I ♥ this...

I made this really delicious chicken and avocado salad with cilantro.  We will be making it again very soon. 

Olivia really likes to use the Rainbow Loom and make stuff.  She made 16 bracelets to give to the kids in our homeschooling group today. 

 Jenny read the life of St. Valentine, as the children wrote messages for each other. 

With God's guidance, Father Steven picked the patron saint of our homeschooling group today.  A couple weeks ago, each family had done some research and picked out a saint they liked.  The children stood up and made presentations on each saint.  Many of the saints had beautiful lives or struggled with learning and through prayers were able to overcome any difficulties.  There was:

• the 3 hierarchs (St. Basil, St. Gregory and St. John)
• St. Catherine the Great
• St. John of Kronstadt
• St. Sergius of Radonezh
• St. Emmelia
• St. Artemis

And now, it is....  the St. John of Kronstadt Orthodox homeschooling group of Cincinnati area!  From this website, http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/johnkr_e.htm:

"his intellectual development was delayed, for he had great difficulty in learning to read" and "he prayed earnestly for divine enlightenment, and one morning, after he had risen during the night and prayed while his companions slept, he found himself able to read easily, and to understand what he had read."

Today

I spotted these pretty glitter heart earrings today and am thinking I will try to make some like them!
It snowed a few inches today.  It's cold and beautiful in this part of Ohio.  I went on a nice walk with Lusy the dog, she just loves the snow!

Olivia just finished reading Eleanor Estes's The Hundred Dresses.   It won a Newbery Honor in 1945 and has never been out of print since.  Wanda Petronski, a Polish girl in Connecticut is ridiculed by her classmates for wearing the same faded blue dress every day.  One of Olivia's final assignments was to write an imaginary letter that Maddie (one of the girls who wasn't very kind to her, but also felt sorry for her) could have written to Wanda.

Hannah had to write an essay comparing how Ebenezer Scrooge felt when meeting the 3 ghosts and how it changed his life, since she just finished reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  A good wrap up to this week of homeschooling...and as it is the 12th day of Christmas for us Orthodox Christians who follow the old calendar!

Rob is at work right now.  He has a terrible cold.  Runny nose and cough.  Olivia has a bad cough, too...she was up many times last night.  I convinced her to take 10mL of elderberry syrup, along with some apple juice, because other wise it's too tart and sweet (very concentrated).  I hope everyone will be healthy soon.

I got a letter in the mail this week from Joscelyn and was just amazed at her lovely calligraphy.   I found my old box of nibs and got to work with various colours of ink...pretty soon Hannah and Olivia joined me and we sampled writing out words and alphabets in various different ways:

This weekend, we celebrate Christ's baptism!  Water will be 

blessed at church, and then sprinkled around our home.

When Thou was baptized in the Jordan, O Lord, the worship of the Trinity wast made manifest; for the voice of the Father bear witness to Thee, calling Thee His beloved Son. And the Spirit in the form of a dove confirmed the truth of His word. O Christ our God, Who hath appeared and enlightened the world, glory be to Thee.

Pogo stick...

Olivia got pretty good at using the pogo stick at a friend's house and is now anxious to earn money to buy one for herself. 

We just took our dog for a walk and Olivia noticed a lot of leaves on the ground. A little business opportunity and lesson of her own...  So, she is currently making a poster, offering to rake leaves in your front yard for $5:

5th grade and 7th grade

Today is the first day of school for my girls.  Olivia is now 10 years old and in 5th grade.  She is reading Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.  It's a classic.  Have you read it?  There are many issues to talk about while reading this...slavery, for one. 

Hannah is 12 years old and starting 7th grade.  I have to say that looking back, that was one of the years of the most changes in my life.  It was a fun year, but not always easy.  For Hannah's literature, she starts off reading short stories.  Chura and Marwe is a folktale that originated in Africa. The Masai tribe, which will be mentioned in this story, is from the area that currently makes up the country of Kenya.  Later this year, she will read Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey.
We look forward to learning and having fun!  We are planning a cultural night, in which we plan to dress in Japanese, Russian, Indian, Greek and African, etc. clothing and cook ethnic food. 

Hiking and sap gathering...

Pathway lined with moss-covered rocks remind me of The Hobbit, which we are still reading together.  It was very cold, but the sun shone and the skies were blue...

Snowdrops.  I don't know the names of the little yellow flowers, nor the pinkish or white ones...do you?

 The woodstove is hot...and boiler with sap turning into maple syrup...and a pile of wood. 

We met up with my sister's family and a couple friends from church.

Rowe Woods is in Milford, OH.  We helped gather sap and watch as they boil it down to maple syrup....and the best part was tasting it after!

Here are our pictures from our sap gathering in 2010.  It always reminds me of one of my favorite books:

"Laura and Mary each had a pan, and Pa and Ma showed them how to pour the dark syrup in little streams onto the snow."
- Little House in the Big Woods

I guess they switched from using metal buckets to plastic at Rowe Woods.  I'm not keen on the use of plastics.  I know it is not as food-safe as many have thought...and I don't want to take chances.
Learning as we live...we all have to take some chances and make choices.  
It's sure been a cold winter here in Ohio.  I hope it snows one more time!

Learning Russian in our home

Our 74 year old friend from church is teaching my daughter, Hannah, Russian.  She really wants to learn after going to camp this summer.  Many of her friends spoke Russian.  Last month we began to label items in our home, the clock, lamp, couch, living room, dining room, kitchen...

The stickers came in this book.  This workbook is geared for a tourist going to Russia, but we are customizing it to fit our needs.  So far, it is working perfectly for us!

When I was in school I studied Spanish for 5 years, Latin for 1 and then in college I took Russian for 2 years.  In my experience, learning a foreign language greatly improved my understanding of the English language.  I understood verbs, adjectives, prepositions better.  One of our favorite activities to do for fun is Madlibs, which came about in the 1950s.  I remember doing them as a child, and now I enjoy it with my own children!  We even made up our own.  Learning is fun and can be a part of everyday life!!!

Work around this home

Happy October!  It is beginning to really feel like fall, the leaves on the neighbor's maple tree have started to change color.  Last year, we made these cookies using a butter cookie recipe and carrot juice and confectioner's sugar to make the frosting naturally orange.  We got that maple leaf cookie cutter 5 years ago while in Vermont.  We gathered some acorns, black walnuts, green and brown sweet gum spikey seed pods, leaves of various colours from around our neighborhood...

If I didn't have a runny nose and sore throat, I'd make a batch of cookies today.  Over the weekend, Hannah peeled and chopped 6 apples up to make an apple pie.  She is 11 and I'm so happy that she is such a good little baker.  Maybe she'll bake some cookies?  This morning, I sipped some Traditional Medicines throat coat tea with Ell Farm honey in it.  I'm feeling a bit better.  

 

Rob is trying to fix the washing machine right now.  Hannah and Olivia are working on their homeschooling lessons...and I will see if they need any help and work on the alphabet cross stitch. 

P.S. Check out my hand drawn cards for sale!

Garden color wheel

Olivia's favorite color is red.  She worked on making a color wheel yesterday, not just the primary and secondary colors, but the tertiary colors as well.  I went into the backyard and found one pear had fallen off our pear tree, then harvested some other colorful delectables...

Our self-portraits

A gentle way to start off the school year...with a mirror and some art supplies.  The previous post was meant as inspiration, so that YOU or your children may want to make self-portraits. I think it's a really neat way to document your growth (artistically), if you do one each year!

Now you've seen the self-portraits that Olivia and Hannah drew, from 2009, 2010, 2011 and the one in the lower right is from August 2012...and finally, a few that I did:

♥  And if you do self-portraits, please add a link in the comments so that we can see yours!

P.S. Don't forget to look out in the sky tonight....a full moon, that many call a "blue moon," because it's the 2nd full moon in August!

A self-portrait

Norman Rockwell, 1960 (he took a photo and then painted and changed things to make it the way he wanted)

Vincent Van Gogh, 1889 (self-portrait with palette in hand)

Frida Kahlo, 1926 (she painted many self-portraits)

Every year we draw self-portraits at the beginning of the school year.  It's so much fun to see how you have progressed as an artist and to see what you notice or choose to add to the portrait to express your unique personality or style or emotion.  Do you or your children enjoy drawing themselves?  What traditions do you have for the start of each school year?

Mary Cassatt, 1880 (I ♥ that you can see the canvas she is working on IN the painting)

Back to school....homeschool!

A few of our favorite books....Olivia and I have been enjoying the McGuffey Readers that I read when I was a child.  She likes the sweet little pictures and the stories.  Some of the language is quite old-fashioned and I have to explain what is meant.
She is now in 4th grade and still loves:

• Dr. Seuss
• Curious George 
• Dick and Jane
• The Velveteen Rabbit
• The Littles
• Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie & Farmer Boy
• Geronimo Stilton is one of her new favorites
• MadLibs (we make up our own, too, it's an excellent and fun English lesson)
• Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer 

I was inspired by Amy's blog photos.

Hannah just finished reading The Secret Garden last night.  It's one of the books she is to read as a 6th grader.  She is an avid reader, got through it in 2 days.  When you love a book, you just can't put it down.  She has been doing 50 sit-ups a day (I tried to do it, too, but gave up, sadly), part of a requirement to get a brown belt in karate and studying the precepts of karate for the test which is Saturday.

• She also put Farmer Boy in her stack of favorite books 
• Charlotte's Web
• The Daring Book for Girls
• Number the Stars and The Giver by Lois Lowry
• The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe
• Hunger Games