A Week, Briefly (Jan. 16, 2023)

Nature Angel said, "Every day lasts forever, but then suddenly the week is over."

Yup.

She's neither the first nor the last to feel that way.

And I can't figure out how the days can be long and short at the same time.  They seem to go on and on, but at the same time, we can't fit as much as I'd like into them!

Things that are working:

*Morning table time for the babies--having a prepared activity for them to just walk right up to is a blessing.  This week I put out the following:

     Mon--large pompoms and foam cutouts in muffin tins

     Tues--playdough and laminated mats

     Wed--Beans, bowls, scoops

     Thurs--wooden puzzles and stacking blocks

     Fri--Calico Critters

The favorite by far was the bin of Calico Critters.  They fell into the world of make-believe so easily and lasted so long.  The beans were the messiest, beating the playdough by a narrow margin. :)  Nothing on this list cost me anything in the moment--it's all stuff we already own.  

The next goal will be finding out how long a loop the activities need to be on for them to stay fresh and allow for familiarity enough for development.

*Symposium--the teens and I are having a consistent 20-30 minutes of American and World History each day.  I read.  They take notes.  I have them write a paragraph or copy timeline dates as the day warrants.  

I wish we could take longer.

*Nap time in the upstairs room--4 babies can be watched by one person.  As that person is usually Nature Angel, she gets 2-3 hours of quiet time doing independent work.  She's already wanting to add Stretch to the mix because she thinks he'll learn quickly to sleep in the room with everyone else.

Things that are frustrating:

*I'm not getting to do the preschool projects I want to do with the little ones.  It's my favorite kind of school, but their playtime is with Nature Angel and Little Princess while I do school with my youngest 6, and then it's nap time, and suddenly the day is gone.

There just isn't time for everything, and my teens need me!  That's where my time needs to go,

*Evening reading--there are so many evening interruptions these days.  We're still successful 4-ish nights a week, but I miss the long-ago days (even the quarantine days of not so long ago) when we had few, if any, interruptions.

However, I am counting the blessing of getting the time we get

.

Monday

Workmen were out again!  It made everyone's day.

The day was spring-warm.  Instead of going inside, I kept everyone out, and they played restaurant/cooking with the wood slices leftover from making geoboards.

"May I have some grapes?" I asked.
"These are purple beans!" I was emphatically informed.

The lure of the warm sunshine pulled us into the yard where we prepared garden beds and worked on our pond project (the one we started 2 years ago).

Baymax and Beowulf kept running the soil through their fingers.  "Look at that good dirt!" they said.

One of these years, we're going to have a pond!

Everyone wanted a turn to use the pruners.

As the afternoon waned, and the kids got tired of working, they were free to turn to other outdoor activities.  Ladybug spent an hour or more making various ombres with sidewalk chalk.

Li'l K loved wearing one of Brother's work gloves, and he dug happily for a long time.

Over the course of the afternoon, we turned over 4 garden beds, dug in several wheelbarrows' worth of compost, completely cleaned out the pond area, moved 3 wheelbarrows' worth of topsoil over to the pond area, and generally had a glorious afternoon.

Nature Angel drew a super-duper hopscotch game that everyone had a great time trying!  It included jumps, spins, backward hops, and a bunch of other challenges.

Tuesday

Winter came creeping back.

My kids and I did math together by first cutting out 100 scraps of paper to use as counters.

Then I put a number on the board, and the kids had to share ways to make that number using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and/or division.  I wrote their ideas on the board and told them that anything on the board was off-limits for the next round.  We did 3-4 rounds for each number.

Nature Angel finished the watercolor assignment I'd given her a week or so earlier.  It is so perfect!

I'm going to frame it.

I had an exceedingly hard day on Tuesday.  We had some behavioral issues flare up, and I struggled with anxiety that took over my ability to make decisions and cope with everyone.

Nonetheless, I read aloud to the kids from the Joan of Arc biography we started earlier this month, and then I allowed the kids to illustrate and narrate from their choice of stories:

     1.  Joan of Arc

     2.  The Tortoise and the Hare

     3.  Peter and the Dike (the story of the little Dutch boy who plugged the hole in the dike)

We are reading stories from The Children's Book of Virtues, and options 2 and 3 above are stories we read from that book.

Wednesday

These two brought chalk on our walk, and they ran ahead to each stopping point on our walk to pause and draw while the rest of us caught up.  They started a trend that all of the kids are now doing when we walk. :)

We made yarn-wrapped sticks to decorate our dining room table.  I'd hoped to bring the babies in one at a time to allow them to make sticks too, but Nugget's therapist arrived, and that complicate our day a little bit, so only my kids and The Munchkin worked on them.

We also read more about Mary's Garden during lunch, and more Joan of Arc in the afternoon while the kids drew pictures.

Thursday 

Library day

The kids did some copywork--from the poem Try, Try Again

9 kids to American Rhythm

Me at home with the 7 youngest babies

Older boys to the temple

Younger boys and most of the girls to the church

Little Princess to CAP

Sir Walter Scott drove kids and did home repairs all day.

Whew!!!

Friday 

Some of the babies developed fevers.

I read aloud while the kids drew pictures.  This is what Ladybug did while I read.  I find it charming!

Sir Walter Scott worked until he fell asleep on the job.

I checked to make sure he was just sleeping!

He was.

He eventually got up and was fine.

Several months ago, these two bought tickets to see Hadestown.  They paid SO. MUCH. for their tickets.  It was finally time to go, and they just glowed with joy over the whole experience.  They sat in the orchestra section, dead center, and felt like they were part of the show.  

 

Nature Angel and I cried as she told me about her favorite scenes, and even though I am still horrified by the price, I can see that the experience will stay with them forever, and I'm glad they went.

Saturday

It was an errand-running, chore-doing, regular kind of Saturday in most ways.

But this picture made me laugh.

Mister Man and Brother attended a church youth leadership planning meeting in the morning.

In the evening, there was a huge church youth activity that these 5 (and their friend) were able to attend.  It involved escape rooms, so they had to work in groups to problem solve, and there was much socializing, snacking, and laughing all around.

I'm posting late because Lola and Baymax were baptized members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on Sunday afternoon.  

More on that to come next week.