Live and Learn Farm

We’re Growing Mushrooms

By: Trish Corlewcomment

You read it right, we are about to be growing mushrooms! Shiitake mushrooms, that is! Since we love shiitake mushrooms and nobody I know of around here are growing them, it seems like a perfect niche for us to add to our Practical Life curriculum. For those unfamiliar with Montessori education, the “Practical Life” curriculum for middle school students involves setting up a business. It teaches them so many things about life, economics, values, priorities but it also can help the boys determine what they want to do (or not do) when they grow up!! I have learned that if you love what you do, it is not work! So, our job is to introduce our children to lots of opportunities to help them determine what they do and don’t like!  (Note this is a long article, so I have chosen to use the “read more” tab below in order to shorten the articles on the home page… so if you are interested, please be sure to click the “read more” button right below the share buttons for the various social media sites).  

We ordered the shiitake mushroom plugs today and hope to get our first stack of wood plugged, waxed and ready to go in about a month. I never really knew how mushrooms grew, but I never expected them to grow in logs!

Shiitake Sharon Dale Farm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Paths of Exploration

By: Trish Corlewcomment

Supplemental Hands-On Resources
Supplemental Hands-On Resources

We will be starting Paths of Exploration in April of 2013.  We homeschool all year and as the boys wrap up their annual curriculum for language arts, geography, spelling, vocabulary, science, etc., we try to add in an all-inclusive curriculum for the summer.  This year Paths of Exploration by Trail Guide to Learning is that curriculum (although it may take longer than the summer to complete volume 1…. we can and will fluctuate as needed to complete the study).  I will be adding resources to each Unit before and during our study, so be sure to subscribe to the site to continue to receive the updates.  We are really looking forward to this curriculum!  In pulling all this together, I want to emphasize that education is NOT just a matter of being able to regurgitate information spoon fed to the learner!  If you are not familiar with Bloom’s Taxonomy, here are a few charts (chart  and a more detailed chart 2 and chart 3) to help you start to understand what it means to really learn.  

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Back to Eden Garden Bloopers!

By: Trish Corlewcomment

2/5/13  Back to Eden Gardening.  


We are all getting so excited to start our Back to Eden gardens!!  We worked on them the very first pretty day we could and got one bed completed (see Garden tab).  However, in our zeal to get the rest of the area around our pool completed, we neglected to think about how far we were going to have to bring or throw the wood mulch.  So instead of doing the inside of the garden area completely and then moving to the outside, we cleaned up and tilled both areas…  AND, since it has been raining like crazy, here is what we have outside the fence:

Outside muddy edited

 

So there is no hope of backing up to this fence line and throwing the mulch in for the inner bed.  Oh well… “live and learn” 🙂

 

 

Until next time…

Homemade Yogurt Thickner

By: Trish Corlew4 Comments

Making Yogurt… NOT!

We are back in milk!!  Woo Hoo!  The very first thing we have been doing (besides drinking our fresh milk) is saving some of the cream off to make butter.  The Second thing we have been doing is planning to make yogurt.  Last year we attempted the whole heating pad and cooler experiment to making yogurt and we were just not that impressed.  If it is going to be effective, time wise and management wise, it has to be half way easy to implement and do regularly.  So I bought us a yogurt maker!  We are all excited and ready to make yogurt and go to pull our powdered milk (to add consistency and firmness to the yogurt)… and here is what I discovered:

Dry Milk edited

    And for those that are as blind as I am, that reads best before Feb 2010!

So, live and learn… and plan better!  LOL!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homeschool Schedule and Daily Checklist

By: Trish Corlewcomment

There are some tools, forms, etc. that I use in our homeschool that I thought might be beneficial to others.  So, I’m sharing them below.  Some of these are so integral to how we homeschool!

Picture of Oldest Son's Schedule

Picture of Oldest Son’s Schedule

For each of our children, I created a schedule that gives each of my boys a visual of their day.  I am sharing them as Word documents so you can use this form to adjust, modify for your own use!

Our boys like to have a checklist to check off each day.  They feel it keeps them on target and on track.  After they complete the daily checklist, they turn it into me.  I then write it in my calendar and I save each of these slips of paper in my annual homeschool organizer.  This is one of those integral “can’t do without” pieces of our daily homeschool routine.  All of the daily schedules are in one document and I have saved it in Word so you can modify it for your needs. Daily Checklist All.

Daily Checklist

 

Until Next Time….

 

 

Back to Eden Garden Started

By: Trish Corlewcomment

At the end of January 2013, we put our builders paper down and shoveled our wood mulch on top. This past week we have had massive amounts of rain, but our wood mulch held!

 

Wood Mulch Holding even with the Monsoons

Wood Mulch Holding even with the Monsoons

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are starting to work on the next area to be papered and mulched.  We have pulled out all of the raised beds, used the weed eater on all the weeds, tilled the high areas where the dirt was and are left with a muddy mess since it’s been raining so much.  We should have waited before tilling this area … alas, did I mention what the name of our farm is and why 🙂  Live and Learn!  

To Be Papered and Mulched 1

 

Evidence of the amount of rain… notice the pier is about under water!

Overflowing Pond

 

We will continue to give you updates as we start this new phase of our adventure!

Until next time…

Homemade Ricotta Cheese Recipe

By: Trish Corlew5 Comments

2.21.13  Ricotta Cheese 2.0

Today I tried the other recipe I mentioned below.  It did not produce quite as much cheese, but it does have a slight orange flavor.  I am sure I will use this recipe for a recipe I found on Food Network for Ricotta Orange Pound Cake with Strawberries!

Ingredients were similar to the other recipe:  

  • 1 Gallon Whole Milk
  • 4 oranges Juiced
  • 1 Teaspoon Cheese Salt

Milk small pot1.  In a large pot (we used a smaller stainless steel pot this time), heat the milk to between 185 – 195 degrees Fahrenheit.  DO NOT BOIL!  Stir often to prevent scorching.

 

 

 

 

OJ in Milk22.   Once at temperature, add OJ.  I still did not get curds after adding more fresh squeezed OJ, so I resorted to adding the citric acid (about 3/4 teaspoon).

 

 

 

 

Curds separated3.  As soon as the curds and whey separate (this time the curds were on top), take the pot off the heat and cover.  Allow to sit, undisturbed for 10 minutes.  (I almost forgot to get pictures of this step… I had put the lid on and was moving it off the heat when I remembered)!

 

 

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And the winner is…. which Logo do you like best?

By: Trish Corlew7 Comments

So, I’ve looked at wayyyyy too many logos over the last week and they are all starting to run together!  So, I thought I would get you guys to help me decide on the logo!  So here goes… I’m going to put my top 5 logos below with a number above each potential logo.  Please choose your favorite one and tell me which one in a comment below or on FB or Pinterest!  Thank you in advance for helping!!!

Potential Logo #1 Below:

 

Live and Learn Farm

 

 

 

Notice for this one the Capital “C” in the center (Corlew is our last name) and that there are 5 leaves (5 of us)

 

 

 

 

Potential Logo #2 Below:

Logo Potential #2

Don’t you know my hubby is loving this one?  LOL!  But, I (Trish) am the one that is primarily updating the blog, so it can look like me, right?  Oh well, I still think this is adorable… but not sure how exactly it works with “Live and Learn Farm” 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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WordPress and The Non-techy!

By: Trish Corlewcomment

blog words

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This blog thing is NOT as easy as it looks!   I have never been extremely technical, but this experience has left me feeling like a kindergartner in a nuclear physics class!  Honestly, I have learned so much in such a short period of time, but I am still a newbie!  This is part of the life-long learning philosophy that we are modeling for the boys!  If we expect them to approach learning with an open and hungry attitude, we must remember they are watching us for how we react in our own learning opportunities.  Do we, as adults, expect more from our children than we are able to give ourselves?  If we are honest, the answer would be YES!  And then we usually try to figure out how to explain away the guilt we are now feeling for not being the role models we want to be all the time 🙂  In reality, even in these moments, we are teaching our children.  We need to learn to laugh at ourselves … lighten up!  It does not have to be perfect (in fact, it can’t be perfect)!  I’ll point out a few flaws I’ve seen on this blog that I’ve been aggressively working to figure out but they still have me completely stumped:

  • Double menus… notice there is a menu running at the top of the page and another one below the logo.
  • Speaking of the logo, notice the white around it?  Will be working with Adobe to get that corrected (have I mentioned I don’t know that package at all… LOL).
  • The watermark on the logo.  THAT one is getting remedied this week.  Just trying to figure out which logo I like best… I will probably conduct a poll on that and ask for your input!
  • The Paths of Exploration page is supposed to be a child to the Curriculum page… but it is hiding it.  Still working on that one too!
  • The Classics page is supposed to be right before the Contact Us! page.  I know what I am supposed to do to reorder the pages… but it’s not working.  Still researching this one too.

See!  Life and Learning is messy, chaotic, hectic, and not linear!  So, we just need to accept it and show our children how to walk out learning in a messy, chaotic, hectic world 🙂  In the meantime, if anyone knows how to fix these things, let me know!!!

Until next time……

What exactly is an Asteroid anyway?

By: Trish Corlewcomment

Meteor explodes over central Russia, 500 people hurt – Yahoo! News.

Nasa Asteroid 3

Well, it appears another asteroid story is big news.  So, we need to be giving our children a refresher on asteroids (or teaching them what they are, if they do not already know).  We used Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Astronomy book with lots of Montessori Solar System Works from Montessori Etc and from Montessori for Everyone.  

Let’s start with what an asteroid is… it’s a space rock orbiting the sun.  Many were formerly short-term comets that had ice on them.  But as they flew past the sun, the ice melted and the core was left, a rock, an asteroid. Lots of folks get asteroids and meteoroids confused.  The primary difference is size.  Asteroids are larger than meteoroids (usually larger than a football field).  What are asteroids made of?  Per Apologia Astronomy, they are made material like iron, rock and carbon.  When asteroids enter our atmosphere, they begin to burn up (just like a meteoroid and comet).  And when it hits earth it is called a meteorite.  There are millions out in space!

Here are several great sites to help children understand what asteroids are:

Ask An Astronomer for kids

Astronomy.com 

Lunar Post

My children just learn a topic better if there is some hands-on aspect of the assignment.  Here are two great asteroid activities for children and one is edible 🙂  :

Edible Asteroids

Model an Asteroid

I hope this has helped you get some ideas as to how to teach your children about asteroids!  Leave a comment and link to your activities so we can see how they turned out!!!

Until next time…