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Last night, we had another encounter with our local wildlife. It happened late at night, or rather, early in the morning.

I was up late working on a project, when around 1:00 a.m., I heard our chickens clucking outside. We have only a few chickens right now, mostly roosters, and we let them wander around the yard free-ranging. For quite some time now, they’ve been roosting at night in the trees, lately choosing to roost in a cedar tree in our front yard. I thought it was a good choice, as they are tucked within the branches and hidden from predators.

Or so I thought. Last night, when I heard the clucking, I knew something was wrong. Chickens are sound sleepers, and they are quite disoriented when awakened in the night. So when they wouldn’t stop making so much noise, I found my shoes, grabbed a flashlight, and headed outside.

I saw something moving near the tree, and thought that perhaps a coyote was there. (We’ve had a lot of trouble with coyotes in our town lately). “Ha!” I hollered out, hoping to scare it away. Suddenly, a huge bird flew up from the ground. I watched as it took off in the opposite direction, flying out over my neighbor’s house.

I continued toward the tree, where I found one of our small hens lying on the ground. The large bird, which must have been an owl, had planned on making this little hen its dinner. In the light of the flashlight, I could tell the chicken’s face was a little bloodied, and it seemed to be having trouble breathing.

I couldn’t leave it there, so I picked it up and started towards the house, thinking I’d find a box somewhere to put it in. As I went, it seemed to come to its senses and began clucking and hollering. I put it in our empty chick pen and headed off to bed.

How’s the bird? She seems to be doing fine, though she’s still in the pen recuperating. And the owl? It will have to find another food source. Chicken just isn’t on the menu this week!

A few weeks ago, for my son Luke’s sixth birthday, we had as many family members that could drop by for a party. It was a pretty day, so we ate outside at the picnic table, and with so many cousins, we created quite a mess. As my husband went to take out the trash, however, we were all met with a interesting surprise. There, stuck in the bottom of a plastic garbage can, were two small opossums.

They must have been there a while, as we hadn’t used that particular can for quite some time. We decided they had climbed in looking for something to eat, but because the sides were so slick, they were unable to climb out again. They were curled up in the bottom of the can, one on top of the other.

We decided to wait until dusk to let them out, as opossums are nocturnal and they’d have a better chance at escaping safely from any would-be predators such as the neighborhood dogs. We covered most of the opening of the can with the lid, to help them “hide” for the rest of the day, and then we went on with the party.

At dusk, before everyone left, our opossum lesson continued. We carried the can out back behind our house to the woods, tipped it over, and dumped them out. One of the opossums took off right away, while the other managed more slowly to find his way through the trees. They were both glad to be free, and we were glad for the opportunity to see them go.

We’re much more careful, now, about leaving the lids on the cans, though we’ve still had some opossum sightings around our trash bin. And just when we had gotten the cats and the chickens to leave it alone…

Over the past few days, there’s been someone in the family who’s not been feeling well. It seems some sort of stomach virus has been passed from person to person, making it difficult to stick to our regular schedule or get much schooling done. When we are experiencing sick days, I tend to let the lessons slide for the time being and have the children make them up the following weekend.

There are some other ways to approach “sick days”, days where you or a child has a cold or a virus that makes homeschooling difficult. Here are a few ideas:

If your child is sick:

Make it a favorite subject day: If your child isn’t too sick, but just not feeling quite right, allow him to choose his favorite subject and work on assignments in that area for the day.

Make it a reading day: Give your older children reading assignments that they can do while lying in bed. If your child isn’t reading yet, spend the time reading to him.

Make it a video day: If your child is feeling too sick to read, find some educational DVDs he can watch. If you don’t have any at home, ask your spouse or a friend to pick some up at your local library.

If you are the one who’s sick:

Have Dad help: If you’re unable to homeschool, consider having Dad homeschool when he’s off work. Even if he works during the day, he can still direct a few lessons after supper.

Enlist the help of older siblings: If you have older children, call on them to help their younger siblings with some of their lessons.

Make it a reading day: Older children can read to the younger ones and do their reading assignments on their own.

Make it a video day: This works well when Mom’s the one who’s sick, too. While you’re recuperating in bed, don’t feel guilty about turning on some educational DVDs for your younger children.

If you find the illness is making it just too difficult to continue schooling, though, take the necessary time off to rest and recuperate. You can always make up the school days on the weekends, during traditional holiday breaks, or even during the summer. After all, that’s one of the benefits of homeschooling — a flexible schedule that can be changed as needed.

A friend at our co-op is known in several grocery stores as “The Coupon Lady.” She spends quite a bit of time following the sales, and for her efforts she saves a huge amount of money on her family’s weekly food bill. Inspired, I asked her for some tips. She did something even better — she had a class in her home for any interested moms to show us how she does it.

I used to use coupons long ago, and now I’m using them again. With the help of some couponing websites (southernsavers.com and hotcouponworld.com), along with the grocery store websites, I’m starting to save a lot of money. I love looking at the bottom of the receipt now to see how much I’ve spent compared to how much I’ve saved.

To clip the coupons, I’m following my friend’s recommendation of laying out multiple newspaper ads and clipping identical coupons all at the same time. What I haven’t got a handle on yet, though, is how to sort them quickly. And with the big pile of unsorted coupons on my desk, it shows.

I thought I’d work at it late at night once a week while watching a favorite movie. By that time, though, I’m usually too tired to think about coupons. Several people have suggested I put the older children to work at it, which sounds like a good idea — I just need to take the time to teach them how to do it. I think once I’m caught up, weekly sorting won’t be too hard — it’s because I have so many to sort right now that it’s become such a chore.

But all in all, I think I’ll stick with couponing. We’re enjoying foods we don’t usually buy, and for half the price!

This week, our Five in a Row story for the K-5/First Graders at co-op was Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton. It was a little harder coming up with a craft to go along with the story, but with the help of my oldest son, John, we came up with one that was a big hit.

The story is about Mike Mulligan and his out-dated steam shovel, Mary Ann. In the story, they take on one last job, digging the cellar of the new town hall in Popperville. As we read the book, we talked about the different machines depicted, and how Mike Mulligan used his machine Mary Ann to dig faster and better.

The project? The children had to think up and sketch their own time-saving machines.

Supplies:

• 1/2 sheet of posterboard (one per student)
• Pencils
• Markers, crayons, and/or colored pencils
• Hot glue gun
• Hot glue
• Collection of misc. nails, screws, nuts, washers, bolts, etc.

Each student was given 1/2 sheet of posterboard and a pencil and instructed to spend a few minutes thinking about the kind of machine they would design. What would their machine do? How would it be helpful? What would it need to do the job?

Next, the children drew their machines on the posterboard. After they were satisfied with it, they colored them in with crayons, colored pencils, or markers.
While they were working, we plugged in a couple of low-temp mini-glue guns.  When the students had finished their drawings, they were given a handful of various nuts, nails, screws, bolts, etc. to choose from. They would then place them on their pictures where they thought they should go. We then used hot glue (a lot for the heavier items) to affix them to the “machine.”

The children really enjoyed it — and they enjoyed telling about their machines, too! Later that day, they stood up one by one with the drawings of their machines and explained just what their machines were supposed to do. They were all so proud of their ideas — and I was too!

A couple of months ago, we rearranged almost all of the rooms in our house, changing two of our upstairs rooms into bedrooms. My husband no longer has a study (he’s okay with that — he doesn’t bring much work home with him), and each child now has their own room to clean, maintain, and house their treasures.

As soon as she moved in, my 9-year-old, Lillie, loved her new room, and she had some big plans. The room (my husband’s former study) was a neutral beige color with white trim. “Can we paint some shapes on the walls?”

We looked up some ideas online, and we decided large geometric shapes would look really good on those walls. Plus, I wouldn’t have to paint the entire wall again. “Okay,” I said, “but we’ll have to wait until we have a free day.” After spending a couple of weeks on the house, I had a lot of catching up to do on other things.

“Can I do it?” she asked. I thought for a moment. Why not? After all, it would save me some time. We’ve painted enough together that she knew just what to do. And it was just paint — we could repaint the walls again whenever she was ready.

“Sure,” I said. “Use the craft acrylics, and clean up when you’re done.”

Later that day, she called me upstairs to see her masterpiece. But instead of the large geometric shapes I had envisioned, the walls were covered in red, green, yellow, blue, and purple 1″-3″ polka dots. And Lillie couldn’t have been more proud.

“There are a couple of hidden shapes,” she said. “Can you find them? A purple triangle, a green triangle, a blue square…” Her bedroom walls were not only much more lively, but they were a puzzle she could share with friends as well.

As we raise our kids, we’ll probably question a lot of our decisions (I do!). But letting Lillie paint her own room is one I’m glad I made — the results have only been positive. She has a room she enjoys, and she built up her self-confidence in the process. What’s more, she inspired her younger brother who also moved into his own room — now his walls showcase stick figures having adventures!

About seven years ago, I worked in an after-school program at a local elementary school. The program was for children in third through fifth grades who were having trouble in some of their classes at school. During that time, the director of the program encouraged the teachers to read The Essential 55 by Ron Clark. I was very impressed with the book then, and after recently picking up another copy, I find I am still impressed today.

When he wrote the book, Ron Clark was a young teacher from North Carolina who had taught at some of the most difficult schools in the country, including one in Harlem, New York. The differences he made in the lives of his students earned him recognition as the Disney Teacher of the Year in 2001. Through his experiences in the classroom, he compiled the 55 rules found in this book. As I’m now re-reading through the rules with my children, we’re finding many that apply to our family.

55 rules? Isn’t that a lot? It is, but Clark’s students were able to memorize all 55, and by the end of the year they were following all the rules. Take a look at the 55, and see if there are some you’d like to use in your homeschool. Some of the rules we chose include:

• When responding to adults, say ‘Yes, Ma’am,’ or ‘No, Sir.’ Just nodding your head is not acceptable.

• Make eye contact with the person who is speaking to you.

• When someone wins a game or does something well, congratulate that person.

• Always say thank you when you are given something.

• If someone bumps you, even if it was not your fault, say “Excuse Me.”

• If you approach a door and someone is following you, hold open the door.

These sound like basic life skills and manners that our children should have, but we’ve realized that they are things my children don’t always do and things I tend to overlook. So…we’ve begun compiling our 55 rules — or however many we come up with in the end.

Do you need some rules for your classroom? Check out this book, and then go from there!

Once a week, a friend of mine organizes a special day for fellow homeschoolers she knows. It might be a science day, when we try a few experiments, or it might be a field trip to a bakery or nature park. Sometimes she hosts a holiday celebration. While my family isn’t to attend the event every week, we are usually able to attend the get-togethers held at her house. And this week, we all met for Pizza Day.

Every family that was able brought in some pizza dough, whether it was homemade or frozen or pre-made from the grocery store. Some of the dough was whole wheat while other dough had been mixed with parmesan cheese. We also brought along our favorite toppings: pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, feta cheese, pepperoni, sausage, bell peppers, hot peppers, mushrooms, onions, barbecue sauce, chicken, pineapple, coconut — if it sounded tasty, someone had brought it along.

Then came the best part. The tables were covered with baking pans coated with cooking spray, and the children got to work. First they decided which dough they would use, then they flattened it in the pan using either their hands or a roller. Then they chose their toppings. When the children were finished, they compared creations, and one by one the pans went into the oven.

Although everyone didn’t eat at the same time (there was a constant rotation of cooking sheets with pizzas on them going in and out of the oven), all enjoyed their personal pizzas and shared slices with each other. There was so much pizza, in fact, that we even took some of the extra home with us.

Pizza Day not only provided us with a great lunch, but it gave the kids some hands-on cooking experience and the moms time to visit. All in all, I’d say Pizza Day was a huge success!

This week, our kindergarteners and first graders at co-op read The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge by Hildegard Swift and Lynd Ward. The craft we did with this book took a little while to prepare, but it was a lot of fun that provided some good practice for their fine motor skills.

For the activity, the children created their own lighthouses using popsicle sticks. If you’d like to make a lighthouse with your child, here’s what you’ll need:

• 40 popsicle sticks cut in half, or 80 half-size sticks
• Red acrylic craft paint
• Paint Brush
• Paper towels
• Container with water (to clean the brushes)
• Newspaper
• White school glue
• Cardstock
• Something round (about 2 ” in diameter) to use as a pattern, such as jar lid
• Hot glue gun and glue stick
• Yellow paper or foam
• Scissors

If you are working with a lot of students (we have 11 in our class), you may want to do the first few steps yourself to save time. However, if you’re working with only your own children, you can show them how to complete each step themselves.

1. First, cover your table top or work area with newspaper.

2. Lay out the sticks on the paper. Using the red craft acrylics, paint one side of each popsicle sticks red. Allow the paint to dry (acrylic paints dry quickly, so if the paint isn’t very thick, a few minutes should be enough. You can also speed up the drying process by using a hair dryer).

3. If you are using whole sticks, you’ll need to cut them in half. Do this yourself, as it’s a difficult task for children. You can cut them in half with a large pair of scissors. Some of the sticks might split a little, but they can still be used.

4. Now, show your child how to “build” the lighthouse by placing two sticks parallel to each other on the paper, adding a drop of glue to each one, and then placing two more parallel sticks on the glue going in the opposite direction. Continue gluing and alternating the pairs until all of the sticks have been used.

5. To make the top of the lighthouse, draw a circle on the cardstock. Use the jar lid as a guide and trace around it. Cut out the circle. Then, cut one slit in the circle, going from the edge of the circle to the center. Stop cutting at the center of the circle.

6. At the slit, pull one of the straight edges you just cut under the other, forming a cone shape. Glue the edges with hot glue so that the glue dries quickly and the shape holds. Using the hot glue again, glue the edges of the cone to the top of the lighthouse.

7. To complete the lighthouse, cut a small circle from yellow cardstock or foam and glue it onto one side of the lighthouse as a “light.”