Monday Makayla left for Girl's Camp with the young women of our extended church area. She's in her 5th year of camp and is a Youth Camp Leader. She's been working and planning for several months with other YCLs and their leaders for this week.
Also on Monday was physical therapy for Mason. His PT is leaving to work in a school system so he's only got 1 more day with her next week. It's sad but change is pretty constant in medical providers. His new PT will join us for therapy next week with his current PT to help the transition. I'm hoping she and Mason hit it off.
I spent a lot of the afternoon making phone calls to doctors and medical suppliers for Mason. We got unexpected good news (a new dynamic stander approved by insurance) and several appointments scheduled for the next 3 weeks.
Other Monday activities this week were cleaning, cooking, and piano lessons. We got into the attic to change out some of our books for the upcoming school year, which is always fun. The kids are trying to browse random new titles on the shelves and so I have two shelves that are off limits as school books I know we'll use this year. By the time we start up in 2 weeks the kids will be more than willing to start so they can crack open some of those books.
We finished off the evening with 50 cent frostys at Wendy's. Yum.
Tuesday started with exercise (me), breakfast, and chores as usual. Most of the kids disappeared upstairs to play
Guillotine (aff). I baked muffins for lunch, which I haven't done in a while. I also spent time organizing the history books we pulled down from the attic yesterday. I'm making a list putting them in roughly chronological order so that during the school year I don't have to think about what comes next, it will already be there for me. I also am grouping books together that are on the same topic because then it is easier to decide who will read which books. Here's an example:
Under Civil War I have these books:
- If You Lived When There Was Slavery in America
- Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt
- If You Lived at the Time of the Civil War
- Abraham Lincoln by D'aulaire
- Just a Few Words Mr. Lincoln
- Escape North
- If You Grew Up with Abraham Lincoln
- Amos Fortune, Free Man
- Freedom Train
- Across Five Aprils
- Rifles for Watie
- Stonewall
- The Red Badge of Courage
- Uncle Tom's Cabin
- Gettysburg Address
Those are roughly in order by age group - so younger children would be books 1-7, middle children could do books 8-12 in addition to the first 7 books, and older children could also do books 13 and 14. Number 15 is the actual Gettysburg Address, which I feel all ages could read or listen to.
My 7th grade and under kids will begin with Native Americans move forward through Columbus, Pilgrims, Colonies, French and Indian War, American Revolution, and the founding of America, Lewis and Clark, the War of 1812, the Alamo, and Westward Movement. Depending on how slowly or quickly we go through all of that they may move on into the Civil War and so on.
My 11th grader has chosen to begin at the Civil War and move to the present day, mainly focusing on the 20th century. She will cover topics like Civil War, Inventions, Labor strikes, Transportation changes, Ellis Island, Immigration, the Titanic, the Spanish American War, WWI, the Depression Era, Migrant Workers, WWII, the Space Race, the Civil Rights Movement, the Cold War, Vietnam, etc.
Other Tuesday fun: It was Taco Tuesday! The kids love being able to make their own tacos with toppings of their choice.
Wednesday was my 'get to things I've put off ' day. That meant finally sitting down to organize the 5 older kids' portfolios from last school year so they can be mailed off to our assessor this Saturday. I spent about an hour in the morning doing this.
In the evening I had Cub Scouts with my little Wolf den. We're working on Code of the Wolf, which involves different ways we can use math. On this night we talked about making predictions based on gathered information, for example weather predictions. Then we learned to draw our own graphs. Each boy drew two blank bar graphs. Then I handed them one of the 'fun size' packets of M&Ms. They opened it and graphed how many of each color M&M were in their packet. We compared information and each boy made predictions about what would be the most and least found color in their second packet. Then they opened a second packet and graphed it. We compared the results. Then they counted how many M&Ms had been in each packet total and we compared the results, found an average, and made a prediction as to how many M&Ms we would find in another packet. Of course they got to eat their candy along the way!
Thursday started off with breakfast (biscuits, sausage gravy, and fried potatoes) and chores. Joseph and I ran to the orthodontist for the next step in the creation of his palate expander while Emma babysat. (The orthodontist's office is 5 minutes from home, which is really helpful.)
The boys decided today was haircut day, so we spent time in the back yard while I cut hair for 6 of the 7 boys. Tobias really doesn't need a haircut yet, he still has wispy baby hair.
Friday saw Grandma arriving at our house at 6:30am. Mason and I left the house at 6:45am to head into the big city Children's Hospital. He had appointments with a couple of his doctors, several x-rays, and we're waiting on news with a plan of action or more tests ordered. We got home 5 hours later in time for me to drop him off and go pick up Makayla at the church, where she had just arrived from Girl's Camp.
The afternoon included our usual hour and a half of medical care for Mason, playing
Sleeping Queens (aff) with Caleb and Oliver, cleaning, cooking, and a little bit of rest. Daddy came home in time to grill hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner.
Saturday is our one video game day. The rule is you have to eat breakfast and get your chores done first. We pull the Wii and Xbox out of the basement and hook them up to the tv. Kids get 30 minutes to play a game. Then it all gets packed away in the basement for another week. We have a new addition to the game options. One grandparent gave us their virtual reality headset recently because they just don't use it. My kids are having a good time exploring that.
A quick library trip happened this morning. This was also grocery shopping day of course. I have to admit that even with one child coming along to help I just don't enjoy grocery shopping. Many people have suggested we try out online ordering but our main shopping place is Aldi and they don't offer it. The price difference between Aldi and other grocery stores is big when you buy food in the quantity we need. I can easily spend $75 less just by shopping at Aldi. The convenience of online ordering is trumped by the budget. The rest of Saturday was more family time.
Sunday we had church of course. It was a good but bittersweet day. I was released from my callings as a Primary teacher and a Wolf Den Leader. I'll miss them. I'm still going to be busy though because I got a new calling - Cubmaster! Yes, really. I've never done that before and have many things to learn, but I'm glad I still get to work with the Cub Scouts. Our Raingutter Regatta (boat race) is this week so we are busily getting ready for that.
Sunday afternoon and evening were family time. We helped Joseph finish packing for Scout Camp and watched a movie.
Once the kids were in bed I worked on our homeschool schedule. Here are cards I made with the lessons that need to happen in a single day (excluding things like art, P.E.). Each column is a different student, so left to right it is Makayla through Mason. The two preschoolers don't have official school work. Some of this work is one on one, some is done as a group, and there are subjects here they do mostly independently too. It's going to be a great year!
Monday we waved goodbye to Joseph as he headed off to camp. His troop is going to West Virginia to camp at a lake and will attend the National Scout Jamboree for 3 days as visitors as well. It's a big deal and only happens once every 4 years. Joseph is excited for the many activities they will do!
The morning was spent working on a project from my things to do before baby list. We pulled a couple of unsorted bags of clothing from the attic, sorted them into the appropriate size bins, and cleared out some things from the attic while we were up there.
In the afternoon I got to do something exciting - become an active Thirty-One consultant again! I've got
a website to make shopping easy for my US friends. (International friends I'm sorry but I can't ship outside the US.) I saw the new Fall/Winter catalog that just opened this week and couldn't resist. There are some beautiful, functional items I can't wait to add to my home. I've also got my eye on several items that will be fun gifts during the birthday and holiday season. This week you can also still shop from the Spring/Summer catalog and snag some of the retiring prints and items before they are gone.
Here is a sneak peek at some things you'll find at Thirty-One.
And one more!
Tuesday is here and our morning has consisted of play, puzzles, and dropping Makayla off to work at the veterinarian office. It's a cloudy gray day and I've got some school planning to do. I think the kids want lunch first, so I'm off to cook.
