Celestial Education

I am posting a link to a video I watched today. It is 2 1/2 hours long, but to me it was worth watching, even if you only watch part. It is the latest buzz in my home schooling circle, and really takes all that I have been learning about education and sums it up a lot better than I could. I really enjoyed it, and feel like the principles are worth hearing.

http://www.utahsrepublic.org/education/celestial-education-by-michelle-stone/

Let me know if you watch it. I would love to hear your comments.

Rhythm

I have been thinking about schedules lately. They seem to be a bit non-existent in my house. I have tried for years to make up perfect schedules, but I am the one who does not want to follow them. I get distracted and do something different than planned. It is fun, but I usually regret it later when something does not get done when needed. I have tried making very rigid schedules, and very loose schedules. Neither seem to work. Sometimes I get going on a good schedule and leave the rest of my family behind. Then I get a little sore that they won't stay on my schedule. It is frustrating.

As I have explored into different home schooling philosophies, I have looked a little into Waldorf education. There is something that strikes me as a good thing from their methods. It is living life in a rhythm. There are many different rhythms to life. One rhythm that I seem to keep well is our morning rhythm. I love to read my scriptures in the morning and get that boost to my day. Then we usually have breakfast and take care of our animals, and then do the daily chores.

We have a weekly rhythm. Sundays are of course the Sabbath; Mondays are Family home evening. Fridays we have a fun movie night, and Saturdays are a big work day or big play day.

With having animals and gardens I am learning seasonal rhythms. Spring for planting, autumn to harvest. Summer brings us bounties of the garden, and our meals are full of vegetable goodness. Winter is a time to stay in and be cozy. I make a lot of soup in winter. A lot of my rhythms center around food.

Life has a rhythm too. I recently read a book that talked about tribal cultures, and they went through the role of each tribal member. Youngest children were for practice for the older children, Older children were for examples to the younger. Parents had their duties and responsibilities, and would still look to their elders for guidance. The Grandparents were the teachers of the children and would share histories and pass on the stories of their tribe. It is a beautiful thought.

My goal for my family is to get into some good (you could say celestial) rhythms. I want us to be living our lives purposefully. I really shy away from useless and wasteful practices. Our music, our food, our parties, our school-- I don't want to waste it. Life is much too precious.

Pictures: Just some random photos. Top is a big mushroom I found in our yard. The bottom photo is a picture of our elf shoes-- a bit of a waste of money as Cedric's already have holes.

Plane ride

Yesterday we went to the airport for a little event they were having and Rich, Cora and Ian went up for a ride in an airplane. Here are the pics.
Waiting in line for the plane

Up in the air.

Feeling a little green?

Back on the ground safe! (They didn't know that Mom spent the whole time praying that they would come back safely)

72 hours

I have started working on re-doing our 72 hour kits-- or bug-out bags as some people call them. Previously we just had a bunch of food stashed in a tote that we could haul with us in our car, but I am changing that to individual backpacks. We have 3 nice backpacking packs that we are going to use while they are not in use for backpacking, and then I bought some nice school size bags for the kids at the DI thrift store yesterday for $2 each-- what a bargain. I am going to get some kind of rolling tote for the baby stuff so if we have to walk then we can carry it or roll it.

Yesterday we also shopped for the food. I found a pretty good list that we are going to use to put our kit together here. I bought the food they suggested and just put mine in large ziplocks instead of milk jugs as they suggested. They ended up being about 4 lbs for the food alone. I may have to modify to lighten it (fewer cans-- more dehydrated) either way we will have weight with water. I haven't figured out how to do the water. We do have a backpacking water filter which will come in handy.

I will update as we get them going, and also add pictures later. I want to have them all finished by July.

Mallows

I've been foraging again. I am really interested in learning about the plants that are right in my yard. I don't like it when I look at a plant day after day and I can't even name it. I like to know what I am pulling up and why. So I looked up this weed. I'm sure you know it. It has little pink flowers. It is nearly impossible to pull up. It has such thick roots that you need a shovel to remove it.

It is called a Common Mallow, and I found out it is edible, and nutritious, and the flavor is very mild. So mild compared to most weeds, that we decided it needed to be sweetened. We got the idea because it is a relative to the Marsh Mallow, which used to be the original ingredient in marshmallows. Mallows have a mucilaginous property (like okra) which makes them get a little slimy(not quite, more like foamy) when you chew on them. We found that if you coat them in sugar and chew them slowly then, if you have a good imagination, it will taste like a marshmallow (or if you don't then it tastes like grass with sugar on it--says Rich.)

The kids thought it was great. See?

We also put them in a fruit salad. It is our mallow-fruit salad. We just put in oranges, bananas, mallows and coconut-- just what I had on hand at the time. It went great with our stromboli.

There you go. We are official weed-eaters! Want to come to dinner?

a spring suprise

By Eleanor

Today I went outside and found a honeysuckle it was covered in white flowers.
there were flowers all over the ground i love honeysuckles

Rings and such

By Cora

Today I found a sleepy little kitten on my bed

She is so cute. we call her Una pronounced oo-na. we call her Una cause its like the french word un which means one. she's the oldest. so the kitten's names are Una, Deux, Trois and Quatre or in otherwise One, Two, Three and Four.

I have been making rings for a while now. my cousin gave me one and I just copied it.
Here are some of them.

Cool. don't you think so?




these two are my favorite

Garden Fort

Hey! Wanna come play in my secret garden?

Cedric and Everett are loving it.

Here are some pictures of our deer fence we have been building around our garden. it looks a bit like a fort. We have it 3/4 finished, so I hope the deer don't hop over the weak side before we have a chance to finish it. Actually it hasn't been deer that have been the problem this spring. It has really been the chickens. They ate off all the leaves of my cabbages, dug up my squashes, and took dust baths in my carrot beds making carrots grow in the aisle instead of the beds! I can't wait until they can't get in anymore either.

Rich is such a Handy Man!

Here is Fort Woodruff. I decided I want to put a sign on the gateway that says "All the Earth's a Garden Sweet."

Projects

I have several projects going on right now, at least in my head I do. I am going to try to blog my progress on here so it actually looks like I am doing something and throw in some pictures now and again for the people who only come to look at pictures. (It's ok, I do it too sometimes.)

So here are my projects:

Preparedness For reasons I have become privy to, I feel a pressing need to get my food storage in place. So I have been working on doing that. I printed out a food storage calculator with all the stuff I need to get and have been steadily buying up the things I need. First I bought all of the Wheat I need, and now I have beans and sugar coming on Friday in a big bulk order. I need to find some more buckets. I have also been buying Olive oil and peanut butter.

Home School Because the preparedness bug has hit, I figured we would do a little homeschool adventure based on the Pioneers. I want the kids to have an inquiry and a project each week. Our first inquiry is going to be "How far did the Pioneers travel across the plains, and what did they pack in their wagons?" I am going to research it myself. Some projects we might do are

Outdoor Cooking
Wild food foraging
Herbs and Medicine
Dress and Quilt making
Basket weaving
Making Cheese
Laundry outdoors
Making candles, soap or lotions
Packing and hauling wagons or handcarts

Then we can have some historical field trips to Chesterfield or the pioneer village in Salt Lake, or camping to practice our outdoor cooking skills.

We are just lacking in some good pioneer literature to read. I wasn't impressed with any of Deseret Book's selection. Anyone have any suggestions?

Enjoy pictures of our trip to American Falls yesterday. The river was really roaring! I was able to identify 3 plants. Cleavers, poison ivy and golden currants. I think I found burdock, but I didn't dare take any because I was not sure if that was what it was. I read that it is edible. More research on that one. Anyone want to munch on this?

Everyone else is doing it...

I've decided this blog needs a purpose... more than it is now. I like chronicling the things we do, but it isn't quite happening the way I want it to, so I need to tweak it a bit. We are home-schoolers in need of a bit of a push in a new direction. This year we have been in the mud bogs when it comes to school. Even though we moved, had a baby and open heart surgery in the last year, I really think we could have done a little better on the school end of things. OK, a lot better.

So I am going to try something for a while. I haven't quite got it all figured out and planned yet, so I'm not going to write much about it. You might have noticed a new page at the top. I have volumes of stuff I have written down in various files and notebooks about how I want to educate my children. So I am going to post some of it there for now, and see what comes of it. This is going to evolve-- slowly maybe-- but I think it will be good.

Tip toe through the Dandelions

Today I did something I have always wanted to do. I made a dandelion salad out of the weeds in my own yard. It was actually really good. I made it a wilted salad, with a hot dressing and potatoes in it. I looked up a few recipes and then made it up myself with the ingredients I had on hand. I am familiar with the salads with hot bacon dressing, but I didn't want to make it that way. I am really trying to eat a lot less meat. After raising and slaughtering chickens, I know what it takes to live on meat, and I am not sure I want to live that way-- at least not so much meat. I am going to post the recipe, but not here, I will put it on my sister's blog called The Cooking Dilemma.