A Week, Briefly (November 7, 2022)

With a dentist appointment for me, 2 case worker visits for Lola and Brother, 2 therapist visits for Nugget, our first show, lots of sewing, lots of doing hair, and an abundance of sick children, it was hard to feel like we did any school.

That's the good part of writing down what happened . . . I can see that we did more than I felt like we did.

 

Monday

I ran off to the dentist first thing--leaving the kids to manage the end of Morning Meeting and dog-walking on their own.  I was referred to an endodontist because I've not been pain-free even one day since the crown prep 3 weeks ago.

Now I only have another 2 weeks to wait for a root canal!

It was chilly, but the sun was shining, and the kids and I set to work collecting sticks that were the appropriate thickness to cut into math manipulatives.

The highlight for the kids was getting to use the pruning shears themselves.

Unused sticks got "planted" in our former front lawn.  (It was a rough year for our grass.)

Really, really sick baby

After gathering for snacks and reading a bit about the Irish Twins, I sent the kids on a mission to create pictures with nature--at least 4 kinds per picture.

This is Lola's farm scene.  I didn't know how to get the lighting right to make it easier to see the details, but there are horses in the barn, and the leaves that are trees have little pebbles on them for fruit in the orchard.  I am charmed by every feature of this art piece.

This is Mister Man's mountain landslide into a forest--the trees are going to be knocked down any moment now!

Baymax made a forest with a small boat sailing down a river.

His boat is made of half of a milkweed pod

Beowulf got stuck because he felt that he had to have blue for the water.  He spent nearly an hour aimlessly walking around, by which time Mister Man had finished his project, so he helped Beowulf decide to use sidewalk chalk--even though sidewalk chalk doesn't appear spontaneously in nature.  It's a waterfall flowing into a mountain pool with a flower floating on the surface of the water.

This is Ladybug's picture of a river flowing past a meadow with a flower and a bumblebee.  The white stuff is milkweed seeds, and before I got outside to take the picture, the fluff was stuck on the sticks and looked like trees.  

Close-up of the bee

Brother built a house with a garden and a little rock pathway.  This house was so hard to build because the wind kept knocking it over!  He used zero fasteners, so it's just pure balance resisting gravity and wind.

After lunch, I opened a Lily and Thistle account (I've been thinking about this for 3 months, at least), and we drew a rock.

The kids really fell apart because this was more about learning to draw and trusting your own eyes than the Art Hub for Kids lessons are.  They like the safety of  "draw this line here and put that line there," and there was a lot of crying and confusion.

I was really glad I'd decided to draw with them, and I could show them that I was trusting the process right along with them.  

I also said, "It's a rock.  Do you really think you can draw a rock wrong?  Just draw what you see and erase the lines if you don't like them."

The 15-minute lesson took over half an hour to finish, but we did it!

Tuesday

4:00 am came dark and early, but we got up in order to watch the lunar eclipse become complete.

We huddled in blankets on our deck for a perfect view of the western sky.

I made hot chocolate for everyone, and Little Princess gave astronomy lessons as the clouds moved across the sky, making various celestial features appear and disappear from view.

She set up the telescope for extra observational joy.

This is the view from our deck.

And this is what Little Princess captured through the telescope lens.

Later in the morning, after we'd all slept again and gone through our belated morning routine, we went on our regular walk.  We made leaf lips.  Even though some of the kids look sad or bothered, they were all enthusiastic participants!

It was another slow, sick day. 

In order to get some educational quiet time, we watched several episodes of Wild Babies on Netflix.   After lunch, I had the kids either write or draw about something they enjoyed or learned.  I was delighted when Brother sat down and worked so hard on this little essay.  He wrote the whole thing in cursive, and it took him hours of dedicated work.

  

I worked on Lola's hair for quite some time while we watched the videos.  

Wednesday

The rest of us were getting ready to go for a walk, but Little Princess broke out her MEL science kit and made a gyroscope first thing.

She finished it while we were gone and had it all put away before we got back!

Here you can see Tink (we verified that she is a girl) and her sister Cleo all cuddled up in this picture of perfect domesticity.  Cleo was not supposed to join us, but Rose Red brought her home anyway, and . . . well . . . who can resist kittens!?!?  They are chock full of kitten mischief and kitten sweetness.  My favorite part of having them around is listening to how Nature Angel laughs at them.  I'm thankful for the sound of her laughter every single day.

Above, Nature Angel is working on her cardigan, and she's so close to being done!  I'm hoping to have a picture of her modeling her finished work in the next day or two.

We watched the rest of the Wild Babies episodes while I beaded Lola's hair.  Brother and The Munchkin helped me sort and thread beads onto the beading tools.  Brother was an astonishingly patient teacher, and The Munchkin got a real fine motor skills workout.

I absolutely cannot remember what else we did that day, but I do know I did Ladybug's hair, too, and I played with the toddler boys for a long time.  The best game ever was putting a toy in a box, handing to a toddler to shake and then open, and yelling with delight over what was inside.

It was the same few toys over and over again, and the littles watched me put the toys in or even put them in themselves, but the joy of shaking and opening and exclaiming never got old.  The game only ended when moms and dads arrived for pick-up.

A random picture of Mister Man coloring--he colored for nearly 2 hours that afternoon.

In the evening, Nature Angel had a Friendsgiving dinner and service project with her church youth group.  The rest of us showered and read from Understood Betsy.

Thursday

We had our first show.

'Nuff said.

I got very few pictures because my hands were so completely full, and even though I know our director took bunches of them, she and her family have been sick, so she didn't do her usual photo-sharing.

My kids are all big enough to handle their own costume changes and entrances and exits, so I focused on the babies.  We had all 8 of them, and The Duke fell apart completely, so Sir Walter Scott held him while he slept, and one of the other moms helped me keep the babies from taking the entire room apart.  

I was usually holding 3 of them at any given moment.

The Munchkin was the start of Soul Man.

And I got the babies to at least wear their costumes and stand on the stage while their music played.

Fortunately, the old folks are happy just to see the babies, so their lack of dancing didn't bother anyone. :)

Brother rocks his solo!

We came home and collapsed with exhaustion, and then most of the kids headed out for CAP and church activities.

Nature Angel made lots of progress on her cardigan!

Friday

The cold front that arrived Thursday evening took firm hold by Friday morning, and after we made a brave effort to bundle up and take our morning walk in the 20-degree weather, we kind of fell into individual quiet activities, and I didn't have the heart or energy to push everyone into organized school.

But after snack time, we turned on a documentary called Into the Inferno--about volcanoes.

The afternoon was also quiet.  Even though I told the kids I was going to do a project with them after lunch, we didn't.

I did help Beowulf gather some sticks so we could cut some more math manipulatives, but it was so, so cold outside, that we came in, and I let him, and later Lola, cut right on the living room floor.

Little Princess and Sugar Bear made pumpkin streusel muffins for everyone.

Ladybug was irritable and mean, so I sat her at the dining room table to sit alone for a while, and when she came out, she brought her old Latin book, and sat studying on her own for a good long time!

Baymax has been reading the Keeper of the Lost Cities series.  Little Princess bought book #9 as an early Christmas present for Ladybug, so the whole crew has been re-engaged in the series.

Brother got very interested in doing laundry!  He washed and dried load after load, learned how to use the washer and dryer in the process, and spent hours folding!  All voluntarily!

It was all such awesome self-directed activity, that I couldn't bring myself to force them into an activity directed by me.

We ended our Friday evening by watching the semi-final episode of The Great British Bake-Off and reading another chapter of Understood Betsy.

Somewhat blurry picture of 3-month-old Sweet Peach just for fun

At bedtime, I discovered that Lola's temperature was 103.

Uh-oh.

Saturday

I assigned a few extra chores to kids who could be trusted to do them without doing other damage while I organized a shopping list and did lesson planning for the week ahead.

The healthy kids attended Primary Program Practice  (Sunday is our children's program at church), and in the freezing afternoon, we attended an outdoor musical showcase that some of our friends were in.

I made pancakes and hot chocolate when we got home while the older girls all headed to either a work party or a church dance.

Thus ended our week.