a gypsy caravan

Monocots and Dicots

We recently learned the differences between monocotyledons and dicotyledons.  Ben illustrated the following drawings and labeled their major identifying characteristics.

Dicots usually have net veined leaves and two seed leaves when beginning to sprout. For the purpose of Shanleya's Quest, the dicot families are Mustard, Mint,  Parsley , Pea, Rose and Aster.  I realized after taking this photo that Ben sketched and colored the seed leaves brown rather than green.  He later corrected it but I did not take a more recent photo of his drawing.  The seed leaves should be green as they are the first green to sprout from the (bean in this case) seed itself.

Monocots have one seed leaf.  They usually have straight parallel veined leaves.  The Lily and the Grass family are examples of monocots.

The Feast of Saint John Bosco

My very favorite saint is Don Bosco.  I posted this about him last year. Leonie has a wonderful quote from St. John Bosco at her site and so does Elizabeth.  Helen has two posts you'll want to check out.

Today, we plan to watch this movie  which we purchased for his feast last year.  It is long but the acting is excellent and keeps the attention of everyone watching.  Happy Feast!  St. John Bosco, pray for us.

Surgery Update

Mike's mom is out of surgery.  She ended up with a quadruple bypass rather than a triple. There is a long road of recovery ahead but the surgery was successful . We are so grateful for all of your prayers.

Please Pray

We returned late last night from a nine day trip to Virginia and Washington DC.   I have a lot more to share about our trip in the upcoming days but there is something urgent that I need to share with you now.

While we were traveling, Mike's mother Joyce underwent a heart catheterization.  It did not go as well as they had hoped and Joyce is scheduled for triple bypass surgery this morning.  Please pray for her, for Mike's dad and for the surgeons who will be performing the operation.  I'll keep you posted as I can.

Thanks so much,
Rebecca

Woodworking Projects

I thought you might like to see the some of the children's recent woodworking projects.

Here is a bird feeder that Benjamin made following directions from the book Easy Carpentry Projects for Children by Leavitt.  It will be mounted on a pole and used as a platform feeder for the birds in our backyard. 

He has made a number of these feeders in the past and has given them as Christmas gifts with a small bag of birdseed in the middle. 

Here are some castle banks that the boys made from kits.  Ben left his natural wood while Christopher painted his gray.

Both boys so enjoy woodcraft.  They've made some nice keepsakes and gifts over the years.  There is a list of helpful books in my sidebar if you are interested in learning woodworking with your child.

The Pea Family

The Pea Family is characterized by its irregularly shaped flower containing five petals: a banner, two wings and a keel (which is comprised of two petals that look like one).   The Pea Family also produces pea-like pods that open along two seams and often have pinnate (opposite) leaves. 

Some members of the Pea Family include clover, lupine, most beans and legumes, wild licorice and alfalfa.  There are 13,000 species belonging to the eight tribes of the Pea Family.

Here is a photo of a kidney bean blossom that we sprouted way back here.  Notice the banner, wings and keel.

Here are the boys' drawings of the Pea Guardian from Shanleya's Quest.

Some fun ideas:

Sprout any bean you have lying around the house.  Record its growth in your botany notebook each day.

Draw and label the parts of a seed.  Determine whether beans (and the entire pea family) are monocots or dicots.

Make Black Bean Chili for dinner or another meal made from peas or beans.

Read The Princess and the Pea and Jack and the Beanstalk

Have fun!

Getting It Done--The Sunroom

The main area of my home consists of the kitchen, living room, dining room and sunroom.  They are all attached to one another.  My sunroom is about 10' x 10' (if that).  It is an addition which was built about twenty years before we moved here.  It has always struck me as funny that someone would go through the trouble to put on an addition that is so small. 

I mean, imagine saying to your spouse one day, "Honey, we need more room.  We are just busting out at the seams here."  Then imagine your spouse agreeing with you and sitting down to talk over just how much space you will need.  Would the two of you EVER come to the conclusion that you need an additional 10 x 10 foot room?  Seems to me that whoever  put on that addition could have thrown away a few boxes rather than constructing such a tiny space.  Anyhow, back to the story...

The sunroom has very little wall space.  One entire wall is an enormous picture window.  Another is a sliding glass door.  This makes for a lovely place to watch the birds at their feeders or keep an eye on the kids playing in the yard.  I  read aloud to the children each morning in the sunroom.  It is adjacent to the dining room where we currently do most of our tablework. 

I started purging this room before the others because it is used every day and because I felt it was a doable project that might help motivate me to continue into other rooms.   Peter Walsh recommends filling out a list of questions like this for each room:

Sunroom
Current function: Laundry folding area, pillow fort building area, pile collecting area, place to dump jackets, purses, briefcases, backpacks, etc.

Ideal function: Relaxation, snuggling, reading, watching birds

Who uses it? The entire family

Who should use it?  The entire family

What should it contain?    Furniture, books, decorations we love

What has to go?    Dusty silk plants, piles of paper clutter, clean laundry, coupons, dusty baskets attracting clutter,  unattractive knick knacks, stuff

Prior to the purging, it looked like this at any given time, though I would clean it up when people were stopping by.  It seemed to be the place where laundry ended up until it was folded.  Sometimes the chair in the foreground was completely covered with several loads of laundry.  There were piles on the floor fairly regularly.   Here is a photo of the room on a particularly bad day taken last year.

Here is the room now, after much purging, dusting and a small organizational change. 

I got rid of quite a bit of clutter, including some really dusty silk ferns, baskets and many knick knacks (that I thought I did not collect).  I did a thorough dusting and vacuuming.  I even vacuumed under the furniture!  (Don't laugh because that doesn't happen often around here!)

I think I did a fairly good job of listening to Peter's advice and eliminating all the things that I did not love.  I also did not buy anything else for the room with the exception of these cubbies.

I purchased the fabric cubbies from Target to store the children's school books for the current term.  Those that were shelved here were not pretty books but spiral bound main lesson books, workbooks, plastic three ring binders and the like.  They made the shelf look very cluttered and sloppy.  This bookshelf  is the first thing you see when entering the room so I wanted to neaten it up a bit.  One of the cubbies also contains the field guides, bird books and binoculars which should make bird watching easier and more enjoyable.

I still have windows to clean and a carpet to shampoo but, all in all, I am pleased with the way this room turned out. I hope to keep it neat, functioning and a nice place for the children to read, watch the birds and relax.

Thanks for stopping by and following our progress.  Have a wonderful weekend with your family. :)

The Mustard Family

We began our study of the Mustard Family before we took our Advent break.  Today the kids finished their illustrations of the family characteristics as well as the Mustard Guardian from Shanleya's Quest.

The Mustard Family contains radishes, turnips, cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, broccoli and kale (as well as 3200 other species).  Some dinner ideas include Broccolini, Brussels Sprouts with Garlic and Bacon, or Potato Kale Soup.

Commercial mustard is made from the seeds of the black mustard plant combined with vinegar. 
We sampled several  types of mustard this week.  My boys were hesitant but eventually tasted the different varieties.  I mentioned to them that the initial sourness that they would taste was, in fact, the vinegar.  After that taste wore off, the true smoky mustard flavor would remain.  You can also make your own mustard for fun.

The Mustard Family is identified by its four green sepals, four petals, six stamen (four tall and two short) and one center pistil.  The children learned that the male flower part can be remembered because they "stay men".  They also learned that when identifying a plant, one should work from the outside in...first the sepals, then petals and lastly the stamen and pistil. 

When browsing Thomas Elpel's website Wildflowers and Weeds, I stumbled upon this card game that is based on Shanleya's Quest.  Here are some game ideas using the cards.  It looks like a great way to reinforce the different plant families and have some fun to boot.

Homemaking Update

I have been continuing my  household purging, though completion might be weeks or months away now that we are back to lessons.   It has all been going quite well with two van loads of random items hauled off to Goodwill.  I drove off with forty stuffed animals in the last load.  Do you know that no one has noticed yet?  Not one child has said a peep.  Phew!

Upon beginning to declutter, I was afraid that my biggest obstacle would be my emotional attachment to certain items.  Now that I have seen it played out,  I have not had much trouble parting with things.  In fact, there are few things in my home that are really THAT important to me.  Photographs of my family and my father's model ships are  all I am particularly sentimental about.  Books are another thing I will hang on to as a matter of homeschooling practicality, though I know there are many I will purge when I get to that room. 

I have much much more to do.  (hint: Come over ANNE !!! Please? :)  I detailed the living room and sunroom, dusting everything thoroughly and eliminating a lot of things that we simply don't need in there.  The rooms that are finished are looking a little, well, bare.  Maybe not sterile but certainly streamlined.   It will take some getting used to but in a very good way. :)

Kim and I have talked at length about clean design lines and minimal decorations.  We've agreed that simple, functional spaces make us smile.  I now have two rooms that almost fit that bill.  Honestly, it feels kind of strange to me now that it is happening.  Two rooms down, six more to go (not including a really nasty basement and a scary linen closet).

I've been following the suggestions in It's All Too Much which uses the acronym F.A.S.T.

Fix a time--Schedule a time for decluttering and make it happen.

Anything not used for twelve months--out the door!

Someone else's stuff--return it or get rid of it!

Trash--gone forever.  Once you take it out of your home, do not bring any of it back inside your home.

Setting aside time each day has been very helpful.  The days fly by so quickly and unless I give time to decluttering,  it rarely happens.  Even fifteen minutes makes a huge difference. 

Slow and steady wins the race, right?

Drive! Drive on Down the Field...

...Men of the scarlet and gray;
        Don't let them thru that line,
        We have to win this game today,
        Come on, Ohio!
        Smash through to victory.
        We cheer you as you go:
        Our honor defend
        So we'll fight to the end for O-hi-o!

More songs here.
And the following is for Diane :)

O

H

I

O

How to Finger Knit--a Demonstration

I thought this was very helpful.  Perhaps now we can make something other than leashes for Mary's stuffed animals.  :)

Patiently Following the Protocol

It has been hard for me to follow this book, not because it is a difficult read or because I don't like the content, quite the opposite.  I have a tendency to want to skip ahead to the portions that tell me HOW to declutter, rather than reading the whys and following his lead.  I want to know how many sweaters to own, how to organize my cupboards and how often to flip my mattress. I am kind of a "tell me what to do and I'll do it" type of person.  I want to read the last page, to reap the benefits quickly rather than do the life-changing thinking.

The most important activity that Walsh mentions time and time again is to visualize the kind of life you want to live.  This is not because he believes that we can think ourselves into being neat and tidy but because he recognizes the connection between verbalizing our goals and achieving them.  When we take time to write down how we'd like our life to look, we might be surprised that it differs from what we are doing day in and day out. 

I took the time to do this exercise the other day.  I was quite surprised by what I wrote because little of what I feel is important is actually being done.  I am spending my time elsewhere, apparently.  In the shuffle of life I am losing sight of what is important to me.  Here is what I came up with, nothing poetic, just a list of things that I would like to call my own.  I want to:

• rise early each day, feeling energetic and well rested.
• be as healthy and physically fit as I am able given my state of life, to exercise most days and to serve nourishing, well planned meals.
• be friendly and cheerful towards my family, to be an encouragement to them emotionally and spiritually.
• educate my children at home, to teach them the vital basics as well as to exposing them to interesting ideas, inspiring people and heroes of their Faith. 
• make my home a peaceful place to rest, learn and grow.
• have a home that we look forward to coming home to, a welcoming place for friends to visit.
• be sure that our belongings in our home reflect, support and enhance who we are as a family, not hinder us or weigh us down emotionally, physically or financially.
• pray the Rosary, as well as other prayers from the heart, each day.
• to spend my free time gardening, knitting, hiking, reading and traveling with my family.
• to embrace my vocation as a wife and mother by eliminating those outside activities that are a distraction or that rob my family of free time.

Walsh then asks us to envision what we want our home to look like, room by room.  As I mentioned in my last post, we have a small home.  I could wish for a sprawling Cape Cod with an ocean view or a farm house with dozens of acres but I believe he is meaning the current space we have been given.  How would we like it to look?  What is the function for each individual room now?  What should it be?

I am going to peruse some of my old catalogs (before I purge them away :) and get some inspiration.  I am not so much planning to replace furniture or redecorate (though a new coat of paint is not out of the question in several rooms) but I will be taking small steps (after de-cluttering)  to make things more beautiful and welcoming without spending a lot of money or adding more clutter to my home.   I need to remember that the goal in this exercise is to envision the beauty and calm with which I want to surround my family.  The next step will be to eliminate those things in each room that impede that vision.   

Walsh writes:

"Every time you look at an item in a room and contemplate whether you should keep it, imagine the life you want to live and ask yourself these basic questions:  How does your home serve your notion of the life you wish you had?  Do the things you own help you achieve that life or distract from that vision?  Is there room in your bedroom to sleep peacefully?  Does the front hallway welcome you when you arrive home after a tiring day?  Can your family gather for meals, fun or relaxation without the interference of piles of junk?  Every item filling your home should move your life vision forward and serve a real function, one that you can explain without making excuses.  Remember, 'Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.'  Do your things meet these standards?"

For today, these are the things I let go which are awaiting their trip to charity.  The item on the floor is a wicker ottoman, which I do like but have no room for.  We keep tripping over it. The rest is, well, just stuff. 

Good riddance! :)