Thrift Schooling

Music in Your Homeschool Family Gardening  Just wanted to share with you some articles in places other than my blog. I would love for you to check them out and share some comment love! Thanks so much! ~ Heather

Local readers!  ~ Come on By and See Us ~ Current schedule for NVable Items  in the  Southwestern Virginia area!      September 5, 2014                   Franklin County Civil War Days September 6, 2014                   Martinsville Culture Crawl  September 10-13, 2014           Franklin Co. Agricultural Fair  October 4, 2014:                      Martinsville Oktoberfest     April 11, 2015:                         Spencer-Penn Pig BBQ                                                                      ...

Create a professional photo book with a single click using Collage.com 's One-Click Photo Book. Select photos of any size from Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, or your computer and they will instantly suggest a clean, professional layout that you can further customize. Perfect for the wedding photos still waiting on your hard drive to be put into an album (guilty as charged). And what a perfect baby book to make for your child! (Yeah, my first child has a baby book and the others, uh, well.....) These photo books not only allow you to design the pages but the cover as well! Why not use College.com to create a homeschool yearbook or a Christmas gift for Grandma this year showcasing all her lovely grandchildren? Thanks to USFamilyGuide.com , Thrift Schooling readers can use the discount code below to receive 51% off a hardcover photo book!                                    Disco...

Hope you are having a relaxing weekend! Kids Having Fun at Philpott Lake! More "homeschool" related posts coming soon. As for now, we will be resting and relaxing before our busy month of September with NVable Items. Check the schedule and come on by and see us! 

We just finished Laura Ingalls Wilder's book, Farmer Boy  today. I cried. I can't tell you the last time I cried at the end of a book, but this one did me in! I won't ruin the ending for you, but I will say that things certainly have changed over the years. The character and integrity of ten year old Almanzo was certainly one to be admired and would challenge many young boys today.  One of my first grader's favorite parts of this book was when Almanzo entered his milk-fed pumpkin into the county fair. My children were on the edge of their seats, caught up in the suspense, wondering if he would win the blue ribbon against all the other entrants!  County fairs were a big deal back then. Everyone took a break for a few days and head out in their horse and buggys filled with produce, goods and livestock. The community gathered together to spend time with their families, friends and neighbors. When I heard that Franklin County, Virginia was bringing back the forme...

To keep up with his math skills this summer, I had my son practice with  UberSmart Software . This downloadable program ($24.95) is for Windows based computers. My son has been working with the  UberSmart Math Facts  program to rehearse his addition and subtraction facts and to begin learning his multiplication facts.     I currently use Abeka Math for my two boys and have been using it with my oldest from the beginning. Personally, I am a fan of the memorization and the method of teaching used in that program. It encourages quick answers and memorizing of math facts. With my oldest, I used to sit with him and go through flash cards. The curriculum pretty much encourages this every day, I can't say that I was entirely faithful with it, but I would try! The challenge began though when my second son entered the picture. At first I would try to sit them both down and go through he cards. Fail. Obviously, the oldest would answer them all correc...

Yes, we did school this week, it just went a little different than the past two weeks in which we have officially been "in school." On Monday morning I realized that our tomatoes were in abundance so I put aside our boxed curriculum for the day and told the kids that we were making spaghetti sauce! I'm glad my kids like to help in the kitchen or this task would have been a drudgery. Fortunately, it was quite pleasant. I sent the boys out to the garden to pick a few more ripe tomatoes. Then they weighed what we had (on our baby scale turned kitchen scale), a total of 21 lbs. Not a huge amount for someone who does a lot of canning, but for us, it was plenty! The kids then "washed" and got the tomatoes ready for our handy dandy sauce maker .  It's pretty cool. You don't have to hull, peel or blanch, just put it in like a juicer and it separates the skin and seeds out for you! The kids chopped the tomatoes into quarters, mushed them down, cranke...