Prairie Scraps

 We've had laying hens for three years and last year, you may remember our adventure with meat chickens .  Well, we raised another 50 meat chickens again this year.    Last year's chickens were a pretty good success, but our neighbor's dog, killed 17 of them four days before butchering.  That day, we all cried through trying to salvage all of them as best we could.  Unfortunately, although we processed them all, they tasted horrible, because they had, had a heart attack from being run down by the dogs.  The chickens that made it to butchering day, though, tasted so wonderful through the winter that we just had to do it again!   Our neighbor actually hooks us up and gets the chicks in.  He sells them to us after a week in his hoop house, and then we bring them down to our little addition to the hen house until they can be moved outside.  I will admit that these chickens are not that pretty and the smell really...

This blog is named Prairie Scraps because it is about the scraps of my life, living on the prairie.  Right now, because I've taken on 17 students for piano lessons, my life is about piano lessons.  I'm wading my way through trying to be a good piano teacher! I had, what I think is traditional, classical piano lessons.  I began lessons at the age of 7, when I was a proficient reader, and took lessons until 8th grade.  I worked my way through method books as most students probably did.  As I entered high school, I really wanted to sing in choir, and not be the accompanist, so when  I moved to a new school my Sophomore year, I quit playing and never told anyone I played piano.  Jump ahead a few years, I enrolled in college in the Music Therapy school, and had to take Piano Proficiency classes.  In the first class, I realized I was far to advanced for the class, and subsequently, tested out of all Piano Proficiency.  The teacher I had, c...

This week, I had my recital with my piano students.  I wanted to make the night special with some sort of gift and a certificate!  I was going to give each of my students a flower with a certificate, but then I stumbled on an idea two weeks ago, when I ran into a clearance sale at Walgreen's.  I'm actually pretty proud of myself on this one! I got the Superfruit Starbust regular size candy bars for $.30 each!  I grabbed up all of them that Walgreens had!  There 18 and I needed 16, so it was meant to be! (I only ended up needing 11 because 5 students dropped out the last week, but I didn't know that yet!) I also found these Certificate of Excellence certificates at the Dollar Tree in the Teacher section.  They just happened be the same colors of the Starbursts - purple and yellow.  I went as far as picking up purple paper plates and napkins to match and printed my programs out in the yellow paper!  I'm not sure anyone noticed, b...

I've recently begin teaching WunderKeys  (go to this site for more information about lessons, to find a teacher near you, or to become a registered teacher) Preschool Piano Lessons to four students.  I love this program and all the games and ideas that are offered for teachers.  The first book has supplemental activities for each lesson as an extra for teachers, but there are just a few ideas for Patterning Games at the beginning of the lesson.  I've been trying to come up with ideas and searching the web, but have not come up with much!   I've also been putting together lesson plans for Summer Music Camp for all of my ages this summer, and ran across quite a few games that use a spinner of some sort.  I found this awesome, magnetic spinner that can be used on whiteboards and have been stalking it on Amazon! It was just a little more than I wanted to pay for the spinners, so I waited!   A few weeks later, I was perusi...

  With the invention of cell phones and texting, and even social media, I knew that we would rarely actually talk to people in person, but I have recently noticed that we don't even respond to people anymore, not even a text!  Is this our fate?    As a direct seller , I make a special effort to really try to personally connect with my customers on Facebook and also by texting them.  I don't just send advertisements, but I try to connect!  I was trying to call them, like a good direct seller, but people weren't answering my calls anymore.  It was then that I realized that people are just not talking on the phone anymore.   I decided about a month ago, to send 3-5 personal messages each day either on Facebook or by text to my friends and customers to try to reconnect.  Here's what I say: "Hi, Jenny!  How's it going?"  That's it!    I would say that less than 5% of people actually respond to this bland q...

As you may have already guessed from my previous article, 5 Reasons to NOT use Standardized Tests in Your Homeschool, I'm not a huge fan of testing my kids at all. It's not that I don't think that tests have a valid place in homeschool, I think in some instances, you should put your child through the process of testing. But I'm here to say that testing, especially Standardized Tests, are not the tell all for your child's knowledge and understanding. Here are 5 Ways to Know that Your Homeschool Works Ask your child questions after presenting the subject.  Can the give you important details about the subject back, in their own words?  Are they able to tell others about what they are studying?  I often "set" my children up.  When we see a friend or family member, I'll ask them to tell them about what we have been studying.  If they're at a loss for words, I'll prompt them.  For example, I'll say: "What war are we studying?" ...

As I mentioned in my prior post Back to the Keyboard, Mr. Right was really excited about the possibility of me offering piano lessons!  Thankfully, I acted on that and got in about six new students to teach each week.  One of the main reasons I've been hesitant to teach lessons, is that it ties up that evening time, where my own kids have sports.  I try so hard to be at my own children's games, that it's hard to be tied to lessons every single week all year round. What surprised me most about putting it out there to my Facebook friends that I was looking for students, was how many wanted their preschool age children in lesson.  My first response was that they need to know how to read.  Well, as I've been researching to get inspiration and see how to run a music studio, I ran across a preschool music program.  I've looked at a different Kindergarten music program before, but had two objections to it.  First, that program involved me teaching a group ...