We are loving the fall weather around here. Each morning we go out for Outdoor Hour and explore God's creations, it is the best time of the day. Because we are studying Botany this year, using Exploring Creation with Botany, we have been combining our science studies with Outdoor Hour. This week we dissected a flower and we were all amazed, nature is so cool! We used Notebooking Pages Publisher to custom design our own pages for each lesson, along with the Wildflowers, Weeds, & Garden Flowers set that also has a bonus Trees and Plants pages. Today we are using the Parts of a Flower page from the Flowers set. Reading the text from Lesson 3 we learned about each part of the flower, identified it on the flower and labeled it on our notebooking page. The Little's even love to join us for Botany, I used the unlabeled flower page for them and they taped the parts we identified over the parts on the picture. Needless to say we went through a dozen flowers or so, good thing Little Woman's petunia patch was overflowing with specimens and we let a little patch of sunflowers go crazy in the back corner. We used both of these flowers for identification purposes. It is amazing how you can read something from a book and think, "Wow, that is pretty cool." Then you actually look, touch, smell and have a hands on experience with what you read about and it is a whole new learning experience, you connect with that subject and have a desire to learn more. For more information about Notebooking Pages you can visit their website, here. I purchased a Lifetime Membership last year and have never looked back. We use these pages for about every subject and I even use them to design pages for my Modern Day Herbal, more on that another time.
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This weekend we were back at Bear Lake for a quick overnighter and hike to Bloomington Lake (minus Big Man, he is still a little traumatized after our last visit). Big Woman planned a family hike for us, to pass off a requirement in her Faith in God Program. She had us look for a variety of colors in nature, usingthese color cards. The children had a great time looking for the different colors in nature and Little Man especially loves all things nature, he came back with a pocket full of rocks, a stick, and a handful of sand (which is pretty challenging with only one usable hand). Here is our picture collection of the colors we found. I had to include a few other photos of this beautiful lake hike. We will be joining the Handbook of Nature Study for theAutumn Tree Study Challenge and encourage you to get outdoors with your children (or grandchildren), enjoy this beautiful world the Lord has created us!
The last days of summer are upon us and there is always a feeling of sadness that the season is over, yet relief that I can rest from my labors. Barb over at Handbook of Nature Study put together thisLast Days of Summer challenge that we will be working on this month. We have done a few of her challenges and added some of our own (like eating homemade Popsicles for instance-see the recipe below). She did a challenge last year and we have some fun memories of hanging on to those last days of summer.
This month along with the end of summer challenge we will be cooking up some harvest time recipes, preserving herbs, getting ready for cold and flu season by preparing home remedies, preserving healing foods and checking stock on those illness fighting essential oils. Not a dull moment around here during the fall. Some "Last Days of Summer Challenges" We Have CompletedHerbal Popsicle Recipe
1/2 cup herbal tea blend
1 quart boiling water 1/4 or so raw honey (to taste) 1 quart of 100% juice of choice (fresh juiced is best for the most nutrition packed popsicle) Mix a batch of herbal tea using my Herbal C Blend below or a favorite you have purchased. Bulk Herb Store has some really yummy herbal tea blends (I just make sure the blends I choose don't have black tea in them, herbs only) Double Immune Booster and Very Berry Tea would be great blends for popsicles. Mountain Rose Herbs also has their own tea blends but I haven't yet tried any of theirs. I like to use a French Press when making larger batches of tea so I put my herbs and boiling water in it to steep for 15 minutes. You could also use a quart jar for this purpose. Strain the tea and pour into a 2 quart pitcher, add the honey and stir until dissolved. Let cool and then add the juice. Stir until well combined and pour into popsicles molds.
I like to order my herbs from a high quality, organic source so I used Mountain Rose Herbs or The Bulk Herb Store to purchase my herbs for the Vitamin C Tea blend. I also use this tea blend all winter long to boost the immune system and my children love it warm with honey (as well as frozen with apple juice :))
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Hi, I’m Annie, a child of God, Mother of Influence and Herbalist. Welcome to my place where I share what I have learned of natural and frugal living, healthy eating and living, gardening, homeschooling, herbal crafting, preparing temporally and spiritually, and love for God and Country.
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January 2023
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