December Notes

My weekend has no notes. I remember family time, advent activities, and Christmas-y fun. Then we rolled into a rainy Monday morning. We waded through new math lessons together, read books, and made different cardboard wheels to try on a box we turned into a small car for science. We also chatted about engines and gears, which brought us to the end of our mechanical engineering portion of our unit. Next up: Aerospace Engineers.

In the evening they painted pine trees or wreaths as part one of an art project. These were left to dry and be completed on another day.

Tuesday the temperature dropped slowly all day. We worked through the morning. In the afternoon the kids had piano lessons. In the evening everyone played games.

Wednesday we got to work pretty early on school because mid-morning we knew we would be interrupted by an appointment. After that we finished up school with lots of science. Today for the elementary group that meant discussing aerodynamics, flight, how a heavy airplane can fly through the air, and jet engines. We made paper airplanes in different styles and tested their speed, glide time, and distance in flight. We used a balloon, straw, and rubber band to see how airstreams move.
In the afternoon it started to snow.

For advent we finished our painted trees. Some kids chose to use stickers for ornaments, others used chalk pastels, and a few even cut scrapbook paper into ornaments. We hung them up around the house.

In the evening the youth had various activities, including caroling and family history work.

Thursday we had a slow and steady morning of learning. One fun thing was that Joseph and Emma were assigned a recipe in their language arts curriculum to bake today. It was damper bread, and went along with one of the stories they have been reading. They decided to make the bread in the evening to go along with soup for dinner. It was different than yeast bread, a heavy soda bread that almost tasted like biscuits.

Mason had his last physical therapy appointment for a few months. We are taking a winter break because until he has the next leg surgeries a lot of what we were going to physical therapy for cannot be done. His bones are not ready for that surgery and won't be checked again for 6 months. Instead of using up all the PT visits covered by insurance, we will continue PT at home working on core strength, and save the PT visits for after his next round of bone surgeries. Or until we find something we need help with before then.

Our advent activity was a simple reading.

At 9pm I started listening to a new book - Atomic Habits by James Clear. I headed to bed an hour later and then picked the audio book back up at 5am Friday morning when I got up for the day. It's a fascinating and enjoyable book, and a great way to prepare for Winter Break.

During Winter Break I spend time evaluating how the first half of the homeschool year has gone. I prepare lessons for the rest of the year, making any course corrections individuals need. Break also holds the beginning of a new year and I am a fan of setting goals to act on for the new year.

The school day went smoothly. Around the usual subjects we also had interesting discussions on the Olympics, presidential elections, underwater explosives, honeybees, and house sparrows/bird migration habits. It is now afternoon. Rebekah is napping, kids are playing, and I'm going to check on the pizza ingredients in the house and decide if we need to make dough or if we have something in the freezer (English muffins) to use as the base for homemade pizzas tonight. Today is also Emma's birthday, so we may bake something for dessert, as her party was earlier this month.

Happy Friday!

December is Here

I left off last week before Thanksgiving. We had a wonderful day with family, feasting, and laughter. We host, so my house was full, with extra folding tables beyond our table that seats 12. Then on Friday we spent the day playing and waiting for Daddy to return from work. That night we decorated our Christmas tree together and took a picture of the kids. Of course, you can't really see the tree around 10 children - ha!

Saturday morning was our long drive to return Makayla to college. My mom and I made the drive again and Jason and kids had a fun day together at home. Other than a lot of rain, it was a good drive that ended with singing Christmas carols because that was all the radio station was playing.

Sunday was the first day of December. The end of the year always feels like it is moving quickly, and this year is no exception. We started our very loose Advent plans. Basically, each day we will do something Christmas related together. It is not all planned out, though I have a list of ideas, because I like to be able to flex with real life each day. Here are examples of things on the idea list:

• Read Luke 2 and act it out.
• Sing Christmas songs together.
• Serve others.
• Act out the nativity.
• Make paper bag luminaries with glow sticks.
• Read stories from Christmas with the Prophets.
• Read a Christmas story from the Friend, New Era, or Ensign magazines. 
• Watch the new Nativity video that was just released.
• Watch the First Presidency Christmas Devotional online Dec. 8th.
• Read the Christmas story from the Nephite's perspective in the Book of Mormon in Helaman 16 and 3 Nephi 1:5-21. 
• Bake treats and share with a friend.

Today our activity was playing "Wise Up!", a fun Christmas game from this month's New Era magazine. We were teams of wise men gathering our gifts for the Christ child, visiting Herod, and finding the young child Jesus. Along the way there were questions to answer and active games to do. 

We also celebrated Emma's birthday with family today. Her 14th birthday is later this month, but today worked well for everyone to get together.

We are back to school this week for three weeks. We did a history focused month in November, so we are switching to science focus for December. The elementary science group will study engineering, with a broad look at different kinds of engineers and some experiments/activities related to each.

Monday was a slow start for the kids. Nobody was quite ready to let go of Thanksgiving break, but we persevered and learning went fine. The elementary science kids were excited to start our engineering unit. We are using Engineering Academy from Usborne as the frame for our study. Today we met several different kinds of engineers and then tested out how levers and fulcrums make it possible for a lighter weight to lift or balance a heavier weight. We used hardback books as fulcrums (set up like a tent), rulers for levers, and stacks of pennies for our weights.

Our advent activity today had us figuring out rebus puzzles that were the names of Christmas hymns. For example, a picture showing the word noel three times, with an arrow pointing to the first word was the clue for "The First Noel". I found these in this month's Friend magazine, printed a few copies, and handed each two person team a hymnal and their rebus puzzles. We started by opening the hymnal to the Christmas section and reading the titles of all those songs. Then they were primed and ready to figure out the puzzles.

In the afternoon I had a grocery pick up order at WalMart. Then we spent some time organizing and sorting some shelves of school and art supplies. Dinner was pizza using a stack of flatbread I found on clearance today. Yum! Dessert was gingerbread men cookies and sugar cookies.

Tuesday kids worked through assignments at their own pace. We had a quiet day together. I like these days! Advent was a simple reading tonight.

Wednesday the kids' favorite activity was science. In their engineering study today the topic was pulleys. They gathered materials and built a simply pulley, then brainstormed ways to make it more effective. There was also a discussion of different machines that use pulleys.

For advent we read a story about sheep and shepherds. Everyone drew a sheep on a sticky note and then I hid them around the house. They worked to find all the sheep and then traded them in for shepherd's crooks (candy canes).

Thursday seemed like the day for writing and stories. Everyone had interesting books to tell me about or things they were learning and wanted to share. We read Christmas books and discussed favorite chapter books. People wrote letters, fan fiction stories, and even poetry. Our advent activity was simple - name that Christmas carol and then singing together gathered around the piano.

Friday is here and school is finished for the week. Some kids picked out new books to read, having finished their current books. There was much sculpting of clay and even a few peg dolls were painted. I'm hitting publish on this post before gathering kids for some hot chocolate and games. 

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!

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!