FREE Book Friday from Treats by Tanya

 This post does not contain Affiliate Links.

    Do you love free stuff? Of course you do! We all do! How about some free 'How To' books. As a amateur prepper, I am constantly trying to cram all the 'How To' in my brain and then trying things out here and there. It's exhausting! I would love to buy a bunch of books and manuals and guides and cook books.. But as a family that tries to live within their means, we do not have that kind of money! So free, is awesome! And when I found out my notebook had a Kindle Cloud Reader App, I was ecstatic! I don't have a lot of time to look for free books, I've picked up a free one here, another there. I had a couple books but did not really get into it until yesterday. 
     
     One of my favorite blogs is Treats By Tanya and I visit it often because she has a lot of great free resources for homeschooling. One day, she posted about her 'Free Book Friday' and I decided to go find out what that was all about. I think it is one of the only posts I have never read and I can't believe I have not looked at the page before now! Tanya makes it easy by finding the free books and posting them for you! Various books grace the page including books on backyard chickens, prepping, homesteading, lessons for boosting reading fluency, and chapter books for kids! 
     

    Head on over to Treats By Tanya and get your FREE books before they are no longer FREE! I love that word! FREEEEEEEEE! 

Disclosure: I was not paid or compensated by Treats by Tanya. I just enjoy her blog and especially her Free Book Fridays. However, I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online. 

The FFA Hens

This post does not contain Affiliate Links.

   
     Finally got a few photos (that are a little better) of my FFA hens. Their names are 'Prissy' and 'HeShe.' Funny story, I was writing this post to see what everyone thought about the chicken 'HeShe.' Then we had some strange developments and I am pretty sure we have our answer now.
     We have actually had this chicken for several months now. It always seemed a little off, but we never questioned if it was really a hen, until a little over a month ago. 'HeShe' has always been an ugly chicken. Her face just looked mean and grouchy. She has a gimp leg that turns in a little, and she does not like to walk, run, or stand for very long. Her feathers never really laid down nicely, and at first we thought she might have been our Roo's favorite, (hint, hint, wink, wink) because she always looked harassed. Then suddenly, Roo stopped messing with her. Completely! He turned all of his attention on our Prissy Hen, causing a huge tear under her wing. Now I am going to skip over to talk about the eggs we have been getting. But first, check out the difference between Prissy and HeSHe.

HeSHe

Prissy and HeShe

At this point, we as a family have wondered, 
"Why is HeShe looking so much like a rooster?" 

That's when we named her 'HeShe.'

     Okay, now back to the eggs! HeShe couldn't be a rooster, we were getting way too many eggs for just Prissy to be laying them. One day we had 2 perfect little hard shells and 3 rubber eggs. The hard shells were laid in the nesting box, while the rubber eggs were scattered all over the hen house. We had seen Prissy use the nesting box, so we were confident she was the one laying the perfect little eggs. So who was laying the other, rubber eggs if not HeShe? 

      We were happy with the eggs we were getting and we were getting a lot of eggs for just 2 little hens. I figured HeShe would eventually get the hang of it and start laying normally. After all, these were extras from an FFA Meat/Show group of chickens. I was told they would never lay, never mate, never be good for anything except for meat. Also, they were prone to suddenly freak out, fly up in flapping wings of fury style and just die. I added egg shells and oyster shells to their diet in hopes this would help. 

     We started with 7 chickens. 6 hens and one rooster. Our Roo was glorious. We knew which one was the rooster from the beginning. Within a month after getting him he started to crow in the morning. He stood tall and proud, showing us his 'cock walk' often. We loved him. 

     But as rooster do, he mated constantly with our hen, Prissy. To the point he was hurting her. Not his fault. I had researched you needed a minimum of 6 hens to keep a rooster happy. At the time, however, these were just meat chickens I was to butcher for our meat. They were not supposed to lay eggs, or try to mate, or live past 3-4 months. Our other chickens were not old enough to put into the big coop with these chickens. So poor Prissy was 'harassed' on a regular basis. To the point she was ripped under her wing so bad I was sure we were going to have to cull her. Roo might have made it past this point, if it was not for the fact he started to attack my brother in law (super funny) and my 18 yr old son (still funny.) But, when he started attacking my 10 yr old daughter, that is when we decided Roo would have to go to freezer camp. It was a sad day for my daughter and I. Even though he was attacking her, we still loved him. But we knew, this was not a petting zoo, these were not supposed to be pets, this was food for our family. 

RIP my Roo! 

     Now we still had the problem of HeShe. Is it a boy or a girl? Her body was all hen. Big, fat, plump hen! She is short, she walks a bit funny, but definitely like a hen. My daughter wants me to also add Prissy and HeSHe both come running to the hen house like a couple of airplanes trying to take off. :) Roo did not run the same way. HeShe's comb and waddles were getting longer and darker, and looked more like Roo. Her feathers around her neck were becoming longer and wispier looking like a rooster. Slowly her tail feathers started to part and look fluffier. What was going on? OH! and right before Roo was sent to 'freezer camp' they had a scuffle only seen out of the corner of our eyes, 'Did HeShe just try to mate with Prissy? Is that why Roo attacked?' WHAT IS GOING ON HERE????

So tell me, is this a hen or a rooster? 

     And why would it have taken MONTHS for him to even look like a rooster? MONTHS! He started out just not being as pretty as our other hens, then grumpy looking. Then in came extra comb and waddles. Lastly, the feather change... So is this a hen or a rooster? I have showed HeShe's picture on a chicken group I am in on Facebook. Consensus was it was a hen that just had more male qualities. But I still wonder.. At least I did wonder. The morning after Roo's demise, I walked out, saddened by the fact that my Roo would not great me with his morning crow, only to be greeted by the morning crow of HeShe! (Now named Frankie) Has anyone ever had this happen? Has anyone ever heard of a FAKER chicken? 

     Now we have had to remove 'Frankie' from the rest of the flock to allow Prissy time to heal and let the younger chickens get used to the coop. We are not sure what we are going to do. I think he will meet the same fate of Roo, because we are pretty sure our new chicks have a boy or 2 in the flock. These will be a nicer breed of laying hens. It kinda makes Frankie useless except to be dinner. That was the whole reason we got them.  Prissy will be the last surviving FFA hen soon. I just hope she keeps laying the big beautiful eggs she has been laying, (and I secretly hope Frankie lays an egg in his pen, rubber or not, so he can stay too.) 

 Our laying chickens! 

 

 

 

Prissy is not sure what to think of the newbies in her house! 

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online. 

Portfolios and Journals

  

This post contains Affiliate Links. 

        I have received a lot of messages asking to hear more about my daughter's portfolio and journal for science. She has a journal and folder for every subject, but, these two are our favorites. Everything plant related we have studied goes into them, although, her science spiral is for everything science related. Let us take a look inside!

 She was very proud of her cover artwork.

Diagram from www.uic.edu

We talked about the parts of a tomato plant and them drew her own plant on a separate piece of paper. Then she labeled them with help of the first photo. Both papers went in to her Plant Portfolio.

After a nature walk, she came in and made leaf rubbings to study the different types of veins each leaf had. 

She chose the leaf she liked best, made a leaf rubbing of it, and then labeled the parts of the leaves.

When we planted our tomato plants, she measured then every other day and then wrote her findings on the Excel paper she created. 

     Also in her portfolio are the different work sheets and printable information she learned about.

Information on plants from 'Instructor Web'

A Quiz from NeoK12 she printed out. 

    

   Inside of her 'Science Notebook' are journaling questions, written notes from books we read from the library that she did not want to forget, recorded observations and drawings. For example, when we were doing our 'Winter Tomato' experiment. Not only did she put her measurements in the Excel table, she also drew and wrote about the progress and growth of the plant. 

Water Filtration Project

 Learning about Container Gardens

How to Grow a Garden

   Portfolios and Notebooks are not just for science. They are great when you are working on a 'Theme" study unit and are pulling from various sources. Math, literature, reading, and geography can also have their own spiral notebook and folder.

At the beginning of the school season, our local Big Box Store has these and other supplies for super cheap! Stock up!

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online. 

Parts Of A Plant- The Stem

This post contains Affiliate Links.

    If you are going to garden, you need to know about the parts of a plant and their functions. This lesson is on the function of plant stems. 

Celery Stalk Experiment

What you will need:

• 1 stalk of celery, cut diagonally at the bottom
• 1 Tall cup filled half full of water
• Food coloring of your choice (I asked her to choose what color she thought would show up the best against the green of the plant. She chose red)
• Peanut Butter (for a snack later, this is optional :) )

Step 1: Choose your piece of celery for your experiment. Cut diagonally along the bottom. Please supervise your child closely if they are cutting it themselves. 

Step 2: Add enough food coloring into your cup to turn the water a nice dark color. Put the stalk inside the cup, cut side down and the leaf side up.

Step 3:   Allow your celery to sit a while to give the stalk time to soak in and pull the colored water through it's veins. We let ours sit for 2 days to get the maximum absorption. Can you see the red veins in the celery?  

Step 5: Allow your child to dissect their celery stalks and make their own inferences. It is not so appetizing at this point. She really enjoyed taking it apart though, and she was able to see what parts were the veins and how they traveled. 

Step 5: Have a snack! My daughter decided she did not like celery and peanut butter. She got out the ranch dressing and ate hers with it. I, on the other hand, almost took down half a jar of peanut butter with my celery! OOOPS! (If you or someone you are doing this lesson with are allergic to peanut butter, try some cream cheese on it! Do not eat peanut butter if you have a peanut allergy.)

     Now I suppose you are wondering how to make this lesson less preschool/lower grade and more of a higher level of thinking lesson. It's easy! The 'veins' in the celery actually have really cool names and their own functions. Xylem and phloem are the vascular tissues found in celery and other plants that work just like veins do in our bodies. Also in the function of transporting water and nutrients throughout the plant are more scientific terms like: Translocation, Adhesion, Cohesion, Transpiration and Stomata. Now the best way I have found to get children to really understand these terms and functions is to have them look them up themselves. 

Other brainstorming activities: 

• Find other plants you can do this same experiment on like roses and carnations. If you use a white flower, you can change the colors of the petals. 
• Start a 'Scrap Garden' from the end of your celery plant. 

• Draw the end of the celery and label the parts of the stem. 
• If your child does not have one already, start a spiral notebook to be their "Scientific Discoveries" journal. We use ours a lot to journal the progress of our plants and science experiments. It is also a place for her to reflect upon the activities we have done. 

• We also have portfolios that we put our loose papers and work sheets in. She also puts in any good info she finds and prints from the web. My daughter makes her own graphs and charts on MS Excel to go with our lessons. Those graphs go in here after she fills them out during our experiments. Want to know more about using portfolios and notebooks? Click HERE.

• Go to the library and check out books about gardening with kids and parts of a plant. 
• Youtube has a lot of great videos on the subject as well. 

Check out our other 'Parts of a Plant' lessons in this series! 
Parts Of A Plant: Seeds
Parts Of A Plant: Tendrils


(And if I can figure out how to get the worksheets we created to change formats for the different computer, we will post those too! :)

In the meantime, here are some websites that have great information on this topic! (These are NOT affiliate links)

Science Fair Adventure

Biology For Kids

Education.com

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online. 

Guess what this is for!

   This post contains Affiliate Links.

      My daughter is so excited to start her next 'homesteading' project! Can you guess what this big bad boy is for? Yup! She is going to do her own laundry the old fashioned way!

     I really can't imagine a kid being excited about doing their own laundry. Especially, doing her own laundry by hand. She is 10. She should be crossing her arms and looking at me like, 'Seriously Mom?' But no, my kid is excited!
     I have been running out of cool, original ideas to do to go along with homesteading the old fashioned way. We have been reading 'Little House In The Big Woods' and are enjoying hearing about them preserving all of the meats and food for the winter. (But we are not at that level yet.) We were going to make corn cob dolls, and saved all of the corn husks to make a doll. However, when they dried, they curled up. (Going to have to do some more research on how to do it properly.)  We don't have the means to make bullets, or the skills to play the fiddle. She has made butter numerous times with me,  AND in public school, with heavy whipping cream. If we make fresh butter again, it's going to be from fresh cream from a cow or goat. I don't have access to either of those at this time, as well.... 
    So I was sitting at work, racking my brains for the next project, when I thought, "Ask Mrs. C!" Mrs. C is my boss and quite the educator herself with nearly 40 years experience! She thought for a minute and first came up with the same tried and true homesteading skills lessons most use. When I told her about the corn cob doll, she understood I was looking for something different. Her face lite up as she said, "I have my mother's wash board." WAHOOO!!!! 
    Later that night, I asked my daughter if she knew how people used to wash their clothes before washing machines. "I don't know what they are called, but you do this with them," she said moving her hands up and down in a scrubbing motion. "And you use one of those silver tub things!" 
"Yes, you scrub them on a wash board that is inside of a wash tub. Guess who has a wash board?"
      My daughter's eyes grew big. "Who?" 
     "Mrs. Carolyn, and she is going to let us borrow it."
      My daughter clapped her hands and squealed. "Do I get to make my own soap, too?"
     "If you want to!"
     "I do!' 
     Joyously, she danced around singing a happy tune of 'I get to wash my own clothes!' Until suddenly, she was right beside me, wide eyed and asking, "How much are we going to SAVE?"  This kid cracks me up! :)

UPDATE: This ended up being a 3 part series, with this being the first part. It's Washing Day is the second post and explains why we did not make our own laundry detergent. The third post is Washing Clothes The Old Fashioned Way where she finally gets to wash her own clothes. Make sure to read them all to get the whole story! 

Do you have a favorite DIY Laundry Detergent Recipe? We would love to hear about it!

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online.