A Week, Briefly (12/9/18)

It was as close to ordinary a week as we are likely to have for quite some time.

I'll call that a blessing.

We had Morning Meeting every day, including a wall mural of a portion of the Revelation of John, and the finishing of the New Testament portion of The Bible for Children.

We had 5 Symposiums which included working on a biographical essay, grammar, punctuation, another watercolor pencil art project, lots of North American geography, and finishing Sagebrush Surgeon.

We had no Academies, but we are continuing to have lunch time read alouds.  This week we finished The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and began The Other Wise Man.

Nature Angel, Little Princess, and I completed 2 more lessons (5 stories) in Greek Mythology.

We watched The Nutcracker, performed by the Colorado Ballet.  It was exquisite.  I hope we can wrangle enough kids at our house to continue to qualify for this school outreach privilege.  We barely qualified this year with 10 kids at home!

#everybodyseedance

 

 Brother read a story aloud to Lola. 

This is a big deal.

It represents a major academic milestone for him!

 Mister Man finished another literature module.

 He's begun the next module about Little House in the Big Woods.  It will be at least his 3rd time reading this book, but it's such a joy that it doesn't matter, and he's getting to think about it in new ways.

Our sweet church grandma came over with Christmas crafts, and she helped us have a peaceful Wednesday morning . . . such a blessing after our infinitely challenging Tuesday (I spent about 7 hours of Tuesday searching for missing Brother or wrangling tantruming/violent kids).

Captain America and Spider Girl did Jr. Kindergarten one day.  The rest of the days this week, Baymax and Lola were my students.

My favorite school story of the week is about Baymax.  He and Lola were working in their little math books, practicing writing numbers and counting.  As Baymax transitioned from one page to the next, he looked up at me sadly and said, "I don't unnowstand 'dis."

I showed him what to count and where to write his answer.

He counted the pine trees in the box, but he missed one, so I said, "Oops!  Try again!  You might get a different answer."

He counted again; this time correctly.

He shook his little head wonderingly, and as he carefully printed "8" in the box, he sighed, "I don't know how you know all 'dis stuff!"

I can't even type it without laughing . . . though I was very respectful in the moment.

Someone thought of getting out our marble runs, and that inspired a lot of creative engineering this week. 

I don't have any pictures, but I also found a bag of forgotten Lego accessories that a friend had shared with us last year.  Without telling the kids, I dumped the bag in our giant Lego box.  The sound of clicking Legos alerted the boys to something interesting, and as I walked out of the room, they peered inside and yelled, "Whoa!  New Legos!"

They built for 3 straight hours.

We were supposed to have Brother's ABA intake meetings, but our insurance is discontinuing their contract with the provider.  The provider is very frustrated and is applying on our behalf for a single case agreement as we were on their wait list for months while the insurance contract was valid, and for us to go elsewhere would require another several months' long wait.

My call to the Regional Office was not returned.  I'm going to have to put on my big girl pants and be the squeaky wheel . . . something I am not good at.

We ended the week with our teen book club meeting for The Old Man and the Sea.  It wasn't the most stimulating meeting we've had, but it was interesting enough.  The kids had some reasonable insights.

While I was at book club, Sir Walter Scott took the younger kids to the zoo where they got to see baby Cotton-top Tamarins and baby River Otters.  The weather was quite warm for December, and the animals were very active--even the lions!

I'm grateful to be capable of counting my blessings this week.