7:30: I hear the kids moving around, pulling out their sketch books and digging for something to eat, and I wake up too. The Daddy has long since gone to work. The littlest comes and climbs in bed with me, and brings a story: Three Samauri Cats. The other two jump (literally) onto my bed, and I read the story from the bottom of a pile of people.
8:00: I remind the kids that they've got about an hour to get ready for school, and go get my yoga mat. There are two Librivox stories going in two different rooms. I can hear them both, but I try to tune them out, and check in on a friend that just had a baby. I sit on my yoga mat and organize a couple of things the new mom needs. And answer some questions. And peek at social media.
8:40: I'm still sitting on my mat, but I haven't actually done any yoga, yet. I glance at the clock, realize how close we are to school time, and get to work on the yoga.
8:50: I mention to the child sitting next to me, chatting and drawing, that school starts in 10 minutes, and they decide to get a shower. "Hurry please." I send another one to get dressed. And attempt chaturanga, but and up doing it with floor support. Next time, maybe.
I was excited when I looked through the Á La Carte products from Home School in the Woods for review this time and realized that The War Between the States Timline was included in the wide range of products that they offered crew members: Hero(11) is just starting to study the Civil War era, and I wanted to include it in our Book of Centuries as a foldout. They have a whole collection of timelines available, but this one is just perfect for where we're at.
There's so much going on in the war, and in the events both before and after, that I think that it'll be good to have a special fold-out, which will leave room for other world events from that time on the main pages of our timelines. We don't have a lot of wall space, so our timelines have always been in binders. This has a number of advantages, including that they last really well, and so we can accumulate a lot of the different things we read about into the timeline over years of reading, so I was excited to have a space-efficient way to include a lot of information about this important period of American history.
I'm excited: Once upon a time, I used to participate in the Daring Bakers cooking challenges, but I struggled to keep up and dropped out after a while: it was too hard to be consistent. When I finally felt ready to try again, they had finished. And I haven't found a different baking challenge -- until now. King Arthur Flour is hosting one. And they're doing Gruyère-Stuffed Crusty Loaves. I'll need to find the fancy cheese, but otherwise, it's ingredients that I've got on hand. However, it's a method that I've never tried before, so that ought to be fun to do.
Last week's excitement about English history continues, and the kids dug up a game that we played the very first time they studied the Battle of Hastings, which was several years ago. They're also still listening to the stories of the Saxons nearly every day. Just as I was thinking that I would suggest a documentary, the kids found one on YouTube by themselves. All this interest in Hastings and King Harold has displaced a little bit of our regularly scheduled lessons, but I'm ok with that, as it's a great foray into genuine self-education, and I'm excited to see that. I can adjust my plans a little in order to encourage this kind of interest!
The biggest project this week has been making a collection of phenology wheels and recording some nature observations. The first day, building the wheels was our math for the day, working with compass and protractor. This was challenging for the younger kids, but we all got it done. It was fun to take a break from our regular math and have a special project; we haven't done that for a while.
All year, we've been telling Miss Kitty how long it is to her birthday. She asks frequently:
"How long till my birthday?"
"It's a long time; about 9 months. Which means that it's about 36 Sundays."
I don't think she counts to 36 yet, but that seems more meaningful to her than the number of months.
"Is my birthday almost here?"
"No, it's still a long time. It's summer, and then fall will come, and we'll have Halloween, and Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and the New Year will come, and THEN it will be your birthday. It's around 24 Sundays."
"My birthday is far away, isn't it? How many Sundays to my birthday?"
"Still a whole bunch. First Daddy has his birthday, then Hero, then Jesus, then you. That's about 20 Sundays."
Sometime after Halloween, the number of Sundays got low enough that it started to be close enough to be numbers that are meaningful to her. This was pretty exciting. And then something even more exciting happened just this last Sunday night at bedtime:
"I only have ONE SUNDAY LEFT until my birthday comes!"
"Well.... actually, today was that last Sunday. There are no more Sundays before your birthday: your birthday is on Friday. That's only five Sleeps away!"
"No more Sundays? Only five Sleeps??"
Oh yes, this was an excited girl. And that's the biggest news of the week: Miss Kitty is turning five at the end of the week. And she's making Big Plans: she's having friends over to make crowns (made out of paper, with stickers) and play in a fort (a really big fort), and eat a cake (because we usually eat cake on birthdays) with ice cream.
So we did this art project from ArtAchieve (there's a review coming at the first of May), and it went really well, particularly considering that they were a little reluctant to do it at first! The kids, particularly Dragon, are learning a whole bunch of things with this style of art, and they're making some really nice art. The project has you do a line drawing first:
Top: Dragon, Hero. Bottom: Peanut, Mom
Then you paint it. They give several examples, and tell what's traditional, mention that you don't have to do that if you don't want to, then turn the kids loose to make their own designs.
Top: Dragon, Mom. Bottom: Peanut, Hero.
And they did.
In fact, the next day, they wanted to do more. It was pretty cool. I made them do their regular school work; told them that this time the horses were an "after school activity". Which was fine with them. They set and did them after their regular work was done.
Peanut did one, then the boys came and joined her and they all started the lesson over, but their impromptu art class got interrupted: Daddy got home and horses weren't very important any more. Right then, at least. So Peanut was the only one with a completed work from that batch.
I was pretty impressed with her. These lessons are intended for kids who are much older than she is, and she had very little help with this one, since I was trying to get some dinner made before we all went to Scouts for the evening. I tried to persuade her to do watercolor, but since we'd used acrylics the first time, she wanted those same paints the second time. A lot of her cute details got obscured when she painted, as a result.
The art lesson has a lot of extras, so we checked some of them out. There's a flyover of Sweden, Norway, and Finland. That was fun; we have ancestors that lived in those places, but especially in Sweden and Norway.
They've got some information about a Smörgåsbord - I had no idea those were Swedish - and while I think that I'm not going to be making anything nearly as fancy as what their article describes, when I searched for Smörgåsbord on Pinterest, I did find this recipe for these cookies. I have no idea how authentic they are, but they were yummy!
We also looked at a factory, where they make Dala Horses. That was pretty interesting. Hero likes whittling. So far, he's only used his pocket knife on sticks from the yard, and a few bars of soap, but we're in the market for better projects for him, and he was all over the little tips they mentioned, like to pay attention to the grain of the wood. I think it would be pretty awesome if we could arrange for him to make a real wooden one, rather than just a painting, but we haven't made that happen. Yet. It's remarkable to me how much they're doing with such a basic knife. I thought carving required much more specialized tools.
Because we have some Swedish ancestry, I also looked up where our people were, and compared it to where these horses were made, but it looks like it's far enough away that these were probably not a thing that our ancestors were involved in: the 3 hour drive is not a big deal today, but in those days, that was a long distance. Still, it was fun to look it up, and to look at some of the designs. Even if the horses weren't a thing in Uppsala, where our people were, it's probable that they had very similar traditional designs. It's always fun to look up that kind of thing and make even a tenuous personal connection.
6:00 - My alarm goes off. I'm trying to move our mornings earlier, and I want to take my quiet time early, rather than late. I actually pulled it off yesterday -when I decided to do this around a year ago, morning started at 9 or 9:30, and had for more than a decade. So figuring out how to be a morning person again has been a process. I didn't make it today: I felt like dirt, turned off the alarm, and went back to sleep.
8:30 - I finally wake up again. I should have set a second alarm; this is longer than I wanted to sleep, and after yesterday's very early start at 5:30, it feels ridiculous. The kids give me a spontaneous narration for the tank documentary that Hero(10) picked out for them. I ask Peanut(4) about it and she tells me, "We watched tanks. They blow stuff up." Sounds about right. I put up our lists for the day.
9:00 - The kids spend some time watching Mincraft videos in Japanese. They don't agree on which one they want, so Hero and Peanut watch one playlist in the living room, and Dragon(6) watches another on the computer. I am making oatmeal, and try to also bounce between the two screens, helping the kids decipher an extra word here and there.
Doing these videos -just watching- is surprisingly effective at helping the kids to get new vocabulary and phrases. A number of the things that get said on the videos have become ordinary parts of our family conversations, now, without my needing to push it: the kids do it spontaneously. I'm not the only one that's having a slow start this morning.
9:30 - Breakfast. I made more than yesterday, so we don't run out. The kids are growing, and the amount I used to have leftovers from is not even close to adequate anymore: this is discovered yesterday. Peanut has a mini-meltdown when the screens are turned off, but then pulls it together. We do our scripture boxes over breakfast, until my BFF calls. I chat about 10 minutes, then tell her I have to go and teach the kiddos.
10:30 - Some people are dressed. Hero is practicing his violin, which is sounding pretty good. At his request, I text a copy of the video to my parents. I have the dishwasher half emptied. I need to locate our math stuff for the day. I feel disorganized. Dragon sees the video of Hero, and he wants to be in one, too.
10:50 - I sneak in some yoga right quick. Hero is working on his Japanese and Latin flashcards with the Anki SRS, and listening to (but not watching) various violin songs on YouTube.
Dragon and I finish out his scripture box, then he practices his violin and wants to also send a video to Nana and Grandpa. Then I persuade him to read to his sister while I finally get a shower.
11:20 - When I'm done, I find the kids are exercising. Hero is doing planks, with "help" from Peanut. Dragon is right in there with them.
Then, Dragon does a bridge - his first ever. He's especially delighted when I tell him that I can't do that one.
And Peanut does her "kitty pose". With the crazy hair. That's next. I fix her hair and mine.
11:50 - Our friends will be here very soon (we get a playdate while some of their family goes to a performance). We've done a good job, but we're not quite done with school. Hero sweeps the kitchen, then does a few review problems of 3-digit addition & subtraction with borrowing and carrying; then he does a logic puzzle. Those are a favorite right now. I do math with the younger two. Dragon is practicing buying things. We did a "Two-Thing Store" yesterday, where the store requires that you buy two things -- and only two things, add them up and produce the correct change. Today, he wants to do a "Three-Thing Store". So we do. I take the opportunity to introduce quarters.
Peanut demands math as well, so I get out the rods and our scale and let her play with them. It looks like math, and even though I don't really show her much, she's delighted. She has more or less demanded to be in school too, now that she's "a little bit big". So I'm giving her things more of the time these days. It's pretty amazing to me that she's getting to be about the same age that the boys were when they started doing school, too. My kids are getting bigger.
12:10 - Our friends arrive. Dragon has one problem left, and I'm just mean enough that I make him do it -- and write it himself -- before he can go outside with the kids. He survives this cruel thing that I do to him. I put Peanut's hair in crooked. It's driving me a little bit crazy, but she's happy, so I'm not messing with it. Yet. The dishwasher still isn't completely unloaded, but I head outside, too, anyway. We've all got spring fever.
1:00 - The kids got chilly; it's only 45F. So they're back inside playing Minecraft. Unfortunately, we can't hook up their tablet to our computer's server: Minecraft isn't cross-platform compatible like that. But the kids work it out, and everybody seems happy, so I let them handle it. The youngest two want watercolors, so I set them up while I make lunch. At the end of lunch, we spend a few minutes watching some puffy Mourning Doves that have settled down for a rest on the deck. They apparently think that it's a bit on the chilly side too: I've seldom seen doves look so puffy. All the kids are delighted. When lunch is done, it's back outside. This is an energetic crowd; the house feels really quiet when they've gone. There were supposed to be pictures of the doves, but first they were blurry, and then they didn't download correctly. So you'll just have to imagine the fluffy, puffy birds.
2:45 - The extra kids are gone. It was so nice that their mom had a few minutes to hang out and chat before they had to go back home. Then another friend dropped by and gave me a belated birthday present, which was very sweet. My kids are still outside, but I still want to try to squeeze in a little art lesson before the day is completely over, so I get to setting that up. We're trying out ArtAchieve lessons right now, and today is the day for the very first one.
3:15 - We've got Eilleen Ivers going in the background (Hero and I saw her at the symphony a while back), and the kids are working on their box drawings from the ArtAchieve lesson, learning to really see what they are trying to draw. It goes pretty well. Dragon started out convinced that he can't do it --
since observing is difficult for him, drawing is, too. But by the end,
he was happy with his work, and feeling much more confident in his
abilities. I like to see that.
3:30 - Daddy's home!! Everybody is excited to see him. He inspects all the art. Peanut writes her name on the painting that she made for him, which is the first time that she'd done that: very exciting!!
3:40 - All the school work is done, except for the kids' chores. Dragon is going to vacuum; Peanut helps him pick up the toys. While they do that, the Daddy and I chat. Peanut got a Moana doll for her birthday in January, but she broke it. Now she wants a new one, but she has to buy it with her own money, so she wants a "sticker job" -- we told her that when she has three stickers on her chart then she can have the doll. But right now, she has to wait for Daddy and me to stop chatting.
5:00 - Daddy and Dragon have gone in search of ink for our older printer. Peanut has done her job, and she and Hero are having a snack. It's super quiet, and I grab a couple minutes to work on some blog posts.
The rest of the evening was very busy: we had a quick, informal dinner, then the Daddy had some things to do, and I took the kids to church for Scouts. Dragon read nearly a whole Magic Treehouse book while we waited for Hero's den to plan out what they're doing next week when they cook on a fire.
One of my girlfriends caught me while we were at church; she's so nice
to me: she had been to Japan recently, visiting her parents who are
serving a mission there, and she brought back a couple books for us. I'm
so excited to get to work on reading them! They're all a little
difficult, which means that, in the process of figuring them out,
there's going to be lots of growth.
After that it was bedtime. I'm trying to fix my bedtime, so that it's more compatible with an early wakeup, and I did an ok (not great) job of getting there. Part of that was that I didn't attempt to read any of the new books; I limited myself to just looking at the packaging on the chocolates that she brought us.
See what a day of homeschooling looks like in other Homeschool Review Crew Homes:
Both boys practiced math facts. We're working toward mastery, which includes speed drills for Hero, though Dragon's not ready for those. Listening to Andrew Pudewa's talk, Mastery Learning and Ability Development, has reenforced my decision to require the kids to do timed tests. There's a lot of value in knowing the facts cold -- and he shares a cautionary tale from his own family about what happens when kids don't know their facts, but move into harder math anyway, including how it affects his daughter's perception of herself and her abilities. Math facts and speed drills are a good thing.
We're having a watercolors phase, and they've been out on the table nearly constantly for several days now, except when I insist on clearing things off for meals. This is Hero's current project, the goddess Artemis. It's a coloring sheet we printed, and he's having a great time painting it. Lots of Greek stuff going on -- looking forward to writing more about it when I share the review that I'm working on, near the end of the month.
So much reading going on lately; it's just lovely. Hero's been re-reading a number of the sci-fi series he has recently, plus devouring classic fiction that I assign. Here he's working on Gone Away Lake, from the Ambleside Online free-reads list. So many good books on their curriculum! So glad I finally figured out how to use it.
A while back I started asking Dragon to read to Peanut. Turns out they both love it (even if she was distracted when I caught them doing it), and it's been huge: he doesn't really want to read to me, much, but he will cheerfully read to her. So I ask him to. And his reading is really taking off. I love this part, where they discover that they love reading.
This has got to be the cutest "gate" ever invented. It's actually open in the picture. When they wanted to close it, they'd spread out their feet as far as they would go, and the two of them can cover a lot of ground! Surprisingly effective... but I have long legs.
Lunch. Baked potatoes. Yum.
And the "meat" of the day. Good stuff.
Hope you liked your peek into our day of school today! How's your day been?
Just an ordinary day, doing our ordinary things...
Here's the soundtrack for our day. We've been listening to this one a lot lately, so we started down the list a little. With 67 songs, we seldom make it all the way through!
Legos are great while listening to stories, and he comes up with some remarkable things.
Practicing our scripture memory work.
Then we did our poems.
The Sea
An everywhere of silver,
With ropes of sand
To keep it from effacing
The track called land.
-Emily Dickinson
Peas
I eat my peas with honey;
I've done it all my life.
It might taste kinda funny,
But it keeps them on the knife!
-Mother Goose
The Sea was perfect for today. Hero and I saw Moana with some good friends of ours last night (it's fantastic), and he's been humming snatches of song all day, especially this one.
Listening to Alexander and Bucephalus, and then Diogenes. With Legos. Because that's how Dragon does it.
Guess who is my kitchen helper today! Best job in the house. The only one that we have an official schedule for, because otherwise there's fighting. She oiled up the potatoes we had for lunch; they were delicious.
Don't let her fool you; she adores doing purlers. This is her concentrating face. She's working on letter A right now, has been for several days, and wanted to do an A car, so I helped her build it a bit. She's doing very well with her letters, and I think that Dragon is a mite jealous that he's not in preschool anymore... preschool does fun stuff.
He's growing up: today he read Plutarch to me, rather than the other way around!
Dragon and I are reading the narrative portions of the Bible, and then we always draw a picture of the story. Last time, he drew the Ark of the Covenant, but this time, he was distracted, so I got to draw the Tabernacle.
Meanwhile, the Peanut announced that she was tired, and I suggested that she could lay down a minute... and she fell asleep. Guess she wasn't kidding!
Dragon was too excited about these games to be super worried about doing the drawing in his Bible himself. "Mom, can I play these games?" Uh... sure. You can do some extra phonics. Knock yourself out!
"Mom! I'm booorrrred!"
Poor kid doesn't really like to go wait for his brother at Cub Scouts. Truth is, it's not very interesting a lot of time time, just sitting and waiting for an hour.
"If you're bored, you need a job. Let's get the vacuum."
"Yeah!!!"
Now, it's bedtime, and I'm waiting for the last munchkin to go to sleep, and learning a little about chess, since my kids and my brother all like to play: I want to be able to hold my own when I play them! Plus, it turns out, once you find a good explanation of chess strategy, it's pretty interesting to see all the ins and outs of it. I am surprised at how much I like it.
