Buiding the coop. By Buddy

Hi, my chickens are doing good.We built a coop for them. We used two nine foot 2x4s, chicken wire, one door hinge,and a staple gun.My chickens are living in it right now.We built an A-frame first then put on the chicken wire. Then covered the top where they lay their eggs. They are eating the bugs on the ground.Little Ann is still smarter than Rue. But Rue is braver than Ann.

The picture above is dad and I working on the coop.

                                                                The finished project!

                                               Putting Rue and Ann in their new home.

       
We finished reading  A wrinkle in time.It is a good book.We did a packet after every four chapters and made a lapbook about the book. Charles Wallace is my favorite character because he is a genius. Thanks for reading!

Hi again from Rain!

Hi! I want to tell you about a reading project Buddy and I did. We read a book called " A Wrinkle In Time ",then when we finished the book we made lap books. While we read the book we had to do packets and we had really hard spelling words. Here is mine and Buddy's lapbooks the one on the left is mine.

 

The picture below is the inside of my lapbook.

 

 

 

These are the main characters in the book. I drew them by hand.

 

 

My plants are doing good. On Saturday we got an Orange tree and a watermelon plant! And i got to eat my first strawberry! It was sour I should of let it grow longer.

Last week I made an apple pie from scratch, here are some pictures:

I had a really fun week! We went to see the author who wrote " Hank the Cowdog " and it was at a college so that was cool! More fun things coming up!

WHY?????????? (a post from Mom)

Well, well, well. Here we are again. I thought I'd fill you in on a few things we've been doing around here.
The chickens are doing good. Very ugly and a little stinky. They still need to be under the heat lamp for a few more weeks, but as it gets warmer and warmer outside I am looking forward to getting their coop up and running and get them OUT of my house. They really arnt a bother, and Buddy is taking great care of them.
Rain's mini garden is coming along fine. (If you call two plants in pots a mini garden) She is looking forward to eating a strawberry when they are ready! (She's not a tomato fan...but her Daddy is...so he's looking forward to them!)

I came upon a question from a stranger today that I didnt have an answer for. I was getting ANOTHER insurance quote on our house (LONG STORY THERE) and the agent asked me, "Why do you homeschool? A simple enough question, right? It seems the world needs a tangible (one of our vocab words last week...lol) answer to this question. Our reason isnt one dimensional. I cant just give you one simple answer. There are so many positives to homeschooling, and I am just finding some of them out now...even after the decision was made and we began this adventure. What do I say? Should I say, "Well, our kids fight a whole lot less now." or "When there is a sibling situation, I am right here to nip it in the bud right away which makes my children respect me and each other more." Or simply, "Our government is trying to re-write history and I dont want my kids to be a part of that." They are all true answers...but none of them are the answers people like our insurance agent are looking for. They want to hear something I can put in to words for them that they approve of. The thing is...I cant make them approve of what we do. I have to come to terms with that.

There are a few things that sound silly but have made a big difference in our lives. Sleep. Everyone sleeps more, and we arent rushing around all the time. Our house is a much calmer environment. Buddy and Rain arnt stressed out over their next day at school. They arent exhausted at the end of the day and still have homework to do, dinner, clean up after dinner, 4-H or Youth. We still do all those things...but they arnt all crammed in to a few hours in the evening. About the fourth day in to our new homeschool life, my husband said to me after dinner..."I cant believe how calm and fun dinner was tonight!" We have always ate together at the table, but now...we eat and talk...one at a time. Nobody is fighting for talk time, nobody is cranky from a long day (besides me and the hubs). It's just...nice.

Well, look forward to hearing from Buddy and Rain about their book reports they have been working on. I assigned the book, "A Wrinkle in Time" and we have all enjoyed reading it. So...soon they will post their thoughts on the book, and hopefully I can figure out how to get their pictures to work INSIDE the blog! Thanks for reading!! We are blessed to have you in our lives!

-The MAMA

Buddy here...my science project was that I had to build a brooder for two baby chickens. I made it out of a big blue plastic box, chicken wire, a waterer, a feeder, and a heat lamp. When I  was told what my project was I never thought I would get chickens the next day. The chickens are New Hampshire Reds, they are supposed to lay up to three eggs a week. That's around six eggs a week! We better start saving our egg cartons.

 The chickens names are Ann and Rue. Ann got her name because she is a little smarter than Rue and in the book Where the Red Fern Grows Little Ann is smarter than Old Dan. I let Rain and my Little brother decide on Rues name. That name comes from The Hunger Games,  The New Hampshire Reds come from the Rhode Island Reds but in 1935 they were so different they became a different breed of chicken.

So far homeschooling is AWESOME! It is a lot of fun. So far I've been on more Field trips than the entire year in public school!

Click here for pics of my baby chicks and homemade brooder

Hi! Rain here! I want to tell you about my science project. Well I had to research tomatoes and strawberries. How to plant them, what types, where they grow best. It was really fun! But the fun continues with actually getting to plant them!

Today we went to Lowes and I got to pick out what type of strawberries I wanted, and to the  Moore Than Feed store in Rockport, to pick out my tomatoes. Then we came home and planted them. Get this... we planted the strawberries in a terracotta pot and after I was finished and moved on to the tomatoes, the strawberry pot broke! We kinda fixed it, we just set it in the position it should be in.


click here to see pics from the day!


I really like homeschooling, because not only can I sleep in till 9:00, but instead of just doing the research on the plants, I got to be hands on and actually plant them. I cant wait to actually get to eat them! [it made me hungry just doing the research!]

Moms making us blog once a week, so see ya next week!
                                                                                 ~Rain

From Buddy and Rain's mom

Hi! I am the lucky Mother of three really cool kids. This is the blog of two of those kids. FYI, their real names are not "Buddy" and "Rain", but that is what we will be calling them here for privacy reasons. Buddy got his name because...well, we call him "Buddy" a lot. lol. Rain got her name because she was born on the 17th day of the 2nd month. In Genesis, it is written that the rain fell from the Heavens beginning on that day after God promised to flood the Earth. So...Rain it is.

We called our blog, Buddy and Rain Unschooled because we are an "out of the box" home school family. Life is our classroom. In this day and age, a blog is a great place to not only journal, but complete research and let out the idea's in their amazing brains! So, welcome! Please know that these posts our written by two imaginative pre-teens and this is their view on our journey of "unschooling".