Break Week Notes: February 15th-23rd

I have learned after many years of homeschooling that February burnout can be very real. I also remember feeling it as a student in public school. To combat it, we take a week off each February to rest, relax, gain fresh perspective, and just enjoy life. This simple habit has virtually eliminated winter burnout in our homeschool. We've made it to break week, so while you won't hear about formal lessons, you will get a peek at large family life.

Saturday kicked off with a 4:30am trip to WalMart with two teens. We were hunting for Valentine candy clearance to refill our read aloud bin. We were successful! Once home, it wasn't long before younger kids started waking up to join us (6:00am is the earliest kids are allowed out of bed and downstairs). We had a slow morning of play and reading, followed by an afternoon of cleaning and family time.

Sunday was church, time at home, and then a family birthday party for my mom and brother in law. We had a great time!

Monday kicked off with a morning trip to Target for two boys who had money leftover from Christmas to spend. After morning snack we loaded everyone up to visit the nature center at the arboretum. We wanted to do some birdwatching for the last day of the Great Backyard Bird Count. We saw a mix of birds we do not always get to see at our home birdfeeder, which was so interesting. We also enjoyed the hands on activities, explorations, books, and learning stations in the nature center. The favorite find today was part of a paper wasp nest on the 'please touch' table. We drove through the auto trails on our way out and parked in a few spots to birdwatch (found a downy woodpecker to observe), to identify a tree with interesting pods (Kentucky Coffee Bean Tree), and then even saw a red-tailed hawk land in a tree near us for a bit.

Back at home in the afternoon we played Settlers of Catan, as well as pulling out kinetic sand for younger kids. We have Catan with the expansion to be able to play with up to 6 players.

Tuesday I spent some time updating each child's homeschool portfolio for this year. I try to keep up with this to make the end of our school year easy. I keep a file folder of their work, that they put papers into each day as they finish them. Today kids helped me update their reading lists and printed any writing assignments from the last two months.

Wednesday I worked on tax filing. The kids read and played a host of games. The most popular games today were Gubs and Forbidden Island. In the evening six of the nine kids had children/youth activities at church. The youngest three kids and I went to play in the nursery room at church while we waited for everyone.

Thursday's mundane task was washing bedding. It is practically an Olympic event when you need to wash and change bedding on ten beds. Thankfully, the kids do a lot of the changing, especially for the two triple bunk beds.

Friday I took a quick snapshot of these kids playing with playdough. I made a quick post on Instagram that shared what everyone was doing in the house during that one moment. Here is what I wrote:

"We have been loving our February break week. It is nearly at an end and so I'm sharing a pook at this moment in time. A little bit of crative play is going on with playdough kits this morning. I'm hearing artillery firing, rescue missions being launched, and shark attacks. Upstairs I can hear a few more kids digging through a bin of legos. They tell me they are building a tree house. Another child is practicing a piano piece for a talent show. The last one is drawing a series of dog portraits, having branched out after watching an episode of two of Dog Whisperer."

I took a few minutes to change out the sensory bin items today. We're back to rice as our base, with rocks, little buckets, and farm and ocean animals.

I made a quick trip to our library drive through. They aren't going to love me very much for the next several months. Have I mentioned the entire childrens/teens floor of our library is closed until May for renovation? That means I'm doing a lot of online ordering, putting stacks of titles on hold for them to gather for me.

Saturday started with a grocery pick up order in the frosty morning. In the afternoon my mom came to watch the kids while my husband and I went on a date. In the evening we took the kids out to play in the back yard while I gave five of the boys haircuts. I also worked on preparing our Mammals science unit from The Good and the Beautiful, which the 6th grade and under crowd will spend the rest of the school year studying, along with several zoo trips to see up close the creatures we are studying.

Now it is Sunday. We had a sweet day at church, came home and video chatted with our college student, and next up is cookie baking. We decided to bake treats for this evening's Children and Youth Fireside that we will watch online as a family.

Tomorrow, we are back to the homeschool routine!

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!

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.