To say the least,  it was not organized although we muddled through. Most of the muddling involved me being up into the wee hours of the morning planning what we would do for the next day. Despite exhaustion and a lack of real conviction, we did alright for ourselves.  I attribute a great deal of that success to our wonderfully supportive and resourceful supervising teacher.  She is in charge of our school district’s homeschool assistance program and I found her to be a wealth of ideas.    I learned a lot during that time about homeschooling that I didn’t know when I was only homeschooling the boys.  I thought I would share some of those lessons in hopes that someone else who is just starting out might get more sleep than I did.LOL
The first thing I discovered is that it is not necessary to be an expert on all subjects.  As more and more families turn to homeschooling , the resources available to teach at home have risen dramatically. We discovered the Teaching Company’s High School Series and the fact that our local library has many of their titles available to check out.  We also discovered how to juggle the holds on three library cards so that an item can be checked out for literally months at a time.   We found that as homeschool parents we have access to all the resources at our local area education agency.  If I can’t find a media resource on a topic between that resource library and our public library, it doesn’t exist.  There are scads of Internet sites and computer software designed to teach almost every subject imaginable.  There is so much press about You Tube and all the negative things that teens have access to now on the Internet.   There is a flipside though and with a little parental supervision those types of sites can be used for great good instead of evil.   We have found experts teaching drawing lessons, painting lessons and yes, even Irish Tin whistle lessons.
I am learning that homeschooling gives us more options.  My oldest daughter is struggling with Geometry but we have been able to slow down, find supplemental teaching resources and make sure that she really grasps the concepts before moving on.   I am enough of a pragmatist to realize that we won’t always have this option but Geometry is such an important tool, I felt it was the best thing to do.  My 13yo daughter, on the other hand, is whizzing through her Algebra I class at such a rate that she will probably be caught up to her sister before much longer.

I learned that some computer programs are better than others.   My oldest daughter took Spanish I last year in school and decided that she hated it.  She started paying attention to her sister’s French lessons and decided that she wanted to do French instead.    My high school French is a bit rusty so foreign language really worried me.  The first program we bought was cheaper but really wasn’t working for us.  Over the summer we searched the Internet until we found a program that we absolutely love.  It was a little pricey but not too bad.  I figure $200 isn’t too much to spend if it will be used by several of us.  Our favorite part is the headset that came with it.  It has a voice analysis option that allows the learner to repeat the word after a native speaker until they get the pronunciation down.   One problem with this is that my girls are both lean towards perfectionism and listening to them repeat the word “bonjour” 75 times trying to match the pattern on the screen is funny but I don’t want them to get bogged down.
I am also learning that this can be fun.   I had a great time putting together our science lab over the summer. I was like a kid in a candy shop.  The funny part is that I wasn’t a science type in high school.  Long boring lectures and worksheets were the teachers primary methods and it sucked the joy out of something that can be really amazing.  When we grew yeast last year to watch them under the microscope, (our microscope is the same one the schools have and while it is good for starters,  I am thinking that by next year I will want something more high-powered.) I realized that science especially could actually be taught in a way that didn’t bore the pants of of a teen.   I am excited that I can provide the girls more hands on opportunities than they would have had in their classrooms.
I also learned to turn to others people as resources.  One of my good friends is a community college professor who gleefully offered her assistance in teaching the girls how to dissect things. One of the HSAP teachers is a math whiz and happy to help with anything, although my husband has a fair handle on math. (It seems that if you cram enough advanced mathematics in your brain to get a “5″ on the AP Math test, you are never able to forget what you learned.)  My brother and his wife-to-be both take French in college, so they can help with conversational French.   When my 13 yo wanted to learn to knit,  we found a knitters breakfast to go to where other women whose skills far surpass mine are happy to help her out. Then there are the other homeschooling parents, who will jump at the chance to coop on something.
I am learning that my job is simply to plug the girls into those resources, provide them with a schedule, and a quiet, calm learning environment.   One of the biggest reasons both of my girls were struggling in school is that they have their mother’s distractable nature.  Discipline problems and just general chaos in the classroom was too much for them and they found themselves having a hard time focusing on learning.

I am also learning that homeschooling, older students especially,  means loosening up my restrictions on the accumulation of “stuff”.   We had to purchase a second computer in April because one computer just wasn’t cutting it.   Because I had several specific requirements of the computer including headphone jacks, card readers, and USB plugs in front and enough RAM and memory to run some fairly large programs like Photoshop and Corel Painter X, we purchased a new one.  We purchased flash drives for the girls to keep their school work, photos, and computer art “sketchbooks” mobile so that they could easily be taken to the HSAP to share with their supervising teacher.   I have a pretty decent high tech area put together now, right down to the Wacom tablet for graphic art stuff.   I am pretty proud of the fact that  I still haven’t succumbed to the evils of credit card debt which has helped me to teach the girls a valuable lesson about saving for “stuff” that we need instead of using credit.

All the planting I got done was moving some plants out of the area where we are putting our grape arbor.   I did manage to get all of the garden stuff fed with some kelp powder.

Harvest Something:

We harvested cucumbers,  tomatoes,  green peppers, beans, comfrey and basil.

Preserve Something:

Let’s see I put away pickles, banana peppers, tomato juice, jalepeno peppers, and some green beans.

I started a new batch of vanilla and dried the old beans a bit before putting them in some sugar.  Vanilla sugar in hot tea is a treat that we love to have around during the cold winter months.  I don’t like sweet tea during the summer though.
While not exactly preserving,  I did start some herbal concoctions brewing including my own variation of Kloss’s liniment,  and several infused oils for making salves for the dry winter months.

Manage Reserves:

I finished organizing the herb closet and reducing my stores.  I am happy to have that done going into the colder months.  We are a pretty healthy lot during the warmer months but I have to dive in there a bit more during the cold and flu season.

We got our monthly organic bulk food order and I managed to get all of the bulk food neatly organized on shelves in the garage so I decided to take inventory.   I have 25 pounds of unbleached flour,  15 pounds of white whole wheat flour,  25 pounds of red lentils (that was actually an oops,  I meant to order green but keyed in the wrong number),  25 pounds of long grain brown rice,  about 20 pounds of chickpeas,  20 pounds of red kidney beans,  5 pounds of black beans,  5 pounds of  white beans,  11 pounds of whole wheat penne, 11 pounds of whole wheat spaghetti,  1 pound of Irish Breakfast tea, and 15 pounds of raw sugar.

Along with the bulk food order,  I stored away the oils that I bought for making soaps and salves.

Cooked something new:

We really have been falling down in this area lately but we are too busy to really experiment much.   Mostly we fall back on recipes we know and have the ingredients around the house to save time.
Prepped:

Right before the camping trip,  I re-stocked my first aid kit and put it all in order.  My Mom was teasing a bit and kept calling it my “field dressing kit”

We have the grape arbor built in our front yard and We waterproofed the arbor,  the chairs that will go underneath it, and re-stained the front porch and mailbox and it’s post.  We will be planting the grapes and transplanting some flowers soon but most of the planting in the front yard will wait until next spring.  We are going to try to incorporate as much edible landscaping as possible.

Much of my effort lately has been directed in getting things organized and in order before we start homeschooling on September 2nd.   While I feel like I never get enough accomplished in a day,  my husband maintains that we are getting a ridiculous amount done.

Local Food Systems

Well we shopped at the local farmer’s market and made a lot of meals right out of our own garden.   I guess my biggest contribution to this lately is that I was accepted into the Master Gardener’s program.  Classes start on September 11th.

1 onion

4 cloves of garlic

2 Tblsp olive oil
64 ounces of vegetable juice

2 cups of cooked garbanzo beans

2 cups of cooked black beans

2 cups of  cooked kidney beans

3/4 cups long grain brown rice

1/2 cup of bulgar

Chop your onion and garlic.  I do this ahead of time.  Heat the oil in a dutch oven and brown the onion and garlic in the oil.  Then add the other ingredients, put the cover on the dutch oven and cook until the rice is done. The key to cooking this in a dutch oven over an open fire is to not be afraid to add extra water to the chili if it gets so thick that it starts sticking to the bottom.  You want to stir it pretty frequently, too.  If it seems to be cooking too quickly

Rice & Almond Foil Packets

2 cups cooked long grain brown rice

1 cup bite size pieces of cauliflower

1 cup sliced carrots

1/2 cup slivered almonds

1/4 cup herbed butter  (butter mixed with fresh garden herbs such as garlic, basil,and rosemary)
Parmesan cheese

I cook the rice at home and prepare the vegetables ahead of time, putting them all in a container. Then when we get to the campgrounds I put the ingredients on foil, dot with butter and then cover with another piece of foil.   Crimp all the edges well and place on a grill over the campfire.  After about ten minutes of cooking flip the packets over.  They are done when you can stick a wooden skewer in and the vegetables are cooked. Sprinkle with parmesan and eat up.

I take granola and yogurt.  We have one of those pie irons and we make cheese campfire pizzas.  We also do a breakfast pocket with scrambled eggs and cheese that is really good.   Of course I had to do pancakes a couple of times because we had cherry syrup to take along.   It’s a nice mix of traditional campfire fare with a few new recipes thrown in. .

Today I am making tomato sauce.  I have done this since I was a little but I decided to poke around in my Emery book since I have it now to see what she had to say about tomatoes.  She does her sauce quite differently than I do so then I decided to poke around on the Internet a bit.  (Do you see how badly ADD can impact time management

I was kind of surprised to see that my method of saucing tomatoes seems to be different than anything I could find out there.

So here goes this is the Ron & Susan method of making tomato sauce.   You peel and quarter the tomatoes,   cook them for fifteen minutes,  run them through a feed mill to get the skin and seed out of the mix and then you strain the mixture through a large thin cotton cloth.    I guess I am sort of making a jelly bag.

So the sauce hangs out in the cloth and the liquid that runs off can be canned and used for soup bases and things like that.

It beats hanging out in a hot kitchen with a simmering pot of sauce all afternoon. It also saves a good deal of energy by reducing the cooking time.

Today we had some large tomatoes that were not quite red enough for my liking but needed picked because they were weighing down the plants.   I wanted to sit them out in the sun but as we have a lot of birds and chipmunks running around the yard,  I wanted to protect them somehow.
We were not quite sure what to use and then I remembered the cold frame kit.     We put the kit together and then stapled a piece of screen from a broken window on the underside of the lid. Then we decided to cut a piece of old plexiglass to drop down on the screen in order to still be able to use the apparatus as  a cold frame this Fall.

It is working  brilliantly  if I do say so myself.  Right now it is sitting on a black bag with ripening tomatoes safely tucked away under the screen.  It can also be used as a rack to sun-dry herbs and vegetables.
I am really quite proud of myself for using  second-hand materials to make something that I am sure we will use quite a lot. I think we will use it so much that I might put together another one.

I had wanted to do the pickles last night but my melissa was dry and needed to be cut, sifted and stored away before it lost that lovely lemon-y scent.

There were some good-looking cayenne peppers at the Farmer’s Market too.  They are still green but really nice size.    I want them to ripen more before I preserve them so I threw them in a paper bag with an apple.  I know that sounds odd but I read online somewhere that the  ethylene gas the apple gives off signals the peppers to ripen more quickly.  It seemed to work so I have kept doing it. Once they have ripened, I will string them on fish wire and hang them in the window to dry.  I like things that are useful and decorative.

I have never actually played one but I played the oboe when I was younger and I use a recorder to play the simple little songs for the children.  The other night, at the hootenanny,  FiddleMama and some other musicians assured me that if I could play the oboe,  I should be able to pick up the tin whistle fairly easily.  I guess we will see.  It should be interesting…

I am curious though what other people who choose this lifestyle do to achieve balance and not let themselves become overwhelmed by the tremendous amount of work that is part of it.   Maybe I will have to submit that as a Friday question over at Women Not Dabbling in Normal.

Plant something:   Transplanted Catnip and Mint

Harvest Something:

We harvested cucumbers,  tomatoes,  green peppers, beans,  melissa, catnip and horehound.
Preserve Something: 

I have the herbs drying on my rack in the kitchen to be stored for winter use other than not much was done.  I am not really behind though because my tomatoes are just beginning to ripen.  I definitely need to put away some pickles this week.
Manage Reserves: 

We are in the middle of a major re-org around here so a lot was done in this area.  We cleaned the garage and put up shelving that units that we had to make room for more storage and a workbench for my husband.
One whole shelf unit was devoted to equipment to preserve stuff such as my canner, my food mill and pestle, my dehydrator and empty jars.  I have one more shelf unit to put up and that will store some of my bulk food tubs so that they are no longer stacked on the floor in the kitchen.
I went through my cupboards in the garage and got rid of some old preserves to make room for the new.  I also got rid of some old cans of paint and made room for all of our dyeing, soapmaking and candlemaking supplies in a cupboard that can be locked. This made some room in my herb closet for new herbs that are coming in from the garden and from my herb order. I am also bagging up herbs that are older to be sold this week.  I try not to let anything in my herb closet go for longer than a year.  Its not that some things won’t last longer.  I just like for them to be fresh.

I also went through the homeschool stuff.   I threw out old crayons and colored pencils that were worn down to the nubs and replaced them.  I boxed up last year’s work and got our crate ready for this year.  We picked up an used school table at the University Surplus store for $20 and some cheap stacking crates so I am busy trying to organize the study nook downstairs also.

We had paint leftover from when we painted the living room last year so we painted over some marking on the table that was not necessarily age appropriate. We are touching up the desk while we are at it.
More science supplies have been ordered and I cleaned up enough old stuff off the game shelf to make room for them.  Much of this was accomplished by buying one of those organizers that usually holds nuts and bolts in a garage and using it for science experiment stuff.
In general,  we sorted through stuff and made a yard sale pile and a Goodwill pile.  The Goodwill stuff is already sent away and I put an ad in the paper for the yard sale.  I admit to not being able to get rid of baby clothes and cloth diapers yet although I did sort through them and delegate some of the more worn stuff to the rag pile.
Cooked something new:

We were awfully busy this week so I didn’t do a lot of fancy cooking.  I did make a nice herbal tea that was a new blend for relaxing with fresh chamomile, borage, catnip and lemon balm.  I wish I had fresh herbs all year long.  It was divine.
Stored Something:

I stored away some of the things I have ordered in bulk from Frontier including  of vegetable broth powder.  I also have ten pounds of lye stored away with the soap making supplies.

I also stored away enough pencils, colored pencils and other supplies to last for the whole school year.
Prepped:

This is the time of year when I place a giant Frontier order.  I have a wholesale account.  I order the herbs that I am not growing, carrier oils and essential oils so as to begin preparing ointments, tinctures and other medicinals we will need in the winter months.  Most of the order was consumables however I did order  an inexpensive otoscope with extra replacement bulbs,  a couple of packages of sea sponge tampons, and a couple of tea balls.   I considered not ordering the stuff this month but it would be silly not to take advantage of the free shipping.
Our lamp oil is also on sale this month so I ordered four gallons to be housed in the cupboard with a lock.  That reminds me that I need to replace a broken lamp shade.

In all good conscience  I have to admit that I respectfully withdrew myself from the August Buy Nothing challenge.  We got a largish settlement check from the drunk driver’s insurance company and my husband takes his vacation in August so this is the only time we have to get our yard back in order.   We decided not to put a tree back into the front yard so we are spending the money to build a grape arbor where the tree was.  We bought quite a few tools this week so that we could do the repairs ourselves rather than pay other people to do it.  We also bought materials to make cushions for some barstools that we rescued from the curb as well as the materials to refinish a dresser and coffee table that we found.  We live in a college town and the end of July is a phenomenal time for such things.  College students dump “stuff” with reckless abandon when they are moving out.

That is more money than I have spent in ages but it is stuff that will help us out around here.
I learned a new skill this week as well.  Two local knitting shops are doing a fundraiser for the food bank I volunteer at.  They had people knit squares and Saturday morning a bunch of us got together and crocheted them together. I should add that although I can crochet a cable from here to China,  I never knew how to start the next line.  So with a little help from friends, I learned how.  My daughter and I are already planning how make our own blanket.
The crazy thing is that until I sat down and did this,  I didn’t think I was getting much accomplished this week.  I think that I utterly deserve to attend Fiddlemama’s hootenanny this evening.

 Music

We all have some level of skill at playing the piano.  My husband  is the most skilled pianist but I can play some simple songs and all of the children are learning to play as well. My husband can also play the upright bass.  He hasn’t practiced much lately but when he was young he was first chair in the Chicago Youth Symphony.    My oldest daughter also plays the flute and her sister, who loves to sing, takes voice lessons. My six-year-old has a violin and will be starting lessons in the fall.

Arts & Crafts
Over the years we have dabbled in all sorts of things that are considered folk art.  I am a fair hand at embroidery and am slowly learning to knit.  Both of the girls have learned to embroider and knit as well.  We have done some quilt squares and the girls are learning to sew.  We make our own jewelry, candles and other fun things to give as gifts like potpourri and bath salts.
Toys

I love toymaking!  I have made two fairly decent Waldorf dolls and lots of little faeries and the like for the boys.  My husband is using some of the branches from the fallen tree to whittle doll furniture for the hobbit hole I made.  We get most of our ideas from Toymaking with Children but I also have a great fondness for ideas Kathryn Sheehan has posted on the Free Projects pages over at The Silver Penny.   I used her directions to make a puppet theater for the kids for the holidays one year and we made the aforementioned hobbit hole from one of her kits.

Other stuff

I admit that we don’t do this as much as I would like but we have managed to read  a few books aloud as a family.  We all read and I buy a lot of books.   I like the idea of having our favorites in print just in case there would be some reason we couldn’t get to the library or the Internet.  Its not so far-fetched, really.  The flooding this spring has shut down a nearby library and power was cut.    We also have a ton of board games and we play them a lot.
I never thought of any of these things as preparing ourselves for anything.  I have always just thought that our activities add to the quality of our life.   I suppose it is likely that other families who spend an inordinate of time watching television and playing computer games,  would be quite bored if the power went out for any length of time.  We actually enjoy it when that happens and are usually quite let down when the lights come back on.