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How To Build a Water and Mineral Stand for Your Homestead

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There’s always big projects and small projects on the homestead. It often bothers me that we have a 1,000 things going on and nothing is ever started and finished in one big swing. But I’ve learned that the farm is ALWAYS bigger than the man and it’s best to be flexible if you want to get anything done. And every once in a while you find a small project that you can knock out quickly and move on. Our recent mobile water and mineral stand project was one. Wood pallets used … Continue Reading…

How to Make a Paper Mache Shark for Shark Week

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If you’ve been following us on Facebook, you’ve probably seen some of our Shark Week activities. We’re doing a summer unit study on Marine Biology (along with our unit on Archaeology) and Discovery Shark Week has been a great fit for some hands-on family fun learning! We’ve had some ocean-themed food, some shark games, and our big group project of building a paper mache shark! This is a very simple project with no special supplies needed. We had everything on hand already. I’ve shared it here in a lot of … Continue Reading…

Pros and Cons of Mobile Livestock Shelters on the Small Farm

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We’ve been in maintenance mode the last couple weeks with the nice weather–when we aren’t running around with end-of-the-school-year and beginning of summer stuff! One of the big-ticket items we’re dealing with this year is our large barn. And while repainting, and re-shingling, and replacing boards, and putting on gutters, we’re having the never-ending conversation about the pros and cons of mobile livestock shelters. Now, our “large barn” is not all that large to some folks, but it’s our biggest and most solid structure. Its where we put everyone during … Continue Reading…

Resources and Ideas for a Family Unit Study on Archaeology

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Well, the school year is starting to wrap up. Now that our Spring Break road trip is behind us, I’m focused on pulling together some unit study materials for the summer. Our family topics this year are marine biology and archaeology, and this year we’re really focusing on professions in those fields. We want the kids to start seeing and understanding what following your passion really looks like, day-to-day. What jobs do people do if they love history or ocean animals? Archaeology started out as a bit of a stretch for … Continue Reading…

How to Help Baby Birds That Fall Out of Their Nest

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If you follow us on Facebook for Instagram, you probably saw we have a baby bird living in my flower pot at the moment. For the love of green-grass, there is ALWAYS a bird “thing” going on around here! {smile} Whether it’s rescuing turkeys or bluebirds in a shoebox or a swallow almost drowning in the water trough, sometimes it seems like there is a constant parade of little feathers through my living room. And don’t even get me started on the chickens…Thankfully I just got new planters for the front flowerbeds, … Continue Reading…

Visiting Fort Boonesborough State Park in Kentucky

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About 2 weeks before leaving for our road trip, the boys and I watched the premiere of the new Men Who Built America–Frontiersmen series. Episode 1 was about Daniel Boone leading the first group of permanent settlers through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. The settlement was called Fort Boonesborough, and it played an interesting role in the Revolutionary War. Since we were getting ready to leave for our trip, and Kentucky was already on our route, we Googled “Fort Boonesborough.” Turns out there’s a state park (with camping!) at the … Continue Reading…

How to UnPlan Your Next Family Road Trip

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Our recent spring break road trip adventure was 10 days and 4,000 miles together. We had a great time and are already plotting our next trip! I say “plotting” and not “planning” because this was a very (very, very!) loosely “planned” trip and I’m sure the next one will be too. Our family likes to call our NOT-AT-ALL-PLANNING style of planning “being flexible.” {smile} Everyone keeps asking me how in the world I planned our awesome trip…well, in my mind, I didn’t. We laid out a very basic route with a few … Continue Reading…

DIY 50 State Passports…with FREE Printable

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One of the special projects I did when planning our spring break trip was making fun 50 States passports for the kiddos to get “stamped” as we traveled. It wasn’t that hard, and I’ve got a free printable for you if you’d like to try it yourself. I found a lot of ideas and a few awesome templates on Pinterest, but I didn’t want to mimic a real international passport too much. The Ladybug just got back from a mission trip and we spent a lot of time emphasizing (and re-emphasizing!) … Continue Reading…

10 Road Trip Car Activities for the Whole Family

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At the beginning of our series of Road Trip posts, I mentioned that we are really looking forward to a fun, relaxed, vacation-feel to our travels. So most of our planning focused on two points… #1. Fun, simple activities while we’re IN the car! #2. Not being IN the car the whole time! I already shared about the individual road trip travel activity cases that we made each kiddo for some of our car time. But in our family, we have a couple of reluctant readers, who just also happen … Continue Reading…

Family Road Trip Journal Using Smashbooks…Free Printable Travel Journal Page

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Did you read that we’re going on a family road trip? Yep, and we’re excited about all kinds of great family moments. (And probably a few squabbles that we’ll live through just fine as well.) My normal operating mode would be to make each of the kiddos their own travel journal to fill out along the way and fact sheets and worksheets for them to do while we go along. There are tons of great free travel journal printable ones on Pinterest like this one, this one, and this one. And … Continue Reading…

DIY Personalized Travel Sticker for Family Road Trips

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Have you seen those cute, vintage luggage and travel stickers? I don’t mean luggage tags (we have those already!) I mean the tourist-y collectible stickers with bright images and place names on them. You slap them on your suitcase, or your laptop or notebook, and share your adventures with the world! They’re also a great little souvenir or memento from your travels. It seemed like a fun idea to add to our spring break family road trip plan. I like the way it takes the idea of a “family vacation” to a … Continue Reading…

Family Road Trip Travel Activity Cases for Kids

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So…we’ll be spending the week of Spring Break traveling in the truck…with the kiddos…for 3,000 miles…YEAH! We actually ARE really excited about our family road trip vacation–in case that first sentence came across sorta sarcastic. I wrote it like that on purpose, though, because a lot of folks really do react like that to the idea of 10 days of travel, in a car, with 3 kids, basically going nowhere. But we’ve put a lot of thought into making this a fun adventure since we came up with the idea … Continue Reading…

Road Trips to Nowhere Just for Family Fun

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So, in just a week or two we’re loading the crew up in the truck and heading out on a 3,000-mile journey to nowhere. Sound crazy? Which part? The 3 kids in a truck for 3,000 miles in 8 days, or the journey to nowhere? {smile} We’re excited. It’s been a long time since we took a family vacation. Ok, we pretty much never have. We travel to visit family and call it a vacation. We go to parties, family reunions, the beach, all that family stuff–which we totally love, … Continue Reading…

How to Build a Pirate Ship from Corks

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We’re a little behind around here, but we wrapped up our summer unit study on pirates (our astronomy unit study is continuing because we’re just loving it too much to stop!) and I wanted to share some of the fun projects we did! One of our hands-on projects was to build a pirate ship that would really float from corks! Flexibility has become our family motto! With relaxed learning plans, there’s no need to feel behind or rushed. If it takes longer, that’s ok. You just keep fitting it in, … Continue Reading…

How to Have Real Food for Dinner on Crazy Busy Weeknights

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We have been in the midst of a very busy season around here. The kiddos have a summer full of family visits, sports practice, and fun camp experiences, against a background of our two full-time jobs and managing the homestead. I’d love to be able to say that eating a healthy dinner in the midst of all that running around is our number one priority, but can I be honest for a moment? Our #1 family wellness goal in this season has become just not eating fast food every night! … Continue Reading…