A Week, Briefly (October 10, 2022)

 

Monday

We've started doing a little yoga routine each morning using the book Good Morning Yoga.  My hope as of Monday morning was to make it a habit each day, and as I write this on Sunday, we successfully had a week of yoga every morning!

The first thing we did after our morning walk was making applesauce with the apple Grandma and Grandpa brought us last Friday.

We finished reading about Murillo as we ate our homemade treat.

I had the kids do a page from This Is Not a Math Book.  It's a consumable book, so I took a page from it and created my own version that I printed for each kid.  Their goal was to draw freehand circles as perfectly as they could all over their paper and then color them in.

It was so hard for Lola and Beowulf!!

But the rest of the kids threw themselves into their work and made lovely geometric art.

This week I assigned Nature Angel to finish her second nature study.  I assigned Little Princess to complete a write-up about her previous week's heat shield activity.  They worked on those assignments throughout the week.

Here is Nature Angel doing some free reading.  

We read ocean stories and started Our Little Dutch Twins. featuring Kit and Kat who are 5 years old. The first adventure had my kids rolling.

Inspired by our ocean stories, we drew jellyfish with Art for Kids Hub.

In their free time in the afternoon, the kids played basketball and made friendship bracelets.

We read El Cid and a Spanish fairytale in the evening.

Tuesday

After braving the wet-cold weather for our morning walk and having a lovely time of it, we started making life-size "me" drawings.  I was in charge of doing the tracings with a Sharpie (I didn't want any kids accidentally marking bodies or clothes with permanent ink).  My younger 6 each helped a baby and then got a turn to make their own drawings.  

We've adopted the maple tree on the corner lot as "our tree" for a year of observation.  We stop to make note of changes each time we walk past it.  I decided that instead of a directed art session, I'd have the kids just draw what they see, and I put this picture up on the TV so the kids could study and draw.

Frustration inspired tempers to flare.  Brother got frustrated because his color-blindness makes the nuances of color impossible.  I'd forgotten this when I thought of having the kids draw, and his behaviors masked his insecurities long enough for us to be at logger-heads before I remembered the problem.  Once I did remember, I explained what colors to use and apologized.

I also looked at each child's efforts and made specific compliments about each one, hoping to reassure and inspire the kids.

But the damage had been done.

His frustration fed other frustrations, and most of the kids were arguing, making fun of each other's drawings and their own, and generally being obstinate.

Beowulf had a full-blown breakdown resulting in violence and me restraining him until he calmed down enough to rest in his room.  

Kudos to Ladybug and Mister Man for staying aloof from the fray and setting a good example of doing their best in spite of tough circumstances!

The Duke was quite ill, and I found that he was wheezing and having chest retractions.  I gave him albuterol and kept his parents notified about his well-being all day.  

At one point in the crazy morning, Nature Angel took these two on a little adventure in our woods.  They climbed and balanced and found 5 snails!  They came home happy and ready for lunch and naps.

We had The Munchkin and Sugar Bear at our house until 9:30 pm because their mom was in the ER.  While I led the rest of the family through our usual evening routine, Little Princess took the two babies upstairs to play, and she used her new phone (I don't think I mentioned that now that she's 13, she has a phone of her own!) to have a little photoshoot with them.  I find her pictures endearing.

El Cid had become a long slog of confusing names, the same fighting, killing, spoiling, and crowning over and over again.  I took a vote, and it was unanimous to put El Cid away in favor of starting an adaptation of Don Quixote.  

As I read, I opened up some recordings of songs from Man of La Mancha, so we had reading and music appreciation at the same time.

We definitely like Don Quixote much, much better!

We also finished all of the Spanish fairy tales, and we're ready to start fairy tales from Belgium,

Wednesday

Once we were home from our walk, the kids found Little Princess in the middle of some physics experiments with her newest MEL kit about light.  She patiently shared her activities with each little sibling that asked.

Once I'd gathered supplies, I took the kids out to the front porch to do a little science of our own--trying to keep an ice cube from melting.  The activity was similar enough to what Little Princess did the week before that the kids needed little direction.  

First, we melted a naked ice cube, timing and recording our findings for comparison as we made changes--2:43.

Then the kids chose various materials to insulate other ice cubes of the same size, and we checked their melting state at the 2:43 mark.  

After snack and reading a story about Kit and Kat from Our Little Dutch Cousins, we went for a walk so that we could count 1,000 steps.  Not all of the younger kids needed that practice, so I made it optional, but they all came . . . along with a couple of our toddlers.   Sometimes I paused our counting/walking to ask questions about groups of  50, 100, and 10.  I also quizzed little ones about digits for numbers up to 1,000 (i.e. "What numbers do you use to write 'one-hundred-twelve?'"

A lot of the kids were next to me, matching my pace, so they're not in the picture.  1,000 steps came out to be .35 miles.  Counting steps was hard because we had to walk very slowly in order to be able to say numbers like "seven-hundred-ninety-seven" before taking step number "seven-hundred-ninety-eight."

Belle came home from her trip to Idaho!  The kids spent lunch and a little while after that listening to stories and watching videos about her trip.

Family history matters.

We read from Don Quixote, but we didn't get to the Belgian fairy tales.

Thursday

By this point in the week, we had so many sick babies that all Nature Angel, Little Princess, and I could do was take care of them.  Sir Walter Scott took over all of the activities and driving for the day.  

He took them to the library.

He took them to dance.

He took them to youth activities.

I considered taking Lola with me to shop for Halloween costume pieces in the evening when the rest of the kids were gone to activities, but The Munchkin and Sugar Bear were at our house until 7:30 pm because of a work meeting gone long for their daddy, and after 12 1/2 hours of sick babies, all I could handle was turning on a movie for Lola, throwing some dishes in the dishwasher, and talking with Pixie on the phone until the rest of the crew got home all excited from their activities.

The boys had launched bottle rockets and exploded Coke with Mentos.  

Ladybug had played Cahoot with the other jr. young women.

Nature Angel had gone with the sr. young women to watch one of the class members play volleyball in a high school match.

Little Princess had participated in a meeting with an FAA representative--a sort of career exploration presentation.

Friday

With 8 babies in various levels of health--most of them sick--some of my own kids coming down with what the babies had, and a visit with Grandma and Grandpa on the schedule (a blessing in many ways!), our day wasn't too homeschooling strong.

Cold weather and runny noses inspired me to trade in our morning walk for extra yoga.  We used a free video on YouTube to lead us, and the babies all got quite a kick out of watching us copy the instructor on the TV. Some of them even tried some of the poses with us.

I set up some gentle classical music in the background, sent Little Princess and Nature Angel upstairs to work on their school, and supervised an hour or so of free time for the other 14 kids.

My plan to read the next artist story at snack time failed when the first featured Belgian artist had no story to go with the two included pictures in the book.  We looked at the pictures, compared them to the Spanish artists we'd studied previously, and learned his name--Sir Anthony van Dyck.

After that, with plenty of snack time left, I read some of the adventures of Kit and Kat.

The rest of the day passed in a blur of baby care, pizza with Grandma and Grandpa, free time, and tidying up.  When the babies were gone, my crew refused to cooperate with cleaning up and getting ready for dinner, so we ate late, canceled our plans to watch The Great British Baking Show, and went to bed almost on time.

Beowulf had a particularly bad breakdown that kept us on edge until Sir Walter Scott got home and could help us settle safely down for the evening.

Saturday

I took the kids to their penultimate soccer practice where they had an incredibly good time with their coaches and friends.

We did Saturday-ish things for the rest of the day, including reducing our costume collection by 75% and sorting out the boys' cool-weather clothing.

I hope our babies feel better when they come back on Monday!