A Fun Month

November has the potential to be a very fun month! We enjoy celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas as early as possible but after summer weather is over. The days are going by so fast; I wish I could put the brakes on so we can take some time to stop and smell the cider.

Amish Boyhood Echoes by Andy Yoder

We just restarted reading this book this past week.  It was given to us by a neighbor after her husband died.  He really enjoyed the book and he got a kick out of our kids so she thought it fitting to give it to our kids.

Amish Boyhood Echoes is a book about the author’s growing up years.  We find his accounts of farm life and it’s various adventures (sometimes misadventures) to be very fascinating.  He makes me want to go buy a farm with an apple orchard and some cows. It’s like Farmer Boy taking place in the 40’s and 50’s.

We’re only on about the fourth chapter so I can’t do a sufficient book review but I can recommend it.   I will revise this post once we finish the book.  The Nicklebee Children may have a few words to say about it as well.  Dub would have us read the whole book from start to finish non-stop.

Homeschooling Ramblings

It has been an interesting week so far. The flow of things has been much more easy going and conducive to structured academics. We have actually read the Bible and prayed together. That serves as a buffer for the rest of the day, I tell ya! Now to get back into a regular habit of doing it. I can’t remember what we read, Ephesians 1 maybe.

One thing that we have really hammered on this week is Spanish. I mentioned in a previous post that we are using the Rosetta Stone software. We are currently at the very beginning of level one. “We” being Homer, Dub, the Unnamed nonBlogger and I. We try to make learning a family affair and not just dried up, school-at-home drudgery. Mr. Nicklebee is not joining us in our Spanish endeavor at this time because he already speaks some Español. He took Spanish in school when he lived in the South and for not remembering much, he sure remembers a lot!

A Beautiful Autumn Day

Good thing I copied this before WordPress lost’s it’s mind!!

Trying again …

Today would be a nice day for a walk in the woods. After donning Hunter Orange for safety, naturally.  It’s a shame we’ve had The Crud to one extent or another all week and miss out on outdoor activities.  The leaves are turning, the air is crisp and the Dogwoods have beautiful berries on them, which I keep seeing all over the sidewalk and driveway.

I thought for sure I’d be able to find out what the berries are called by looking through a couple of books I have:  The Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady and The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, both by Edith Holden.  I was disappointed to see that Dogwoods (and they’re less common name, “Cornus” something) were not in the index of Country Diary and I didn’t see them where they would be in Nature Notes (no index, I checked by months Dogwoods might be draw-worthiest) and she didn’t have any in there. After all that time, did no one think to transplant Dogwood trees in Great Britain??? (Apparently someone did.  Scroll down to cultivation details. )

Anyway, whatever the berries are called, they’re very festive, almost Christmasy.  I haven’t noticed them before in the 9+ years we have lived here.  (Should I be embarrassed about that? Hmm … maybe.)

As we were driving home from the doctor’s office Wednesday, we passed a cornfield where the corn stalks had recently been cut down.  (Cornfields are another curiosity to me.  More on that another time.)  The stalks were only cut down to about 2 feet(about .61 meters) in height.  Something looked different about this particular field but I couldn’t immediately figure it out.   Then I recognized a head.  As I looked, I could see that the field was full of Canada geese!  (I wasn’t neglecting my driving.  It takes 100 times longer to tell than the time it took to happen.) It’s that time of year again.  Soon we’ll be seeing geese flying over regularly, or at least hear them.  “Honk, honk, eh!  Honk, honk, eh!”  I think I might just rent Fly Away Home.

With autumn come apples and pumpkins and you know what that means:  apple cider, apple butter, pumpkin butter, maple syrup, maple sugar and yummy homemade goodies!!  MMMmmmm!

One of the library books we picked up last time around is The Ox-Cart Man.  The Ox-Cart Man could easily be used in conjunction with history, economics, social studies, geography, and other things.   [I had a bunch of links here when I tried posting it the first time but I think when I changed one of the links, it doinked up the html and WordPress rejected it out of fear for it's health!  You'll just have to Google "Ox-Cart Man" and wade through all the stuff that comes up for yourself.  Sorry!]

I hated fall until recently.  Until then, I always got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Another schoolyear, another opportunity to be reminded that school stunk.  Now, since we homeschool, I’ve really started enjoying it and all of the “fruits” of other peoples’ labor.  ;)  If I had a spare five bucks, I’d probably run to a farm outside of town and by some cider and enjoy the fresh country air.   What am I saying?  I do have a spare five bucks, the remaining clear blue sky days this season are numbered.

See ya! 

Creation Astronomy with Jason Lisle, PhD

Here’s the “Video on Demand” link within the Answers in Genesis website. Jason Lisle is an Astrophysicist with Answers in Genesis and there are a couple of links to talks he has done. Actually they are two parts to the same talk.

Something I did not know: the Big Bang theory has issues with temperatures. I can’t remember how he explained it but it’s referred to as the Horizon Problem. I’m sure some evolutionist can explain how it’s a non issue.

We never got this perspective in school. It was always “millions of years”. While [the theory of evolution (as in Origins, not Natural Selection)] may be based on much more than a hunch, it is still a theory and as such should not be given the credibility of, say, Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, [at least part of which is observable, testable and repeatable,] and should not be given preference over other things just because it’s more palatable to some than the alternative. Remember, real science considers all possibilities, not just the ones we like.

I should add the AiG Media link to the link list. There are lots of things to listen to.

[edited for clarity]