A Week, Briefly (5-17-21)

 I'm thinking of building an ark.

It has been raining for so long, and there is so much more rain in the forecast!

The kids love to go see the creek when it is thunderingly full, but once that thrill is over, they come back inside--wet, muddy, and hyper.

Such is life.

Nature Angel saw a rainbow one afternoon, so I know it won't last forever!

 

I actually turned on videos one afternoon when the rain left me feeling rather desperate.

It was a hit with big and little kids alike!

It was Planet Earth II, though, so it counts for science.  

Belle had her last day of seminary for the school year.  It was a hard year with Zoom meetings and independent work, but it was lovely that the kids got to meet in-person for the final 5 weeks.  

 

All around us the public schools are winding to a close, but we're just marching steadily along (mostly).

 

We've continued watching Book of Mormon videos during Morning Meeting.  But I just received delivery of Illustrated Book of Mormon Stories, vol 1, so we'll read that for the next week or two.  I'll search for and buy volume 2 ASAP.

 

Little Princess finished The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts Level 6.  That's the end of her formal, independent work, and she'll keep up with Duolingo Chinese (Mandarin) and Portuguese just because she loves them, she loves being on the computer, and it's good to work on language study.

Baymax is still enjoying reading living books for his reading lessons.  Here he is revisiting Katy and the Big Snow with Beowulf at his side to help him with the hard words.

My parents stopped by one afternoon, and Grampa read stories to the youngest 6 while I got dinner on the table.

Lil' K likes to do school with us.  We decided to embrace his constant begging to be taken from the playroom into the schoolroom.  He was thrilled.

Here he is in the kitchen, too!  His mama brings him to our house to give him social time with other children, and he does get that, but he's happiest when he's where I am, doing what I'm doing.  That makes it clear to me that he's got a good mama who includes him in her activities.

Little Princess purchased a Chinese calligraphy practice set.

She's been sharing it with the other kids. :)

This is how Nature Angel uses her bullet journal.  :)

Our strawberry plants are producing beautifully.

Beowulf found this bone fragment out near the creek, and we spent a lot of time trying to figure out what bone it could be!  We finally turned it in such a way that we could see it is part of a skull.  What skull, we still do not know!  But if we keep studying it, we might figure it out!

Estimating the circumference of the earth using handwidths.

Ladybug worked so hard on this craft recommended by MLFLE.  It represents counting by 5s and 10s.  It was crazy hard for her, and she had to re-do part of it a couple of times, but eventually she understood how to match the hands to the skip-counting.  I hope it represents a better understanding of what skip counting means.

Nature Angel worked on Greek while the babies played with shaving cream.

Brother and Beowulf are both having med struggles and triumphs.  We've definitely removed another med from Brother's acceptable list when he eloped from home necessitating a call to the police after he took his first dose.  There were several other acts of aggression and destruction of property along the way.  He is safely home and doing well on his old med.  

Beowulf doesn't like how his med makes him feel (kind of slow and fuzzy around the edges), but it does make school and chores and not fighting with others possible--even wonderful!  On the med, he can do an entire math lesson in 20 minutes or less.  Without the med, he cannot complete even half a page.  We had to wait two extra days for a back-ordered refill, and he was both frantic and incapable on both days.

We're about half way through The Twenty-One Balloons, and we just started The Wild Robot Escapes during our evening reading.  Both books are a lovely break from the heart-rending historical fiction we've been reading.

Lots of lovely geography, history, and nature study books this week

I've got a mostly full spreadsheet of plans for the 2021-22 homeschool year.  And we have a tentative start date corresponding with the start of seminary--Belle's senior year and Nature Angel's freshman year.  

Time is passing in that yo-yo way it has--quickly and slowly simultaneously . . . 

 

and you know what?  

 

The forecast has been updated to show no rain!  Maybe we can dry out a little bit!