A Week, Briefly (Feb 14, 2022)

 Temperatures swung from 60+ degrees and sunny to single digits and 8 inches of snow this week.  In the coming week we're swinging back up again with 20 degree temperature climbs per day.

The kids are out in it all.  I don't have photographic documentation of their outdoor play this year the way I have in years past, but they are still outside in all weathers.  This week they spent most of their time on bikes and skates, but when the creek froze, they spent almost 2 full days on the ice.

The ice and snow caused schools to close and travel advisories in our area, so we had a day with no babies at all and then another day with only 2 babies.  It was so quiet around here!  We missed our babies, but we put our time to good use to get lots of school and organizing done.

We celebrated Valentine's Day on Sunday instead of Monday because of school and work and babies.  We had our treasure hunt which was actually pretty challenging this year, and even though our numbers of celebrants is shrinking, the house rang with laughter as 9 kid raced around the house searching for clues.

Then we exchanged valentines.

Nature Angel painted bookmarks and miniatures for each of us.  This one is mine.

Little Princess baked and decorated two miniature cakes to deliver to friends from church.  They are 4 layers and filled with buttercream, ombre-frosted in each girl's favorite color.

Baymax finished his first grade math completely!  He asked to start second grade math right away, so we did.  He's quite happy in his new book which is the updated math program by The Good and the Beautiful.  I like that the updated program still has games, but is simpler to manage than the first program.

Brother is in a math book that isn't really working for him.  We're doing a lot of practice on the whiteboard while I decide what to do for him.

Ladybug filled her 100 days of reading as she finished this book.  She's now writing longer narrations (at least 4 sentences) without illustrations in a composition book.  She's made the transition quite well.

It just makes me smile when my "littles" take care of the true littles.

Little Princess worked with another MEL science kit.  Above are her fingerprints, chemically enhanced.  Below is an experiment I still don't understand. :)

Beowulf finished reading and narrating The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk.  The plan was to have him read and narrate another book, but when The Good and the Beautiful language arts went on clearance, I picked up a 2nd grade book for him to work on.  We're switching to that program in the coming week.  Also, I made a switch in the order in which he takes his meds (with his psychiatrist's approval), and this week's school sessions were far easier than last week's.  We still had one difficult day, and I still have to redirect him constantly, but the change is improving his ability to do focused work.

Brother finished this spelling book!  He'll be picking back up with the phonics book from this program and level.

This is Mister Man's voluntary math one day.  He wanted to figure out exactly how many days President Russell M. Nelson has bee alive, so he calculated years, leap years, and days since his birthday to get the number.

And he finished his handwriting book.  I've asked him to fill the gap with double lessons from his Lightning Lit book (which he loves!)

Belle and Nature Angel finally got to attend the Masquerade Ball put on by a local church.  The masks squished up their faces when they smiled, so we had to settle for more serious pictures.  They had a wonderful time, and we are waiting excitedly for the professional pictures that were taken to be sent to us.

Our show was cancelled due to the storm, so we did not dance this week.

Most church activities were cancelled, too, but Lola did get to do a yoga night with the other primary girls.  

Belle is completing and submitting scholarship applications.  I'm hoping she receives enough aid to go to SVU this fall.  She didn't do as well on her college algebra exam as she thought she'd done, but she did well enough, and now that she has the first exam under her belt, she can improve on future exams.

Ladybug had an assignment to write a story of at least 6 sentences inspired by a painting in her language arts book. I was hesitant to assign it to her, but decided to go ahead.  What a blessing!  She got caught up in the joy of storytelling, and she wrote two full composition book pages.  She was so proud of herself, and I was quite delighted.  I will need to nurture this new joy.

We will finish The Cat of Bubastes next week.  In spite of the challenging vocabulary and grammatical construction, the kids are quite enjoying it.  We finished I Am Sacagawea, and we read Who Was Davy Crockett? this week, too. 

 I told the kids we'd be reading about The Star Spangled Banner next week, and then Baymax told the whole story perfectly based on a book I read a couple of years ago to Ladybug and Mister Man that he happened to overhear.  If they all remembered that well, I'd call the narration good enough, but the other kids need to hear it again, and a little repetition won't hurt Baymax.

I bought seeds yesterday.  As soon as I can replenish our peat seed starters, we'll get our garden started!