New toy = much fun

 
Much fun has been had with this new toy this past week! Nathan is loving his new motorbike and having six acres to ride it around.  It didn't stay this clean for long - mud and the shallow parts of our creek are his favourite spots to ride through :)

Did you spot the photo-bombing golden retriever in the first two pics?

First term, 2013...what we've been up to so far

So much to do, so little time! We have had another busy term as usual.  
We watched honey being harvested from the bee hives...

We did a few science experiments, using this book:

 

 The kids made a volcano (and the dogs helped...)

 

 

 Lili and Amy have been learning to sew (and Nathan too, but he didn't really want me to put that on here).  On the sewing machine they made a small cushion with a hand stitched motif on the front.

Then they hand stiched a little "softie" toy with button eyes.

 On the 27th February the kids participated in a home school swimming carnival.

All three kids have enjoyed doing weekly gymnastics classes this term. Nathans class focussed on trampolining and "urban sports".

We have continued to use Math-U-See for our maths. The kids like using it and the manipulatives really help make sense of the concepts.  Amy is almost halfway through 'Alpha', and Lili is using 'Beta'- both of which cover addition and subtraction as the main concepts.  Nathan is tackling fractions in the 'Epsilon' level.

For language arts we have been using Learning Language Arts Through Literature (LLATL) as a base.  Lili is using the Red level and is loving reading, spelling and writing- these are her favourites.  Amy is working on the Blue level, and we have been playing lots of games to help her learn sounds and words.  Spelling in shaving cream was a fun game...

I find that while LLATL gives us a good spine to work from, it can get a bit boring, so we tend to skip parts and add other things. For Nathan, on Purple level, the emphasis on grammar has become tedious, so we are looking at alternatives for him.   Most of all we read lots of books.  Nathan and Lili are voracious independent readers and one of the things I like about LLATL is that is bases all its activities on quality childrens books.

Lili and Amy have been working on a 'lapbook', All About Autumn. We left our LLATL work for a while to do the lapbook instead. They love the creative elements of a lapbook.  I incorporated some books into this unit which we already had from LLATL. Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall was a perfect way to begin learning about Autumn.

 

We are still slowly reading together The Wizard of Oz.  The edition we have is beautifully illustrated by Robert Ingpen.

This term Lili and Amy have been doing Reading Eggs which they really enjoy.

All three kids have been loving weekly art classes at our local Art Gallery with a group of homeschool friends.

We started The Story of the World last term, but haven't found time to do the activities so far this term.  We have, however, been listening to the audio version of the book in the car. The kids love it and now it's the only thing I am allowed to play!

One Autumn-feeling morning we ventured out to see if we could find some wild flowers in our new, large yard.  We searched all over our 6.5 acres but mostly found weeds! This was still interesting though, and we tried to identify them. We have scurvy weed, which is a native plant similar to the introduced weed 'wandering jew'. Scurvy weed is edible and was eaten by white colonists to ward off scurvy.  After collecting some samples, the kids sketched them in their nature journals as well as sticking in some samples.

Phew! So much happening. Of course there has also been all the other creative activities the kids invent, making mud duck sculptures, Girl Guides and Scouts, jumping on the trampoline, riding the pony and exploring the yard.

Bees!

When we moved to our new house we inherited two beehives.  I've had a dream of having our own bees for a while now, and we thought about keeping them.  Bees need to be checked and managed, they are not a set-and-forget project, so in the end we decided that with everything else that requires doing and tending here it was just not practical to become beekeepers right now.  

Enter Scott from our local beekeepers club. He bought the hives from us, but as they were too heavy to move he first harvested some honey from them here at our place before taking the hives away.  What a treat! I find bees so fascinating, and it was fantastic to watch the process of harvesting the honey from the hives.

First up, getting the smoker ready. Time spent setting the smoker going well prevents the disaster of getting part way through and running out of smoke just as the bees are getting agitated.

 All suited up, Scott opened the hive and started pulling out the frames from the top box.

Next,  Scott checks the frame to see if it is ready to harvest.  Unfortunately, these hives were not set up very well. A fundamental aspect is to use a "queen excluder" which keeps the queen bee in the bottom box ("super") of the hive.  This keeps the baby bees, or "brood", down the bottom with the queen, and clean honey in the top super which is the one you harvest from.  Without a queen excluder, there was brood in the frames up the top, making the honey and wax dark rather than clean and clear.

 If the frame was ready to harvest, Scott gently brushed the bees off and placed it in a plastic container.  The container lid was put on to keep the bees from following along to the location where harvesting would take place.

You can see the beeswax capping over the top of the honeycomb in the photo above.  This wax was sliced off to open up the comb to enable the honey to come out.

You can see the honey in the frame after the wax has been sliced off in the photo above.  Below is the beeswax still dripping with honey.  This wax is drained for a couple of days and then can be used to make candles.  This wax may be difficult to turn into candles because of the mixed in brood cells.  You can see that it is dark and dirty looking rather than pale and clean.  We will still attempt to make candles with it-stay tuned for more on that project :)

 Into the centrifuge to spin the honey out.  Scott spun the frames fairly slowly to protect the honeycomb and minimise the amount of repairs to the comb the bees will need to do after the frames are returned to the hives. The more energy the bees need to put into repairing the comb, the less energy they will have for making honey.

 The honey is poured out of the centrifuge and through a fine sieve.

Finally, the honey is poured into jars.  Although we were only able to harvest from four frames, we collected about eight kilograms of honey.

My fascination with bees has increased after watching this process and I think I will keep bees sometime in the distant future.  And of course, the honey tastes superb :)