Week of the Empty Bookcase

Sounds a little bit like a Nancy Drew title, doesn't it?  Week of the empty bookcase has involved a lot of shuffling and dust.  

This cake missed making it into the Mother's Day post.  I'm not much of a cake person, but I appreciated the thought.  

I couldn't believe how chill Cairo was in the bath!  I guess I got the temp Just Right for her.  

Love the purrito look.  

Oslo in the laundry basket.

One morning when we were out for our ride/walk/jog, I noticed my shorts were almost the same color as my legs.  I hope the neighbors didn't think I was half naked.  

The kittens were looking all tired and cute, so I took a picture.  

The *click* of the iPad made them all wake up and blink at me.  

I've been working on the school room this week!  One of my projects was to take pictures of some curriculum to sell.  Grumman decided to "help" with that.  Oh Grumman.  

The girls are bored with nothing assigned each morning, so I pulled out a new puzzle from their respite at home box.  Hopefully, I'll be showing a finished picture next week.  

Big haul of library books this week.  

When cleaning the school room, I came across one of the golden eagles we made almost 5 years ago.  Probably time to let that craft go.  

Dubious milestone this week.  The kittens popped out of the tub.  It happens with every litter, but it's always a little sad when it does.  They now have free reign in my room during the day, and are in the playpen at night.  Notice Quito's toy?  One of Grumman's pipe cleaners.  I guess it's not as weird as I thought, because the kittens are fascinated with them, too.  

Speaking of the kittens playing with Grumman's toys, there's Oslo, figuring out the ball track.  

 Don't feel too bad for Grumman, though.  He's discovered the sea monkeys.  I'm surprised they're still alive.  I tend to forget them for a week at a time.  

Eventually, I got pictures of 6 different years/levels of My Father's World curriculum, 

and posted them on the MFW curriculum exchange Facebook group.

I've shipped out a couple boxes so far, and it's looking like I'll have another couple of pieces going out Monday.  

I've got each level bagged up separately, so stuff doesn't get mixed up.  

It's all rather exhausting, right Grumman?  I love it when he wants to hang out with me, but I have had to pull the keyboard out from under him so I can type.  

All of this rearranging has led to our first empty bookcase!  I kind of wish I'd taken some "before" pictures of the school room, because I'm looking forward to how much better things will look when we get to "after."  

Besides trying to sell off some curriculum, we've also identified some books that our family is finished with.  Starting to see gaps on the other bookcases, too.  

Lots of organizing going on.  

Over the years, we've bought a lot of books, and been given a lot of books.  It's time to set some free to be enjoyed by others.  

Our Last Week of Homeschool

Possibly our last week ever, but who knows?  I thought I'd taught my last week of homeschool in 2017, and that turned out not to be the case.  Open hands.  

Katie's jumping dolphins craft.

Josiah is having some medical issues.  He's been in a couple of times, and today he had a pre-procedure covid test, in preparation for an appointment this coming week.  I'm trying not to be a worried mom, but I'll feel better once we know what we're dealing with.  

Miss Hannah had a birthday, and decided that 14 is old enough to light her own cake on fire.  

Since she didn't have experience with lighters, Sam helped a bit.  

Katie's sword and sheath.

Katie's bottle fish.

I got behind on photographing art, so these are from our time in Ireland.  Harps.

Celtic crosses.

Something or other castle.  

Thatched roof cottage.

Seals.

Crabs done in watercolor crayon.  

Bats.

Books - we're not getting the large piles any more at this point.  

Did you know that shelters are now using animal facial recognition software to help unite owners with lost pets?  I thought I should get a good, full frontal shot of the Grum, just in case he ever goes missing.  He's also microchipped, but average folks don't carry chip readers, whereas a photo is just a click away.  

The girls added various sea life to their ocean boxes over the last semester, and with the completion of the Swimming Creatures books, their ocean boxes were done, too.  

So, I had them share their boxes with the family at dinner, and tell about some of the creatures they created/included.  

One morning, I walked into the school room and proclaimed, "We're going to play with knives today!"  I handed them each a razor blade, and they removed all the pages from their Swimming Creatures workbooks.  The pages with tape, staples, glue, etc went in the trash, but the paper-only pages went to the garage to be shredded for bunny litter.  They've since also hacked up their Flying Creatures workbooks and some finished spelling, English, and handwriting workbooks.  We'll have free bunny litter for a good while.  

This was gratifying.  Something I can quantitatively point to and say, "They learned to label ____ number of countries on a map this year."  The left two columns were from the first day of school, back in August.  The same activity, done the final week of school, netted far better results.  I'm pretty sure Hannah can identify more than I can on a couple of continents.  

Jack's watch broke recently.  So I ordered him a new one.  This masculine black and red one, pictured above.  

Imagine our surprise upon opening the package, when this cute kitty watch showed up instead.  Jack laughed like crazy, and offered to wear it to school anyway, but I said I'd return it for the right one.  Only, the right one showed up with the buckle assembled backwards.  I think we're going to try a different brand next.  

Puerto Rican frogs, called coqui.  

Hummingbirds.

I wanted to give the girls something to do while I was tutoring my English learner via Zoom, so I pulled out these mosaic kits from the respite at home program.  

I love having little treats tucked away that I can pull out on a whim.  

Grumman, who looks cute when he naps on my desk, is rather annoyed with us right now.  

Because the day after we finished school, we got the "Can you foster kittens?" text from the shelter.  

Yes.  Yes, we can.  There's 3 of them, all girls.  The tiny white one in the first picture is Oslo, the calico is Quito, and the black & white one is Cairo.  Place names, in honor of our around the world learning this year.  

I always think that having foster kittens is a good experience for Hannah and Katie, but even Sam and Josiah have been playing with them and taking pictures of them.  I suspect that the way girls squeal, "Omigosh, how cuuuuute!" when shown a picture of a kitten may have something to do with this.  

We'll have to come up with new things to request books about next week, as our pick ups have really trickled off.  We're down to only 32 books out!  

Our plan for the next month is to take Jack to school, work on the school room (we have started turning this year's used papers into shred for the bunny, and we've started taking down some of the artwork), play with the kittens, continue our walk/jog/bike jaunts each morning (we did 1.3 miles today!), and fill in with projects/art/cooking on an "as I feel like it" basis.  I'm planning to try to sell off our curriculum, and donate many of our remaining school room books to the kids' fledgling school library.  I'm feeling like we could end up with a couple less bookcases around here when we're done.  I'd like to actually paint at least one wall in here, but I'm holding that wish lightly.  

Once Jack is out of school, we'll embrace the summer lack of routine, as long as everyone tolerates it well.  Some people thrive on structure.  And, we'll keep working our way up to that 3 mile/day goal we have for June.