I Got Sick
And that's why I missed a week of posting about our homeschool.
I was so sick.
So.
Sick.
But now I'm okay, and my family helped me every day, and we didn't do much school, but we did what we could, and it's okay.
(So I keep telling myself every time I want to panic about how hard it is [again!] to get really going with a productive school year.}
It's okay.
No one died.
No one abandoned the family.
We didn't give up.
We just had to take time off . . . during our third week.
Habits we kept up because my husband and teen daughters are amazing:
Morning Meeting
Math
Cursive/Copywork
Individual Subjects
Seminary--Yes! That started this week!
Before I realized how sick I was and how awful I would eventually feel, we engaged in a little bit of what I like to call "documentary school." This means I found a documentary online that goes with one of our areas of study, and we watched it.
1. We watched the National Geographic mini-series Ancient China from Above. This complements our Eastern Hemisphere studies. I also let the kids watch Mulan and Dragonkeeper. If we can read folk tales for school, we can watch them! Could I have had the kids write a little something about each show? Probably yes.
But I was sick.
So. Sick.
2. We watched a few YouTube videos (not linking the videos because they weren't great) about the human skeleton, and then the kids colored 2 pages in their Dover Human Anatomy Coloring Book.
The kids went to dance because Nature Angel could take them.
They also went to church activities--water balloon fight (Baymax), family history (Lola), video games (Beowulf), archery (Mister Man and brother), swimming (Ladybug), yoga and sound bath (Little Princess).
Brother, Beowulf, and Mister Man went with Little Princess to their second CAP meeting. They do want to join!
I am now inserting random pictures that Little Princess took one day when she was playing around because I took not one photo the whole week long.
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| Mister Man, edited into a girl?! |
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| Brother, edited with tattoos and lipstick?! |
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| Ladybug with a hat/glasses/beard filter!! |
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| Ditto for Beowulf |
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| Looks like Baymax liked(?) the same filter Brother did. |
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| And that's Lola under that cloud face. :) |
On Friday, I was starting to feel like a living human again, and I had high school student interviews/check-ins. It was mostly pro-forma for Mister Man and Ladybug, but Little Princess and I talked for over an hour going over her individual subjects and getting her organized and all set up for goals. It was a great session, and we're both so glad we're doing these this year!
I graded her first physics quiz today, and she got 98/100!
She's doing equally well in her other subjects, so far. (I have a few still to get her started in!)
I give my husband and older daughters credit for being amazing at running the household in a pinch!!
Going back in time to our second week of school is harder, but I'm writing things down in a planner, so I have a better record of our accomplishments, and I'm so very glad!!
On Monday Nature Angel and Little Princess went with a friend to an amusement park for that friend's birthday.
The rest of us had a half school day in the morning, and then Baymax and I headed to the doctor for our "get established" appointment. (These doctor appointments are going to be a big part of our weeks for the next month.)
On Tuesday we went to a recycling facility for a homeschool field trip--it was organized by another mom who is scheduling amazing field trips this school year!
I was between phones at this time (my old one had been dying for several months, and it finally gave up), so I am very grateful to the other mothers who posted pictures of the group for sharing.
When we came home, we had lunch and spent the afternoon writing thank you letters to the owners of the facility.
Wednesday was a wonderful day at home doing school as I dream of doing school.
High school literature with the teens: we're making great progress through Otto of the Silver Hand.
Eastern Hemisphere: I'm delivering massive quantities of notes about the imperial dynasties, and the kids are narrating until their hands are exhausted from so much writing. I'm surprised at the heavy amount of textual material that is part of this curriculum, but the stories in Sweet and Sour and the novels are engaging. We finished up The Year of the Dog and started Young Fu-Chi.
Human Anatomy: Over the course of the week, we finished up the first chapter in our text--about the history of our understanding of human anatomy and cells. Mister Man and Ladybug completed a paper spinner project about the functions of the organelles, did a vocabulary crossword puzzle, and made an edible cell as well as doing lots of written narrations.
Loop Rotation:
We're doing ASL with the YouTube channel Learn How to Sign. We're practicing fingerspelling right now.
We're memorizing the presidents of the United States. During this week, we worked our way up to the first 6 presidents in order.
We started The Mapmakers, a book I found at a local thrift store and thought the kids would like.
We're reading a poem at a time out of All the Small Poems and Fourteen More.
We're working on Studio Art lesson 2 (it has a lot of practice)
We're continuing to read from The Golden Treasury of Natural History--we're on insects at the moment.
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| Lola helped me make dinner that night. |
Thursday was our first day of American Rhythm.
We have 50 kids this year!!!
(It might be too many. 😟)
While our director held a parent meeting, Nature Angel and I taught the whole group of kids the opener.
Everyone was a little bit squirrely and a little bit overwhelmed, but we did it.
And then we collapsed exhausted at home for the evening.
Friday was a lovely quiet day that we used to complete some of the activities I described above.
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| Mister Man and Ladybug enjoyed putting candy organelles into the jello cytoplasm. Then everyone enjoyed eating the results! |
And on Saturday, Lola and Baymax got to join a church service project for the children during which they assembled birthday boxes for our local Harvesters chapter. We'd spent the previous month collecting the supplies, so this was the culmination of a lot of work.
Everyone ate ice cream treats to celebrate at the end.
And that gets us to within 24 hours of me sinking into illness for 5 straight days.
Which returns us time-wise to the top of this post.
As I write, the three high schoolers are working on their seminary independent-study assignments (they attend in-person 3 days and have to do 2 days' work on their own).
Everyone is settling into their math routine reasonably well. Ladybug is struggling; between the summer break and her seizures, there's quite a bit of material lost in/from her brain. We had some tears, and I'm wondering how best to assist her. Overall, though, we're in the honeymoon phase of the year, when kids are still willing to pick up their work with a minimum of fuss.
I anticipate the week ahead to challenge us with working on routine work days again, but we all get a reprieve because my adult children are taking the children children to our local amusement park on Monday for the holiday!
But first, we're all going to the Temple Run 5k in the morning!
Some of us are going to switch from running the 5K to walking the 3K because we've had zero training time this past while, but some of us are going to see what happens when we run cold!!
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