All posts by Danielle Huddleston

Chickasaw National Recreation Area ~Sulpher, OK

03/25/2021 Danielle Huddleston Leave a comment

The Chickasaw National Recreation Area was once Platt National Park and is a beautiful little area in South Central Oklahoma.There are beautiful springs and waterfalls on an easy trail by the nature center.

We only stayed one night there because our plan was to stay at a Wildlife Management Area for most of the trip.

So we did not have much time to explore but I would like to go back, preferably when it is not the week of spring break. My kids want to go back in the summer to swim! The sites are nice and not too close together.

It was nice to have power and water in the new rig also! We did not run water into our tanks still though, we tend to wait until all danger of freezing is over for that.

We basically stayed here because we needed to dump our tanks and it seemed a better value to pay for a night of camping then to just dump our tanks at most places.

We left right after our walk around the springs and headed to a spot called Blue River.

It was a beautiful area but very popular and pretty full so we checked out another spot and hit the jackpot!

Our tire also shredded on the way to the blue river spot!

Thankfully there was enough room to pull over and fix it!

I will share pics of where we ended up staying next!

History, Homeschooling

Blessed Heritage History Curriculum

01/29/2021 Danielle Huddleston 1 Comment

I love Belinda’s description of her curriculum, “A Literature-Based history featuring African-American presence and contribution”.

It is exactly what I was looking for and I have really enjoyed getting another point of view on the history of America.

My boys are on week 9 of the Intermediate Level Volume one book.

It is geared towards more middle school aged kids and I have her highschool curriculum as well but after looking at it I decided(although I loved it) that my boys were not ready for the content yet.

But I am really looking forward to them doing it in another two years.

Because this is geared for a lower grade then the boys, I have needed to add a lot more reading to it.

One of the things I loved about her curriculum was starting with the first people to come to America.

I added as many books as I could on native american history and was happy to find this list on books by native american authors.

I also struggled a bit with keeping track of what they were doing from the curriculum and came up with these spreadsheets that I can easily see.

I think I will grade them based on completion.

They have one sheet for the reading and one for the activities.

She recommends The History of US books to go along with her curriculum.

I was not sure about them based on reviews so I got Masterbooks “America’s Story 1” to try also but my boys ended up liking the History of US a lot better and it covered the history of America before Columbus a lot more. Especially the first book “The First Americans”.

I am also trying to use her Primary Level with my three girls.

They do better with projects and documentaries than sitting for reading but I finally worked out how to get more reading done this month.

Before this month I just got every kids book I could on Native American folklore and culture for them to look at and read.

Although we have not done them on the same schedule as suggested, we did make two of the projects she has in her curriculum.

Tipi’s and corn husk dolls.

The tipi’s we made because of this book “Storm Maker’s Tipi”. It was a nice easy craft that they enjoyed.

I actually did the corn husk dolls because of another book I got “A Kid’s Guide to Native American History“.

It is a really interesting resource but I have not used it as much as I have wanted to yet.

So far we are really enjoying her recommended reading!

Hiking, Wildlife Preserve/Reserve

Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge ~Indiahoma, Ok

01/23/2021 Danielle Huddleston Leave a comment

We did the Elk Mountain hike at Wichita Mountains and it seems like no big deal since it is only 1.1 miles but it is going up.

If you look to the upper right of this pic you can see our destination.
We did it one other time but I had to stop before going to the top so I was pretty excited to make it all the way to the top this time.This is definitely my favorite hike we have done here.The view is definitely worth the hike up!It was very windy and chilly up there!Our four oldest were in front of us on the way down and got off the trail(some of it is not marked clearly). So my husband had to go back up to where they had gotten off and bring them back. After we got down we went to see the cute prairie dogs at the prairie dog town but they did not hold my kids interest long this time.