A Week, Briefly (9/14/20)

 On Saturday of last week, Sir Walter Scott had his last vacation day of the week Pixie left for college (we weren't certain how she was going to go back or if she was going to go back, so he took the week off to cover all eventualities).  

He took 5 of the kids on an 8 mile bike ride!

Lola is our only little one who can't ride a 2-wheeler, so she stayed home with me and a couple of bigger kids, and helped make dinner--even getting to flip the pancakes herself.  

She was so very proud!

In my mind is the picture Sir Walter Scott painted of little Baymax plugging along on his little red bike for 8 whole miles.

The kids came home, ate ravenously, and slept hard that night.

The new week was full of activity.

We had park dates on Monday and Tuesday, which meant adjusting our schedule to make room for friends.
 
We returned to our regular morning walks on Wednesday and Thursday.  The cool part of bending over to pick up trash is that our faces get right close to the ground.

When we get down close to the ground, we find treasures like this spider that Brother is pointing to . . .

 . . . and this four-leaf clover!

Mr. S-- continues to be an asset to our household.  I'm still feeling the effects of a "stranger" in the house so often, but he's a blessing.  

My favorite interaction with him came when I felt like I was inviting Brother to join me in an activity, but really I gave him a direction to do it.  When he resisted, I felt like it was reasonable for him to refuse the invitation, so I was ready to comply, but Mr. S-- jumped in with an emphatic, "No!  That was a direction.  [Brother], when Mom gives you a direction, what is the correct answer?"

After a quick moment with Brother, Mr. S-- turned and apologized to me for correcting me that way.  I simply laughed, saying, "I need to be taught, too!  I didn't realize I was unclear, and if I can learn how to communicate consistently and clearly, then we're all better off."

He apologized 2 or 3 more times, and I assured him all was well. 

Later, as I walked into a room to tell the kids they had 5 minutes until clean up, I overheard him talking to our BCBS saying, "Yes, she seems very open and cooperative."

Perhaps it was not me they were talking about, but if they were, then I feel grateful for such a compliment.

Individual subjects went well--everyone did their reading, writing, and 'rithmetic all week long (except Lola whose training needs to be my next project).  

Ladybug finished her first literature unit.

Baymax finished this phonic workbook--begun last school year.

Little Princess added Portuguese to her daily study program, via Duolingo.  

In Academy, we spent time reviewing some of the picture books about China that we've already read, and we added a couple of folk tales--The Shady Tree and The Magic Tapestry, both by Demi. 

My favorite day of study was opening Maps to the 2 page China spread, and letting the kids take turns pointing to pictures they wanted to learn more about.  I then found Youtube videos on each subject.  We learned about:

     The Terra-cotta Army
     The monks of Shaolin monastery
     Tibetan Sand Foxes
     Yak racing
     The Great Wall of China
     Chinese Mountain Cats

We're ready to move to Lesson 2 in our Spanish curriculum.  The kids are pretty comfortable with basic greetings, and the next unit is about family members.

Baymax likes to listen to Brother read a Bible story each day.


In Colloquium we finished The Perilous Road.  It made Little Princess cry a lot.  And as I edited a couple of pages of war destruction for my tender-hearted children, Nature Angel was quite angry that such description would be in "a children's book."

We had some gooood discussion.

Poor Belle only had one reading session with me.  We only have 25 pages left to finish The Last Days of Socrates, but we should have finished it over a week ago.  This is a scheduling issue I really need to fix.
 
The Church Youth Activity this week was painting kindness rocks to leave for people to find.  Belle made cute polka dot or stripy patterns with words of encouragement, but Nature Angel opted to inspire others with the beauty of nature.
 
We opted to skip our weekly hike and have a work day at home on Friday.  I got the interior of our front door painted a lovely, gentle blue that makes my heart sing every time I look at it.  I was also able to work on repairing and painting the folding doors that will return to Lola's room (she has curtains in her doorway now), begin demolition of the horrid tile entryway floor, paint a set of homemade peg rails (and sand them clean again because the paint color was awful), and work on repairs for a little shelf that is moving from our school room to our entryway.

While I did that, Sir Walter Scott mowed, ran errands, and mended bikes.  

The kids played outside for at least 8 hours of the day--actually, I think it was closer to 10 hours.  Bike riding, basketball shooting, tree climbing, sand digging, swinging, and building with rocks were activities I was aware of.

Little Princess made most of the meals, including a huge batch of homemade cookies.

This only represents the first 2 trays . . . not the whole batch!

 In the late afternoon, Sir Walter Scott took 7 kids (again, Lola stayed home with me) on a bike ride.  It turned out to be something of an adventure when Baymax first crashed then had his chain fall off so many times that they left the bike on the side of the trail while he rode piggy back on Dad's back as Dad rode his own bike.  Then Brother wiped out rather badly, and it seemed that everyone came home with new band-aids and stories to tell.

All owies are healing nicely, and they picked up Baymax's bike later.  (It is now mended.)
 
This week Super Star aced her first exam, scoring the highest in her class!
 
Pixie has successfully completed her first week of classes.  World History is turning out to be a killer with hundreds of pages of reading due each week with written commentary, but it will be a good learning experience for her.  Mondays and Wednesdays of each week are dance-only days, so she's quite happy.

The coming week will be a new adventure for us as we begin our full-time gig providing childcare for the little friend that visited us for 3 weeks last year.  He's not quite 2 years old, and he has a new baby sister that will eventually join us once Mom feels she can't get her work done and meet Baby's needs.  

Our schedule will have new challenges, but it will be such a joy to have itty-bitty ones in the house again.

Comments

  1. Hurray for your Super Star on the test. Your husband is a wonderful father. The cookies look so good. I am trying to eat almost no sugar right now to shave off a few pounds before the holidays so I can have so wiggle room in my eating habits and pants (lol).
    Blessings, Dawn

    ReplyDelete
  2. What amazingly full days!!!! And I've got to get a copy of that Maps book. It looks so good!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cool 4-leaf clover!! And the cookies look to die for--make my mouth water! :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anne's Day in the Life: 17, 16, 12, 10, 9, 8, 8, 7, 5, & 5

Review: Drive Thru History® – “The Gospels”

The Second Week