Our Week - With World Cakes

Salutations!  I hope your part of the world is not on fire, or raining ash.  The air quality here is awful, so we're staying inside as much as possible.  California had a massive, crazy lightning storm, and now everything is on fire.  Again.  And will continue to be, sporadically, from now until Thanksgiving.  #because2020 

Random VBS craft, and a reminder that despite the world falling apart in so many ways right now, God is still on the throne, and none of this series of disasters comes as a surprise to him.  

One of the intangible things we're working on this year is having Hannah and Katie figure things out independently.  

The book Maps & Mapping has a couple projects in the back.  I asked Katie to pick one, and she chose the treasure map.  You can't really tell, but after crumpling the paper, she painted it with a wash of brown watercolor to "age" it.  She did a great job with her grid lines, once the paper dried.  This project was a good way for her to read and follow directions and figure things out with a minimum of help from me.  

Jack started school this week, so we staged a First Day of School picture, even though the girls & I started "half days" about 10 days earlier.  

I'm a sucker for books, and a sucker for adoption fundraisers, so when a mutual friend online invited me to an online book auction, benefiting an adoptive family, I was all over that.  So we got a cheap infusion of new books for our home library.  

Which is not to say we're using the public library any less.  

In fact, last time we went to pick books up, we took the girls' clipboards and did a quick nature walk and drawing session.  I think they drew palm trees, but I don't seem to have pictures of that.  We also looked up a flower that we saw, the Canna Lily.  We observed buds and blooms, we took note of the big, striped leaves, we felt the smooth petals, and we noticed the colors we would need to draw or paint it.  

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  8 years ago, we made world cakes.  Here we are, making them again.  Different kids, same shirt.  Totally unplanned.  I gotta say, Hanna Andersson clothes wear like iron.  

Katie had just gotten out of the tub, hence the bath hair and jammies.  Our blue frosting was a lot darker this year, because I tried to use expired food coloring, and it tinted our frosting GRAY!  Fortunately, I had some of the concentrated icing coloring gel, so I squirted that in and got blue.   

Hannah's cake.  (South America)

And Katie's cake.  (Australia, Tasmania, Papua New Guinea)

I took this picture a while back, while Grumman was meowing at me to let him out the back door.  

 

And I had it made into a mask for Eli (Grumman is his cat) for his birthday.  I know he can't wear it in uniform, but he can wear it on weekends, in his normal people clothes.  

Speaking of Eli...  this guy?  Is all done with tech school.  He's waiting to head overseas to his first duty assignment later this year.  

Grumman continues to be a lovable distraction in the school room.  I've noticed it's easier for Katie to watch Hannah, and copy what she does, than it is for her to listen to ME and follow directions.  So we're trying a different setup, which will hopefully help her rely more on her listening skills.  

Hannah's figure it out project this week came from Great Civil War Projects.  

She chose to make a fan, with large craft sticks.  Paul helped her drill the holes in the sticks, and I provided the supplies she asked for and repeated, "Did you read the directions?" over and over again.  I look forward to seeing both girls gain thinking skills and confidence as they tackle more things on their own.  

This was my "Wait!  Wait!  You can't go eat lunch yet.  I need to find my phone and get a picture first," shot.  Neither girl is exhibiting delight with the culmination of the base of our bird feeders.  

I think they were a 3 day project, because we made them in phases.  Our supplementary science program is birds, so we're making our yard more bird friendly.  We actually saw 3 California Scrub Jays in the yard last night as we were eating dinner.  

Hopefully, we'll attract some other feathered friends to observe.  

I put the hook up, and hopped down to let Katie hang her feeder.  I guess spatial awareness isn't one of my strong suits.  

You totally can't see Katie's feeder, but it's on the other side of the post behind the hummingbird feeders.  We'll be adding a birdbath soon.  I'm looking forward to the weather cooling and the smoke dissipating (eventually) so we can enjoy the yard and hopefully observe some birds out there.  

Inspired by last night's visitors, we read about the California Scrub Jay online, and then the girls drew Jays from a how to draw birds library book.  

 

I know I shared Hannah's Cardinal earlier.  This is Katie's Hummingbird from that same day.  

It seems a little weird to be doing a Weekly Wrap Up style post on a Thursday, but we're done with our second week of curriculum, and will start week 3 tomorrow.  I'm sure there will come a day when something derails our planned schoolwork, so it will be nice to be a bit ahead when we have to skip a day for an appointment or illness or crankiness.  One of the things I love about homeschooling is the flexibility.  

Our (Home) School Has Started

Remember how we got a new minivan back in February, before the world fell apart?  We might not have made the same choice, if we had seen what was coming, but what's done is done, and I am pretty happy with it.  

In July, we said goodbye to our big van.  The last of the big vans for our family.  (We've had 3.)  The end of an era.  I have to admit, I had some feelings.  It was a good workhorse for us.  It never stranded me.  We were able to sell it to another large family with more kids still living at home than us.  I hope it will serve them well, too.  

After being cooped up in the house so very much lately, I took a minute to enjoy the memorial rose garden next to the post office, when I was mailing some masks.  

It felt good to take a moment by myself to just enjoy nature.  

Speaking of nature, Tuzi the bunny and Grumman enjoy getting out in nature a bit, too.  Grumman is curious about Tuzi, but hasn't been aggressive toward him.  

Grumman is an indoor cat that really wants to be an outdoor cat.  Every evening at dinner, he begs and whines for us to take him out in the yard for a little while.  

One of our first school projects were these "whosoever" posters.  The girls were supposed to cut magazine pictures of people around the world to illustrate the international love of God.  When the only magazine subscription that comes to your address is Firehouse, the pictures have a decidedly Western flair.  

We received some blank white masks, and I used my Cricut (affiliate link) to personalize this one.  I like this image file, and could see myself making t-shirts for the girls with Hello Kitty on them, too.  Maybe even decorating some cheap canvas shoes with it.  

I really wanted this Pinterest project to work.  :sigh:  I bought black glue after seeing a cute Pin, specifically to do these owls.  Since we're doing "flying creatures" for science, I thought it would be perfect.  Unfortunately, the glue is thick and the tip is thick, and we didn't have the control I was hoping for.  It came out kind of gloppy.  

I forgot to have the girls go over the eyelashes with black sharpie after the watercolor paint dried.  

If I were going to use this glue again, I would stick to super simple shapes, like a heart, or a very simplistic 6-petal flower.  It might work for window clings.  Maybe we'll try doing bat clings in October, since those are flying creatures, too.  

We've had a school mascot before.  Wheelie (the orange cat) used to love to lay in the school room sunbeam (on the floor!) while we worked.  

But Wheelie was a mature, mellow, polite gentleman of a cat (who crossed the rainbow bridge a year ago).  And Grumman is a teenager psycho kitty.  When he's not chewing on a spiral bound book, he's swatting at a moving colored pencil, or sprawling across what we're working on.  

We tried "parking lot VBS."  Socially distant church fun for kids.  

The theme was Concrete & Cranes, and the music was catchy.  Each family got a 5 gallon bucket.  Helpers put the kids' snack, papers, and craft supplies in the bucket, which I thought was a nice way of maintaining distance.  The helper moves to the next vehicle's bucket, and you can retrieve what they left for you.   

For geography, we've been discussing maps & globes, latitude & longitude, how to read a map, etc.  I let my inner Ms. Frizzle shine through with my footwear choice.  

 

We drew compass roses.  

And we talked about NE, SE, NW, SW, as well as the tropics, Equator, Prime Meridian, and International Date Line.  This year lays a really good foundation in geography.  

We talked about political maps and topographic maps.  This project illustrated the difficulty in making something round, like the Earth or these oranges, into a flat map.  

Which helped explain why flat maps are distorted, making Greenland appear huge, when it's really not.  

I found the girls a coloring page for the story of the Tower of Babel, and we read about God confusing the languages to cause people to spread out.  

So far, so good.  It took us slightly more than a week to complete 1 week's worth of work, minus the material from one book which I thought we had, but cannot find.  I ordered the book, and we'll make the work up when it arrives.  We're finding our groove.  It helps that it's been so hot here that the girls don't mind giving up most of their outside play time.  

Schoolbooks Have Arrived!

The Timberdoodle catalog said it best:  "Homeschool curriculum has become the new toilet paper."  Meaning it's the latest thing for which there is a shortage because more people than usual are buying it.  

Fortunately, we must have picked unpopular options, because we didn't run into any back orders.  

Canada will be the third country we learn about, but I've already started setting aside things for later in the year.  

Everything has arrived now, and since we have nowhere else to be, we've started up a little early.  We haven't managed a "full day" in one sitting yet, but we're getting close.  It's nice to kind of ease into things instead of being overwhelmed with having to do everything on Day 1.  

Grumman is fascinated with the bird science books.  I know he can't read, but he was all over it when I opened these up, and, well...

The first time we used our Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day science notebooks, he tried to eat them.  

Blessing alert!  I was able to trade masks that I sewed for both these used books from other homeschooling mamas in the area.  

Depending on how quickly we fly through Flying Creatures (zoology 1), we may start up Swimming Creatures (zoology 2).  We'll see how it goes.  I'm not going to stress about it.  

This was our biggest order.  We had most of our stuff from My Father's World, since I used it with Brianna, Eli, and Jack several years ago, but there were a few things we needed to replace, and a new writing course for Hannah.   

We're working more on drawing this year.  I just ordered some Prismacolor pencils, which are really nice to work with.  

At the end of the year, we'll learn about Antarctica, so I'll put this one away until then.  

Speaking of books, we're still greatly enjoying curbside pickup at the library, which has expanded hours, and streamlined the process, which is awesome.  This week, they just started doing inter-library loans again, so I have requested some books from outside our area's collection.  

I've been keeping lots of books on hold, so we're picking up about twice a week.  MFW has an extensive reading list in the back of the book, as optional suggested reading.  Since we have a "quiet time" every afternoon, my girls go through a lot of books.  Books from that list, books I see in curriculum catalogs that look interesting, books I'm reminded of by discussion in homeschool Facebook groups.  Books, books, books!  Just this week, we were learning about maps and globes, and Katie asked a question about Magellan.  We'll be getting a couple of books about him soon.  The same thing blossomed out of a discussion of Father Junipero Serra and the missions.  

The last time we picked up books, we got a text asking if we wanted Summer Reading Program prize books.  Um, yes, please!  The librarians taped up pictures of the options for each age group inside the library windows so people can look and choose which they want.  Katie has been obsessed with Nintendogs lately, so I got her a puppy book, and Hannah got Because of Winn-Dixie.  

I feel slightly guilty that I haven't been reading as much as I should lately.  I've spent a lot of time zoned out in front of the iPad.  But I've been enjoying Jennifer Chiaverini's books.  I read a couple of the "modern day setting" ones #beforecovid so when I finished Hidden Figures (which I checked out back in February!) I reached for another of her books.  Only this one was set during the Civil War.  Wow.  It was good.  And, so were the next two books in that story line.  I first stumbled across her books volunteering at Book Den, and brought one home because of the quilt angle.  Even though I'm not really a quilter, I like to sew, so I speak the language.  And most quilty books have, er, "mature" heroines.  So they're more relatable for me.  

I'd love to hear what you're reading!  

Outside, Drawing, and Reading

It doesn't really feel like we had a "summer" in one sense, and it's still hot (over 100* for the next 10 days here), but alas, summer is drawing to a close.  More and more people are making back to school (or not) decisions and posting about plans.  

I'm super grateful that Zach sends me a picture when he and Eli get together to hang out.  It does my heart a world of good to see my boys together.  I still miss them, but I know they have each other to meet some of that "family" need.  

We have these cool storage clipboards that we carry colored pencils and sketch paper in.  

I had the girls take them outside to draw what they could see.  Hoping to build observation skills and get them to take more of an interest in nature this year.  

We've been talking more about trees and leaves and such when we do get out lately.  

I'm not much of an artist, so I'm hoping we can all grow in the area of drawing this year.  

And when we do go out, guess where we're going?  

Our libraries have streamlined the curbside pickup process, and they're starting to move books from branch to branch, which is awesome.  

I printed copies of the first few pages of the very extensive reading list our curriculum provides, and I've been requesting a few at a time, along with other things.  We can have 60 books on hold at a time, and every time we pick up a few, I add some more to our hold list.  

The girls usually read during Quiet Time in the afternoons, but they will soon have a portion of schoolwork assigned then, as well.  

We did something different the other day.  We ventured to a local park for the first time in ages, and the girls brought their clipboards.  We walked along a trail, past a creek, where I pointed out cat tails, dragonflies, dry grasses and lush park lawns, bird sounds, and more.  Then we sat and drew for a bit, before walking back to the van.  

This was a good experience, and one that we will hopefully repeat on a regular basis (until it gets too chilly), once we establish a weekly school routine.  

 One of our library books was about drawing birds, and Hannah created this cardinal from the directions it provided.  I'm impressed!  

If your curbside pickup is two bags of books instead of dinner, you might be a homeschooler!