((drip)) ((drip)) January Thaw...for a Couple of Days: January 21 - 27

In My Life This Week
Snow. And shoveling. And lingering FRIGID temperatures. Temperatures that make your face and hands hurt within moments of being outside...and freeze your water pipes and shut down your furnace in the wee morning hours leaving your house a, um, "balmy" 58 degrees. ((wink)) (Thank you  Blue Spruce and furnace guy!) But the warmer temperatures have returned. At least for now.

Whatcha Makin'!
Snickerdoodle Blondies from Lovin' From the Oven! Another Pinterest find! Want some of these too? Hop over to Lovin' From the Oven here! (Psst! We only added 1/2 the brown sugar and left out the Turbinado sugar and the bars were definitely sweet enough.) Don't over-bake these!

Homeschool Happenings

A week of working on POSITIVE school attitude and behavior! The Trees had gotten into a rut of hemming and hawing over school assignments, needing constant refocus reminders and making our mornings (and afternoons) longer. It happens this time of  year. My goal every day is to finish up our work by lunchtime so the Trees have plenty of time in the afternoons for their own pursuits, friends and extracurriculars.

The solution? Earlier bedtimes, earlier wake-ups, separating the Trees into different rooms (if needed to minimize distractions), and no "extras" until assignments have been completed. Oh, and assignments written on our handy-dandy whiteboard! THIS rut seems to be "flowing" better!

A perfect place for our daily
assignments! Wipe off when
completed! (Photo from 3/11)

We traveled back to the educational farm on Thursday for "Joy of Chickens". I know - us and chickens! LOL - but we couldn't resist seeing SOMEONE ELSE'S chickens. These were Golden Comets. And after a quick lunch (from home) and a few samples of made-on-site cheese (from the cows we visited last week), we explored a bit, finding the walking trails for the spring. (I wish I had some fantastic photos to share with you, but in our harried rush out the door I forgot my camera.)

photo credit by JC Poultry at www.rightpet.com

Oh, and White Pine finished up his History Channel's "America: The Story of Us" work! Part of his studies included watching the 12 part documentary, reading the accompanying book and completing the episode guides. He learned (or reviewed) over 100 new historical vocabulary words and organized them onto a metal binder clip...with a little help from Cat. ((wink))

Cat scratched up White Pine's vocab cards for
a bed.

Helpful Homeschool Hint
Favorite resource! New High School GRAMMAR link find! English Grammar 101 has approximately 100 hours of on-line FREE instructional lessons with assessments! Did you know that 1 Carnegie Credit (High School) = 120 instructional hours? Almost a FULL credit here! Add in some Literature and Writing and voila!

Off the Bookshelf
We borrowed LOADS of books with winter themes from the library to enjoy before bedtime, but I decided to only share our favorites below (least you be wading through MANY Amazon stock photos).

Here, There and Everywhere!
❄ Cub Scout Pinewood Derby ❄ Basketball ❄ Cub Scouts ❄ Boy Scouts ❄ Clarinet ❄ Library Lego Club ❄ Chickens at the Farm ❄ Playing with B_, C_ and C_ ❄ Hanging out with C_ ❄

One of Our Favorite Things
Our librarian! There's nothing better for a homeschooling family than a GREAT children's librarian, huh?

Ponderings
Although there are LOTS of wonderful nature notebooking pages out there, they never seem to QUITE meet our needs. Any suggestions for an inexpensive computer program for creating notebooking pages? Or a website for free pages that has "everything"?

A Photo, Video, Link, or Quote to Share

Visit my blogger friend Katie at Katie's French Language Cafe for a chance to win Rosetta Stone French Level I! Or just to learn some French language and culture! Pretty cool (FREE) resource!

Joining up With These AWESOME Blog Hops: