Frontier Days at Historic Washington State Park

The weather was supposed to be really nice Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, so I was trying to think of something fun that we could go do outside.  After being under the weather the last few weeks, we needed an outing in the fresh air.  Wednesday I discovered that Historic Washington State Park had scheduled Frontier Days For Homeschoolers on Friday, so I decided that would be a perfect activity for us!

They do Frontier Days twice a year in October and February.  We had been once before in October of 2012 but had not made it back since then.  My girls did not remember it at all since they were so little and my younger boys only remembered a little bit.  Since my younger children are studying American History and we are learning about the frontier and pioneers, it was perfect timing.

I bought the family pass which allows us to go to any of the activities for a year.  The pass was only a few dollars more than it would cost us to get in for one day, so hopefully we will make it back for Frontier Days in the fall, or Civil War days, or another activity.

We spent about 3 1/2 hours at the park, and still did not see and do everything.  We had a great time!

We started out at the candle shop because that is where you sign up for the surrey rides.  The list can get long (last time we were there we did not sign up early and had to wait all day!.)  Going there first made a big difference because we only had to wait around 20 minutes for our turn.  That was just enough time for us to wait in line and made candles to take home.

Then we took our surrey ride.  The children loved this!

Next we headed to the Royston Log Home.  Here we made rag dolls to take home.  So cute!

And saw a hearth cooking demonstration.

We saw the Traveler's Camp.

After that we went to the Block House.

And did some finger weaving.

Next up was the Blacksmith Shop.

Then we took a lunch break.

Next we went into the weapon museum.

And the print shop.  The children could make their own print to take home.

We headed over to the Sanders Farmstead and ground some corn to feed to the chickens, checked out the farmstead kitchen, learned about soap, and got a sample to take home with us.

The last house we went in was the Crouch house.  Here they have half of the house restored and half what it looked like before restoration.  Here the children had an opportunity to draw their own pioneer home.

We finished up with a tour of the visitor's center, upstairs courthouse, and gift shop.  It was a great day!

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4 H Cookie and Bread Contest

Tuesday was the annual 4 H Cookie and Bread Contest.  I had 5 children participating.  They are allowed to enter up to 3 items as long as they are in different categories. but I limit my children to only two.  There are several different categories they can enter such as corn bread, specialty breads, muffins, yeast breads, bar cookies, drop cookies, and cut out cookies. We started baking on Monday afternoon to try and get a little ahead, but we still finished right at 5:00 on Tuesday and the entries had to be in by 5:30 (and we live 20 minutes away!)

Cloverbuds (ages 5-8) are allowed to use mixes (thank goodness!)

Lillian made Chocolate Chunk Cookies from a mix.

And blueberry muffins from a mix.

She won 1st place for her muffins and 2 nd place for her cookies.


Christian made sugar cookies from a mix.

And raspberry muffins from a mix.

He won 1st place for his cookies and second place for his muffins.


Alex and Anthony are juniors (ages 9-13.)

Anthony made honey butter dinner rolls and won 2nd place.

Alex made chocolate cheesecake brownies.  He got a participation ribbon.

Nick is a senior (ages 14-19.)

He made butterscotch caramel brownies and pretzels.  He won first place for both of them.

They all did a great job!

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Review: Room For Hope by Kim Vogel Sawyer

Room For Hope by Kim Vogel Sawyer is a historical fiction that takes place in Buffalo Creek, Kansas in 1936.  Times are tough as the Depression continues on but Neva Shilling works very hard to run the Shilling Mercantile with the help of her 14 year old twins while her husband Warren travels to neighboring communities to sell items from his wagon.

On a night Warren is expected home after one of his trips, Neva and the children run out to greet him, but instead of Warren they find a deputy with a load of furniture and 3 small children.  Neva learns that Warren and his wife have died and the children were sent to live with their "Aunt Neva."  Neva is totally devastated to find out that Warren had a secret family and does not want the reminder of his infidelity under her roof, but she also doesn't feel that she can abandon them to an orphanage.  Will she ever be able to see them as more than evidence of her husband's betrayal and love them the way God does?

I have to tell you that I am a big fan of Kim Vogel Sawyer.  I have read several of her books and have not yet found one that I did not love.  I could not wait for Room For Hope to arrive and could not put it down when it did.  It was a beautiful story of love, redemption, and of course hope.

One of the signs of s great book for me is if the author has the ability to immediately draw the reader into the story and make them feel as though they are part of the story.  After reading the first few paragraphs, I was transported back in time to Buffalo Creek, Kansas 1936.  The story is told through the different view points of Neva, Bud, Jesse, and Arthur allowing the reader to "see" each person's thoughts and feelings.

Another sign of a great book for me is if it draws emotion from the reader.  Room For Hope draws a wide range of emotions from the reader.  It made me smile and made me cry.  It made me feel angry and happy.   I worried over the characters and felt their sadness and joy.

I would highly recommend Room For Hope and any of Km Vogel Sawyer's other books to anyone who loves faith based books.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book for the purpose of writing a fair and honest review.  I received no other compensation and all opinions are my own.  I am disclosing this in accordance to FTC regulations.

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Homeschool Wrap Up Week 21

The colds are still plaguing the house.  Monday morning Christian woke up running a fever.  Tuesday I started having a sore throat, stuffy nose, and a cough.  No fever thankfully but I had very little energy.  The girls and Nick are still coughing too.  Alex and Anthony have not had any symptoms yet. We did school this week, but not as much as we had planned on.  Tuesday the only afternoon school work I did with 4th and under was Math, although I did tell the children to find something interesting to read for the rest of our school time (except for Christian who was excused.)

Week 21 in our Homeschool

P.E.: One day of yoga.  It's hard to do P.E. with a sinus headache!!

Bible: We started our new Grapevine Study of The Resurrection.  We did the introduction to lesson one, which is a timeline of what we will be studying.

Anthony made a LEGO cross.

Read Aloud: We finished C.S. Lewis Master Storyteller.  We read two chapters of Corrie Ten Boom Keeper of the Angel's Den.

History: In The Mystery of History Volume IV we completed lessons 55-57 on The Rise of Adolf Hitler, The Holocaust From Afar, and The Holocaust Up Close.  These are hard topics to read about and discuss!!  I think the author did a really good job taking the two different perspectives to talk about the holocaust.  In the first lesson she takes a broad view and gives an overall explanation.  In the second lesson, she focuses on 4 different people: Anne Frank. Corrie Ten Boom, Gerda Weissmann Klein, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, giving faces to some of those that were deeply affected. We made our memory cards and added the figures to the timeline.  We watched a short video of Hitler giving one of his speeches.  There was no map assignment for this week.

Science: Ironically our lesson this week in Exploring Creation With Anatomy and Physiology was the immune system!

My Father's World Adventures: One of the books we use in Adventures is Pioneers and Patriots.  This week our reading assignments were about a family who went west by water and settled in Ohio. Our state this week was Ohio.  We finished up reading Farmer Boy and we watched a documentary I have about Almanzo called Life Before Laura.  In science our lesson was about the different kinds of animals.

Math: The children completed lesson 20 in their levels.

Grammar/Writing/Literature: No grammar and no writing this week.  Alex finished lesson One of LLATL.

Reading/Spelling: Lily finished All About Reading Level One!

 Anthony and Christian finished lessons 26 and 27.  In AAS Level 2 they finished steps 11 and 12.

Horizon's Preschool: Emmie has finished through lesson 110.

Other Activities This Week:

Monday: We had a 4 H meeting on the heart.

And the girls had gymnastics.

Saturday: We went to Texarkana to get some things from Lowes we needed for the house.  Mostly stuff for the upstairs bathroom and the roof.  We were in the store for almost 3 hours!!! The chidlren were really good though and we got them some ice cream before we headed back home.

Lily lost another tooth this week!

I hope you had a great week in your homeschool!

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February Nature Seekers 4 H Meeting

January flew by so fast I did not find time to get a meeting in. I was trying to get it done earlier in the month then usual and schedule it before the public school's mid winter break, which left our only available date as Monday, giving me exactly an hour to do a meeting.  We only ended up with 7 children attending, which I think is my lowest attendance ever.  Two of my children weren't even there.  Christian was running fever, so Nick stayed home to babysit until Art could get home from work.

For our topic this month, I chose heart.  We talked about two different aspects of heart.  First we talked about what it means to us in 4 H as one of the 4 h's.  Then we talked about the actual physical heart.  We talked about where it is and what it does.  I read some fun and interesting heart facts.  We also talked about what we need to do to keep our hearts healthy.

Since one of the things you need to do to keep your heart healthy is exercise, we did a little yoga.

Then we did a science experiment with candy hearts, alka seltzer, and water.  The hearts were supposed to dance.  It did not turn out as well as I thought it would.  One of the pink hearts kind of danced but the others did not.

Our last activity was to make an edible model of the heart.  I actually got this idea out of our science book, Apologia's Exploring Creation with Anatomy and Physiology.  To make the heart we used graham crackers, marshmallows, mini marshmallows, tooth picks, and red and blue icing.

We iced two graham crackers  and 4 marshmallows with blue icing. The graham crackers represented the right atrium and right ventricle and the marshmallows the superior and inferior vena cava and the pulmonary artery.  We iced 2 graham crackers, 2 marshmallows, and 12 mini marshmallows threaded onto 4 toothpicks.  The graham crackers represented the left atrium and left ventricle, the big marshmallows the ascending aorta, and pulmonary veins.

It was a little messy!

I also gave them all a coloring page of the heart to take home.

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