Pumpkin Patch, Date Night, and Nature Study

Saturday morning we woke to a frosty world. We decided our trip to Pigeon Roost Farm would be best in the afternoon after things warmed up a little. That meant a relaxing morning at home doing a few chores, playing games, and eating leftover 'Thanksgiving' food for lunch from yesterday's mini-Thanksgiving dinner.

Pigeon Roost Farm is a pumpkin farm with a giant area of activities, games, animals, corn maze, and play. We only go once every few years. The kids all had a great time and Daddy and I got a great workout in helping the little ones and Mason with different things. Mason loved the Ninja warrior course, and could do about half of it on his own, but needed help with the rest.

Sunday we had church, tithing settlement with the bishop, and a broadcast. The rest of the day was family time.

Monday was the first day back to school after break. It was a bit of a rough re-entry with a few grumpy children who didn't want to do certain subjects. We made it through it eventually and moved on with the rest of our day. We switched out some of the books on our shelves for ones in the attic. It was time to put away books on ancient Greece and Vikings and pull out books on explorers, native Americans, pilgrims, and Thanksgiving. Some of our chapter books were put away to make room for new chapter books we ordered from The Good and the Beautiful.

 In the late afternoon Jason and I went on a date while Grandma played with the kids, which was great. When we came home we decided it was the perfect night to introduce the kids to the 2010 movie The Karate Kid. There were lots of laughs, lots of questions, and lots of discussions.

Tuesday was a cool, breezy day with rain in the morning and sun and clouds later on. The kids enjoyed cloudwatching. In homeschool today most of the kids worked on making a notebooking page for their science notebook. They each chose some aspect of yesterday's science lesson (natural resources, non-renewable resources, reduce/reuse/recycle), except Mason. He wanted to draw and write about Earth, so that is what he did.

My favorite thing about Wednesday was history. I love reading the stories of people and times past. Some of my kids love it too, while others prefer science. My least favorite thing about Wednesday was that our second refrigerator stopped working. It had been given to us when someone we knew upgraded their fridge a couple years ago. We don't plan to spend money to replace this right now. We can make one fridge fit food for the 11 of us, sort of. Or we will just have to grocery shop a bit more often to restock what will fit.

Thursday's day had school, lots of reading, singing, play, an orthodontist appointment, birdwatching, clothes shopping for a boy who outgrew all his pants, and family time.

Friday the kids were most excited about our nature study plans. After a morning of school we headed to the arboretum. On this trip we had several goals:

1.  Joseph was working on his photography elective.
2. We were checking out the fall changes compared to our last trip - trees are glorious colors right now!
3. The kids decided it was time to visit the swamp. 

All these pictures are mine. I'll try to share some of Joseph's photography in a post soon. For now I need to go do haircuts on 6 of the boys.

Fall Break Week 2019

Monday of our fall break week we headed to the zoo. The weather was sunny and 50F when we arrived and stayed cool all day. The zoo was uncrowded and we were able to spend time in the exhibits we visited just observing the animals. Everyone had favorites and we only visited part of the zoo today. We saw a variety of apes, Australian animals, reptiles, fish, penguins, flamingoes, and more.

In the evening we rented Toy Story 4 with a free Fandango Now ticket we got during our summer trip to New York and had a family movie night. There were tears by the end of the movie from several people.

Tuesday was laundry day. The kids had an epic hour long nerf war all over the house to start the day. I mostly dodged bullets while sorting through school papers to pull out items for each child's yearly portfolio. I made it through three kids' work.

Wednesday while the kids did yet another nerf war I did some online classes as part of my own continuing education/teacher improvement. Continuing my own education and learning is important to me. I try to consistently make time for reading and learning for myself.

Also, typing that reminds me I forgot to share a fun class several of my kids and I took a few weeks ago. Emma is a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes (books, classic British tv show, more modern tv series, spoofs like Sherlock Gnomes, pretty much all of it). Pam Barnhill did a class on the mind palace memory technique (also know as memory palace, method of loci - first described in ancient Greek and Roman treatises). Using the technique, we worked on memorizing a poem we had never heard before, in less than 20 minutes. We had a lot of fun!

Wednesday afternoon a couple kids pulled out our sculpey clay. They created and baked the creations. That evening had the usual youth activities for the older 5 kids.

Thursday there was no early morning seminary for Joseph. It was wonderful to sleep in until 7am! When I made it down stairs about half the kids were already awake for the day, reading together. I worked on a few more homeschool portfolios today. Only two left to do tomorrow!

In the afternoon Mason and I went to physical therapy. Then it was home to make dinner, and out the door to visit some friends and drop off a few things with the oldest daughter of our friends, who is driving down south to visit Makayla this weekend at Southern Virginia University.

Friday was another no seminary day. We started the morning with baking four loaves of banana bread and a pan of magic cookie bars. At 9am I had a grocery pick up. At 11am Emma and I got a turkey into the oven because we're doing a mini-Thanksgiving-ish dinner tonight just because we can. A lot of the kids were busy with playdough kits this morning, or nerf guns. Rebekah loved playdough and didn't try to eat it, which is always good!

It is Friday afternoon and I need to get through the last two portfolios while Rebekah is napping. That's what I'm going to do next! Then it is time to prep school for the next 5 weeks.

Happy Friday!

The Three Weeks crossing September into October

Saturday we headed to COSI, the big science center in the city, for some fun. We checked out the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles exhibit, pet real turtles, explored the Ocean and Life exhibits, and found the WOSU broadcast studio tucked away at the end of a hall. The kids had fun filming themselves, using green screen, and more. 

Sunday started off with church. Tobias was wild and crazy leading up to the service, but settled down as the opening hymn was sung. After church was a quiet afternoon at home as a family. After dinner we headed to the cousins' house for a double birthday party and some jumping on the trampoline.

Monday around school I played chauffer for my mom and step-dad for eye surgeries. We will do that again next Monday too, for their second eye each. Daddy was home and working on his own school work, as well as doing a repair project in the bathroom upstairs, then visiting a surgeon of his own. He's got some testing coming up and then it looks like he may be having more surgeries. We don't know how long he will need to be off work, and to be honest, after 5 months off at the beginning of the year, we are hoping for short recovery times. We shall see!

Tuesday around school Mason and I headed to physical therapy to evaluate the new braces that were made. Unfortunately, they don't work well. Mason has some bone, tendon, and muscle issues in his legs and we are pretty sure that until the next round of surgeries is done bracing isn't going to work. We've decided to get back to physical therapy and focus on core and upper body work, no walking, until his x-rays and surgery plan appointment in 5 weeks. We will wait to try more adjustments on the braces until after surgeries/recovery, unless the surgeon's schedule is packed and we have to wait into 2020 for surgery.

We had a very laid back afternoon. Kids were busy building with legos, reading books, and playing games. I read, cooked, and read some more. It was a rare day with few kid arguments.

Wednesday we dove into all things Vikings. The kids had varying levels of familiarity with the topic, so it was fun to hear older ones sharing things they knew with younger ones, and everyone learning new things together. Caleb was fascinated with the idea of building boats, and his lego creations reflect that.

My middle boys have been very into coloring in the evening while listening to their audiobook. Sometimes they like to draw, but more often they want coloring pages. Today I took some time to print out a stack of new coloring pages for them.

Older kids also had the usual Wednesday night activities at church.

Thursday we had nothing on the calendar. These are my favorite days. No hurrying to get school work done before appointments, piano lessons, errands, or field trips. Just letting the morning work unfold at it's own pace for each child.

Friday we ended up with one sick teen. Stomach illness is never a good thing in a large family. Will they share it? How long will it last passing from person to person? Will we drown in laundry along the way?

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It is now a week since I last took any notes. Life has simply been the happy and full life of a large family. We did not end up having the plague sweep through the house, which I was very thankful for. There was the usual steady pace of homeschooling, physical therapy, chores, church, youth activities, library trips, grocery shopping, piano lessons, doctors appointments, and medical care. This past weekend was General Conference, 10 hours of encouraging talks from leaders of our church broken up over several sessions. We are able to stream these live from home and our kids love it. Yummy food, drawing, coloring, note taking, music, and time together makes for a refreshing weekend. The kids also did a couple art projects, including watercolor trees or pumpkins, as well as painting actual pumpkins we were given.

This week was supposed to be the first week long school break of the 2019-2020 school year. Before the school year began I tentatively marked out our break weeks, with flexibility to adjust when we want to. As everyone is still working willingly, and we have several appointments and interruptions to our week next week, as well as two birthdays, we decided to move our break week to next week.

Monday this week we made a nature study trip after school was finished. We observed chipmunks, a variety of birds, a beehive, turtles, a variety of nature materials in a nature center, and then a rainy drive through the arboretum to see the beginnings of fall changes to our area. We visit this arboretum several times each season, sometimes hiking the trails, sometimes driving the auto trails. It makes for a wonderful way to watch the changes of each season unfold.

Tuesday there was nature journaling about yesterday's trip for the 6th grade and under kids. The nature journals varied, with drawings and writing, but several of the kids wrote about the turtles we saw and the things they learned about them. Math this week is pretty much the two ends of the spectrum - easy or hard - according to the kids. There was also language arts, geography, reading, and so on. Emma and Oliver mixed up a batch of banana chocolate chip muffins and put them in bread pans instead of muffin pans. It was a delicious lunch

Wednesday the kids woke up, ate breakfast, and settled into the school work routine. I asked some children to do a less favorite subject earlier in the day instead of putting it off to last, just to see if the subject went better while they were fresh. It went better for some of them, and one it went about the same.

History today was studying Marco Polo and putting him in our mental timeline in relation to other people we are familiar with.

There was also a lot of cupcake baking going on. Emma made 2 dozen blue cupcakes yesterday evening for a cupcake decorating class today. She made 4 dozen purple cupcakes today and iced them for everyone at home to enjoy.

Thursday if you asked my elementary science group what their favorite subject was, they would all say science. Today we took a few of our sunflowers and pulled them apart to harvest the seeds. It was fun and messy. The kids decided to put the sunflower seeds outside in the backyard where we often see birds and squirrels. Now they wander back to the windows to check for visiting animals.

Friday everyone woke excited to get school work done because after weeks of cancelling due to various families' illnesses, we were having Homeschool Book Club. In history we started talking about reasons for explorers to travel. We learned about a few different explorers and their discoveries, challenges, and how they influenced the explorers who came after them.

Our friends arrived midmorning to much rejoicing. Conversations, games, discussion of Archimedes and the Door of Science, and snacks filled our time together.

It is now Friday afternoon. Kids are playing games on their Kindles or watching an episode of Doctor Who. I am getting ready for an afternoon of phone calls and we are officially on our fall break. Yay!