projects they do each week.  

Nicholas gets so excited about tinkering with electronics that when our coffee maker broke, he wouldn't let me throw it out.  Instead the boys took it apart as part of their class work and learned about how it worked.

And, when this microwave was seen at the curb in front of a neighbor's house, I was asked to pick it up so the deconstruction and investigation of it could become another extension of Electronics Class!  Note: microwaves can be dangerous to take apart so you must do some research before you try to tackle this project.

We also have a big trunk under the school table that Nicholas is using to collect other dead or broken things that I would like to throw away like an old PC, a monitor, an electric pencil sharpener, a kid's version of a tablet, and much more.  The trunk is so full that we can no longer fully close the lid on it.  I think he has enough electronic projects now to last him an entire year!  But do you want to know something cool?  Nicholas doesn't just dive into taking everything apart.  Stuart has a great understanding of electronics so Nicholas always wants to wait until Stuart is available to do it with him so he can teach him about the components and what they do.

I love listening in on Stuart and the boys during Electronics class.  I smile as I hear the excitement in the boys' voices as they learn cool new things or they successfully make their electronic projects work correctly.  Stuart, thank you for pouring your time and energy into making this class so great for them, especially when you do it after a long day at work.

Only in Our House

We left the house at 2:00 to head to our weekly park outing with friends.  We came home around 4:30. Nicholas walked into the kitchen and calmly said, "Um, Mom.  The cabinet is on the floor."  I thought surely I misunderstood him.  But no.  

Only in our house could a kitchen cabinet just decide to fall off the wall.  I can't access most of my pictures to find a good one of the cabinet's original position but I was able to find this silly picture with the cabinet in the background.  

It didn't have a lot of weight in it.  It was mostly our food storage containers, some coffee and tea, and our vitamins.  On top of the cabinet was a wine rack which held a few bottles of wine.

Based on the damage, I think the cabinet fell straight down the wall onto the counter top below then fell to the floor.  Amazingly, none of the wine bottles that were on top of the cabinet broke.  None of the glass food storage containers inside the cabinet broke.  None of the glass vitamin bottles inside the cabinet broke.  The main damage was caused when the cabinet hit the countertop and knocked the coffee maker and my new (and oh so perfect) little sugar bowl on to the floor.  They both broke and a few dishes in the sink broke as well.   One side and the back of the cabinet are ruined as well.

How could this have happened?  These cabinets were installed in 2014 as part of the restoration after our Great Flood.  We used a general contractor to do the work and we haven't had many issues with the work that was done.  However, as I looked up at the wall where it had been, I noticed only three screws had been used to hold this cabinet up.  

The two screws in the back wall were screwed into studs but they were not the special cabinet screws that should have been used.  The screw on the side wall was just for show because it was just in the sheet rock and not screwed into a stud at all.  That is useless!  There were no screws anywhere else to hold this cabinet up.  I'm amazed it stayed up as long as it did.  Of course, next we questioned the security of the other hanging cabinets but we can see that they at least have screws going into the wall at both the tops and bottoms of them.

So now we will have to buy a replacement cabinet, find time to install it (ha!), and most importantly, buy a new coffee maker and sugar bowl.  *Sigh*  

Little Kid Art Supplies

Rachel loves making art.  She loves drawing, painting, pastels, and more.  She has been doing some art lessons online and I have let her use some of my nicer art supplies.  

As we were getting ready for the new school year, I had her help me clean out the art closet.  She was excited to find some supplies that had gotten buried and forgotten about.  But she also turned her nose up at what she called, "little kid art supplies".

While I'm always happy to get rid of stuff on my de-cluttering mission, I found myself actually sad about giving away these particular items.  It was a sudden reminder that my babies are growing up and we are getting rid of our last Crayola crayons and big foam stamps.  As a parent you don't usually know until after the fact when will be the last time your child will ask you to push them on the swing or the last time they will want to sit in your lap while you read a book to them. This was just one of those moments that stuck with me as we got rid of those "little kid art supplies".

Savor the days.  

Foster Puppies

The kids have begged us for years to get a dog.  Stuart and I didn't want to have to deal with something else making messes and tearing things up so we've always brushed them off with "maybe someday".  But after some of the stress our family has been through this year, we started seeing it in a different way.  Maybe a dog wouldn't be so bad.  The kids are old enough to take care of it and if we wait much longer to get one then the kids will have moved out. 

So one day I saw a post on our community Facebook page with this picture.

The caption read, "Anyone want to foster 3 widdle bitty puppies? Any amount of time appreciated! Harry, Ron and Hermione are 7-8 weeks old and well socialized. Expenses provided."  I thought they were adorable and by fostering we could just temporarily try life with dogs and see if it was what we really wanted.  I asked some more questions and got a little bit of information about them.  No one knows about their dad.  Their mom is a 25 lb. Wheaton Terrier that looks just like Benji.  This is her.

We had a little discussion and we did realize that what we might go into as "just fostering" to see how we might like having dogs but it could end up with hearts too attached to get rid of them. The kids and I met with the lady in charge of the rescue group and brought the three puppies home.  She provided us with the crate, baby gate, towels, food, treats, toys.  It was going to be just a 2-3 week foster and in the mean time she would get the word out and try to find permanent homes for them when they were ready but we would get first claim on them if we wanted them.  

So starting with the white puppy, meet Harry, Hermoine, and Ron, creatively named for the three main characters in Harry Potter.  

We set up their area to be in the kitchen because, well, tile floors are easy to clean.  We put the crate in the hallway between the kitchen and the schoolroom to block them from getting out that way and then we put the baby gate up in the kitchen entrance at the living room.  I tried to get a picture of the kids with all three of them looking at the camera.  Ha!  They were constantly on the move so this is the best I could get!

Below is just one of many videos of their cuteness!


The kids were so delighted.  I felt bad that we hadn't gotten dogs before now because they have been begging us for years.  They had fun playing with the puppies.

Here's another video of Harry trying to play with a ball that is a bit too big for his mouth to hold!


And of course we had to take them in the backyard for more adventures.  They really enjoy wrestling with each other and biting toes.

They are just so cute!  Lots of playing and sleeping.  And lots of pee too!

Hermoine hugging Ron in her sleep.  The puppies had been diagnosed with mange and had received treatment.  They were safe to be around at this point but some of their fur was still thin and hadn't grown back in yet.

Homeschoolers Make the Best Lunches

When we take a lunch break from homeschool, I need that down time to just take a break for myself so I don't usually fix lunch for the kids.  They are in charge of fixing their own lunches.  We always have sandwich meat available but they often pull out leftovers and make a meal out of those.  Over the years, their foraging abilities have gotten quite creative.

Here is Nicholas' latest creation.  He wanted a hot dog but we were out of hot dog buns so he used a flour tortilla.  Then he added some baked beans on top of the hot dog.  Hmm, not quite done though.  He added some cheese to help stick another flour tortilla on top to make it a double decked dog.  On the second layer he added some slices of jalapeno sausage and frito chips.  Wow!  What a creation!

Not to be outdone, little sister jazzes up her PB&J sandwich by adding kiwi eyes, a peanut butter smile, and mozzarella cheese hair.  These kids keep me smiling!

Carole P. Roman: Children Books for Learning and Fun {Review}

As in most homeschools, we read a lot of books and I'm always looking for new ones to introduce to my children.  We read everything - non-fiction, biography, historical fiction, books with a virtuous message, and of course, books that are just for fun.  Award winning children's author and former teacher Carole P. Roman has written a wide selection of books for young readers that fit all of these categories.  She has an historical series with books that cover time periods from Ancient China to the American West.  She has another series that teaches children about cultures in different countries.  There are also several fun books like Captain No Beard as well as several books with important messages for young readers.

As a member of the Homeschool Review Crew, I was given the opportunity to review some of these books.  Rachel was excited to receive three books from the Carole P. Roman books and collections.  

The first book she read was If You Were Me and Lived in France: A Child's Introduction to Cultures Around the World.  We have been talking about starting French lessons so she was excited to learn a little bit about the culture and history of France.

Rachel is nine years old and she is a good reader.  Although this book was written for younger readers it still introduced her to cultural and historical aspects of France that she did not know.  We took some of the information mentioned in the book and did further research on them such as Bastille Day and City of Lights as a nickname for Paris. 

The next book Rachel read was Oh Susannah: It's in the Bag.  This book is a chapter book and closer to her reading level.  It is a story about a third grader named Susannah who doesn't want to deal with the little daily challenges that come up in life.  Instead, she just shoves them all into her bag until it bursts.  She eventually realizes that it would have been better to deal with each problem as it came up instead of letting them just continue to build up.  She also learned that it is important to ask for help when you feel overwhelmed and don't know what to do.

Rachel chuckled as she read this book.  She said, "Susannah is just like me!  She piles everything in her backpack and doesn't want to take care of it because it seems too stressful to her.  It's like me with putting up my clean clothes.  There are just a few pieces of clothes one day but I don't want to put them away.  Then more clothes pile up and I just can't hang all of that up.  It's too much.  So I shove them all in the back of my closet so I don't have to deal with them."

Yes, that is a real problem we are working on.  But hopefully reading this book helped Rachel to realize that it is much easier to tackle a task when it is small and not let that pile of clothes get so high that it becomes unmanageable.

Rachel enjoyed this book so much that when she had finished she grabbed up the second book in the Oh Susannah series and started reading it right away.

This book is called Oh Susannah: Things That Go Bump.  In this story Susannah is afraid to go to her best friend's house for a sleepover because her friend lives in an old creaky house.  She is afraid of the spiders there and she thinks there is a ghost living in the house.

Susannah realizes that everyone has unique fears and that fear often about how one interprets the things around them.  One person might love unicorns and think they are beautiful while someone else who is blind might be terrified of them because of a fear of getting injured by their horn.  But as Susannah learns, sometimes are fears are unwarranted and facing them can sometimes lead to exciting surprises.

These are three great books for children.  The Oh Susannah series was a quick and fun read for Rachel and she is hoping that Ms. Roman will write more books about Susannah.

For more information about Carole P. Roman and her wonderful books, please check out these social media links below:

Facebook: Carole P. Roman, Award Winning Author
Twitter: @caroleproman
Instagram: @caroleproman
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6A9PDx7NdBgYUN1giUOp0A

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Super Beads by Zirrly {Review}

Rachel is very creative and she loves making arts and crafts projects.  She especially loves trying new products so she was excited to try Super Beads from Zirrly to write this review for the Homeschool Review Crew.

Super Beads are a fun invention that allows children to  For the purpose of this review, my daughter and I used the Super Beads Mega Pack.
The Mega Pack comes with a whopping 4500 colorful plastic beads.  The kit also includes 4 pegged plastic trays that can be interconnected to make larger trays.  There are lots of paper pattern cards so up to four children can create a work of art at the same time.  There are also two spray bottles to fill with water and, of course, instructions on how to create a masterpiece.

To begin, Rachel chose the cupcake pattern card.  She then popped the pattern card on to the back of the plastic tray.

Next was the fun part!  She picked out the colors of beads that she wanted to use and started placing them on the pegs over the pattern card.

Once she had the pattern covered with colorful beads she grabbed the spray bottle and lightly spritzed her cupcake with water.

She struggled with waiting but she did manage to wait a few hours to pull her cupcake off of the plastic board.  She had to take her time and go slowly but it all came off in one piece.  

Next she got creative.  She put two of the plastic boards together and made her own creation that covered both boards.

Rachel was fascinated with how easy these projects were to make.  She has used similar bead products that she had to wait for me to iron because those beads only stuck together by being melted.  But Zirrly Super Beads are so easy to use that even young children can finish their creations on their own because no ironing is needed - just a light spray of water!

Rachel made several of the creations from the paper pattern cards but she also made a flower, toothbrush, and cherries.

The cherries turned out especially nice because Rachel made them three-dimensional!  She created the first layer of beads then once they were dry she spritzed the red beads and added a few more red beads on top to make the sweet cherries really pop out!  What a fun idea!

Rachel is 9 and was able to make all of these creations on her own.  However, she did have to be especially careful when removing them from the peg boards because they would sometimes try to break apart if she went too quickly, especially where the beads were just one row wide.  So my only comment about this would be that younger children might need some help from an adult to remove the project carefully enough that nothing breaks apart. 

The Super Beads Mega Pack that we received sells for $18.98.  We would highly recommend Super Beads for all kinds of fun craft and homeschool projects.  Rachel has already been talking about how to use Super Beads in our homeschool work.  She has been learning about human anatomy and she wants to make a Super Bead picture of the inside of a human cell complete with nucleus, mitochondria, and  Golgi bodies.

If you would like to read other Zirrly reviews from the Homeschool Review Crew, please click on the banner below:

R.I.P. Nuggets.

Last year, we started our backyard chicken adventure.  It all began because a friend of Stuart's at work knew that we homeschool and she thought it would be neat for the kids to incubate some eggs and watch them hatch.  She also knew that I was kind of interested in having backyard chickens so we could gather our own fresh eggs each day so she told us we could keep some of the chicks that hatched.  We started with 32 eggs.  The first one to hatch was a little black and yellow cutie.  Stuart named it Nuggets.

Nicholas fell in love with Nuggets.  Eleven total chicks hatched but none ever came close to his heart like Nuggets did.

We all loved Nuggets. 

She got a lot of attention and was often flown around the room in a Star Wars ship or had MagnaTile houses built for her.

As our eleven chicks grew, Stuart made a coop for them outside.  For our size lot, our town only allows us to have 4 hens and no roosters are allowed. But ours were still too young to determine the sex.  They didn't have fully developed combs and waddles and their tail feathers weren't fully grown yet.  So we just kept them all until they would start crowing like a rooster and then we would bring that one back to our farm friend.  It turned out that we were left with exactly four hens out of our bunch.  They were Nuggets, Black Bolt (aka Mr. Troubles), Fire Bolt, and Eleven.  But Nuggets was still everyone's favorite.  She was a little smarter than the rest.  And she liked to swing.

Nuggets is the one standing on Nicholas' leg.

She would come to the kitchen window to visit the kids while they did their school work and the other chickens would follow her.  

She was calm even when being worn as a hat.

Occasionally the kids still bring the chickens back inside.  One day Nicholas had finished his school work and I found him sitting quietly on the couch with Nuggets wrapped in a towel on his lap.  He looked so peaceful and in love.

But Saturday morning, Nicholas went out to check on our girls and Nuggets was not in the coop and there were black feathers scattered around outside of the coop.  We know that there is a bobcat in the area so we are pretty sure that is what got her.  We had heard that a bobcat recently got our neighbor's free range chickens and Stuart thinks he saw a bobcat near the coop one night a few weeks ago.  A while back we stopped letting our chickens have free range of the yard all day long (mostly because they seemed to always come to our deck to poop).  We still let them out if we are out there with them and can shoo them away from the deck.  But they are always in the coop if we aren't out with them and they are always in the coop at night.  

After Nuggets went missing, we studied the coop to try to figure out what happened.  We found a piece of chicken wire had been peeled back where the coop and the run meet.  We knew there was a small gap there but it was too small for a chicken to get out through it so we didn't expect that anything bigger than maybe a squirrel could have gotten in.  I still don't think the bobcat actually got into the run but he must have gotten his arm in there enough to grab Nuggets and pull her out.  We looked around the yard and found no signs of Nuggets other than the black feathers right outside the coop.  No blood, no body.  We did find a bobcat print in a muddy spot on the sidewalk along the side of our house.

I'm still amazed that this could have happened.  Here are some pictures to show you how small of a gap there was.  First, a tour of the coop.  It has 2 nest boxes and 2 roosting bars, and a hanging feeder.  The roof lifts up for access.  There is also a little door on the left side.  Since we added the enclosed run, we no longer open and close that door so it is tied in the open position all the time so the chickens can come and go whenever they want.

Stuart build these two enclosed runs and attached them together and attached them to the coop.  The big blue bucket is their water.

Here is where the bobcat must have gotten Nuggets.  The green netting on the right is on the coop and you can see that the little door is open.  The chicken wire of the run usually covered that gap more than this but it had been pulled back by the bobcat. 

Here is the same corner from a different angle, looking into the coop.  I'm still amazed at how he was able to get Nuggets through that little gap.

Nicholas was obviously upset when he went out yesterday and figured out what had happened.  But I'm so proud of him for quietly coming back inside and getting Stuart.  He didn't want Rachel to get upset because she was about to leave for a birthday party.  After the party, we sat down with her and told her.  Of course, she cried and it broke my heart.    

Needless to say, yesterday there were lots of modifications to the coop and the run.  Hopefully this time it is truly bobcat-proof.

R.I.P. Nuggets.  We love you and miss you.

Operation Gratitude Cool Ties {Service Hours for Kids}

As part of Rachel's work towards earning service hours for the President's Volunteer Service Award, she has found a way to help members of our military by making Cool Ties for Operation Gratitude's Deployed Troop Care Packages.  Cool Ties are like bandanas to tie around your neck but they are filled with absorbent beads that can hold water for several hours.  Operation Gratitude sends these in their care packages to help keep the troops cool in the heat of summer.  

Rachel loves to sew and this was a great way to put her skills to work.  We found the directions for the Cool Ties on the Operation Gratitude website.  We ordered the Watersorb Super Absorbent Polymer beads as they suggested.  When we went to buy fabric, Rachel chose a basic brown cotton.  The directions suggest a neutral color and I'm glad that they put that in writing because otherwise Rachel would have probably chosen something much more colorful and bright.

Rachel started by measuring and cutting the fabric into 1/4 yard strips.  I got out my large self-healing mat, rotary cutter, and yard stick.  It was her first time to use a rotary cutter.  She thought it was a lot of fun and she may have sacrificed a little fabric to do a lot of "practice cuts" with it.

Next she followed the directions to sew the strips together.  Each end of the strip was tapered and she sewed a pocket in the middle of the strip to hold the water beads. 

She measured and poured 2 teaspoons of water beads into the pocket of the Cool Ties and then sewed up the gap.

This is a neat project but there is a lot of measuring involved so I would really recommend it for ages 9 and up.  Rachel was very excited about her completed Cool Tie and she has continued to make more.  Of course, she also plans to make one for herself in bright colorful fabric.

Once she is done making a lot of these we will mail them to Operation Gratitude to be added to the Troop Care Packages.  I'm so proud of my girl for working on this project so diligently.