Woodwater Farmhouse

It's the start to the Chinese Lunar New Year today and we celebrated it all! It's the Year of the Horse so of course we had a horse! This is the Chinese Dragon we made out of paper plates this week. Took two days to complete but I love it. I was inspired by another teacher over in Italy - found her post on Pinterest. You can see her entire classroom dragon HERE . Here is a picture  recap of our celebration complete.  We also learned about the celebration, traditions and we even learned how to write our numbers and days of the week in Chinese!  Other fun stuff this week....we learned about maps, all kinds of maps. Molly even made her own Treasure Map!  We also dedicated a day to the Groundhog. Sunday is Groundhogs day and I am sure it will be lost in the entire day of Football, but we wanted to make sure we gave props to the groundhog!  I was not the best at taking pictures as I have been under the weather this week - on ant...

Hello February!  If you are here with me and others, Welcome!  Even if you didn’t participate in our No Spending January, jump right in with our February Challenge: Managing your Food Budget. Let me first premise the challenge with saying that I am in NO way a college educated expert in the “field” of money management, debt reduction or even a CPA.  I have been at the rock bottom and I have been at the tippy top and everything in between with my finances. I have lived in the basement apartment sleeping on the air mattress and I owned my own home at the age of 19. Whatever your situation, there is always a way to improve on it.  Our family has been mostly debt free ( I say mostly because we do have a mortgage and 2 vehicle payments monthly) for the past 7 years and I know that without planning we would not be able to be where we are today. The experts say the key to managing your finances is to write it all down so you can visually see what y...

My Recap on the No Spending Challenge: It has been a long month since we embarked on this No Spend January . I have come to realize MANY things about myself, my family and our way of life over the last 30 days. Here is what I know for sure: I would rather BUY experiences with my friends and family,  then BUY stuff to fill our home. I should have stocked up on wine before January 1 st ! (just being real here) I have figured out that the value I place on STUFF and THINGS is not the way I will live my life from this day forward. My outlook on people whom I thought were people I wanted to hang out with and be “friends” with, have changed. LESS IS MORE! I will never be enslaved to STUFF again! (truth be told, if it were up to me, we would sell our home and most of our possessions and RV around the US, experiencing our country first hand.) How did the children do? I really thought this was going to be an “issue” for our children....

Be still my beating heart! I have a love affair with all things paper. I love the feel of high quality paper and the way the my pen glides across the paper.  When I come across a product that makes me smile to just look at it, I have to share! My friend Pamela Smerker of Pamela Smerker Designs  has created this shop that will make paper lovers melt!   PS Designs on Etsy  What will you find at her shop? Glad you asked!   Oh you will find an assortment of one of a kind stationary, printables and paper goods.  These are the adorable  Preppy Monogram Fill In Calling Cards set of 48 that I am crushin on.   Have you ever been at a meet up, playdate or maybe at Classical Conversations and looking for a pen and paper to jot down your information?  These are the PERFECT way to pass along your email address or text number. I know these will be a hit at homeschooling conventions, meet ups, playdates and gather...

Welcome to another end of another week here at The Joys of Home Educating and Collage Friday at Homegrown Learners .  It seems that so much is going on around here. It was definitely a wintry and cold week here in southern New York. Snowmen, snowmen cakes and snowmen LEGOS - all frosty and fun!  We read a lot about snow, snowflakes and Zachary finished up his unit on Benjamin Franklin.  The girls make some penguin pictures with our "snow" and Sammie just loves anything she can dob! lol At the library this week:  what a great program on Electricity!  You can see the back of Zachary and his best friend listening intently.  Not surprising, those two had their hand up to answer every question asked of the kid crowd. (know it alls...lol) We discovered what worked best to push our "snowflakes" to the cups. (toilet paper and paper towels rolls did not work well as it dispersed the "wind" and the balls never moved, but straws worked gre...

Want to improve vocabulary skills?  Focus on reading! Many kids struggle with vocabulary. Think about it, they are just starting to learn to read and there are questions about definitions, unique spellings, and pronunciations to learn. For kids and parents alike, it can feel overwhelming. What is the best way to improve your child’s vocabulary?   Focus on reading! Research indicates that children with larger vocabularies have higher achievement when they reach high school age, as well as higher reading achievement. The key is to start reading with your children at a young age and it will develop into a life-long habit. As their reading skills improve, so will their vocabulary skills. There are many ways to get your kids enthusiastic about reading. Take them to the library or bookstore and ask them to help pick out books. What interests them? Dinosaurs? Nature? Animals? Look for books with topics that they will find fun.  Remember the acro...

We are more than halfway through our No Spend January Challenge.    Is your family still on board or have you all fallen off the wagon?  We have had a few slip ups but are still committed.  These words from Kristie over at Saving Dollars and Sense SO hit home with me:  It’s not about being cheap or how much money you have or don’t have. It’s about thinking before you act and learning the skills and tips that will allow you to live an abundant life and have money left over to save or bless others with. It’s about not spending more than you have to whenever you can do something about it. It’s about living for today, but always with the future in mind. So as we continue with our challenge, I wanted to let you in on a little secret.... February will present itself with another challenge!  I am keeping the theme going!   Next month:   Ways to spend less on your food bill   I will share our menu with you, ways ...

It's Friday and I will admit it was a long week.  I have a nasty head/sinus cold that is kicking my butt. I will be brief today.... But I am hear and I am ready for a productive weekend!   Won't you join me at Homegrown Learners where other homeschoolers come to link up their weeks.  If you have not entered our Elmer's Giveaway yet there is still time. Very easy ways to get entries.  We had a lot of fun with our Elmer's Science!  The girls received their Kiwi Crate this week and it worked out well for a momma who's head is all stuffed up and did not want to "teach" on Thursday!  Mad Science!  Girls loved it!   (Zachary takes a Physics class away from home on Thursdays and he loves it!) We spent the better part of Tuesday morning talking and learning about Martin Luther King, Jr.  The girls are having a better understanding now about this period in time.   Reading about penguins and Antarctica still.   ...

I am so excited to bring you this Science Curriculum review today!   Elmer's has always been a trusted brand in our home. Even if I did not home educate our children, we would still have a closet full of craft supplies from Elmer's.  It's hard to believe that Elmer's has been around for six decades. Their products are helpful and I can always trust the Elmer's brand.   When I was asked to review this Elmer's World of Glue - A Cross-Curricular Investigation of Adhesives from The Elmer's Teacher Club , I was excited. It fit into our grade levels K - 5 for all the children in our home.  It can be adapted for 1 - 25 students. I was so pleased to read over the Teacher's Manual to find so many activities and handouts you can copy for all your students.  They even give you the academic standards - common core state standards in the manual.  What we received:  Too Much Glue - Book by Jason Lefebvre (signed personally by J...

It's been 14 days since the 1st of the new year (seems longer doesn't it..)  and 14 days that our family has spent not a dime on anything other than food, our monthly bills and a headlight and wiper blades for my truck (safety issue) . It's probably the LONGEST I have gone without visiting our local Dollar Tree or buying a pizza from our favorite in town pizza place.  Or spent any money at an on-line deal site.   (did you unsubscribe to those sites? if not, read THIS post!) It has not been as hard as I thought it would, but it's taken discipline to look the other way from temptation.  This challenge is not just about not spending the money so at the end of January you will see how much money you did not spend. It's about personal discipline, working together as a family unit, realizing that LESS can be MORE! What I hope you walk away with, on the 31st of January, is a sense of realization that you could (or maybe will continue to) live o...