Winter Arrived for Real!

6:30 am next to my driveway

We dove fully back into school this week.

And it went fairly well.

Because our Christmas School was so enjoyable, I designed a month's study in the same style.

This is the first week's plan.

The kids said they knew what would happen when they brought snow inside to melt, and they acted a little bit blasé about it all.  But then it started to melt as they worked, and they began applying pressure, moving their cups to places in the sun, and generally becoming engaged in the process of a huge cup of now melting down to an inch or two of water.

Not included in the plan above are my handwritten notes about including spelling (I printed out a variety of grade level lists), and over 3 days, the kids copied them, studied them, then had a mini spelling test of 5 of the words from their appropriate lists.

Ladybug and Mister Man share a list.

Brother, Beowulf, and Baymax share a list.

Lola has her own list.

It was surprisingly easy to do the spelling list around the table/levels.  Kids had time to write their word while I gave the words for the other two levels, and we finished in no time at all.

The Xs on Thursday indicate our dance day.  I encourage the kids to do math, and we have successfully had a cooking lesson on the past two Thursdays, otherwise, dance takes up all of our time and energy.

I also let them fry an egg or two to help the meal satisfy them as dinner that night.

Cloudy skies prevented us from doing any star-gazing.

And our walk on Friday was only 10 minutes long because the weather dropped to 2°F with the windchill bringing it down to -11°F. 

But we did it!

We bundled up, and we braved the icy, windy cold long enough to identify curly dock, test various ponds for ice strength, find bird tracks, and study branches for evidence of deer and rabbit chewing.

Getting off the pond when it cracked after Beowulf fell.

Who was chewing here?

A bird!  Out in the snow!

We came home to fresh chocolate chip cookies, a warm fire in the woodburning stove (we brewed tea on this stove), and nature notebooking pages that the kids were surprisingly pleasant about filling in.

A cozy afternoon

Nature Angel made Lola a blueberry hat.

And she wears it all. of. the. time.

Little Princess turned in her application to be cadre at this summer's CAP encampment.  She found out a couple of days later that she made a mistake in the video she had to make calling drill, but she really did an outstanding job overall.

She also baked cookies for us, baked 2 loaves of artisan wheat bread, 1 loaf of gluten-free sandwich bread, a dozen gluten-free dinner rolls, and 3 dozen wheat dinner rolls.

She's let Lola help.

Nature Angel had an "I'm almost 17, and I have to start making some decisions.  Will you help me?" conversation with Sir Walter Scott and me.

And then she submitted an application to work at Freddy's--where her older sisters worked when they were her age.

Both teens have done a great deal of their high school work, and we met together to do grammar and world history 4 out of 5 days.

Technically, the Mason-Dixon line is below where we live, but we're in a place where the South influences our otherwise Midwestern behaviors.  Therefore, we freak out in snow and icy weather, so seminary and church activities were canceled.  We even had a toddler-free day because power went out at said toddlers' parent's work.

We reveled in the snow, and my kids spent hours and hours out playing in it.

I don't have any good pictures.

But here are a few mediocre ones.

One of the days, they got together with neighbor kids and had a massive snow war.

Snow makes winter totally joyful!

We had some hard, hard hours this week with both Brother and Beowulf.  I currently have a swollen bump on my forehead courtesy of Beowulf.  Our meeting with the kids' case manager was fruitful because he was not only understanding of the need to restrain violent kids, but he also got me reassigned to an FSP (family support provider), so I get meetings for me!

I was happy to have the last FSP, and I was happy when she said we didn't need meetings anymore.  Now I am happy to have them back because I'm struggling mightily--I'm worried that I'm resorting to physical restraint before it should be used because I'm so jumpy.

(How bad is my PSTD?)

We're happily reading The Little White Horse, and the kids are making delightful predictions that sometimes are and sometimes are not correct.  

Ladybug and Brother walked a sick neighbor's dog because it was too hard for her.  I'm grateful for their service to her.

As far as my education goes, in addition to making more dairy-free cheese, I canned beef for the first time!

I'm doing some seasoned pork this coming week. :)