A Week, Briefly (Mar 13, 2023)

 We're trucking along in a good groove right now.  Reading, playing, talking, researching every day in some way or another.

This was a week of being in the middle of books.  Nothing new started.  Nothing new finished.

The teens and I completed unit 3 of American History, so next week we're returning to a couple of World History units.

We had a friend for Lola over on Wednesday, and on Saturday, we had a friend over for the boys.  It makes the days both easier (because a friend makes all of the play activities new and fun again) and harder (because no one will listen to mom when a friend is over).  

Pixie is hilarious with her students, and she's having a camping, hiking, rappelling outing this weekend.

At the top of the cliff!

Belle is still checking items off her mission to-do list.

Rose Red is in a new, sweet relationship.  I have good hopes.

Super Star has tonsillitis (boo) and a new job (hooray).  I hope she gets better easily and has joy in the new job.

Monday

At least 4 of my kids are reading the Wings of Fire fantasy series.  We have 15 books from the series checked out from the library right now.  Ladybug said first thing on Monday morning, "I have the dragonet prophecy memorized?  Do you want to hear it?"

I was trying to make oatmeal for a dozen kids and keep everyone on task (including Ladybug who had stopped doing her chores to talk to me), and I almost said no.

Just in time, I remembered that she was sharing something important to her with me.  And I said yes instead.

She proudly rattled off the two stanzas of not-great poetry and smiled.  I complimented her, reminded her to get her chores finished, and wondered how to get her to do the same for real poetry.

I stopped.

This is real poetry to her.

She took time to study, to commit to her memory, something that spoke to her heart.

Who cares if it's not Shakespeare, Keats, or even Silverstein?!

She memorized a poem!

On her own.

In her free time.

That's self-motivated education, and I'm proud of her!

Later, I heard her talking with Mister Man about memorizing another dragon prophecy from the series.

Go Ladybug!  

As far as assigned work goes, we quilted the tops of our sit-upons this week.  In order to allow each of the 6 children to sew every day, I supervised them sewing 2-3 lines of stitching each day, and we spent the whole week on it.

I did not take pictures of them every day of the week, though.  Here they are on Monday, and they looked the same all 5 days that we worked on this step.

They are learning how to operate a sewing machine as well as how to control their stitching.  They're all dying for a turn to actually thread the machine, but my machine is really finicky, and I've told them that even if they're ready, I'm not ready, so that will have to come later. :)

In the meantime, they're watching closely every time I thread it (which is a lot of times as they are each using different colored thread!).

After school, and once the babies were awake, I got out some more of the Harbor and Sprout activities.

They went over very, very well!

Ladybug got very stressed when I asked her to practice spelling with this activity.  I reassured her it was going to be better than she thought it was going to be, and . . . it was!  She finished with a huge smile!  I think there's something about spelling with cute letter cards that takes a lot of the pressure off.

Baymax absolutely freaked out, even though he'd just seen Ladybug have fun, when I asked him to spell the words.  Holy cow!  This kid can tantrum!  But he, too, had a blast once he was engaged.  

Tuesday

We're watching this little plant on our walks each day.

Look at all of the flower buds!  I can't wait for it to bloom!!

Nature Angel found an old glassless storm door on a neighbor's trash pile.  She figured she could turn it into an awesome bulletin board in her bedroom, so she brought it home.  Most of the babies wanted to "help" her carry it home.

Lacing cards are The Munchkin's favorite!

We've been on hiatus from Lily and Thistle art lessons.  They were so excruciatingly difficult to do together.  But they have a whole set of bird lessons, and we're kind of studying birds this month, and I wanted to figure out how to do some lovely bird paintings.

I finally thought of just printing the tracing pages, hanging them up as an invitation to trace, and then asking if kids wanted to just watch the video with me with no obligation to actually paint anything.

As I thought, tracing the pictures was irresistible.

We gathered after lunch reading to "just watch" the instructional video.

During the 11-minute lesson, all 6 kids gathered their painting supplies and started painting!

Because I wasn't starting and stopping the video and settling angry kids, I was able to paint, too, and we all worked at our own pace, and we all finished with no tears!!!

No one was exhausted, overwhelmed, or angry.

No one swore to never do another painting again.

Most of the kids asked if they could do another one.

Hurrah for making the lesson work for us!

Wednesday

The weather warmed up just for this one day, and I sent the kids outside as much as possible.

Sometimes, they came inside to draw Pokemon characters because that is their main passion right now!

Baymax brought me a treasure he found in the grass.  That's his little 8-year-old hand that the flower is lying against!

Later in the afternoon, Mister Man came inside and said, "Mom, I've been sitting in the chicken run just watching the chickens ever since you sent us outside to feed them the leftover bread and vegetables.  I had no idea chickens are such interesting creatures."

He was in there for nearly an hour--just observing.

Even later, he showed me these three sketches he'd done on his own.

I'm feeling delighted by the self-motivated learning activities my kids are engaged in right now!

Thursday

It was a full-and-busy day with a visit to the library, sewing, dance practice, and church/CAP activities.

It flew by in such a hurry that I only got one picture of the day:

How fun is it to see so many of them spontaneously gathered together reading and sharing books!?!

With grown-ups, we numbered 16 during our library visit, and the sweet, sweet librarian welcomed us with a smile saying, "There are even more of you than usual today!  Welcome!"

Friday

We've read some really good biographies lately, and we've done some narrations with them, but not so much with others.  I realized that the ones we didn't narrate were going to disappear from our records, so I wanted to come up with a low-pressure way to make a history notebook.

I used Google Sheets to print a little notebooking page with a black and white picture of each historical figure with 3 simple questions:

Who is this?

When did he/she live?

Where did he/she live?

Then there are lines for the kids to write a little or a lot (depending on skill and motivation) about what they remember about that person.

I printed up pages for each of the 4 people we've studied in the last few months and we completed one page on Tuesday and another on Friday.

Lola and Mister Man working on their William Tell pages.

It was sharply cold, and a fierce hail storm inspired us to turn on Dancing With the Birds--a Netflix documentary we've seen before, but which fascinated the kids in a new way because the kids are older and able to learn different things from it.

Tons of spontaneous narration erupted as the video ended, and I enjoyed listening to their enthusiastic chatter.

Rummikub is reemerging as a favorite game to play, and there are often puzzles out on the floor.  To me that says that the kids are filling a mathematical/problem-solving need in their brains.  

We have three dance shows in the next three weeks and I look forward to milder weather that will allow us time to head to the swales and do some nature study activities I've had on hold.