July 27th - Aug. 7: Last week of summer, First week of Homeschool Year

Monday one of my husband's sisters was able to visit most of the day. She has come in from Utah and around the other things she needs to get accomplished here, she is spending time with us. On this day she brought her longbow for the kids to try some archery in the morning, then came back later in the afternoon and stayed for dinner, along with doing some painting crafts with the kids. 

Tuesday was project day for me. In between the usual mom life I sorted bins of our science, art, craft, homeschool supplies, and games. We are trying to rearrange the dining room shelves where our homeschool materials are kept, to be a bit more user friendly for the school year. 

In the evening I worked on printing and preparing history and science materials for first semester. We will begin our year with the Water and Our World science unit from The Good and the Beautiful for my 7th grade and under group of boys. The whole family will do The Good and the Beautiful History Year 3 together. 

Wednesday we kicked off the morning with a quick breakfast and then headed outside to play before it heated up. I just realized I forgot to record a tender mercy from last week, so I'm remedying that now. You see, we own one bike. It's an adult bike that was given to us several years ago when Joseph needed to learn to ride during scouts. We're not a biking family and simply have never had bikes for our kids. Fast forward several years to now. Only my oldest 3 children can ride a bike. We still do not have small or medium size bikes for younger kids to learn on. And we don't want to spend money on them, either, because our money has other priorities for our large family. This was fine, until Daniel decided he really wanted to learn to ride a bike this year. Then the pandemic hit, and all money has been designated 'let's survive the crazy economy' money. So no bike. Until one random day last week, when a church member who has no children, stopped by our house with a medium sized bike in hand, asking if we wanted it. Another church family's children had outgrown the bike and given it to him, as he was collecting some scrap metal from them. He thought of us, and just like that, the prayer my son had been praying for some time was answered. We had a bike he could fit. In the last few days three boys have learned to ride that bike down the rutted, rocky alley by our house. 

Wednesday the kids also helped me move things to the attic, sort a few shelves of school materials, and  do a bit of baking. 

Thursday was a cloudy day, very gray and dreary, even with little rain. The kids spent the morning enjoying their last visit from Aunt Danielle. In the afternoon I sat down with each child's school books and read the first week's lessons, making notes of any supplies we need for activities or experiments. Kids chose folders for their science and history notebooks and added name labels. Of course, Rebekah and Tobias want their own 'school folders' like the big kids, so we have a stack of 18 folders ready to go. 

We kicked off Friday morning in the kitchen baking a couple of cakes. We don't have another birthday in this house until October, but we decided to celebrate Harry Potter's birthday. It is our final Friday of summer break, and we are on the third book in the Harry Potter series as a read aloud. We've listened to these books all summer. It just seemed like the perfect way to close out our summer.

Saturday was a whirl of small things. I was out the door early to grocery shop, then home for breakfast and unloading. Next was a trip to the UPS store, the library drive thru, and then a long drive to IKEA with Makayla. The evening was family time and final printing and organizing of school things, including the weekly assignment sheets. 

Sunday we had a sweet home church where Caleb helped teach the lesson. He did a great job helping us learn about the Atonement, repentance, and challenged everyone to team up and find scriptures about repentance, then bring them back to share. 

In the afternoon we played games together - Would You Rather Harry Potter and then Harry Potter Uno.

Monday was our first day of homeschool for the year, so of course Mason and I were gone for 3.5 hours at a surgeon's appointment. Before we left at 8am I worked with a few kids who wanted to do some of their school early. While I was gone Daddy made sure kids got reading done. After I returned we did afternoon school. This is one thing I love about homeschooling! My kids can work when they are ready, we can be super flexible with our schedule, and we aren't locked into specific hours of the day for school work. 

The surgeon's appointment went well. We're waiting for a phone call to work with a scheduler because Mason's 24th, 25th, and 26th surgeries are ready to be done. All 3 will happen in one day, just 3 separate sites (right femur, left tibia, and left tendon on his heel). We've been expecting these for a while, so no surprises. 

In the afternoon my husband got 4 steroid shots after a check in with one of his surgeons. (Both elbows and the knee he has not had surgery on.) We are hoping not to have a repeat of 5 months off after surgeries like he had last year when he had shoulder and knee surgery, but are not sure exactly what is going on in these joints.

Tuesday was day two of the homeschool year. It was much slower than usual because I had to orient 7 kids in their new language arts courses from The Good and the Beautiful. I've got kids doing level 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 7. It went smoothly, just slower than things will go once we are all into our new routines. Emma also had an orthodontist appointment, which took an hour out of our morning. By the time all subjects were done by all children it was nearly 4pm (with a solid 1 hour break for the orthodontist in the morning, and a 2.5 hour break for lunch and afternoon medical care). Not all kids were working all of that time, some of it they were waiting around for their turn to work one on one with me, or they were already finished with all individual work and waiting for our afternoon science lesson. 

Wednesday was the first day that felt like a normal school day, with no appointments, and lots of smooth movement from lesson to lesson and student to student. Even though I had 7 students last year, this year of 7 students takes more of me working one on one. Those choices were made on purpose, and will be a positive in our year, but we are still figuring out the best way to have things run smoothly. Here's what I mean:

I need to teach one on one math lessons once a week for Caleb, Oliver, Daniel, Emma, and Joseph. The rest of the week they practice the new skill and review old, only asking for help when needed. They use Math U See curricula. I need to teach five one on one math lessons a week for Mason and Samuel (total of 10 lessons). They use The Good and the Beautiful Math curricula.

I need to teach five one on one language arts lessons a week for Caleb, Mason, and Samuel (15 lessons). The older 4 children need me for small parts of their daily language arts, typically 5-10 minutes each. Everyone is using various levels of The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts.

I do speech therapy with Tobias daily. I read aloud to Tobias and Rebekah, and do some preschool-ish play.

I teach two science lessons to the group of Daniel, Oliver, Caleb, Mason, Samuel. Tobias and Rebekah usually join us, this has a lot of hands on fun they like. This group is using The Good and the Beautiful science units. I review science with Joseph and Emma once a week, or as needed. They are using Exploring the World of Chemistry by John Tiner this semester.

I teach two history lessons a week to the entire group of kids, Joseph, Emma, Daniel, Oliver, Caleb, Mason, Samuel, with Tobias and Rebekah often joining. Then we add in a third day of history for notebooking about what they've learned. We are using The Good and the Beautiful History Year 3 because we've loved Year 1 and 2.  

We have a family read aloud going, currently Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

We have a history read aloud going, currently Slave Boy in Judea. 

I read on my own and then meet with Joseph and Emma to discuss our current Boomerang Book Club title: Emma by Jane Austen. 

Joseph and Emma chose to do a Culinary Arts and Nutrition elective this year. That is being integrated into daily life, lots meal planning, grocery shopping, and cooking.

I oversee piano lessons for the kids still doing piano. Even though they play better than I do, I'm able to read music and help figure things out, or just be a listening ear. I also work on my own piano practice when I can squeeze it in. 

We do family scripture study daily. Currently we are 322 pages into The Book of Mormon, in Alma chapter 46. This puts us a bit ahead of where I'll start out at the end of this month teaching daily seminary lessons (Mon-Fri at 6am) with nine teens from church. 

As you can see, it is all totally doable, it just takes a bit of time to get into smooth routines. 

Thursday was another day of learning at home, followed by an afternoon outside. We loved the sunshine and slightly cooler afternoon temps. 

Our first Friday of the school year went great. Lots of reading, discussion, and notebooking.