A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

  The only picture this week is of my kids doing an object lesson for Come, Follow Me during Morning Meeting.  The kids tried to make eggs stand on end (of course, they couldn't).  Then we added 1/4 tsp salt, and we could help the eggs stand up easily!  (idea credit: here )  We compared the egg to the job of building Zion.  Alone it was impossible.  When lots of little salt grains (us) worked together, we could do it. It was fun, and we had two good days of school (including finishing both Mr. Revere and I and The Golden Goblet ) before I was taken down by covid. I could feel in my bones that this was not an ordinary cold, and I was too sick to do anything, so I hid myself away while the teens ran the household for a couple of days, and Sir Walter Scott pitched in when he was home.  When we didn't have any daycare babies, I came out of my room to find that Baymax had a raging fever, so he and I cuddled up for a day together while I could at least supervise enough to give the

 We're in the zone:  chores, school, family time. It's the zone I always want to achieve, and I'm so grateful we're here. The first day at dance was good.  We did a show run through, just to see what we did and did not remember; there's significant review to do!  I was right that the covid surge would affect our ability to perform in the community.  We do have two shows scheduled, but none at nursing/rehab homes.  We'll have lots of time to rehearse and have fun and work on our Friends and Family show planned for mid-April. Nature Angel, Little Princess, and I all agree that our preschool activities are just right for our little ones and our family.  The older kids love to join in for some of the sensory activities and crafts, and Nature Angel said, "Knowing what we're doing and having it all planned and easy is letting me do better at school and keeping me from feeling frustrated with the toddlers.  It's just nice to have a plan that they like, to

 Wonderfully enough, we had a relatively boring week.  Beowulf did have a 2 hour breakdown on Thursday morning that undid our school day (a hard moment), and Grandma came over for a visit on Friday (a fun moment), but other than that, we did school, took care of babies, went to church activities, and took care of home. Santa brought us some more magnetic tiles to add to our collections, and the kids are making the most of them. I love Sugar Bear's face as she feels the paint going on her little feet! Li'l K was more into the project than Sugar Bear. Dancing with scarves was a big hit one day . . . but playing with the scarves afterward was even more fun. The Munchkin has begun to ask to "do school" each day.  He's so proud of each new accomplishment! In spite of his breakdown, Beowulf finished a school book this week! We finished A Lion to Guard Us , and we're continuing to read Mr. Revere and I .  We're also making slow progress through The Golden Goblet

 This week the pics are all about Lola.   This is what she did instead of chores one morning.  She's a brand-new 7 year old, and the drawing she did is amazing!  Done with her non-dominant hand!!!  I couldn't even be (too) annoyed that she'd been ignoring her chores.  Her Northern Finch is hanging on our gallery wall, and I hope she'll do more sketches like this! She did it!  She finished the entire book!  She's faking stoicism here, but she was super proud of herself, and all of us are proud of her!  She's now working on Language Lessons for a Living Education 1 in order to review and build on the skills she's worked on here. I excused her from all written work seeing as it's her writing hand that's in a cast, but she loves her math games and begged to play a few of them this week.  She's becoming more and more adept at using her left hand.  In non-Lola-related news, we kept losing our read alouds. We were working on Tales from Ancient Egypt w

 The plan was to just jump back into our usual school routine. The reality is that we all got quite sick, and we lounged around a lot, trying to get well. All of the babies except The Munchkin (the oldest) got RSV at some point.  Some of them stayed home with their families; some of them came to our house every day just the same.  They are all on the mend, now. New Christmas loot kept everyone interested and busy all day every day. And the weather swung from 70-ish degrees and sunny to single digits and snowy!  Kids rode bikes, played basketball, played in the woods with their new walkie talkies, climbed trees, and went sledding--from shirtsleeves to snow pants--all in the space of a single week. On Christmas Eve we managed a trip to the park (Dad handled this!), cookie decorating, going to The Giving Machines, and our family Christmas pageant. We were privileged to donate a beehive, a goat, and some chickens to families worldwide.  And we were able to share some food and shelter with