A Week, Briefly (9/28/20)

Photo Credit:  Nature Angel

 

These are leaves Nature Angel picked up on one of our morning walks.  It is increasingly beautiful each day.

(And to be honest:  the beautiful pictures are by one of my daughters.)

 

 

Temperatures have dropped enough that Brother is wearing gloves inside the house this morning to build his marble run.  :)  I could turn the heat on, but knowing we're supposed to head back up to the 80s next week makes me inclined to encourage sweaters and socks and leave the thermostat alone.

 

We had 4 successful morning walks this week.  Sometimes we picked up trash, sometimes we meandered along, one day I listened to kids talk out the plot of one of their imaginative play games.  

The constant of the morning walk was the dead opossum in the road around the corner.  

On the first day, we were able to look at its teeth, claws, fur, tail, and general shape.

On the second day, it had been run over again, and lots of muscles and bones were exposed.

On the third day, the meat had been thoroughly eaten by something.

On the fourth day, the insects were finding their way to the leftovers.

I suppose it is cliché to be a homeschooler who uses roadkill as a science lesson . . . but when an interesting opportunity is right in front of our faces, what else are we supposed to do!?!?!?

That 'possum prompted long, interesting, thought-provoking discussions, not the least of which was the one about when and how the kids would prefer to die.  (The good news is that they all chose to die peacefully of old age, but it was pretty wild as they discussed the potential horrors of drowning, freezing, or being killed in an apocalyptic war.)

Hike #34 of 52:  Morning Walks

68.96 miles + 1.7 = 70.66 miles

This photo is completely unedited!!  Can you believe that sky?

 

We only had one interruption to the flow of our academics, and that was a telehealth appointment with Beowulf's pediatrician about what his meds have been doing to him recently.  After many months of success, he seems to have developed a "tolerance" to his ADHD meds, and even though I've given him med breaks and and followed doctor's orders to increase his daily dose, his behaviors have been deteriorating to a rather desperate point.

At this point he's better off the meds than on, so it's been a full week since he's taken them, and his doctor listened closely to what I had to say and then suggested that we seek broader psychiatric services than either she or his ADHD clinic could offer.

Which is exactly what I've been thinking for several months now.

With a referral, we're ready to see if Brother's psychiatrist has room for Beowulf in her schedule.

Otherwise, the kids and I had 4 solid school days with lots of reading, geography, arithmetic, science, writing, narrating, social science, history, grammar, spelling, and whatever else we did.

Ladybug caught and set up a temporary habitat for this toad.

 

We finished a fairy tale from The Blue Fairy Book called "The White Cat."  

The next day, we put away The Blue Fairy Book for a little while and replaced it with Aesops' Fables.

It's nice to have a little change in our days.

My Colloquium girls finished their rough draft essays about the benefits of self-mastery, and now they're working on revisions.  In addition, we finished reading the assigned selections from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.  We've also been taking turns reading aloud from Carver: A Life in Poems by Marilyn Nelson.  (It's awesome!  But there will be some necessary editing as a few of the poems are too graphic for us.)

(Note!!!  This book only explains sweetly that flowers come from seeds, kittens come from cats, ducklings come from ducks, and babies come from moms and dads.)

Nature Angel and Little Princess do the lion's share of the work of watching The Munchkin.  He's so much fun, but he is in that awkward toddler age of being still-a-baby-but-not-a-baby at the same time.  They've each come to me to discuss the challenges and blessings of balancing school, work, and free time.

 

 

Belle and I had 3 good days of reading aloud together.  The translation of Livy that we have is quite engaging, and we're enjoying the stories.  It's fun to remember a lot of what we've already forgotten about some of Plutarch's writings.  

 

"Repetition builds and stabilizes." (author unknown to me)

Super Star took Mister Man and Ladybug on a sister date to Freddy's.

Discovering carbonated soda--I think this is a posed-for-the-camera version of the real reaction.:)

Brother is doing very, very well on his current med regimen and ABA schedule.  I have watched him work his way successfully through huge feelings that would have resulted in violence a month ago.

His success is astonishing and encouraging!

Ladybug has worked her way to significant personal freedoms that had been on hold for over 2 years.  Her success has breeded further success, and she's been reveling in getting to serve her siblings and play like a regular little kid.

One of her favorite activities is reading aloud to a crowd:

As I listen to her read and watch the kids be riveted by her engaging reading, my heart swells with gratitude.  She's diagnosed as Intellectually Disabled and a host of other issues, but here she is getting to be a leader and example and helper in our family.

It's nothing short of a miracle.

Sir Walter Scott took the kids to a local park for an hour while I was having an ABA meeting.  Some of the pictures above are from that outing, and so are these:

Eventually we got to Friday, and as we had to take Sir Walter Scott to the airport so he could go to California to help his parents with some stuff, we didn't have a hike.  I did keep my promise to feed the ducks and fish, though.

We listened to nearly 2 hours of The Railroad Children by Edith Nesbit in the van on the way to and from the airport, and when we got home the kids were ready for some more outdoor play until Grandma and Grandpa arrived for a visit.

Grandma has been going through old boxes, and, among others,  she brought some pictures of me when I was 19 and backpacking with Grandpa and the aunties and uncle through Europe.  Pictures of ancient ruins and Mediterranean countrysides prompted memories and story-telling.

We've happily watched General Conference this weekend, and we look forward to the final sessions today.