General Herkimer's Home

As you may remember, we visited the Oriskany Battlefield a few weeks ago, site of the bloodiest battle of the Revolution, and also a major turning point, contributing to the eventual victory at Saratoga. In the battle of Oriskany, General Herkimer was shot in the leg (his horse died under him) and, refusing to leave the battlefield, directed his troops from his position under a tree. He was then carried the roughly 40 miles back to his home, where he later died as a result of a poorly executed amputation of the wounded leg.

He died reading Psalm 38 from his huge German bible and feeling that he had failed in his mission. Tragically sad.

But we needn't dwell on that. We visited his home yesterday and focused on what life was like before that.

His house was beautiful and has been meticulously restored by the good state of New York.

Apparently, he was quite enterprising and made a nice living running a portage business, taking boats, their contents and passengers around the (small) waterfalls.

We toured the house, admired the grounds and the views and even went on a scavenger hunt for information in the family cemetery.

We learned about trading, making fire with steel and a flint and hunting.

Z-Man even got to hold the musket!

And, since it was 97 degrees(!!!), we visited the nice, cool, root cellar more than once. Loved the root cellar.

It was a wonderful trip and well worth a visit if you ever find yourself near Little Falls, NY.

Fencing

We've been trying out a new sport here: fencing. I question the sanity of putting a sword in the hands of a five-year-old who has been known to throw some pretty colossal fits of temper, but so far it's worked out. It turns out it's not a sharp sword and they do wear a helmet.

Plus I figure I'd better let them try it before it's outlawed. Better read this before you let your kids play tag or kickball this summer!

Anyway... back to cute pictures of my kids before I get myself all worked up.

Little Man looking determined.

Z-Man fencing his coach. The coach really loves what he does and seems to genuinely enjoy the kids.

And just for fun, here is the sword fight scene from Princess Bride. Enjoy!

Some Revolutionary trips!

We're just finishing up our first year of TruthQuest History (AHYS 1) and I have to say that it has been a resounding success. We've gone from the early explorers through the Revolution and have met fascinating spies, heroes, traitors, generals - it's been great.

And now, since it is spring and we live in NY, we are finally getting outside!! On Friday, we joined several families in a trip to the Old Stone Fort, a church-turned-fort that saw a little action in the Revolutionary War.

Yes, that's the actual cannon ball hole - from 1780! Pretty amazing.

There were several other buildings on the grounds, one of them a one-room schoolhouse where the kids each had their own little slate to write their lessons.

Over the weekend, we visited the Oriskany battlefield, site of the bloodiest battle of the Revolution. There is a monument with names of the dead and many signs giving a play-by-play of the battle. Please excuse the iPod photo - we forgot our camera again.

One sign reads: "British and Indians here ambushed the Tryon County Militia as they were marching to the relief of Fort Stanwix (Rome.) General Nicholas Herkimer, though wounded, rallied his forces and directed the fighting until the enemy fled. Defeated at Oriskany and unable to force the surrender of Fort Stanwix, the British retreated to Canada. These reverses, with their defeat at Saratoga, thwarted Burgoyne's plan to divide the colonies by conquering New York." Herkimer later died at his home following an unskilled amputation of his leg. We are actually scheduled to go to his home for another field trip in two weeks!

I'll keep you posted!

Mrs. Katz and the Passover

Last week, we learned all about Passover with a sweet Five in a Row book, Mrs. Katz and Tush. In the book, an elderly Jewish lady is befriended by a neighbor family and eventually adopted as their "Bubee." She tells the boy the story of the Israelites' exodus from Egypt as they share the Passover Seder together.

We covered many of the FIAR lessons, including:

• "Love your neighbor as yourself." - we memorized Luke 10:27 and used it as copywork and cursive practice.
• We read the story of the Exodus and made really cute (I know that just seems wrong, but they really are cute) little books of the 10 plagues that I found at Homeschoolshare.com
• A yeast experiment - mix yeast and sugar in a bottle of warm water and put a balloon over the top. That worked so well that we had to secure our balloon with electrical tape.
• We talked about patterns, tried drawing our own and looked at these National Geographic patterns in nature.
• We learned all about Passover with The Matzah That Papa Brought Home.
• We learned about Warsaw, Poland during WWII and why Mrs. Katz left in The Cats in Krasinski Square.
• We learned quite a few yiddish words, ate bagels and attempted to polka. :)

I like to have a picture of the books to show you. However, Amazon apparently no longer supports just the picture of the books without the purchase information. I am not trying to sell anything here. Of course, I'm not against anyone using these links, because I will get a commission, but that isn't my reason for putting them there.

What we've been up to

Tapping our 2 (yes, two) maple trees. The buds are just starting to open so the season is over, but we had enough sap to make almost 2 quarts of maple syrup and we shared some sap with another homeschool family who had fun making their own syrup too!

Little Man has been a heart-making machine. He strings the pony beads onto pipe cleaners and I twist them together for him.

Classifying animals. I believe the cars, being metal quadrupeds, are in their own category.

Reading about the Revolution! We're all learning so much! Did you ever hear of Sybil Ludington? I know I never did. She was a 16 year old Paul Revere and, apparently, has just had a movie made about her daring ride. We're enjoying TruthQuest History so much that we will probably just continue it all summer.

Learning to read!! Yes, Little Man is putting his letter sounds together and reading 3-letter words! He's enjoyed playing games on Starfall and this week, we'll be getting out the beloved Bob Books.

Learning about Passover - but that will have to wait for another post.

Z-Man doing his math in his pj's. Life is good.

Good Reads

We do quite a bit of reading in our homeschool. We read books all together in the morning - FIAR, science, history, biographies, books on whatever we happen to be studying. Then, in the afternoon, while Little Man takes a short quiet time, Z-Man and I read more advanced books (or "books without pictures" according to LM) from our TruthQuest History guide. Z-Man usually has something he's reading on his own as well.

In my planning notebook, I keep a list of all the books we read throughout the year. Recently, I came across Goodreads.com, a more high-tech version that I can keep online, complete with pictures of each book. There are many other features that we haven't used yet, such as to-be-read lists and even an option to email interested friends and family each time you finish a book.

Z-Man has his own account, but I sign in and enter the books for him because they advertise books on the main page and also show what others are reading. There have been a couple of times that there were some inappropriate images there. Once you get into your own list, though, there are no ads or other images and he can scroll through all the pictures of the books he's read, rate them with one to five stars and even write a review. I think he was kind of surprised to see how much we've covered this year.

Now if I could just get to my own reading...

Summer, maybe?

Little Man is the octopus

Little Man is The Octopus. Remember Paul the oracle octopus that accurately predicted the World Cup soccer games last summer? Here is Little Man filling out his NCAA basketball tournament bracket.

The octopus worked very diligently on this for about half an hour. Since the lines were a little too small for him to write the whole team name, he wrote the first two letters of his picks. As of 8:45 Saturday evening, the octopus has picked completely accurately for three out of the four regions. The rest of us have not been so successful. I suppose more than one psychic invertebrate mollusk per family is too much to hope for.

In case you're wondering, our five year old says Duke is going all the way.