The Princess sure does keep busy!

The Queen (of course!)
The Princess shuns the Queen!

This morning, the Princess made herself some breakfast. then she started HER OWN blog (hmph!). It is about babysitting. She has attempted a website about babysitting, but because you have to have so much content at once, I think she was overwhelmed (like I am at my site!). With a blog, you can post a sentence, paragraph, or whole story each time you post.

Great News!

The Princess is going to  be interviewing Stan, the toothpick man ( as I call him!) in early February! For those of you who didn't see the Toothpick City, check out Stan's site at: http://www.toothpickcity.com/. I think she will really enjoy it. She talked to him a few weeks ago when she was at the museum with her aunt. We also got some pics when we went Friday. My camera is being stupid, so only a few pics came out. Check it out HERE.

Later, The Princess found some OLD computer paper, the kind that where each sheet is attached with a perforated line where you can separate it. She decided to draw the solar system. She dragged out some of our science materials. One thing was the book I bought at the museum Friday.

Golden Child, the Princess' 18 yr old brother (graduating in June from PS) came out and started flipping through the book. Before you know it, we were all so interested in all the stuff in the book. We came to a page about rocks, which then had me getting the fossils.

When we bought our property, it was all woods- and BOULDERS-BIG BOULDERS! And tons of rock, stone, etc...We spent tons of time digging the boulders out so we could have a yard. In the process, we've found many fossils, mostly with small shell imprints. Others look like leaves or "ribs" of something small imbedded in the rock. Once, I'm pretty sure I found an arrowhead. I handed it to a kid I was babysitting, and told him to hang on to it. What does the kid do? Tosses it into the woods!

That was almost 12 years ago, still no arrowhead :-)

Golden Child just ran down to his school. They have regents today and he had none so he had the day off. One of our "fossils" looked like a bone. He took it to his science teacher (just got back)- the teacher thinks it's a kneecap from a dog or something like that. We do have coyotes and wolves in the area.

Bad news, he went to get it back and dropped it. It broke into a bunch of pieces.

Right now, I have a skeleton of a (?) chipmunk I found in the yard. It's in a box waiting to be put back together.

Ok, enough eeby-jeeby stuff.

Later at Girl Scouts, the girls are going to make "hope" pillows for kids in Haiti. I'm bring in all of my material, ribbon and whatever. We have to run to the craft store and get more needles and thread and a few other items.

I'll try to get pics today- providing there's anything to get a pic of and that the camera works! I figure it may take a few weeks to complete the pillows. I would like to send a number of pillows, and we only have 4 girls.

So, the Princess has done some writing, artwork,science, geography, home economics and more today..........

And it's only 12:47 p.m.!

Later!

Saturday School

The Queen:

Even though I report to NY state that we homeschool only during the normal school year, we learn every day here. Maybe I'll change my state report to year-round homeschool. I mean, most of our nature and science stuff is during the summer, and that's when we do our building projects, home repair and such.

Anyhoo, yesterday morning, I went out to feed the goats, chickens and ducks. I noticed little footprints all over the place (mice?). They ended at our picnic table, which is flipped over and covered with snow. Looking around the yard, I saw rabbit and deer prints as well. I ran in to grab the camera.

You could see Princess Ders head jerk up. When I grab the camera, there's usually something up. I mentioned seeing some prints. She just shrugged (yeah, right!)

I took some pics of the mouseprints, then started walking into the woods. I was following some deer tracks to see where they ended, when I heard the house door close. I yelled to the Princess to let her know where I was.

The Mouseprints (???)

We ended up walking all through the woods, looking for tracks, and trying to take pics of them. Unfortunately, I accidently deleted something on my computer, and can't upload the pics to it. I can't get the Princesses laptop to turn on.

Princess Der is MIA at a friends, so the pics will have to come later- if they even turned out!

(edited: I got one pic as seen above- the others were corrupted-time for a new camera, don't you think?)

After we came in, we made brunch for everyone- pancakes, eggs and sausage.

We each did our own thing for a hour or so, then the Princess and I played Scrabble, where I proceeded to whip her hiney. I'll admit, I got some "lucky letters"- high point value and able to place them on the board where I got extra points.

Later, wii played Wii............................

So we did a little science, practical living skills, math, Pys.Ed and language arts. Cool, huh?

More later......

P.S. I have a chart somewhere here (I think something from Girl Scouts) that shows different animal prints and what they are. I'll have to find it, and next time we have a fresh snowfall overnight, check out the prints!

Welcome to our homeschooling blog

Princess Der

Hi, I am Princess Der.


I have Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. It's called polyarticular (which means 5 or more joints are affected).

I am 12 years old and I do NOT like having Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. My friends don't understand that sometimes I can't do things they want me to.

 I'm also homeschooled. Home schooling is  fun to me because I like doing my work at my own pace. I also like that I don't have to sit there when the teacher is yelling at all the other kids.

Thanks,
Princess Der

The Queen

I'm the mom here. We embarked on the homeschooling journey for a number of reasons. The Princess has always been a glutton for knowledge, yet she started disliking school in 2nd grade. After years of of hearing of her dislike for anything school and her begging me to homeschool her, on top of the arthritis diagnoses, I thought , "Why Not?"

I had always wanted to homeschool, and now I was working at home. So here we are.

We prefer an eclectic/bordering on unschooling approach. Since The Princess has a natural curiosity about her world, not to mention we have a house full of books on just about everything, I figured we'd be ok.

So, a typical day in our home.............

Princess Der worked on some of the reading part of the GED. She is doing this because she found old GED books I had from when I tutored an adult student who wanted to get his GED ( I am a Literacy Volunteer).

A little later, she found some balloons and started checking out static electricity.

First Princess Der rubbed the balloon all over her head...................

Then she experimented with different surfaces- the balloon stuck on the wall and the lamp.

It stuck on the side of the freezer...

Not sure why she's measuring- she said she just wanted to!

It DID NOT stick on the couch.....

Later in the day...................

Check out where they did stick.

Tomorrow, maybe we'll take a peek at the website Science Made Simple about Static Electricity...

http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/static.html

Princess Der has been going to my neighbors this week in the early afternoon to help her out. Earlier in the school year, the neighbors daughter, son-in-law and 3 kids lived there. When Princess Der had finished some Math and Grammer, she would go next door and help out with a newborn, 2 year old and 4 year old. Now they are gone but the neighbor(the Grandma) has a knee problem. Since her boyfriend is at work and the kids are in school during the day, she's on her own. Princess Der has been going over and putting the dogs out and making the neighbor lunch. Princess Der has such a spiirit of helpfulness and servitude.

We also had a birth to celebrate today. One of our goats, "Q" ( short for Suzie Q) had triplets. Here is a pic:

I'm pretty sure the black & white one on the left won't be alive in the morning. It didn't look too good tonight- it kept laying on it's side & it's not eating. Momma wont let it eat, either. The Princess has encountered death before with our animals, but she's not too happy about it.

Later in the afternoon we went to the YMCA and exercised. Then we had dinner. Now it's almost 9 p.m. and I'm ready for bed. Princess Der is cleaning her room and washing clothes.

That's it for today. Either tomorrow or Friday, Princess Der is going to help a homeschooling mom we know homeschool her 6 year old.