A Week, Briefly (November 28, 2022)

 I finally got a picture of Nature Angel in the cardigan she crocheted!  She wears it pretty regularly, but only when she's leaving the house.  Life at home is too messy for a white, handmade cardigan!

She says it took her about 24 hours to make--24 actual hours over the course of several weeks.

Monday

We found deer prints on our morning walk--several of them going in several directions.  After much study and conversation, we decided the deer tried to cross the street, then was startled and turned around, not knowing which way to go in its moment of terror.

Our main morning project was making cards for soldiers.  We sent them to amillionthanks.org just in the nick of time!

Ladybug was able to make 3 cards, and they were each unique and lovely.  Everyone else managed one a piece.  The Duke's daddy said he would have loved to receive a card like this when he was serving, so that makes us happy that these really are meaningful.

Our mid-day project involved the geoboards.  The littles were free to do as they pleased, but the big kids were separated into teams of two.  One person on each team had a geoboard picture to describe to the other person.  That second person had to follow the directions given without seeing the picture.  

It was challenging!  

I ended up allowing Lola and Baymax to just follow the pictures because the describing was too much for them at age 7.  

The rest of the kids really rose to the challenge and found ways to describe the pictures and correct their partners both accurately and patiently.  The makers were patient in trying over and over again, and the success of everyone was fabulous!

This was a lovely, productive day, and the kids were able to also do a Christmas landscape drawing on Art for Kids Hub.  I figured it worked for our November rock study (mountains) and was fun because it included a tiny Santa and his sleigh crossing the moon.

In the evening, we had our annual Christmas lighting ceremony.  While the kids waited for the treats to be ready, they spontaneously settled into a game of Down on the Banks.

I love it when they laugh and play together!

At first, the lights failed!  We spent a long time waiting for Sir Walter Scott to figure out what the problem was.  The night was mild but muddy, so the waiting was kind of stressful.

And after I worked so hard to finally get a picture of Nature Angel in her cardigan, here she is wearing it in a casual picture! 😂

Oooh!  Lights were on for a minute!

Last pic before they started blowing out!

Officially tired of waiting, and Sir Walter Scott was really frustrated.  We gave up when he told us that new sections of lights were blowing out every time he tried to turn them on, so he wanted to stop and wait for daylight to see what he needed to fix.

This was our first lighting ceremony fail.

At least he saved most of the lights, and we can at least plug them in each evening now.

Tuesday

We headed out right after breakfast for a nature scavenger hunt.  The weather was unseasonably mild, and we enjoyed a beautiful morning exploring one of our favorite haunts.

Every time we turned around, Lola was in a tree!!

She's not even actually climbing a tree here--it's a vine!

The kids alternately ate our picnic lunch and ran around the labyrinth.

Map study!

In the end, this is what we did and didn't find, though Mister Man tells me that he and Nature Angel heard a cardinal, so I should have marked "an animal making noise."

The kids settled into their own quiet activities in the afternoon, so I didn't disturb them.

I gave Little Princess the assignment of researching and writing an essay about any tree she liked from our walk.  She wrote an interesting paper about evergreens--focusing on the definition of evergreens and how they're not always green.

I learned new stuff!

I asked for a drawing from Nature Angel.

I swear her work could be used in a book!

Wednesday

Oobleck day!

Even with pictures, you cannot comprehend the level of mess.

There's still cornstarch in odd places around the house!

But it was so worth it.

The kids experimented, described, and experienced.  The talking and learning didn't stop for days.

Then I handed out Advent Cards from Lily and Thistle for the kids to color, cut, and display.  Ladybug and Mister Man took the time to copy the coordinating scriptures for each day on the back of the cards.  The other kids found it too daunting, and I didn't require it.

Ladybug's cards all ready for the month

A sampling of Mister Man's cards

We did a drawing lesson by Lily and Thistle.  Again, it was met with much dismay, but the kids seemed happy by the end of the lesson.

The marker drawings are The Munchkin's acorns.  He recently turned 4, and he's napping less often, so he joined us in our art lesson.

Multitasking with math and baby.  She makes me think of a Madonna.

I'd been fighting a headache all day, and even as fully medicated as legally possible without seeing a doctor, I was almost crying with pain.  Belle was home early enough from work that I was able to ask her to take over supervising dinner, stories, and bedtime.  

Hurrah for awesome young adult kids!

I went to bed, and she kept everyone else happy.  Not knowing what we were reading, she started The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, and even though I feel like I just read that book a year or so ago, the kids all feel like it's brand-new, and they are whole-heartedly hooked!

 

10 hours of sleep later, I felt human again.

Thursday

We were going to go to the library in the morning, but I forgot that Ladybug had an orthodontist appointment, so the rest of us played with cinnamon-scented playdough and pursued individual interests.

Little Princess was particularly charming leading the littles in learning new ways to play.

We went to the library after lunch, and Sugar Bear joined us because she only slept for 10 minutes!!  (I got her to take a good nap when we got home.)

The evening was filled with CAP and church activities for all of the girls.  

Little Princess got most of her uniform!  She's missing a few key pieces, so she can't officially wear it yet, but we're hopeful that we can gather what she needs in the next week or so.

The boys cleaned up the house with me and watched 4 episodes of Star Wars: Rebels.

They went to bed very, very happy!

Friday

Our good friend who is the chair of The Nativity Puppets board, reserved 15 seats for us to see the opening show!

I packed snacks and drinks for the daycare crew, and I had an usher help me plan a route to beat a hasty retreat if needed!.

The women seated behind us were board members, and they were delighted to have us sit in front of them.  I promised to take the kids out if they were noisy, and they said not to worry because they saw the show every year, and they were happy to see us.

The littles were captivated by the larger-than-life puppets!  The Munchkin and Li'l K sat and watched quite well.  Interestingly, so did Stretch.  Sweet Peach slept through most of the show, had her bottle through another part, and watched the rest with wide eyes and no noise.  The true challenges were Sugar Bear and The Duke, who are both 2 and quite good at it!

They both talked non-stop in their normal voices, so I spent the whole time modeling how to whisper and encouraging them to put food in their mouths.  I didn't take them out because they were talking about the puppets--mooing at the cow, asking questions about the sheep, saying hi to Mary and Joseph, learning the words 'angel,' 'prophet,' and 'shepherds.'  I figured that since no one was in front of us, and we were seated right next to the choir and orchestra, their voices probably weren't carrying too badly.

Turns out I was right because Nature Angel told me she saw the women behind us giggling and watching us happily.  And the choir and orchestra members said they didn't hear a thing.

Well, until the last 3 minutes.

The Duke ran out of snacks and began to kick the pews--which was crazy noisy.  I had Sugar Bear on my lap, and I knew if I moved her, she'd squawk, so I kept hold of her as I reached for The Duke.  He screamed at being touched, so I scooped up both toddlers, did a fancy maneuver around the choir, and hightailed it down the far aisle just as the angel choir came flying down the three center aisles.  Ushers pulled the doors open as we--both babies screaming like they were on fire--approached the vestibule, and the three of us missed the final scene (my favorite part of the show).

C'est la vie.

The rest of the kids got to experience the wonder and joy of it all, and I'm happy about that.

When the lights came on, and the applause ended, we re-entered the chapel to visit with our friends on the board and in the show.

We were all tired when we got home, so we had a quiet afternoon and evening.

Saturday

I decided to stop putting it off, and I cleaned the hall closet!  (I had kid help.)

All of the stuff out of the closet

Having all of the board games out in plain sight made all of the kids interested in playing, so they did!  They were cooperative and busy all day long.  Ladybug and Mister Man played a hilarious game of Scrabble (spelling), a bunch of other kids played Monopoly Jr. (math), and several games of Catan (critical thinking) were and are still being played.

Brother was my right-hand man all day.  His extra-helpful work was sorting all of the card games into their correct bags.

8 hours later, I'd outfitted Ladybug with winter clothes, sorted out all of the games and puzzles with missing pieces, filled two jumbo trash bags with clothes to be donated, filled an entire recycling bin with broken cardboard games/pieces, and thrown out an entire bag of trash.

I still need a few more baskets and plastic bins, but those will wait to be purchased sometime in the future.

Pixie was invited to dance in a BYUI Christmas Concert.  

Pretty cool to be invited to dance without auditioning!

 

The concert was Saturday night, and she sent us a couple of pics.

During the week we also did a reasonable amount of reading.

~We read in full The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (lots of laughter and tears).

~We finished reading about the Irish Twins--the kids were fascinated to learn about the potato famine and how many Irish emigrated to the U.S.

~We finished Yeshu, Called Jesus.

~We started City of the Golden House--a story about a Roman slave after the death of Christ while Peter led the church.

~We started our picture book Advent reading.  

~And we're continuing our reading of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle.

I'm not inspired by the WEH reading for December, so I'm putting it aside for the summer when there's time to come back and revisit the topics we'll miss.  I'm more interested in pursuing winter nature study, Advent, art, crafts, and service, so . . .

That's what we'll do!