The One with a Long Drive

Christmas Light Show at the Zoo

Notes? Who needs notes?

Oh, that's right, I do, and I didn't take any last week. The things I remember are lots of cleaning, laundry, school, and runny noses. We had piano lessons and youth activities. Joseph got his braces off on Thursday - and was thrilled to eat an apple without having to slice it first. Caleb officially turned 9 this week (his party happened earlier this month). We built new shelving and a chair, then realized the chair, and the other 3 like it, will need the legs cut down so they fit our needs (tall enough to forego booster seats at the table and still be a good height for doing school work and writing for my younger learners, but short enough kids legs actually fit under the table). That project is being done this week. We played board games and watched 101 Dalmatians.

I also spent a ridiculous amount of time on the phone this week with various doctors and specialists setting appointments, getting test results, and so on. It's just a fact of large family life with medical needs thrown in.

I forgot to hit publish on this tiny post last Friday because I was too excited for Saturday. My mom and I loaded up in the car and drove 14 hours round trip to Virginia and back. It was rainy and long, but worth it, because I got to hug Makayla and bring her home for Thanksgiving week.

Picture during our Zoo day. 

Yes, someone always makes a

face or closes their eyes.

We just roll with it.

Since then it has been family time, doctor appointments, a trip to the zoo to see animals and their Christmas lights and music shows, and playing games together. We've got Thanksgiving on the horizon and then we will decorate our Christmas tree as a family on Friday before making the 14 hour round trip drive again on Saturday to take Makayla back to college.

A November Week's Notes

Saturday we had our monthly family birthday party to celebrate birthdays for November. Tobias turned 4 last week, Caleb turns 9 later this month, and we also had a cousin and aunt with birthdays we celebrated. We did some projects around the house today as well.

Sunday was a special sacrament meeting where the primary children (ages 3-11) share their testimonies through song and word with the congregation. It is always sweet to listen to the children singing and speaking. Once home we had lunch and our usual afternoon medical care for Mason. Then I took a nap. It was so nice. We had an odd experience with a woman who tried stealing some of our children's shoes from our enclosed porch, which led to us clearing all the shoes from the porch for now. In the evening we had a ham dinner and lots of talking together around the table. I love seeing the crazy silly discussions that happen around the table at meal times.

Monday was Veteran's Day, but we chose to have school and take Wednesday off instead. It fit our schedule better with a several hour doctor's appointment on the calendar. The morning began with new Math U See lessons for everyone:

•  Algebra 1 - Solving simultaneous equations with graphing - Joseph and Emma
• PreAlgebra - Solve for an unknown with Multiplicative Inverse - Daniel
• Epsilon - Reducing fractions using prime factorization - Oliver
• Gamma - Skip count by 6, equivalent fractions - Caleb
• Beta - Skip count by 10, Dimes, Pennies - Mason
• Alpha - Adding Doubles, Mental Math - Samuel

Other lessons today included:

• Reading independently or aloud to me depending on age/reading ability. 
• Handwriting (print or cursive)
• Biology - Cellular biology, aerobic respiration cycles including Krebs cycle. 
• History - The Aztec civilization - we learned about their history, engineering feats such as floating farms and building a city in the middle of a lake, religion, calendar stone, and interactions and conquering by Spain. We watched a short video as part of this lesson as well. 
• Language Arts - depending on the child assignments today ranged from sentence dictation to sentence diagramming, reading a chapter in Little Lord Fauntleroy, narration, brainstorming story starters for man versus nature, man versus man or society, and man versus self, grammar cards, poetry memorization, geography cards, and spelling. 

After our usual afternoon medical care I pulled out a new game for the kids. I found a free printable online for a game called 'Shut the Box'. It is a fun way to practice addition without it feeling like work. You can get the free printables from this post at Teaching with Jillian Starr. Basically, a child rolls a pair of dice. They add the dice and then can use any mix of numbers that make up that amount and cross them off their game board. For example if a child rolls 8 they could choose to cross of 8. Or 7 and 1. Or 6 and 2. Or 5 and 3. Or 1, 2, and 5. Or 1, 3, and 4. There are so many possibilities, and the older they get the more they will see. Today I had kids from age 6 to 12 playing together using two player boards in dry erase sleeves.

After dinner we rotated the toys from the living room with toys stored in the attic. I'm now watching the five youngest kids playing with dinosaurs and mega blocks. Two older kids are writing (both are working on books/fanfiction for fun), and two kids are playing together in the boys' bedroom. That means I have a few minutes to jot these notes and check my email.

Tuesday was a relaxed morning of school. Caleb was fascinated with learning about the Inca civilization. We decided it would be hard to be an Incan messenger because they didn't have a written language, so all messages had to be memorized and then runners passed it from station to station along the Inca Trail.

Wednesday Mason had several xrays and an appointment with his orthopedic surgeon in the morning. In the end, he still needs to wait for his body to have some growth and finish correcting the bones in his right leg before we remove the plate, and the left leg doesn't have to get a plate in just yet. His scoliosis is stable, improved a few degrees. Grandma watched the rest of the kids while Mason and I were at his appointments. In the afternoon Tobias started getting sick. He's my 4 year old tornado, usually running, playing, and busy. On this afternoon he curled up in a blanket and just laid on the couch for hours with a fever. Poor guy didn't feel like eating at all. In the evening my youth had church activities.

Thursday school was the first thing on the agenda as usual. Tobias woke up and felt better as the day went on. In history we learned about some of the Spanish conquistadors. It was an interesting discussion that there are always two or more sides to historical events as we tried to imagine things from both the Spaniard's and the native tribes' perspectives. The older kids had a bit of discussion about motivations for different explorers/conquistadors, human sacrifice in some religions (Aztec in particular), how tribes surrounding the Aztecs banded together with Cortez to help defeat the Aztecs, and issues that were unexpected like how diseases from the Europeans were devastating to some of the native populations of the Americas who did not have the same immunities. At physical therapy today we reported on the surgeon appointment and started working on a new plan because of the things we can't do until surgeries happen (like using standing braces and a walker). For dinner Caleb and Mason helped me make homemade pizzas. Evening was family time and a video chat with Makayla. I rarely remember to mention these, but we video chat at least once a week, often twice. We are all counting down to seeing her for Thanksgiving!

Friday kicked off with school work as usual. Most of us took turns playing the piano and singing together. Joseph and Emma saw an invitation to join the church Christmas choir and so they'll be doing that for the next 5 weeks. I haven't decided if I'll be joining them or just providing rides to and from practice. We had some fun discussions about goal setting and are all looking forward to a broadcast for children and youth this coming Sunday about the changes coming in January to the church activity programs for ages 8-18.

In all, it was a peaceful week of learning and family time. Does it ever get boring reading that? I think it might, but that is our reality. We are blessed beyond measure to spend more than the average amount of time together, thanks to homeschooling. 

Two Weeks, the Conservatory, and Glassblowing

Saturday I did the majority of the fall/winter clothes shopping for the kids at Once Upon a Child, with my mom as helper. It was fun to have some uninterrupted time to talk, my mom is one of my favorite people! We also stopped at Half Price Books and found a few treasures for the kids to read. In the evening I spent an hour cutting six of the boys' hair on the enclosed front porch because it just kept raining all day. They're so handsome with their hair freshly cut!

Sunday was a day of rest. We all needed it. We had a lovely day at church together, then spent the rest of the day quietly at home. There was coloring, reading books, and discussing some of the coming week's Come Follow Me lesson in the New Testament (we're up to 1st and 2nd Timothy, Titus, and Philemon). We made plans for an outing to a new place on Monday. We are trying to take advantage of the cool but not yet frozen weather to do a fair amount of field trips, as summer field trips are complicated with one child who can't sweat and overheats easily.

Monday the kids dove into school work early because they didn't want to have any left to do this afternoon when we returned from out adventure. At 9:15am we were out the door and on the road to the Franklin Park Conservatory. None of us had ever been there, which means I had done a fair amount of research ahead of time on accessibility for Mason, but you never really know until you get there just what it will be like. It turns out that it is semi-accessible, but less than they were making it out to be.

The Conservatory has several parts, a few of which we visited today. Once inside the front doors and checked in we took the elevator up to the second floor, where the biomes in various greenhouses begin. There was an accessible path through each biome. However there were also a lot of areas in each biome that could only be reached by stairs. It ended up being a lot more lifting and carrying Mason than we expected, to see the different plants.

The Conservatory also has Chihuly glass installations throughout all the biomes, gardens, and an exhibition hall of his glass works as well. Outside there is a children's garden which is a large area of paths, play spaces, and activity areas. It was more accessible than the inside, with a large majority of areas reachable on the ground and up high in the treetops by wheelchair.

Tuesday was not a fun day. Joseph woke up for Seminary and started blacking out repeatedly, had a high fever, chills, and sweating. He rehydrated, napped a lot, and we hunkered down for a quiet day at home.

Wednesday I love how the morning unfolded. This term we adjusted our school start time from 8am to 9am. All this means is that until 9am kids can play, sleep, eat, and if they choose, work on school. But at 9am we have an alarm that calls anyone not already working to the table to begin. Some of my kids get working well before 9am, while others wait for that morning bell. Today the oldest 4 kids pulled out school work around 7:45am at the table and got to work. I was able to sit at the table and answer questions, give quizzes, listen to readings, and focus on them with much fewer interruptions while the younger 5 kids played in other parts of the house. By 9am the older 4 had made great progress on their hardest subjects and were on to easier things, freeing me up to focus on the younger kids.

In the afternoon Joseph made a double batch of no-bake cookies. Part of it went with him to youth activities and part stayed home for the family to enjoy.

Thursday's notes simply say: It was a long day. Physical therapy was hard work. Kids were energetic and it rained all day long. School happened.

Friday was the first day of November. I hit up the local WalMart at 6am after dropping Joseph off at seminary and grabbed some clearance candy. They also had boxes of Pumpkin Spice Oatmeal on clearance so I grabbed a few of those. Back at home the kids refreshed our read aloud bin full of candy with some new treats and everyone got to work, ready to reach read aloud portions of our lessons so they could enjoy the new candy. In the group history we learned about some explorers, including John Cabot, Sebastian Cabot, and Balboa. Joseph's history was about physicists who began exploring neutrinos (sub-atomic particles) and quarks. We also put together a package for Makayla and dropped it off at the post office to wing its way to Virginia.

Saturday we decided to catch a glass-blowing demonstration at The Works, which is part science center, part art displays, and part local history museum. The kids all enjoyed it and the gaffer was amazing at doing her job while inviting the kids to ask questions, answering them, and including them. The kids surprised me with some really good questions and all were delighted to learn that they can try out one on one glass blowing classes beginning at age 9. Some are already asking for a class for Christmas.

After the glass blowing demonstration we basically took over the science center floor of The Works. Some kids wandered through different activity stations including programming a robot, building with snap circuits, exploring an anatomy model and putting it together, taking apart electronics in the lab, the little kids enjoyed their play section, building on the Lego wall, and producing electricity by hand crank to power various lights.

Playing in the outdoor bird nest at the conservatory.

Sunday was a peaceful day with church, family time, and rest.

Monday's school week began with math, math, and more math. There were writing projects and in history we began studying pre-Columbia America. We have several cultures ahead, including the Aztec, Inca, and Mayan.

Tuesday was school and piano. With rain. Again. The kids enjoyed pulling out games to play after school was complete.

Wednesday was technically Tobias' birthday, but we'll celebrate at a party this coming Saturday. The kids pulled out lots of card games after school today. The rain keeps dripping.

Thursday we had our first bit of snow, not even enough to stick. It was mixed with rain. Brr. I smiled a lot today because some of the kids have started working on Christmas music on the piano. I love Christmas music!

I also did a bit of Christmas and birthday shopping online. I love being able to shop online instead of trek through store after store.

It is now Friday morning before 7am and a couple kids are awake. Our day looks peacefully normal - school, play, and family time ahead. There are bananas ripe and ready to bake into something delicious. We have stacks of books from the library to give one last read through before we return them. I'm going to go sneak in a few minutes with my own book before anyone needs me!