Month: September 2014

Back at the Creekbank Album

prayingmother

Back-at-the-Creekbank-9780006185925

Okay, I just can’t contain my excitement! I recently found that a couple of albums that I loved as a kid have been remastered for CD. I’ve ordered both. We are playing the first one that arrived just now. In fact, it arrived yesterday evening and we must be on our tenth round about now. My kids like it almost as much as I did as a kid.

This one is called Back at the Creekbank. It is the story of kids going fishing at the creek bank with Mr. Jenkins, and includes songs to teach great morals for kids. My favorite songs are “Drop a Pebble in the Water” and “God Paints the World with Love.” My kids’ favorite song is the same as mine was when I was their age—”Riddle Me, Riddle Me”

I have to be just a little sentimental too. My brother Ben and I sang two or three songs from this album for special music as children. I can remember that one or both of us were missing teeth when we sang one of these songs and were lisping with the best. Wish I had a recording of singing with my little brother. It makes me miss him. He would enjoy listening to this album with my kids as much I do.

Tree in the Trail Map

prayingmother

Tree in the Trail with Map

At the end of the summer, my poor little third grader couldn’t stand not doing school any longer, but his poor teacher wanted every minute of break possible, but I can’t hold out when kids beg to do school! We read the book Tree in the Trail a few times and then colored in this map together with the assistance of his older brother. It was a fun story and a great geography lesson.

Hand Colored Tree in the Trail Map

 

Beautiful Feet offers an entire geography course based on four of the Holling C. Holling books and make and sell the corresponding maps. The maps are beautiful, but I didn’t feel like making an entire unit study at the time, so we just read the book and looked at an atlas to figure a few things out that were mentioned in the book. Sometimes keeping it simple is best, at least for me.

Canning Peaches

prayingmother

We managed to can over 100 quarts and to freeze about 50 quarts. We will be enjoying lots of peaches this winter, especially peach smoothies from the frozen ones. Yummy! Can’t wait!

We like our set up pretty well, we keep all the mess outside.

Canning & Freezing Peaches Sept. 2104

Canning Peaches Sept. 2014

I consider canning to be a very educational experience and it does well to teach everybody to work as a team, but I never count it as “school” because it doesn’t get the algebra done.

Now off to can pears or do algebra.