A large family, homeschooling, adoption, special needs, whatever strikes my fancy, sort of blog.

A large family, homeschooling, adoption, special needs, whatever strikes my fancy, sort of blog.

Monday, April 26, 2021

Our Week In Which We Jogged More



The weekend got away from me without me getting this posted.  I'm not even sure what I did over the weekend, but posting Our Week wasn't it.  


Last week we learned the difference between turtles (they live mainly in the water) and tortoises (they live mainly on land).  


Again with the trying to use up art supplies.  The girls drew self-portrait astronauts on black art paper in acrylic marker.  Basic idea from Art Projects For Kids site.


Library books.  We're still working on getting down to a more reasonable number of books checked out.  We're at 70 right now.  But we only have 24 books on hold, instead of our usual 60.  When all the books for Hannah's report go back, that should help.  Also, we're about to start our Last Week Of School, so I'm sure our interest-led, summer acquisitions will go back in a more timely manner.  


Attended the zoom baby shower for Zach & Heather's little boy.  Shower by zoom is a little weird, but it's exciting that his birthday is getting closer.  My plan is to go visit in September, but I'm trying to hold lightly to that plan.  


More books.  


I'm grateful for the push to get us exercising more.  The girls jog while I ride my bike.  


And we do some exercise in the garage, too, using Hannah's new equipment.


In fact, we've decided to participate in this year's virtual Walk For Love event.  We'll really be pushing ourselves, as it's 20 miles in 8 days.  We have until June to work our way up to the 3 miles a day goal.  The first time we went a whole mile, Hannah was really sore the next day.  


Sea creature drawings


This was a good book.  It was a quick read, which is good, because I didn't get to it until 3 days before it was due.  It's faith based, which is helpful, as it talked about how to handle a situation where an adult child is making choices you oppose for religious reasons.  It helped affirm my "nod and smile" (or "smile and wave" if you're a Madagascar fan) policy, and reinforced some things that I knew but struggle with putting into practice.  Perfect timing, since I facilitated one of the boys adulting at Urgent Care this week.  


Annaliese scored big sister points by sending the girls a package of goodies.  


Shamrock drawings to go with our study of IRELAND this week.  We learned why there's Ireland and Northern Ireland.  This year has really been eye opening, in terms of understanding the effects of colonialism.  How very weird that Europeans felt entitled to claim bits of land all over our globe.  


Bird drawings


Instead of our usual route around the block, we started varying our route a bit and ended up at the park a couple of times.  


Feels good to get out in the sunshine!  We got spoiled with weather in the 80*s and when it dipped down for a couple days, I went back to sitting in front of the space heater.  Fortunately, it's looking like 80* again tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future.  Whew!  


Strong girls!  


Oh Grumman.  He has a thing for freshly washed ankles, as Sam discovered after his shower recently.  


Since the girls have finished their English curricula, we've been doing Mad Libs to review parts of speech.  


Books, books, books


Katie's St. Brigid's Cross craft.  Grumman is so thrilled to have pipe cleaners all over the house again.  Sigh.  


He's probably exhausted from destroying pipe cleaner crafts.  


We're getting to the time of year where there are a lot of, "Choose any..." assignments.  The "make any origami animal from this book" is a good example.  Also, today's "Pick any Robert Frost poem for copywork."  Hannah's gotten into writing poetry lately, which makes me smile.  


Our beloved mascot won't be happy when we're not hanging out in the school room every morning any more.  


"Hey Mom?  Can you Crikey me a jet mask?"  Yes.  Yes, I can.  I pulled up Design Space, searched "plane," and handed him the iPad to select the image he wanted.  We made it together.  


We've finished Ireland and are moving on to our very last country for the school year:  Puerto Rico!  The girls are taking their final exam in Swimming Creatures science today.  We're really starting to wrap things up.  Very exciting.  

Thursday, April 15, 2021

Our Two Weeks


Since I did the Easter picture post last week, I never quite got to our regular weekly wrap up post, so this will be a little longer.  


I posted we'd made the Bird Nests, but we hadn't tried them yet.  I wanted to report back that I liked them, but they were kind of messy to eat, as they crumble easily.  These lasted in the kitchen much longer than I expected them to (but Paul and Sam are both off sugar right now).  Josiah and Jack weren't really interested in them, even though peanut butter is usually one of Jack's favorites.  All that to say, we probably won't make these again, even though I liked them.  


What's this?  A back to school picture in April?  Yep.  Jack is back on campus again, after more than a year away.  He was struggling with virtual school, and is very happy to be among humans outside the house again.


Oh Grumman.  


I was looking for a particular book in the school room and ran across something else entirely (please tell me I'm not the only one who does this!) so we have used God & the History of Art a couple times this week.  I have leftover student pages from when the older kids were homeschooling.  This may be my last chance to use some up.  


Books, books, books.  I'm surprised they let me take more out this week.  This business of holding them to let the cooties die before checking them back in has the effect of making it harder for us to see a drop in the total number of books we have out.  Because I returned books 3 different days, and picked books up 1 day, and we've only had a net drop from 102 to 97.  


More Chinese stick puzzle brain teasers


Origami tulips


Red pandas


Because our curriculum has ended, and I'm cobbling together enough stuff to fill our days, we're doing a brief return to Grapevine Studies with a free sample I downloaded recently.  The girls vaguely remembered using it a few years ago, because of the drawings.  That's my very impressive Chief Priest paying Judas 30 pieces of silver.  


Forward arm circles!  Backward arm circles!  High knees!  Side shuffle!  We didn't do our exercises every day, but we're starting to get into the swing of things.  I keep forgetting to take pictures while we're out there.  


Really loving the cones and handle tubes the most out of all the equipment we received.  

Also, while I was riding slowly alongside Hannah as she jogged, I spotted a wallet on the ground.  After trying a couple houses nearby and not getting any response, I posted looking for the owner on NextDoor, where everyone said, "Take it to the police station."  So Jack and I did that when I picked him up from school.  


There's a dish I made when we studied Turkey, that we all liked well enough to add to our regular rotation.  Only, it uses 2 pounds of diced lamb, which is pretty pricey.  This week I tried it with pork instead.  (Photo is of dish in progress, not the finished product.)  Saved about $10 bucks, which makes me happy, and while different, was still tasty.  


The book I'm currently reading was pictured weeks ago, but it's really interesting.  Presumably, it's about the Faberge eggs, but it's really covered so much more than that.  A good overview of Russian history during/after the last 2 czars.  It's sad that King George (the 5th, not Elizabeth's father) rescinded his offer of sanctuary to his cousin.  I wonder what the world would be like today if the Romanovs had not been executed.  

Speaking of royal families, and history, I feel like the recent passing of Prince Philip marks the beginning of the end for Queen Elizabeth.  He's really the last person who knew her well before she was queen.  After 73 years of marriage, his passing is bound to leave a gaping hole in her world.  


No study of Nepal could be complete without a mention of the animal in every animal alphabet book:  The Yak!  I used the faux fur I bought for the gnomes we never made when we studied Norway.  I showed the girls how to only cut through the backing, and not through the fur.  

 
Finished multimedia project.  Paint, 8x10 canvas, construction paper, fur, and wiggle eyes.  


More books.  We're down to 74 checked out now.  I've got a pile going for our next country, but I haven't started requesting books for the one after that yet.  I'll just have to hope those can get to us in a timely manner, once I do.  


Dove drawings


Sea turtle drawings


This pickup included some of Hannah's research books on a woman she's doing a report on.  A butterfly and moth scientist, apparently.  


A local church is closing their library and giving away all their books, so I went and picked up a wagon load for the kids' private school.  (I also plundered a few Susan May Warren and Terri Blackstock books for when I need some fluff reading.)  The bookends and book stands will be helpful in the school library, too.  


The only time this wagon gets any use is curriculum fairs, so it was nice to pull it out of the garage and see it in action again.  


Katie's origami fox


Hannah's plant life cycle project


Katie's bird project


I told the girls they could choose any project from a "How to draw..." book.  Hannah's deer/antelope/gazelle, and Katie's golden eagle.


A shark project from a library book.  


Josiah made pizzas one night.  He's discovered bacon ranch dressing, which he used for the sauce on the bacon chicken one.


And pepperoni & olive for the more traditional.  


Katie's bag puppet, from a repurposed library bag.  

Whew!  So that covers Nepal and the Galapagos Islands.  We'll be off to Ireland next, which was Katie's choice.