Category Archives: Farm School

Our family doesn’t homeschool full-time so we call our committed to home learning and hands-on learning throughout our days farm school. From picking up construction and engineering skills in our chores; to hands-on service opportunties; to spontaneous nature study; our days are filled with books, movies, and moments that we use to enrich our crew’s love of life and learning!

Key topics: Book lists and reviews; family field trips; history lessons and unit study ideas; learning with movies and audiobooks; nature study and wildlife experiences; service projects and community outreach opportunities.

History, Adventure, and Treasure…The Ultimate Guide to Studying Pirates

Posted on by July 7, 2017 6
History, Adventure, Treasure...the Ultimate Guide to Studying PIRATES. A fun family unit study via Walking in High Cotton

In the spring I mentioned that we would have two family unit studies this summer. One is our Astronomy unit study–which is continuing casually through the whole summer and has been very fun so far! (I’ll have an update on one of our projects soon.) The other topic I chose this year is Pirates. I had no idea they would overlap so much, but space pirates is totally a thing so it’s worked out great! The history of Pirates is an interesting topic because it can involve a lot of … Continue Reading…

The Quest for Truth Sci-Fi Series for Middle Grade Readers…A Review and GIVEAWAY!

Posted on by May 26, 2017  
Quest for Truth sci-fi series for middle graders by Brock Eastman--A Review and Giveaway! via Walking in High Cotton

We’ve continued with our slow, steady, and FUN family Astronomy study this month. So far we’ve already seen and documented several moon phases including a full moon and a new moon; visible Jupiter; visible Mercury, and learned to recognize the Big and Little Dipper.  We’ve also watched several space and sci-fi movies as a family, including a special at-home family movie night presentation of Rogue One (which my kiddos hadn’t seen yet) and a splurge on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 in the theater. We’ve been keeping a list of … Continue Reading…

Space and Science-Fiction Adventure Books for 8-12 Year Olds

Posted on by May 6, 2017 6
Space and Science Fiction Adventure Books for 8-12 yo via Walking in High Cotton

When outlining our simple family unit studies, I mentioned that I like to use a fiction read-aloud on the topic as the backbone of our unit. Then I laid out our summer-long Astronomy unit study for you and there were no fiction books! I struggled with finding fiction books in the space and sci-fi genre because it’s not one that I’m very familiar with, personally. It took a lot of searching, chatting with our librarian, and reading reviews on Amazon to find a list of books to consider that meet … Continue Reading…

Summer Star-Gazing…A Simple Family Unit Study on Astronomy

Posted on by May 18, 2017 8
A Simple Family Unit Study on Astronomy for Fun Summer Learning! via Walking in High Cotton

Have you gotten your FREE Summer Unit Study Planner? I’ve been hard at work with mine, laying out plans for an Astronomy unit study and a Pirates/Maritime History unit study for the family this summer. I’ve put quite a bit of time into gathering resources and planning activities because I enjoy it. We don’t get much for family vacations and holidays around here with the farm to keep an eye on. So we have to make up our own, local, staycation-type fun for the summer. I’m going to share my resource … Continue Reading…

How to Plan a Family Unit Study for Fun Summer Learning

Posted on by April 26, 2017  
FREE Summer Unit Study Planner set at Walking in High Cotton (2017)

A book, a movie, and a field trip about the same topic equal an easy summer family unit study!  Summer brain drain–ugh! For 3 months the kids run around from camp to craft to sleepover wanting fun and games and play time all day, every day because SCHOOL’S OUT so we don’t have to do any more of “that learning stuff.” Um…not around here! So what’s a busy, working mom to do besides frantically shuffle the kids from one STEM camp to another and continue to spend her nights tracking … Continue Reading…

John Deere, the American Inventor and the Man Behind the Tractor Company

Posted on by March 22, 2017 2
John Deere, the Man Behind the Tractor Company. An American Inventor from the 1800s, who developed the "Plow that Broke the Plains." A list of video and book resources to study John Deere, the man. via Walking in High Cotton

We tend to think of John Deere as tractors and green hats and forget that John Deere was an actual person. A person who never built, or even saw, a real tractor in his life. Speedracer had to do a famous American project one year so the whole family got a big dose of John-Deere-the-real-person for a few weeks. It turns out there’s a lot of biographical information available about John Deere, but it can be hard to get your hands on because it’s buried under all the tractor books! … Continue Reading…

Bald Eagle Encounters…Bald Eagle Study Resources

Posted on by March 18, 2017 2
Bald Eagle Encounters with a BIG list of (mostly FREE) Bald Eagle Study Resources. via Walking in High Cotton #homeschool #unitstudy #naturestudy

I’m out the door in the morning the same time the boys head to the end of the driveway to catch the school bus. When they get picked up, I head to work. So we’re all heading out the other day and the Cowboy comes racing back in, “Mom, where’s your phone?!” Between my laptop, purse, lunch bag, and coat, I had no idea. He stormed through the house, grabbed it and headed back out. We had a Bald Eagle. In the driveway. I dropped my pile of junk by … Continue Reading…

Using Sermon Notes for Kids in Church…Busy Book of Sermon Notes for Young Ladies Review

Posted on by March 18, 2017 1

Our church recently had First Fruits Revival (hear the messages), which means we were in church several evenings in a row. It was a good chance for the crew to start using their new Sermon Notes books that we got them for Christmas. I posted about them on Facebook after the first night and got a lot of questions, so I thought I’d share some more detail here. It can be a challenge to get children to behave in “big church” as we call the congregational service–as opposed to “children’s church” … Continue Reading…

Visiting the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia

Posted on by July 7, 2017  
Visiting the Mariners' Museum in Hampton Virginia (via Walking in High Cotton}

Most of our Christmas/New Year’s holiday this year was kinda drizzly and mucky, so Mr. Fix-It and I decided to take the crew to the Mariners’ Museum one of those last dreary, stir-crazy days. It’s a museum and park with trails and outdoor displays as well, but we stayed inside. The first thing I’ll say (since the majority of my readers are frugally-minded) is that I thought it was a little pricey, and I really think the 3D movie tickets should have been included, or at least discounted with the … Continue Reading…

On the Trail of the Beaver, Part 2…the Daily Farm Adventures {112}

Posted on by March 18, 2017  

So on Monday I started to share how we spent all of last weekend scrounging through the woods on the tree farm looking for beavers. They’re damaging and flooding out young pine trees–which is the main product on the tree farm. {smile} But our adventure stopped just short of finding the new beaver hut… Well, here’s what we found–not just a den, but an entire new ecosystem! There are three different dams built to create a two-tier pond system.   Of course, Coal the Cattle Dog had to immediately jump … Continue Reading…

On the Trail of the Beaver, Part 1…the Daily Farm Adventures {111}

Posted on by March 18, 2017  

You might think that tree farming is about the easiest farming there is. I did at first. I mean, you’re growing pine trees, and surely they don’t need much supervising…right? Wrong. For crying out loud, sometimes it feels like growing those trees takes more work than raising our human children! {smile} You have to cut, mow, burn, plant, pray for rain…mow, cut, thin, spray…and then the predators…rabbits, mice, rats, voles, disease…apparently everything that doesn’t eat meat loves to eat trees! And now beavers. I wrote before that we’ve found some beaver damage … Continue Reading…

Sign of the Beaver…the Daily Farm Adventures {103}

Posted on by March 9, 2017  

No, not the book by Elizabeth George Speare (although we like that too!). I’m talking about the real thing. Brown. Wet. Big flat tail. He was here… And here… We’ve got beaver problems at the tree farm. We’re not immediately ones to campaign against the local wildlife. We try to have a live-and-let-live philosophy. We only target wildlife that is specifically damaging our resources. For example, we know there’s coyotes around here–but none have ever bothered our stock, so we don’t mind sharing space with them right now. We’ve also lost chickens, … Continue Reading…

50+ Resources for Learning About War Dogs and K-9 Heroes

Posted on by March 9, 2017  
Resources for Learning about War Dogs and K9 Heroes {at Walking in High Cotton} #homeschooling #military #wardogs #heroes

Have you seen the movie Max, about a Marine Corps dog originally stationed in Afghanistan? As a boy momma, with an equally adventure and animal-loving girl, it was right up our alley for family movie night. We enjoyed it! A little predictable? Yes. But still a quality family movie. And it sparked a lot of interest from the crew about military working dogs. The boys are already crazy about anything military and the Ladybug loves everything dogs right now so this angle on their favorite topics was very fresh for them, … Continue Reading…

Kids Need More Than Book-Learning

Posted on by June 7, 2017 2
Kids Need More than Book Learning...I've become strongly opposed to homework. I need those hours back to teach them all the OTHER things they need to know! {via www.walkinginhighcotton.net}

Ok, we’re not even a month into the school year and I’m already over the homework. Sheesh. I’m just the Momma, it’s not even my homework! And the more I read and think and pray, the more oppose to homework I am, except for two cases… The child is not being diligent and getting their classwork finished and has to bring it home to work on it. This would go hand-in-hand with a student with a specific learning challenge that needs extra work. (Um, we have one of those. Maybe two. … Continue Reading…

The Night-Stalker…the Daily Farm Adventures {66}

Posted on by March 18, 2017  

Well, I posted on Monday asking how everyone felt about pictures here on the blog–do you mind my sometimes blurry, sometimes grainy, sometimes shady pictures? Or would you prefer for me to find only good photography to share (which would probably not be my own!!). All the comments and emails I got were “yes, we like your pictures!” so here’s some more! {smile} I mentioned on Monday that we’ve got an owl in the neighborhood that seems to have made himself quite comfortable and is settling in. Well, he’s taken … Continue Reading…