Family Fun at Old Baker Farm

 About 14 years ago I was sitting in a doctor's office at Children's Hospital waiting on our second sons pulmonary specialist appointment when I came across a magazine with 'things to do in the Birmingham area'. In that magazine was an advertisement for a fall family fun event at a farm. They had all kinds of fun things for the children to do, including picking pumpkins. And so began our family tradition of visiting Old Baker Farm every October.

The farm has grown over the years to include so many fun activities for the children. We always try to attend on their 'cowboy weekend'. On the farm's cowboy weekend they have men and women dressed up in old fashion costumes reenacting cowboy shootouts with real guns, shooting blanks!! It's spectacular to watch and experience!

We've talked about visiting other farms to go pick pumpkins, but we always come back to Old Baker Farm. Not that they ever remember us, but we usually have the privilege of talking with the Bakers, it's like visiting with family ~ they're a family of down-home country folks. Plus the cost of admission includes all the activities. We only have to pay extra for concessions, horse back riding, and  if we purchase something from any of the craft-fair type vendors set up on the farm. 

One of my favorite things about coming to Old Baker Farm is that it's a real working farm. The pumpkins aren't trucked in, you actually pick them off the vine. Although there have been years when the harvest was limited and the Bakers did bring in pumpkins from another farm. 

The farm is set up so that visitors ride on a hay-ride to go pick their pumpkins. They have several tractors and trailers running and ONE trailer hooked up to a pair of mules. This year we were blessed to get to ride on the mule-pulled trailer ~ which is our favorite!!

Lydia loved every part of being on the Farm ~ walked around like she owned the place, lol.

Some of the many activities for the children to do includes giants slides, hay bail climbing, a cotton jump, kiddie train rides, horse swings, petting zoo, corn maze, and hay bail maze. Trust me there is no shortage of things to do on this farm!! We spent over four hours playing this year!

This was the first year our oldest was unable to attend due to work obligations. I must admit this new season of life has not been easy for this sentimental mama. But, I'm proud of him and know our job is to simply raise them, and one day they do set out to live their own lives (and that's a good thing).  No matter how much we want to slow time, it just keeps billowing forward, all we can do is hold on for the ride. Of course there's nothing wrong with savoring every special moment we're gifted with until they do 'fly the coop'.

The Baker's really go all out decorating the farm, especially the few old farm houses on the property. (Which are actually lived in by the family.)

Even though big brother couldn't come enjoy the family fun, he did send money to buy the littles ones a treat. They ended up getting the biggest snow cones I've ever seen!

The last picture of the day. 

Daddy loves carnival/fair food and as y'all can see he's passed that love onto our children as well. Fresh squeezed lemonade and kettle corn for everyone to share concluded our family fun day at Old Baker Farm.

I must admit at 31 weeks pregnant, it took a lot of psyching myself up to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I love our tradition of visiting Old Baker Farm and I wouldn't have missed it for anything. We did all 'the things' and my family was super sweet to take 'all the pictures'. (I'm not even sharing half of them, lol.) Another year of visiting Old Baker Farm and another precious memory stored away. It is kind of crazy prepping and getting our family to functions like this, but watching my children having fun and enjoying the season makes it all worth the effort. 

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer

Fall Fun Schooling Week

Fall is finally here! Well according to the calendar that is. Unfortunately, I'm not sure the weather is in agreement. Today, in the Deep South, the temperature registered in at 103 degrees (and that's not including the heat index!). I am so beyond ready for cooler weather!

I really enjoy doing crafts and fun seasonal activities with my children. I've struggled over the years to find a balance between the must be done nitty gritty homeschool and all the fun schooling that I want to do. To help me find a balance that enables me to incorporate those fun crafts and acuities; every few weeks I schedule a fun school week. 

Typically my fun school weeks coincide with the seasons changing and holidays. Since the calendar officially hit fall last week, that's when I scheduled our fall fun school week; even if it is hotter than blue blazes!

Mostly, the fun schooling activities are just for the little ones, but sometimes the bigger kids get in on the fun. I try to organize at least one seasonal/holiday activity for the older children as well, but mostly their core academics take up the majority of their school time. 

When I was making our academic calendar for the year, it was really hard to schedule in appointments. Sadly, this particular fun school week included an out-of-town appointment that I did not know about when I did my planning. When we have these out-of-town appointments, that means no school days. Of course this hardly effects the children, it's dear old mom that has to rearrange and cram extra lessons and activities into a shorter amount of days. Thankfully, we did manage to get everything done, but it certainly was a challenge to say the least.

I like to incorporate a themed sensory box for our fun school weeks. For our fall fun schooling week sensory box I included pinto beans, faux fall leaves, brown, orange, and yellow yarn strips as well as a wooden scooper and a small tin pail.

All the little ones love the sensory box and they will play in it for quite a while, without fussing (mom win!!).

Our first project for the week was a fall leaf wreathe. I had one of the big kids collect a bunch of leaves from outside which the children glued onto a paper plate with the middle cut out. Honestly, if I had to do this project again I think we'd use fake leaves. because once the real leaves dried they made a major mess!

Next we made leaf rubbings. This projects was a bit difficult for my two little bitty ones and they needed some help to be able to color over the leaves.

I always like to incorporate a 'snack-tivity'. This particular week's fun snack was s'more mix. A super easy snack, including only three ingredients: honey graham cereal, mini marshmallows, and milk chocolate morsels. 

I allowed each of the children to pour a portion of the ingredients into a large bowl.

Of course they thought this was loads of fun, but Titus and Lydia were far more interested in eating their snack mix instead of actually making it, lol.

Then we had a leaf resist painting. I taped large leaves onto construction paper, the kids painted around the leaf, and then we removed the leaf to show a pretty outline of a leaf.

I let the children choose their paint colors but kept it to fall colors. I was pleasantly surprised at how well these paintings turned out, lol.

Last the children made torn paper fall leaves. I found a free template of a leaf and printed it off onto white card stock and then the children glued torn pieces of construction paper onto their leaf. You could easily cut out the leaves if you so fancied.

And that's what we did for our fall fun schooling week. Nothing overly complicated, just some fun and simple activities to help us ring in the new season.

We haven't officially started our fall storybooks yet so we didn't do them this week, but trust me we have plenty of those coming in the very near future. 

Fall is such a fun time to enjoy seasonal crafts. The children had a blast and I'm glad we were able to get everything I had planned worked into our busy schedule! Sheesh, I don't know about y'all but fall is our busiest time of the year. It seems we have something planned every weekend and even events planned during the week. But, I love every minute of it and look forward to the crazy busy memory making opportunities every year ~ even if it does take a masters degree in juggling to keep this large crew rolling forward, lol! 

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer

Homeschool Fun at Steele Apple Orchard

This past Friday was brimming over with family fun! So not to make my posts lengthy and drawn out; I've decided to break the day up into three separate posts. Our Friday adventures began with a trip to the Steel Apple Orchard in Cullman, Alabama. 

It took us a solid two hours to get there, and folks let me just tell ya, it was a l-o-n-g two hours!! All you mama's out there know those 'fun' road trips that just don't go as planned ~ well this adventure certainly started out a little rocky to say the least! We had two pit-stops (because hello, 27 weeks pregnant and I have the bladder the size of mustard seed - insert eye roll), a detour in downtown Birmingham through the projects, a puking (carsick) child, and crying babies ~ yeah it was a blast!!

Once we finally arrived at the orchard the day started to get a little better, but it certainly wasn't without it's struggles. I still had sour attitudes and cranky babies. Lord willing my kiddos will remember the highlight real and not all the drama, because the Good Lord knows the drama meter over runeth on our trip to the apple orchard that's for sure!

The real culprit to all our road trip troubles was a nasty head cold we all seemed to be nursing. Unfortunately, I couldn't cancel our apple orchard tour, or we wouldn't have been able to attend this year. Since we missed last year, I really didn't want to forgo the experience, especially for the little kids. 

We were supposed to 'piggy-back' on with another group for the apple orchard tour since our group did not total 15 people, but the other group never showed up. I was a tad bit anxious we were NOT going to get to do the tour, but the folks were super kind and basically gave us a private tour despite us not being a 'full group'. 

Steel Apple Orchard is a family owned, small farm that began in 1985. They have 15 acres and over 200 apple trees including 20 different varieties of apples. The wife actually does part of the tour with another farm worker. The tour began in their processing room where they share about how they pick, sort, and store the apples as well as what they do with all their apples. 

This particular apple orchard sells all their apples to patrons visiting the farm. They also make a variety of apple products including apple cider, apple butter, and fried apple pies which they sell in their country store.

Once the children get a lesson on the farm operations, everyone is taken outside the 'shop' to learn some more fun facts about the health benefits of apples, how the honeybee is beneficial to the apple, and of course no apple orchard tour is complete without a thorough education on Johnny Appleseed. 

To conclude the tour the children have a blind apple tasting of different apples and the kiddos try to guess what kind of apple they were eating.

The folks at Steele Apple Orchard are just as sweet and down-to-earth as they come. While it was a long and difficult drive, it was absolutely worth it, and I'm glad I was able to take the children on this little adventure. (Even if half of them didn't really want to go.) I'm quite used to my people giving me grief over road trips ~ most of them are homebodies, but they usually have a great time and admit it once we've get home from the crazy escapades I drag them on, lol. So, I reckon I'll just continue planning these 'fun' trips and giving my children a taste of adventure; after all getting out of our comfort zones is good for all of us!

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer