Moving, gardening, homeschooling and more.

So we finally left our house and moved into a rental. I love the fact that it is walking distance from the fine arts academy and the garden, although it was hard to move and fit everything in our rental.
On the homeschooling front, Leo has started gymnastics, which is great because he has so much energy. Unfortunately, he twisted and hurt his ankle the first day. It was ok by the following week, but it was still sore. Latin is going well and we have some projects for February for African american month.

Gardening continues to give me so much peace. It feels so nice to listen to the birds and be outside tending to the garden.

Homeschooling a 13 yr old

This year Leo has decided to take Latin. At first I wondered if he would meet the challenge of this class. You see, we've been unschooling him since day one and this is one if his first classes where homework and tests are expected of him. I am thrilled to say that he is doing well in this class and we don't have to fight with him to do the work. As an unschooler, I have had many moments where I wondered if we were doing the right thing. Reading and picking the brains of unschoolers that have grown kids really helped along the way and it's exciting to experience the stuff I have read about with homeschooling. He is also continuing to work on math through the Life of Fred book(fractions). I like this math book because not only does it help with learning math, but it helps with reading and introduces other subjects like history. As for his reading, he is into the Manga series. Still loves to build with legos.

More challenges

So the last time I wrote, we were thinking of how we can eat more local without buying food that has been shipped from far away. Well, life continues to challenge us and it's been a bit hard to just focus on growing food with continually dealing with our living situation. We might be moving soon, due to the fact that we can't afford this house anymore and haven't been able to afford it for quite a few years. This has made me really think about what is important in our lives. It brings me comfort in thinking that I don't really need too much stuff and as long as I have a few pots to grow food in, things will be fine. Not to mention that I have a wonderful family which makes life pretty nice.

Anyway, back to gardening. Since I don't know if we will be here in this house for much longer, I have planted some stuff in pots. My Aji Amarillo(peruvian pepper) is doing great. The plan is to let one of the peppers stay on the plant so as to collect the seeds for next year. Another pot has a heirloom purple broccoli plant, that also has stinging nettle growing under it. Stinging nettle is a part of my diet in the winter, so this is exciting to me. I use it for tea or soups. This plant is great to eat because it has lots of nutrients in it including iron, calcium, magnesium and so on.

So our quest for free, fresh local food is still going strong. I might even pull some dandelions and see what I can make with it.

A challenge

Well, today Leo and I were watching youtube videos about people who grow a lot of their own food. Specifically the "Path to Freedom" family in Pasadena and Novella Carpenter, author of "Farm City". We were truly inspired by these videos and Leo said that we should try eating from just what we grow for a week. Hmm, that sounds great but our diet would consist of Artichokes, peaches, onions, eggs, strawberries and some weeds. Somehow, I don't see us being fed on just that. Specially because Leo's appetite is quite large now that he is 13yrs old. The fact that this challenge is coming from him is motivating me to plant a lot more stuff. Stay tuned....

Homeschooling year 8

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  What's Leo up to?
  
  
  
  
  Leo isn't into gardening but I continue to talk to him about sustainability and why it's good to grow some food. Every now and then he'll help in the garden.
  
  He's continuing to take Lego engineering classes.
  
  Learning fractions through the "Life of Fred" series.
  
  Learning guitar.
  
  Playing license plate game to learn states and capitols.
  
  Looking up some phrases in our sign language book.
  
  Finished up the third book written by his friend Gwen.
  
  Continuing studing ceramics with Lynn at the Fine arts academy.
  
  Working on writing and grammer.
  
  Leo is 13 yrs old now and he seems more motivated this year and interested in more challenging subjects(although he would never admit it). The last couple of years Leo has improved in his math, reading and writing skills a lot. It's fun to look at his past work and see the difference.
  
  
  We used to play this game where he would phonetically write a word or phrase and we would try and guess what it said. We had fun with that game because the stuff we would come up with would make us laugh.

Juggling all the things I love to do

So lately I've been trying to re-organize my time so that everyday I have time to do something for my homeschooling, businesses, and garden . I've never been the kind of person with a routine, so at times this can be challenging. I think my routine was not having a routine. My husband on the other hand thrives on his routine. He's done the exact same thing the first hour he is awake, probably for all his adult life. He gets up around 7am, makes his coffee and watches the sports highlights, then it's off to work. When I get up in the morning, I roll out of bed, and then its different every time. Sometimes I feed the chickens first, then eat breakfast, or eat breakfast, check email, then feed the chickens(which reminds me, I need to feed the chickens).

Synergia ropes course( Nadia is just 12yrs old)

This ropes course was really challenging for Nadia. We camped out too in these adobe building which was fun.