My week started with an email from our town’s public school that we used to attend letting me know that a threat of violence was made against our school and every student & their mom. A former student threatened to shoot up the school on September 22.

This news reassured me that I made the right decision in pulling my children out of traditional school. I’m sure I sounded crazy as can be explaining myself away in the beginning days of being enrolled. “I’m not going to worry each day I drop them off if it will be the last time I see them.” Not even a month into the traditional school year and there has already been a shooting threat. How long until the threat doesn’t happen before the action? I’m not willing to find out.

This is what a typical morning looks like for us. The girls eat breakfast, do their morning jobs (brush teeth, brush hair, get dressed, etc) & chores. Once we finish those tasks, they sit down at the table or their school desks to work on their individual work baskets until I’m ready to do our together reading. Moses lives on his own terms 😂.

Our first field trip this week was to A&M Apple Orchard. It was a bit of a drive, but totally worth it. Each girl got to fill a bag of apples for only $5 each.

They picked different apples they wanted. We got a nice variety. Ella wanted yellow apples for a health spell she’s working on.

Ella had a lot of fun climbing the trees to get the apples from the tops.

Moses loved walking around and testing all the apples (which we were allowed to do!) He couldn’t believe the amount of apples everywhere he looked! He was so excited!

We made out like bandits with our apples! So excited to make apple snacks and desserts this week!

The first recipe we made was Cinnamon Applesauce. Since we are planning to make several other apple desserts this week, we decided to use all of our very small apples for the applesauce so they could still get used up.

We peeled them, sliced them, & put them in the slow cooker with some big shakes of cinnamon, a little sugar, & 1/2 cup water.

It was delicious 😋! The kids agreed that anything homemade tastes better than storebought. This was even better though because they went the extra mile and picked these apples themselves!

Since Fall began this week, we pulled out our seasons cookbooks & planned some yummy fall recipes to cook together this week to celebrate & welcome fall.

For the children, we use the book, At The Farmers Market with Kids. It teaches the children what fruits/veggies are available seasonally & has simple recipes that they are able to make using those seasonal produce items.

The first meal we made to welcome in Fall was Butternut Squash Pasta. It had pasta, butternut squash, spinach, minced garlic, and onion + salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, & toasted pine nuts. Super easy weeknight meal. I thought it was great, the kids wouldn’t pick it again. They do better with Butternut Squash Macaroni & Cheese.

Of course we had to examine the Butternut Squash from the inside out before eating it.

I gave them each a slice with seeds to examine with their senses & pick apart.

We went to Friday Connections with our homeschool friends and took a kid-led hike through the woods of French Park.

Ella kept a list of all the different plants she identified using the app, Picture This.

It’s a very neat app. You take a picture of any plant and it gives you the name and information about each plant. You will learn if it is poisonous or not, if it attracts any birds or bugs, along with any poetry or art it has been mentioned in.

This very beautiful butterfly also landed on Ella. Such beautiful colors, like our own little Ukrainian sign from the universe.

We collected cool nature we found in this cute little bag.

And checked some of it out under the microscope.

Once we got home, we took out all of our nature we collected to see what we got!

We used construction paper & contact paper to make these cute window-scapes of our nature we collected to finally replace our summer tissue-paper kites with.

Overall, it has been a great week! Oddly enough though, our week ended just as it began. Another report of a shooter, this one turning out to be a “hoax.”

Not sure why or how children’s safety is considered funny to anyone, but I for one am really freaking glad that I don’t have to worry out of my mind about whether my kids are safe each day or not. So freaking grateful.

This really was the best decision I could have made. It’s been amazing getting to know my children on a level that I wouldn’t be able to with them in school. I love finding projects to do with them and watch their faces light up as they begin to understand new things. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Until next time ♡ Mama Morozov