A Week, Briefly (11/15/21)

 Honestly . . . it was a pretty good week . . . even though we had a lot of sickness and a lot of activities. 

We did our book work on 4 days, and we had our one and only show for the semester on Thursday.  
 
The whole bad dress rehearsal--good show adage proved true for us, and our show was a joy.  The audience was so appreciative and complimentary (that's why it is lovely to perform for the elderly).  When the girls came out to dance to Peppermint Twist, and they were all wearing poodle skirts, there was an audible gasp of delight from the women in the audience.  One woman leaned over to her friend and said happily, "I used to have a skirt just like that!"  
 
A frantic costume change moment before Peppermint Twist
 
Our theme is patriotic this year, and as the kids concluded with singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic, there were many tear-streaked faces.


How grateful I am that the nursing home staff not only allowed us to perform, but encouraged our children to interact personally with the residents after the show.  It was a tender mercy of inter-generational connection.

Baymax completed the phonics workbook he began last school year.


And he and Lola got a few new workbooks each.  They are delighted with their full school regimen right now.  

The blur on the left of the photo is Sugar Bear, who wanted to "do school" too.  She was moving and wiggling and writing and climbing and shifting all over the place!

The babies keep us very busy.  Another of our 1 year olds turned 2 this week!  Everyone is growing so fast!



Ladybug is working on multiplication and division again.  It is so very hard for her!   She is doing daily multiplication drills with online games, and those are really helping her with her facts.  The challenge is that her book is teaching (quite sensibly) that multiplication and division have fact families.  The idea is to make the memorization easier.  

It just isn't working for my girl.  

The blending of facts and logic is too much for her, so even though I'm having her work through the logic of it all (because she will eventually get it), I'm also allowing her manipulatives and drawings in order to solve the problems.

We read a Landmark biography of George Washington this week for American history.  We've also reached and passed the falling of the walls of Jericho in Shepherd, Potter, Spy--and the Star Namer for ancient history.  The youngest kids and I also watched VeggieTales' Josh and the Big Wall to review the story of Jericho from the Israelite perspective.
 
On Friday night, Nature Angel and Little Princess headed out to see a friend star as Jane in her high school production of Tarzan.  


And Belle went with her youth group to do temple baptisms on Thursday evening.  (This was after she watched 5 of our 6 babies while we did our show!)

We had some rough moments during the week, but they were not so rough that they overwhelmed us.

That is a blessing!!

We are grateful for the Thanksgiving holiday this week.  Sir Walter Scott will work on the holiday, so we will celebrate another day, but we also have the joyful anticipation of visiting with extended family!
 
Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Comments

  1. DawnNovember 22, 2021 at 5:24 AM

    I am glad you week had so many positives. The poodle skirts are so cute. We are hoping for successful performances of the Nutcracker this week. They feel very much unprepared.
    Blessings, Dawn

    ReplyDelete
  2. grtlyblesdNovember 26, 2021 at 10:09 AM

    Congratulations on a good show! And I'm glad the kids & residents enjoyed one another afterwards.

    ReplyDelete
  3. DiannaNovember 29, 2021 at 3:44 PM

    Your show looks very good! The costumes look so fun.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anne's Day in the Life: 17, 16, 12, 10, 9, 8, 8, 7, 5, & 5

Image
This is my crew last summer--the day we said goodbye to Pixie as she headed off to college. I actually have all 12 of my children home right now. Rose Red is nearly 20, graduated from our homeschool a year and a half ago, lives at home, and is working as a server at Applebee's as she tries to understand what it means to be an adult. Pixie is newly 18, graduated from our homeschool almost a year ago, is a dance major at BYUI, and is spending her off-track semester working full-time in the 1-year-old room at a daycare. These two still are part of our family days, and their schedules directly impact the rest of us, but I am no longer responsible for their day-to-day educational needs. The remaining 10 are still under my educational supervision.  Among these 10 children we are schooling while we cope with anxiety, depression, FASD, ADHD, DMDD, ODD, ASD, PTSD, and Intellectual Disability. Here is a February Wednesday in our lives. 5:04 am :  Sir Walter Scott's al
Read more

Review: Drive Thru History® – “The Gospels”

Image
We are total Drive Thru History® fans around here.  We discovered Dave Stotts and his awesome video series years ago, and we've watched them enthusiastically ever since.  The videos are informative, interesting, and funny, so we jumped quickly at the opportunity to review the newest series:   Drive Thru History® – “The Gospels." And it definitely makes the grade. Because this new series focuses on the gospels, we opted to make watching it the focus of our Family Home Evening on Sundays. The timing of our review period was such that we were enjoying the lessons in the weeks leading to Easter. How cool is that!?! The series has 18 episodes, beginning with background information about Judea before Christ's birth, exploring the annunciation, His birth, His childhood, all kinds of aspects of His ministry, through His trial, crucifixion, and resurrection, finally ending with a summary of the prophecies and power of His ministry and thought-provoking qu
Read more

The Second Week

Image
This week was a lot like last week. We didn't make any progress introducing new subjects, but we got better at what we are already doing. We got better at listening to music--3 times this week!  We don't much like Bach's St. Matthew Passion, but we are quite fond of the Brandenburg Concertos .  (This could be my influence, as I've always preferred a concerto to a cantata.) We got better at reviewing our bulletin boards. (Now I need to get new board information ready!) We finished How to Behave and Why on Monday, and we read this book several times during the week.  Along with our readings, we had discussions about the lessons taught and the values of the culture represented in the story.  I also began to pause in places and turn over the storytelling to the kids. For zoology, we watched a great video about elephants .   And we started this book. We're only 30-ish pages into it, but we're really curious about where it's going. I assigned the kids to researc
Read more