Preparing To Return To The Passive Solar Prefab Home

I Heard The Geese Again This Morning, And Again, I Looked Up, And Overhead, South They Flew...
Likewise, We're Preparing To Return To Our Passive Solar Prefab Home.

Off Grid Passive Solar Prefab Home:
"Yo, Where's Mah Family? Don't they like construction dust?!?"

The pull to migrate back to the off grid passive solar home is overwhelming... but first we must button up the old In-Town Ramshackle for winter and finish some items on the off grid prefab home.  I thought to myself, looking at the fig with its second crop ripening, "When the old fig bears twice, it's time to head home."

[Back, in the prefab: WHAT A MESS!]
Handsome Husband meets with the septic people regarding renewing the permit and final decisions tomorrow. So he headed out early from the Ramshackle, journeying to the passive solar prefab house, and was able to add the rest of the solar evacuated tubes for our radiant heat in the prefab's slab and hot water, adding all of the array for winter use.


I also handed him a chore: seeding for fall / winter vegetables.
Because, chiles, it's mid-August. Time to get crackin' on the winter garden.

Heading Home
We're not the only ones traversing geography... sadly, the time of the French Exchange Student comes to an end, and she is headed home.  Grosses bisoux, A., tu me manques beaucoup! A bientôt!

Makin' crepes.

It May Be August, But Fall Hurries Towards Us.
Visiting friends are already saying, "I can't wait to visit the prefab in fall, let's cook and cook and make stews and roasts and be cozy."

Like me, they love the energy efficiency even in severe temperatures; and like me, they adore the old happy warm cook stove, and the cooking.

Soon a pot of beans will be simmering, soon hearty healthy stews, soon pans and pans of cornbread...

So let's enjoy these last summer days as they wane: fresh dill, seafood, grapes plucked off the vine, and pool parties for the French and USA teens.

 

Speaking of pool parties, my nephews wanted to come to A.'s party but his band was playing GWAR B-Q.
Yes, GWAR B-Q.
Oh, the childrenz these days...


In Prefab Home News... (Oh wait. Am I actually on topic?)
We have finished the final prefab house quote for the New Mexico prefab house project, and they meet with their contractor this week. They are building a Dogtrot Mod from our sister modern prefab home line, Green Cabin Kits.

A passive solar modern prefab house,
our Dogtrot Mod from Green Cabin Kits,
in New Mexico.
Details soon.

The great news regarding this prefab house project is that the client is a teacher who is very excited about blogging. I know *you're* thrilled because then you can follow another one of our prefab house kit projects where someone is actually blogging (no one ever wants to blog!) and no longer have to listen to my off topic rambling! Yay for all of you!

Speaking of off topic rambling...

"Aaaaaah! She never stops!"

Reading Club

• World must brace for higher food prices, experts say
  http://rdd.me/ikoas7dt
• via Mike Elgan
  "Tell Your Appliances to Get Their Own Damned Power!
  
  I think the biggest trend in home energy will be small solar. Instead of a single home power plant juicing everything, our devices and appliances will increasingly draw their own power directly from the sun, in tandem with big solar power generation and other alternative energy approaches coming online.
  
  How do I know? Because ubiquitous solar power is what the Pentagon wants."
  http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/3624288/list/Small-Solar--Big-Home-Tech-Trend-in-the-Making

Homeschool Notes
I am realizing that homeschool is like getting set up for chickens. If you don't have a good foundation and haven't thought it through, it can be a disaster. But if you start with a good set up (most things in place, I still research every day for new information), your stress and loss of opportunity are minimized, and you can actually enjoy it. Uh, when they're not whining...

I find ourselves using much more math throughout the day- even when I went to the pool with Pipsqueak 2 last week, as we walked along the edge I would say, "Hey, it says 3'9". How many inches IS that?" And we would go through the logic, that if there were 12 inches in a foot, then 2 feet would be 24, then 3 feet would be 36, then you add nine...

This week I am actually liking homeschool. We struggle through the mornings, yes I spend way too much time finding information, but then we score SOL rote gold, and, my panic abated, review it, then find even more stuff. I also spend days on 2-3 subjects at a time, but usually every day a little math- like math and science, then math and social studies... Also I've found "time outs" are a great time to plop a worksheet or study text in front of them. It switches their mood from sulking to learning- it actually seriously works well. 

Hope some of it sticks, but here are some useful things we saw this week:
In general: 

"I'm tawkin' TO you, not AT you!"
"Blah, blah, blah...! Talk to the paw..."

• http://www.mce.k12tn.net/history/historypages.htm
• http://amomentintime.com
  A *GREAT* history resource, become a member!!!
• 3rd Grade Social Studies SOL Resources
• 4th Grade Social Studies SOL Review
• BBC Primary History (great site!)
• Math & Science Worksheets: http://www.adaptedmind.com/
• Discovery Education 
• Math, Typing and Spelling Games (in the left navigation area) 
• Learning Lab: English root words, summarizing, main ideas... great resource! 

Potato Gun Science Project.
Because science and math are
SO much more interesting
when you can shoot it.

3rd Grade:
Ancient Greek And Roman History

• http://quizlet.com/9284432/3rd-grade-social-studies-greece-rome-egypt-china-flash-cards/
• Ancient Greece & Roman Government
• BBC Ancient Greece (then move on to the rest from there)
• Sunrise Valley Instructional Web Sites
• 3rd Grade Greek and Roman Web Sites
• Greece and Rome: Rags To Riches
• Greece Test Practice 
• http://www.quia.com/pages/3history.html#greeceandrome 
• Ancient Cultures Guide
• Ancient Greece- An Empire Of City States 
• Greek Doric, Ionian and Corinthian
• Greek & Roman Columns Quiz
• Ancient Greece & Egypt Maps

Mali: http://teachers.henrico.k12.va.us/itrt/3rdcivil.html
Math: 

• Really Big Numbers
• AAA Math  
• Place Value Games

Stay with me. We're just
slowly climbing some
ed-u-ma-cation links.

4th Grade:
Math: Changing Fractions Into Decimals
Virginia History

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ykyp-NLzO0&playnext=1&list=PL6E33C929507A8057&feature=results_main 
• 12-029 12-029: Native American Democracy I
• 12-030 12-030: Native American Democracy - II
• 12-031 Native American Democracy - III 
• America's First Century: Bloody, Bloody Virginia
• John Rolfe I and John Rolfe II
• 13-031 JJ: Spring, 1607 I –The Long First Journey
• 13-032 Jamestown Journey: Spring, 1607 II – Blessed Arrival
• Landing in Virginia and John Smith s Leadership
• 13-120 LFM Captain John Smith
• 13-080 Jamestown Journey: Puritans in Virginia
• Early Indian Interaction:
  • 12-070 Early Native American Relations - I 
  • 12-071 Early Native American Relations - II
  • 12-026 America’s First Century: Algonquian Annihilation I
    12-027 America’s First Century: Algonquian Annihilation II
• Pocahontas
  • http://amomentintime.com/transcript.php?id=2817&t=03-059-americas-first-century-pocahontas-i
  • http://amomentintime.com/transcript.php?id=2820&t=03-060-americas-first-century-pocahontas-ii
  • http://amomentintime.com/transcript.php?id=1599&t=03-061-americas-first-century-pocahontas-iii  
• 13-003 Jamestown Journey: Jamestown & Market Economy - I 
• 13-004 Jamestown Journey: Jamestown & Market Economy - II 
• 13-013 Jamestown Journey: Tidewater-Frontier Tensions - I 
• 13-014 Jamestown Journey: Tidewater-Frontier Tensions – II
• SOL Study Guide
• 4th Grade VA History

English:

• Figuring out Roots, Synonyms Sure it's for an exam but it had great sense in figuring out words
• Synonyms, Antonyms, Root Words

And more off topic RECIPES from this week! Becauase durned it, it's my blog and I can be off topic from prefab green construction if I want to! ; )

Alix's Crepes (30 crepes)
600 grams of flour
1,5 liter of milk
4 spoons of oil
6 eggs
a pinch of salt

Whisk together, pour thinly into a pan, when ready, flip. The crepe may be filled with anything- but you add things only on one side- then start rolling on the opposite side.  We cut them up and quickly serve hungry teens on one plate, for all to grab, as we keep making crepe after crepe... until everyone is done!

 

 

 

Molly's Salsa
Adapted from a topping for chicken on What's Gaby Cooking, except Molly...

- Adds diced onion when she sautees a bunch of different peppers and corn
- Has really chunky fresh tomatoes & avocado

*Delicious* and when you run low, you can always just cut up more tomato & avocado, stir it up and VOILA!

And by the way: The French Kid might leave for now, but we have decided to keep her.
A group of families has decided, with us, to extend another tour to her and her family next year.
More... on that... later.