February Notes: 1st - 8th

Rebekah at COSI - enjoying the Ocean exhibit.

The weekend slipped quickly past with family time, church, and celebrating February birthdays. This month two of my kiddos have birthdays.

Monday morning we dove into school work. New math lessons were everywhere.. Oliver is rocking all things fractions this year. Daniel is on speaking terms with pre-algebra, most of the time. Caleb loves multiplication. I have no idea why. Joseph and Emma have a love-hate relationship with algebra. They hated the graphing equations and inequalities of the early chapters, but are following along well with factoring equations. Samuel has started subtraction. He has to tell a story with every single problem. The usual theme is a pet store, where he has a certain kind of animal available and someone comes in to take away some as pets. (Ex: 8 crabs take away 5 crabs leaves 3 crabs in his pet store.) Mason is working with larger addition and subtraction problems, mostly without complaint.

Tuesday felt wonderful because the kids managed to start lessons where they needed me at mostly different times. I wasn't pulled in quite so many directions at once. We also spent some time birdwatching on this rainy day. The favorite sighting was a beautiful scarlet cardinal that hung around in the bushes for 20 minutes.

Several of my kids decided to listen to and sing all the songs in Musical Multiplication from The Good and the Beautiful today. We have not worked through all 4 booklets yet, but they did them anyway. The songs are simple, sweet, and memorable. We are loving them.

Caleb loves to craft. This is a hedgehog he made this week.

Wednesday I just remember being tired. Ever since the whole family spent most of January sick, I haven't had a great sleep schedule. Right now I get to sleep at 11:15pm and wake up at 4:43am (before my 5:15am alarm clock that is supposed to wake me so I can drive Joseph to seminary). I'm trying to fit a regular nap in, but that isn't always possible.

Thursday my baby girl turned 2 years old. You can read her birth story if you like that sort of things, I wrote it not long after she was born. We finished our study of Benjamin Franklin with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, ending the Revolutionary War. The kids were fascinated by the many different things Franklin did, tried, learned, explored, invented, and made.

We also had fun playing Apples to Apples Disney as a family. Most of the kids can read now, and the few who can't are able to play because this version of Apples to Apples includes pictures on the cards. It was a lot of laughing and disagreeing over which card fit the theme the best each time.

Friday we woke to a few inches of snow. After breakfast almost every single child was sitting curled up somewhere reading a book. It felt heavenly! I read books to Tobias and Rebekah, including Little Blue Truck. They really liked that one. Over morning snack I started a new read aloud with the kids. We're reading Framed by James Ponti (Amazon Affiliate Link). Joseph, Emma, and Daniel have read this series before, and when I asked the kids for read aloud suggestions it was their nomination. The first chapter was funny, especially when reading some parts with my poor attempt at a Russian accent.

Saturday we gathered up the kids and grandma and headed to COSI, a science center in the city. It was the opening day of a new exhibit about DC superheroes, which was fun. The best part was seeing the art gallery for the exhibit - because Emma's art was one of the 12 pieces accepted for the gallery. The entrants were to create a new superhero and share their story in 100 words or less.

Emma and her art hanging on the gallery wall at COSI.

She used a mix of pen and colored pencils for this piece. It never ceases to amaze me to see the things people can do with basic art supplies. I love that homeschooling gives kids time to explore and work on their interests as a regular part of their day. Emma is often found drawing or writing for fun.

Here is a close up of the story of Volt, her superhero creation:

After a couple hours visiting different exhibits at COSI we headed home in the snow. The rest of the day was spent playing games, video chatting with Makayla, studying scriptures together, and crafting.