Continuing with week 1

We're very happy with everything so far. Noah has been doing well with fractions. Here is a picture of some of his work.

We've also been working with a new program called Writing With Ease. I started him with the 1st level and we're working through it at double pace to get caught up. Here is some of his writing work. He needed some prompting to get the letters done properly for some reason.

I'll continue this post soon. I'm still playing with blogger to figure out adding photos properly.

The First Day of School 2008-2009

Today was our first day back at school. The Little Man is in second grade and Pooh Bear is in Preschool.

After playing outside with his friends this morning, Little Man wasn't very happy about coming in to start school. Public School doesn't start until tomorrow, so he wanted to play today. I was the mean mommy.

After some tears, the day went rather well. He seemed to like the currriculum we had for the year. We'll see how it goes in the next few weeks.

Here he is doing his math. We started fractions today in Singapore 2B. He seemed to like doing them today and since there was no writing involved, he was very happy.

I didn't get any pictures of Pooh Bear today, but she was thrilled to start school. We worked on learning the letter E and reviewed the letter A. She did some handrwiting practice from the Donna Young site. We also did some math work on the number 5 in a Rod and Staff workbook a friend gave us. More pictures tomorrow.

Continuing to plant

We went out today and weeded. I got the beds along the front fence done. The parsnip, carrot and beet beds. I also weeded and planted on the back area peas, beans, beets and zucchini.

The first zucchini flower appeared today! It won't be long until we have tons. I also picked 2 more quarts of sugar snap peas. There are flowers and fruit on the tomato and pepper plants, so they will be coming along soon as well. I'm sure in another month or so we'll be inundated with produce.

The weather hasn't been ideal. It's been cloudy and muggy, threatening to rain, but not doing so very often. We really need more sun right now.

Notes for next year.

We just got back from a week long vacation. This morning I went out to check on things. There are plenty of weeds, although many of those are clover, so I'll leave them alone. I picked several quarts of sugar snap peas, and lots of lettuce. The spinach has gone to seed, so I'm waiting to harvest the seed.

Next year:
-don't just scatter the small seeds
-plant something different and hardy against the back
-put the onions and garlic in an out of the way corner
-plant the potatoes in containers and put more other things in the garden

Strawberries

Today was strawberry day. Mom and I went to the farm to pick berries with the kids. We each got about 30 pounds of strawberries after a little over an hour of picking. Pooh helped quite a bit, but Little man did not want to be there at all. I must say that 30 pounds of strawberries is quite expensive and it kind of takes your breath away. It is very worth it though.

When we got home I got right to work. The kids helped for the first batch and then lost interest. After 4 batches, which is 20 pints of jam, I was finally finished. Bending in the fields and then making all the jam about killed my back. Luckily the neighbors were out in their quickset pool and we were able to relax in the water. It felt glorious!

Straw and weeds

The weeds are out of control and its only June. I went to the farm here in town and got some straw. I got 3 bales, it covered only the 1/3 of the garden that has the squash in it. Must go find more straw.

Progress

We just finished having quite a bit of rain and now its in the 90s. It seems a little early for a heat wave, but here we are.

I harvested a bit of spinach, but for some reason it is already going to seed. I didn't get nearly as much spinach as I thought I would. The lettuce seems to be stalled. I think its the little starter things I used that is keeping them hemmed up. I planted some more, so we'll see how that does.

The peas are getting tall and so is everything else. I hilled the potatoes and they're too tall again. We'll see if I can rehill again. There are jalapenos on my plant and flowers on a few of my tomato plants. Everything is really getting big, and should get huge with all this heat.

Today I plan to plant a bunch of broccoli and try again to get it to grow. I would really love this to work, since this is a favorite veggie with all of us.