A Week, Briefly (10/4/21)

Brother is doing much better.

 

Beowulf is doing much worse.

 

I'm sad.

 

I'm scared.

 

I'm full of questions.

 

Every day our babies come over, and every day I hold them and feel them fill my soul with peace . . . or at least bring me down from the ledge I feel I'm standing on.

 

Even though it's so much work, I think the babies are good for all of us.

 

Ladybug and Brother did 4 days of math lessons.

Baymax did 5.

Mister Man did 3.

Brother did 1.

Lola did 1 reading lesson.

 

Little Princess worked a lot on math and chemistry and calculated that she's "right on schedule" in language arts.

 

A chemistry experiment                     Photo credit:  Little Princess

 

Nature Angel is still working on Unit 2 of her language arts, but she's putting so much lovely work into it, that I cannot fault her.  Every day she puts her whole being into getting her work done as well as serving in our home and taking care of babies.

Belle applied for a few generic scholarships--most of them are the kind that are really a ploy to get your information for marketing, but one of them required an essay about her goals and definition of personal success.  It was due on Friday night at midnight, and she submitted it at 11:50 pm.

Here is her opening paragraph:

In this modern world, for a woman to be considered successful she must be independent and assertive, a businesswoman who worked her way from the bottom to the top.  For myself, however, I yearn for a different sort of success.  In the movie Mona Lisa Smile the character Joan Brandwyn chooses against going to law school and becoming a lawyer in favor of marrying and raising a family.  When confronted with her decision, she gives her reasons for her choice, “Do you think I’ll wake up one morning and regret not being a lawyer?... Not as much as I’d regret not having a family, not being there to raise them.  I know exactly what I’m doing and it doesn’t make me any less smart...This is what I want.”  I reflect Joan Brandwyn’s sentiments when I make the same decision that she did: What I want most in life, what I consider my path of success to be, is to raise a family.

 

I forgot to record that we read D'Aulaire's Pocahontas a week or so ago. In current news, we've continued to read Squanto: Friend of the Pilgrims and Who Was Che Guevara? We finished The Three Brothers of Ur (I've been given the job of finding the OOP sequel) and started Geraldine McCaughrean's Gilgamesh the Hero. The kids love it . . . and I love their reactions.

We had "preschool" 3 mornings. Our story was Are You My Mother? We colored baby bird pictures, made a baby bird out of geometric shapes, and did mother/baby animal puzzles. We're also learning the ABCs by song and ASL, singing The Eency Weency Spider, and we learned the Mother Goose rhyme Once There Was a Little Bird.

 

The kids went to church activities and to dance. 

 

We did yoga on 3 mornings.

 

  

We walked the dogs. We're up to 81 miles. 

 

 

Photos by Nature Angel

We've reinstituted Saturday cleaning, which is such a relief to do after having it interrupted for several years. I write a list of special cleaning activities on the white board, the kids sign up for chores, and then I erase the items after I've approved them as finished. This was our third week in a row, and next week we're tackling the game closet as our special project!