Books We're Reading in January

While I don't keep track of the stacks and stacks of books the kids grab to read just because, I always love sharing what we are reading, and seeing what other people are reading. I'll sort this list by person, and just include current reads or books finished in January.

Rebekah (age 3) 

She's not reading on her own at all. But her favorite books right now are Black Beauty and anything fairy tale. 

Tobias (age 6) 

Not reading on his own yet. His favorite books currently are The Cat in the Hat and other books by Seuss, as well as fairy tales. 

Samuel (age 8)

January reads include Ollie the Ox and Other Animals, Ash to the Rescue, Secrets of the G.S. Ball, and The Kingdom of Wrenly: The Dream Portal. 

Mason (age 10)

His recent reads include Pumpkin, Ginger, and Spice; The Boxcar Children #17, The Boxcar Children #18, Who Was Elvis Presley?, What Was Hurricane Katrina? and stacks and stacks of nonfiction books.

Caleb (age 11)

He read book 5 of The Impossible Quest: Battle of the Heroes. He just started The Ruins of Gorlan (Ranger's Apprentice book 1). Also did a reread of Wings of Fire #4.

Oliver (age 12)

He read The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and now is working through Wings of Fire Legends: Darkstalker. 

Daniel (age 14)

He read Ella Enchanted and is reading The Phantom Tollbooth. He loves funny books and these both have been a hit!

Emma (age 16)

She just finished The Hobbit (again) and is rereading The Fellowship of the Ring currently. I love when kids reread favorite books because the conversations we have about them the second or third time through have great insights and connections.

Joseph (age 17)

He's read The Prophecy of Bane, The Curse of the Warmbloods, and is currently reading The Marks of Secret. Those are books #2-#4 of The Underland Chronicles.

Family Read Alouds

We are slowly working through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix together. The boys have also been doing several books together. They finished Dragonwatch #5: Return of the Dragon Slayers, Eragon (a reread for them), Eldest (a reread for them), and are working through Brisingr right now. 

Mom (age 40)

I do a mix of reading for fun and reading ARCs (advance reader copies) of books for authors that I then post reviews about on Amazon. I'm also a decently fast reader, I made it through 200 books last year alone. My January reads have been:

• Hunted by K.M. Shea
• United by K.M. Shea
• Wren by Rachel Rossano
• The Wolf Gate by Hanna Sandvig
• The Rose Gate by Hanna Sandvig
• The Lily Gate by Hanna Sandvig
• The Masked Fae by Shari L. Tapscott
• The Baker and the Wolf by J. M. Stengel
• Charming Artemis by Sarah M. Eden (originally an ARC last year, this was a reread for me)
• Tex by Liz Isaacson (ARC)
• In the Waves of Tristwick by Deborah M. Hathaway (ARC) Currently reading
• The Gentleman and the Maid by Martha Keyes (ARC) Currently reading
• Raising Critical Thinkers: A Parent's Guide to Growing Wise Kids in the Digital Age by Julie Bogart (ARC) Currently reading
• The Beast and the Enchantress by Camille Peters - Currently reading
• The Snow Queen: Heart of Ice by K.M. Shea

It is almost February and we will pick up another read aloud as we start homeschool book club back up. Our February title is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. We haven't read it in years and years and years. I can't wait to see what my children think of it. 

Have you read any of the books on our January lists? Did you enjoy them?

Jan 15th to Jan 23: Snow, Illness, and Books

 We had a wonderful late Christmas on Saturday with extended family. Good food, good conversation, and lots of laughs. Sunday the whole family was at church. I feel like it is important to note that, because in the winter in a large family it is rare for everyone to be healthy enough to all be at church. A winter cold that runs through a smaller family in a week or two can take us 4-6 weeks before the eleven of us get through it. It is more common to split the family between home and church as those who are well go, and those recovering stay home. 

In the late afternoon the winter storm that is wreaking havoc across the U.S. reached us in Ohio. We had a couple hours of ice that slowly accumulated before switching to snow. The kids went to bed hoping to wake Monday to a lot of snow.

Ice Emma found

They were quite happy to see we had 4-5 inches of snow when they woke up. After breakfast and some chores everyone headed outside for a couple hours to play. 

Rebekah wasn't thrilled when she got snow on her cheek, but eventually moved back to playing.

Unfortunately, Rebekah also woke up with a dry cough. She did not eat breakfast. When we came back inside from playing she drank some hot cocoa and ate some goldfish. She coughed and threw up about 10 minutes later. Her fever started climbing and she snuggled up on the couch to rest and watch Encanto, one of her current favorite movies. The rest of the day she sipped liquids and nibbled the occasional bite of food. I called her pediatrician for a quick check in by phone. 

The rest of the kids played games, drew, wrote on works in progress, and enjoyed the day.

Tuesday Rebekah woke up feeling much better, and able to keep food down. Still sounding froggy, but up and active. The pediatrician called and said to bring her on Wednesday for COVID testing, because they like testing kids on day 3. They also said her symptoms could be any of the 99 other winter viruses people usually have (so grateful for a pediatrician that recognizes this still!), so we shall see.

Wednesday Update: Rebekah is feeling great and tested negative for the virus. I'm getting her cough. The day was pretty straightforward with kids doing school, even during the hour I was gone with Rebekah getting tested. I love that homeschooling is such a normal thing for them, with or without mom at the helm. Our afternoon was filled with singing and dancing along to Encanto, drawing characters from Encanto, etc. I spent a solid block studying my scriptures and preparing seminary lessons, which is my afternoon routine. 

In the evening I drove around a bunch getting 7 kids to their church activities and back home, because some groups met at different times or places than usual. The kids all had a great night with their friends and doing interesting activities. 

Our Climbing Dome and Swing

Thursday morning was cold and homeschool-y. I spent some time updating a couple kids' homeschool portfolios for the year. We learned about lizards from around the world (science and geography), did a whole lot of math levels, read great books, answered 1001 questions, wrote, edited, did grammar practice, diagrammed sentences, and so on. The older kids read about Tajikistan in Notgrass World Geography, a landlocked mountanous country in Central Asia. A couple teens cooked dinner. We watched two episodes of World Watch Geography, playing a bit of catch up as we missed yesterday's episode. (If you've never heard of it, it is similar to CNN10) 

Friday was bitterly cold outside and we happily stayed in with our books and blankets. Kids trickled through the end of their lessons. The coughing cold spread to Daddy and Tobias. 

Saturday Emma and I went to Ikea to pick up some Kallax shelving units in different sizes. We did not get all the shelves we wanted, because they were out of stock. You see, we have a lot of books, well over 1000. We only had one large book shelf (5 shelves 5 feet long) in the dining room before this Ikea trip. Most of our books lived in the walk up attic, sorted by topic/school subject in labeled boxes or rubbermaid tubs. We were able to switch out books, but it was a lot of work. All my kids love reading, so every week someone is digging around in the attic storage for more books. 

We spent the weekend building shelves, anchoring them safely, and then filling them with books. We also were home from church with half of us still dealing with the winter cold.

Here is the new shelf in the piano room, mostly filled (for all it's fancy sounding name because of the piano in the room, this is also the computer room, the entry to the house, and part of the living room). On this shelf we went with two rows of chapter books and two rows of bigger books. Some of the chapter book shelves are stacked two deep.

This is the new shelf in my bedroom. This one is mainly curriculum, and a few of my own books. The bottom from left to right is The Good and The Beautiful Math for the younger 4 kids for their first 5 years of school (Math K, 1, 2, 3, 4). For example, Samuel only has one year left of math here, while Tobias has 4. Beside that are our science units in binders from TGTB. The next row up holds Apologia Science, TGTB History, TGTB Constitution and Government. The top two rows are much more mixed batches of curriculum, as well as one square of favorite chapter books double stacked.

The attic shelf is this one. Lots of chapter books stacked two deep on the top two rows. The bottom row is a mix of history and science nonfiction books and picture books.   

 In the end, we will need at least one more 3x4 Kallax shelf, when it comes back in stock. We have 4 or 5 boxes of books left to shelve. I have to be honest, there have been times when we've donated books, sold curriculum we were finished with, and decluttered books that we just didn't love. But I am so grateful for a library of books right in our home! It was a wonderful blessing during the COVID shutdown of our public library system, which lasted for months. It is always fun to see different kids discover books on our shelves that were favorites of older siblings. I also like that the kids are often found with a stack of books in their bed or on the couch or floor reading. 

I would love to know if your family keeps a lot of books, like we do, or if you are more minimal in the book department? Do you have a favorite book or series? I'll share a what we're reading post soon to give a peek at what we're reading here.

October 2021 to January 2022: Catching Up

Life is always full with a large family. My last update was early in October of last year, which means I have 3 months to catch up on. There is no way to do that well, but I will try to hit a few interesting moments. 

October was uneventful, which I appreciated. We had steady progress in homeschool, teaching seminary went well, and we had two birthdays - Joseph turned 17 and Daniel turned 14. 

November decided to make up for the uneventful month before. I woke up one morning barely into November, walked into the bathroom, and stepped into water. 

Overnight, a pipe burst from what they think was a pressure build up under the bathroom sink, and flooded rooms on 3 floors of our home: bathroom, kitchen, dining room/homeschool room, basement. It was not the way I had hoped to kick off the holiday season. 

We spent part of a week in several hotel rooms with no kitchen, while the water restoration company started the drying out process at the house. We would go over to the house each day to be able to use a table for meals, or wash laundry, or just all be in one room together.

It was loud with a lot of dehumidifiers and industrial fans going, but better than sitting in a hotel. We did swim in the hotel pool, which the kids enjoyed. 

We ate out a lot, as we couldn't use our kitchen at all, and some kind souls from church brought us meals some nights as well. 

After the first week, the floors were dried out, we had our bathroom pipe fixed and bathroom working, and most of the appliances were tested and worked, so the insurance company sent us home. They also sent the water restoration company back to rip out the kitchen ceiling and parts of the walls. Picture nearly 100 years of dirt and coal dust falling everywhere after they pulled down the three different ceiling layers. It took nearly another week to almost get the rooms clean as the dehumidifiers kept running and the industrial fans kept blowing on the ceiling to dry the space out. Our contractor put up insulation and plastic right before Thanksgiving (after things were dry) so we could cook without having to watch for things to fall in our food. They planned to come back in December to do the repairs. 

School during this three weeks of November was pretty much unschooling. Kids read, studied topics of interest, did real life math, learned a lot about water mitigation, finances, and so on. We did a few field trips for something fun to do and hit up a science center, a museum, and the zoo.

Emma also performed in the local high school's fall play, Leaving Iowa. She was Fred the mechanic (on the right). 

We were hosting Thanksgiving at our house, so Thanksgiving morning was spent cooking some of the food and enjoying Makayla being home from college, because my mom and I had driven down to Virginia to get her in a 14 hour round trip just before. About 25 minutes before our extended family was to arrive, bringing their own additions to the food, we got a phone call. My mom had fallen down the steps outside her house, loading the car with food, and broke her femur badly. She went to the hospital, Thanksgiving went on, and then my sister and I headed to the hospital that evening with food. She had surgery the next day, and for nearly 2 weeks was in the hospital (I was able to visit several times).

Oh, and we put Makayla on an airplane to go back to school the day after Thanksgiving, because without Mom available to watch kids or help drive, it was just easier for everyone. 

We also celebrated two birthdays in November, Tobias turned 6 and Caleb turned 11. 

December was slow and quiet. We did our usual homeschooling until the contractors showed up and spent a week repairing our home, while we lived in it. Ceilings, walls, cabinets, paint, etc. The kids spent that week learning all they could about construction. 

We celebrated one birthday in December, Emma turned 16.

We also decorated gingerbread houses, which we don't usually do, when my husband's sister visited from Utah right before Christmas.

Christmas was different, as my mom was still not able to leave her house. Makayla flew back and we had Christmas with my sister's family at her house, where the cousins/siblings had a gift exchange. We decided we would plan a second Christmas for January or February with grandma (my mom) and grandpa. 

As Christmases go, this one went well on the gift front. It is sometimes crazy shopping for ten children, most of whom also have birthdays between October and February. And even when the kids give us ideas of what they might enjoy, you never really know until the gifts are opened and some time passes, whether what you pick out was a hit or not. This year we had a lot of hits. 

In late December we got a warm day and spent hours outside together. The teens put together the one family gift we bought this year: a climbing dome and swing. We built a fire and cooked outside, played, and worked together. 

We also rearranged the boys' bedroom to fit 7 twin size beds. This involved taking down one of our triple bunk beds, getting rid of the junior bed that was too small, and building two new double bunk beds. The youngest 3 boys are in the remaining triple bunk bed, and the older four boys each have one bed of the two new bunk beds. (In case you are new, the boys have had the biggest bedroom in our 3 bedroom house for years. The 3 girls share a bedroom. And as we have no babies left, Daddy and I have our own bedroom with no crib.)

New Year's Eve was spent as a family, doing an at home escape room with the oldest 7 kids, while the younger 3 kids played. Makayla flew back to school the next day. We celebrated one birthday in January, Mason is now 10. 

Now we are in January and have been doing school as usual. We've really enjoyed our curriculum choices this year, and it is always encouraging to be halfway through the school year. We did have the construction crew come back one day this week to replace carpet that was damaged during the water disaster of November. 

We went to COSI, a science center, last week. While I took the younger 6 kids to several different exhibits, Daddy and the 3 older kids spent their time in the visiting Marvel themed exhibit. 

Tomorrow we will finally have Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa. Then we are on to February and two more birthdays. 

Life is full but blessed!

October 2nd to October 10th: Urgent Care, Robbery, Zoos, and More

Let's see if I can get back in the note taking habit! 

Saturday kicked off with an unexpected run to the urgent care near us with Mason. He woke up with a swollen area the size of my palm on his knee. It was hot to the touch, tight, and you could feel fluid under it. I always hesitate to take him to the local urgent care because he is so complex medically, but I was pretty confident in what needed checked and done temporarily to get us through to Monday when we could check in with his surgeon. 

As any mama with a medically complex child will tell you, you have to be your child's advocate. This held true once again, as the doctor came in, looked (without touching at all) at Mason's knee, and said, "Oh, he probably was walking and fell down and it will be fine in a day or two." To my child who was sitting in his wheelchair, and who we had already explained has no movement or sense of touch/pain from the hips down. I reminded him that it was impossible. He said, "Well, maybe it's just patellar bursitis. Give it a few days." Sigh. 

I informed him that the area feels like it is filling with fluid, and that we needed an x-ray to check for anything unexpected, and a course of antibiotics to address what was most likely an infection until we could see his orthopedic surgeon on Monday. He felt Mason's knee - finally - and ordered the x-ray and antibiotics, because I was right, it did feel like fluid. I told the xray tech what views of the knee to do, and that I wanted to see them on her screen. I'm pretty familiar with Mason's knee/leg xrays. You could see former broken bones that have healed, and a fluid area on the knee, with no unexpected things I could see.  

Two days of antibiotics later, things were looking much better, and our orthopedic surgeon checked the xrays and our report of progress since starting the antibiotics and said to keep doing what we were doing, everything else looked fine. We will check in again after the course of meds is done.

Back to Saturday, we got home from the urgent care and started making cinnamon rolls and setting up the living room for General Conference. It was a wonderful day of music and encouragement! While it sometimes is a bit noisy surrounded by kids of all ages, everyone participated in their own way, listening, watching, drawing, and spinning in circles on the floor until they fell over laughing and listened some more.

Sunday we had two more sessions of Conference. Knowing the kids had already gone through six hours of Conference the day before, we pulled out a surprise to keep hands busy - clay in a rainbow of colors. They molded and cut, twisted and crafted all sorts of little things with that clay, and generally when little hands are busy, little minds are listening. 

Monday was recovery day, catching up on chores, doing projects around the house, and adding papers from the last six weeks of school to each child's portfolio.

Tuesday morning we were getting ready to head out for the day when we realized our detached garage was broken into and things were stolen, as well as damaged. We called the police, filed a report, and then took the kids to the zoo for the day. We saw old favorites like the stingrays (we pet and fed those) and the reptile house. We saw new favorites like the baby elephant. We walked a lot and came home ready for some rest.

Wednesday was more small projects and then Primary and Youth activities in the evening.

Thursday a visit to the wheelchair vendor for new parts, adjustments, and leaving after hours with a few unresolved issues still. Sigh. Going to have to consult with the physical medicine doctor about the best of two not great options equipment-wise. We did more projects today in the afternoon, and Emma had play practice. 

Friday we spent a lot of time playing games together. We also challenged the kids to pull together Birthday/Christmas idea lists for us. Between this week and the end of February we have birthdays for 8 of the kids, as well as Christmas. It is always interesting to read their lists. Some are quick to come up with ideas, while others struggle to put more than two things on the page. 

Saturday my husband was gone for most of the day on a dad's trip to the Air and Space Museum in Dayton. The kids and I played games, I prepared some seminary lessons, Grandma came to visit twice, and the older four kids also had a stake youth bowling activity in the afternoon. 

Sunday we split between church at home and at church, as one child dealt with some medication side effects. We watched the broadcast of church, made grilled cheese and soup for lunch, and have mostly rested and spent time talking together since. It's closing in on bedtime and we'll be back to the work (daddy) and homeschool (everyone else) routine. 

Looking ahead this week, we will be studying the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune), begin the history of astronomy, learn about the Massai people of Tanzania and Kenya in geography, make paper beads, and lots of other things. 

September Homeschool Notes: Life as usual

Monday's seminary lesson focused on temples. After that it was breakfast with the kids, then all sorts of math lessons. From radicals in Algebra 2 and angles in Geometry to mental math with a focus on different strategies to do two digit subtraction problems in your head, to equivalent fractions, we covered a lot of math. The kids all agree their favorite subject today was science. The younger boys experimented with mirrors and illusions. The older kids built working wooden cranes with several pulley options. 

Another thing we have been doing every day is watching some of the Paralympic Games in Tokyo. We loved the Olympics, and for our family the Paralympics are every bit as interesting. There have been so many discussions about ability, skill, talent, hard work, and disabilities. Mason, my 9 year old who uses a wheelchair, is especially enthralled by the wheelchair races, both sprint and distance. He has decided wheelchair rugby looked way too rough, but that wheelchair basketball was pretty cool.

Tuesday was a fun school morning because Tobias was so enthusiastic about doing school. We've been using a couple different resources for him loosely. First is The Good and the Beautiful PreK course. We have the older edition, and a new one released on Monday, which I've ordered. In the older edition they do a mix of things, from learning uppercase and lowercase letters, letter sounds, a dash of handwriting, counting, shapes, colors, etc. There are a fair amount of hands on activities. For example, today I hid a mouse behind one of 9 houses. Each house has an uppercase or lowercase letter he's working on learning. He would choose a house, tell me what that letter says, and then check to see if that house had the mouse. Tobias also uses The Good and the Beautiful Math K, the older edition. We do not plan to change to the new edition of math because we love this one. It has an entire box full of manipulatives and games, lots of stories, and all the math-y fun. Today's math lesson covered counting, days of the week, months of the year, ordinal numbers, patterning, and mental math using a mix of games, manipulatives, songs (with videos), coloring, drawing, etc. This week I also decided to add in All About Reading 1 for Tobias. While TGTB will teach him to read as he goes through the levels, I really love the solid phonics instruction of All About Reading, and the hands on activities woven throughout. Tobias is all about playing games right now, so he's happy to have one more source for games. The jury is still out on how ready he is for blending sounds, but we're going to play around with it and see. 

For geography this week we're finishing up our study of the Middle East. The older 3 learned about Turkey today, Gallipoli, and other interesting things. The rest of the kids learned about Muslim beliefs and how that is reflected for many in their clothing choices. We had a great discussion about how our beliefs can and should be reflected in how we live our life: the things we do, the way we speak to others, and so on. One sweet book we read today was The Proudest Blue: A Story of Hijab and Family by Ibtihaj Muhammad, and Olympic medalist. Muhammad is a fencer, and the first Muslim American in hijab to compete for the United States in the Olympic Games. (She won bronze in her event in the 2016 Olympics.)

This week I had no energy for planning fun extras. Wednesday the kids decided that fun must be had, as it was September 1st, Hogwarts Day. In the Harry Potter books Sept. 1 is the day the students all take the train back to school. The kids did a little planning, placed a quick grocery delivery order for ingredients they were missing, and in the afternoon we watched the very first Harry Potter movie with the snacks they had made: butterbeer, chocolate dipped wands (pretzel rods), and as they had plenty of chocolate they also dipped strawberries and apple slices. In the evening seven of the 9 kids at home headed to the church for youth activities. 

Thursday School was slow. We are loving the chilly weather in the mornings! 

Friday I tried to take the van to get some things looked at, but the shop is closed until next Tuesday for the Labor Day weekend. Oh well! Came home and got through the homeschooling, spent lots of time playing games together, and had long discussions about favorite characters in books.

Saturday I made a Costco trip, a WalMart trip, and even took a short nap. The kids and Daddy did some house chores, played games together, and worked on a few projects together.

Sunday was rest and church. Kids also each picked a recipe to cook in the next two weeks.

Monday was Labor Day. Caleb was the first up for cooking and he made yakisoba noodles for lunch. 

Well, as things sometimes go, this month I stopped taking notes. In general, it was a good month. We had a lot of happy moments. The kids all took turns cooking several times each this month. We also have one teen dealing with pneumonia, that has hung around all month. There have been extended family get togethers for fun Fridays and for birthdays. My husband is transitioning to a new position at work, one that he is excited about. I have struggled to get through to medical providers and medical suppliers for Mason, which is frustrating. Emma auditioned for a play at the local high school and got the part she hope for, so she is now doing drama practices regularly. School has gone great for everyone. The kids are all learning and making progress in their courses. We have been enjoying all things space for science this month, and all things Africa in world geography. More books have been read than I could possibly keep track of, by kids and on my own. I have also studied all the talks from the last General Conference again, because tomorrow it is already time for General Conference again! 

Aug 23 - Aug 28: Break Week and Life Lessons

Random photo on my phone for
dog appreciation day - no real dogs here
thanks to allergies, but lots of 
stuffed animals.

Monday kicked off with our first day of seminary for the school year. At 6:10am I was surrounded by teens who make the time to show up each morning before school to study the scriptures together. It is so neat to be a part of this! After they headed to school at 7am the rest of my kids started drifting downstairs, ready for our school break. The plan for the week is to rest and do family time. One sad note, my grandmother passed away today. We love her and miss her, but know that she is no longer in pain and are grateful for that. We spent time sharing stories of her life with the kids all week.

In the late afternoon we took most of the kids to the movie theater to watch the new Paw Patrol movie. It was very fun to watch Rebekah experience the movie theater for the first time that she can remember. She was so enthusiastic!

Tuesday morning started with seminary, then breakfast. We opened a new game, The Bears and the Bees, from Grandpa Beck Games. I love that it is easy enough for younger kids to play on some level due to the domino-type matching, but there are enough fun extras based on card type to challenge the whole family. Even better, there are two sets of rules, the family version and the expert version, so you can choose just how challenging the game will be. Between the nine kids the morning was filled with toys, coloring, painting, reading books, chores, writing, art projects, and Lego building. I managed some game playing, reading, bill paying, lesson planning, and dishes. 

Wednesday was hot with a quick thunderstorm mixed in. A couple of my boys wanted to play The Bears and the Bees with me before breakfast, so that is what we did. It is a fun game and the lead changed several times before someone finally won a single round. We filled the day with the usual hubbub of life. A fun note - Joseph cooked scones for dinner, yum! In the evening the older four youth had activities at church.

A slug Emma noticed this week outside.

Thursday morning came dark and early for seminary, but we had a great discussion about the first 20 verses of Doctrine and Covenants section 93. The first request again today from several kids was to play a round of The Bears and the Bees, and Emma joined in so the younger kids took great delight in teaching her how to play. Another round happened in the afternoon with other kids. 

Friday was a hard day for everyone, as we attended the funeral of my grandmother. It was the first viewing and funeral for many of my children. We spent the week talking about what to expect, but there is only so much you can do to prepare. There were tears and smiles and sadness and lots of hugs. The rest of the day we just hunkered down at home to get back to some normal family time and let everyone decompress. 

Saturday we headed to the science center in the big city to explore new and old exhibits. New to us were two exhibits: Animation Academy and Cuba. So many things to see and do! We also spent time in old favorites: Ocean, Nature, Progress (a trip back in time to the 1860s and 1960s), Gadgets, and the Dinosaur museum. It is so fun to see how my children's attention changes as they grow. I still get to see the entire spectrum, from the 3 and 5 year old who dive deep into play with anything hands on, to the older kids who do as much reading and discussing of the exhibits as they do trying the hands on activities. Different kids lingered in different areas. Older kids showed things to younger ones to make sure they didn't miss out on favorites. Younger kids dragged their older buddies along to play in the sand table in Ocean or hoist themselves using pulleys in the Gadget area. As mother to a wide range of ages I get to enjoy all the ages more because of the perspective mothering adults down to a preschooler brings. Sometimes it is chaotic, often it is exhausting, but always it is deeply satisfying. 

Aug 16 - Aug 20: Homeschool Life

A couple of the boys are
working on learning coding.

Another week has come and gone. I wanted to quickly remind readers of a few things:

1. Our weeks are very often repetitive. It's just a fact of this slow growing time we've chosen as we stepped off the education conveyor belt more than 15 years ago. It's the freedom of living a life less driven by other peoples' agendas and schedules. It also can get boring to read about. Check back in when you need a quiet read. Take a break when you don't. 
2. The real reason I keep this blog is to keep a family journal of this precious time we have together. When I look back at the earlier posts in this and an older, private blog, I see the growth, love, learning, and joy of family life. Sometimes I need that as a mom of ten children. I need a way to step back and see the bigger picture, to see the progress that we've made inch by inch over the days and weeks and years, that add up to miles and marathons. 

On to this week's notes!

Monday morning's homeschool was the usual chaos of teaching new math lessons and overseeing many other lessons. We started our continent tour this week officially and begin in the Middle East. What a time to do that, with the events going on in the world right now in Afghanistan and other places. Our goal with this study of middle eastern countries and cultures is to learn to see God's children and learn to love them a little better. I will try to remember to share a separate post each month about the books we've grabbed for each area.

We started our next family read aloud today. It is The Turtle of Oman by Naomi Shihab Nye. 

In the afternoon Mason and I made a trip to pick up a brace he'll wear at night for his scoliosis. It was a rainy 3 hour trip, but we had fun listening to an audio book and talking together. Daddy and the rest of the kids at home had their own quiet afternoon.

Tuesday's slow wander through lessons took all morning. Tobias was one of the first kids up and wanting to do school work, so we sat down and did his language arts and math first. He is five years old, and finally interested in 'doing school'. It is a bit interesting because Tobias has a speech delay. That makes phonics a challenge, but we are working on learning letter sounds, handwriting, etc. He is using The Good and the Beautiful PreK Language Arts first, and will move into K Primer soon. We also have their handwriting books, but the PreK includes some handwriting already. In math, however, he flies. He naturally grasps a lot of the concepts in the curriculum we've started with, so we will take it at his pace and move through faster on easy concepts, and slower on more challenging ones. He is using The Good and the Beautiful Math K and will move into Math 1 later this year. The other kids woke up and did their school work. 

Language Arts and World Geography in progress.

Wednesday was a harder day, with a very distractible and distracting kid who simply didn't stay on task all.morning.long. We finally made it all the way through school work and I was worn out! In the evening the older four had youth activities at church that ranged from hiking to karaoke and bb guns to 3D drafting and printing. 

Thursday was our last day with Makayla. She got a lot of final tasks accomplished while the rest of us did school. Joseph and Emma's Culinary Arts project this week was today. They teamed up to cook a 'Thanksgiving dinner', which meant our house smelled like a roasting turkey all afternoon. Yum! The kids spent a lot of the afternoon playing together in various groupings. Dinosaurs and vehicles are the current toys downstairs, so those featured in a lot of play. The boys have also been Pokemon battling regularly. They play the card game, not online, and have so much fun. 

Friday morning I waved while Makayla drove off to college, and even with it being year three, I cried a bit. She'll hopefully be able to visit for the holidays this winter, but until then everyone will get by with video chats regularly. A little bit before were were going to begin school for the morning Grandma showed up to visit for a bit. We talked and chatted about lots of things, including hard things as a family member nears the transition from mortality to heaven. After soaking in time with my mom, the kids pulled out their school work for the last day of week three. We will actually have our first break week next week, so everyone was excited about that. We generally take a week off every 6 weeks during the school year, but it worked out well to take one a bit earlier this time around. Our next break week will be in early October. Next up is a visit from my sister and a couple of her kids, a perfect way to kick off break!

Aug. 2 - Aug 15: First Two Weeks Back to Homeschool

 First Week of the Homeschool Year

Rebekah gathered a lot of 
supplies when she was ready to 
'read'.

Monday, August 2nd, was pleasantly smooth for a first day back to homeschool. I woke up at 5:40am (no alarm, I'm just an early riser) and spent some time quietly eating, reading my scriptures, and putting away the clean dishes from my cooking/baking session on Sunday. At 7am I woke any kids still sleeping. The first hour of their morning is for waking up, eating breakfast, getting dressed, and doing a chore. At 8am everyone begins school, though some kids like to dive right in after breakfast. 

Between 8am and noon lunch time we got all our school work done other than our lunch time read aloud. Basically, I go from child to child helping as needed until 10am, when we do group work. I can't begin to remember the order of lessons, but I'll share the things we accomplished just for fun. 

Math: Rebekah and Tobias worked on counting and Tobias did some adding and subtracting in real life with toys. Samuel learned about Euclid, a mathematician, and some of the ideas he wrote about, then did a game where you roll three dice to create 3 digit numbers and do subtraction problems with them. Mason did a couple review problems of finding perimeter, reviewed how repeated addition, multiplication, arrays, and division relate, and created a chart of problems showing those relations. (Ex: 7+7+7+7=28, drawing an array of 28 dots in 4 rows of 7 dots each, writing 4X7=28, and then writing 28 divided by 7 = 4). He also did a multiplication review game with me called around the world. Caleb did a review of finding a fraction of a number, such as 1/4 of 24 or 3/6 of 18. Oliver worked with adding and subtraction negative numbers. Daniel defined some geometry terms, measured angles, and answered questions based on a diagram. Emma and Joseph's Algebra 2 lesson was a quick review of exponents and fractional exponents. 

Phonics/Handwriting: Tobias practiced writing lowercase 'e', did a flip chart of phonic sounds for the first five letters of the alphabet, and made uppercase and lowercase letters out of playdoh. Rebekah played with playdoh. 

World Geography: The 3 oldest read lesson 1 in Notgrass World Geography, answered 10 review questions, chose a project for the week, and started the project. The younger 6 and I explored two books together: Miss Rumphius and Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth. They also each chose one book from our library shelf to explore a geography topic. 

Ranch School Science: Today I introduced the kids to the Ranch School website by hooking my laptop up to the TV. We browsed the many workshop topics and they chose to begin the Working Dogs workshop. We learned about different kinds of working dogs (service, therapy, police/military, herding, livestock guardian, search and rescue, sled, hunting, water rescue, rat exterminating, truffle sniffing, and entertainment). There were a lot of discussions about what they already knew, what they wanted to know, etc. We answered the quiz questions about our reading. Tomorrow we will pick up with the next part of the workshop, a 30 minute video about working dogs.

ASL: Joseph wants to learn American Sign Language this year. We are still searching for just the right online class. We are looking for something that covers deaf culture and community as well as teaching sign language. There are several possibilities that we are exploring currently. In the mean time, he and I are working through our collection of Signing Time dvds to begin building a large sign vocabulary. (We have more than 26 dvds that we used many years ago with some of our little kids.) 

Lunch Time Read Aloud: We started the book Pie by Sarah Weeks today. It is a fun read and everyone is enjoying it.

Tuesday was day two of the school year. It was the first day for most of the kids language arts curricula from The Good and the Beautiful, so the introduction to a new level for each child. It went well, but a bit longer than things will usually take. Once they get used to how their new level is set up, things go faster. 

The kids were all very in to the Ranch School video on working dogs, which took us to meet and learn about specific dogs and their jobs, letting us watch them in action. We all learned things from this video!

After reading Pie today the kids realized this book will be a mystery. We discussed how mystery authors leave clues in their writing, and kids started guessing what might be significant to the story so far. We also discussed red herrings in literature - misleading, or false, clues. The kids had opinions about which of the clues they suspect to be red herrings. We will see how things develop as we read. The best part - I haven't read this particular book, so I'm guessing right along with them. They loved it so much that they requested we read another chapter over dinner. I happily obliged.

Math and world geography went smoothly today. Nothing really unexpected for week one. As usual, the kids spend 20 minutes reading each day outside of their school work. I thought I would share a quick list of what everyone is currently reading, because it changes often!

• 11th grader is reading Wings of Fire book 2: The Hidden Kingdom. His younger brothers finally convinced him to try one of their favorite series and hearing the conversations between them all makes my mama heart happy.
• 10th grader is reading Dracula. She pulled this one out of a stack of graphic novels we picked up from Usborne books last month. 
• 8th grader is reading Rascal. We read this in book club several years ago, but he doesn't remember much of it. 
• 7th grader is reading Five Kingdoms book 3.
• 5th grader is reading The Impossible Quest. 
• 4th grader is reading The Woodshed Mystery, which is the sixth Boxcar children book. 
• 3rd grader just started the 9th book in The Kingdom of Wrenly book series: The Bard and the Beast. This is a perfect early chapter book series for kids who are intimidated by lots of text on a page. It is highly illustrated.
• Kindergartener is learning his letters, but loves 'reading' our Garfield comics treasury. 
• Preschooler is all about animal stories lately, bringing us Peter Rabbit and others.
• Me! Mama is reading The Ears Have It by Rebecca Connolly, Where the Stars Meet the Sea by Heidi Kimball, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I'm also listening to Dragonwatch book 3: The Master of the Phantom Isle. 
• The boys are also listening to the Upside Down Magic collection at bedtime, alternating with The Mysterious Benedict Society. 

The day had lots of other things in it, as usual. These posts are usually just some highlights. Today, for example, Rebekah, Daniel, and I set up a block city, Oliver helped me by putting frozen rolls out to thaw and rise, several kids built with Lego, one kid was coding on Scratch, we did the usual medical care with Mason, scripture study, and random conversations. 

Wednesday, day three of the school year, started slow and steady, with kids trickling down and moving through the first hour of their morning tasks before school. One fun thing I want to remember for today: I put Oliver, my 7th grader, in charge of a project for the elementary age kids for world geography. The challenge was to help them become familiar with the shape, name, and position of each continent on a map. He pulled out an atlas and construction paper, assigned each kid a continent to draw and cut out, and then they taped up their work on the wall to create a world map. School went pretty well. The four youth had a fireside in the evening. Right as he was going to bed, Caleb told me he 'forgot' to do his language arts today. I reminded him that he uses a checklist and so he didn't forget, he chose not to do the work. The consequence was simple, he would have double lessons tomorrow to complete. He laughed a little and said, "You mean like in Harry Potter when they have double Potions class, it's extra long?" Yep. 

Thursday morning had a bit of chaos as I several kids wanted help at the same time, but we reminded one another that this is normal for the first week back, and that they can always work on something independently while they wait for me to be available. Caleb's 'double Potions' language arts lessons today brought a few tears, as he realized just how much work he had piled up for himself, but he quietly did the work and smiled when he was finished. He also said he never wanted to do double lessons again. He'll be much more likely to follow his daily checklist now, I suspect. 

Today was a pretty typical day with some grumpy attitudes appearing in some kids, as they realized that we really are back to school and will have to do lessons every week. It happens pretty much every year, and I know not to take it personally. There are days I would be just as happy to not teach 20 lessons that day. But the other thing I have learned is that being consistent in the small things each week really adds up over the school year to great results. 

A quick culinary arts note: Wednesday Joseph planned and cooked dinner: chicken tacos, rice, and watermelon. Thursday Emma made dirt dessert. I'm not sure what each one plans to make next, though I heard rumblings of baking fresh bread from Joseph.

Friday we finished out the week with a solid day of school and a family work project - taping off two rooms to paint. 

Saturday morning everyone painted together. My living room and piano room (which are really one big open room to each other) are now monorail silver. 

Week 2 of the homeschool year:

I took zero notes. We simply moved ahead one day at a time doing each day's tasks and then spending afternoons playing, swimming, and doing small projects. 

School went well. Everyone felt a bit more comfortable with their new materials. Ranch School Science this week was focused on survival skills, which was fun to explore. We also voted on the next several science units we will be doing. There are so many options in Ranch School, but the kids narrowed things down to their top three units. 

On Friday we finished our first read aloud of the school year: Pie by Sarah Weeks (Amazon affiliate link). We all enjoyed the book, were all wrong on the solution to the mystery, and had some fantastic conversations along the way. 

Saturday was spent doing a lot of errands. Groceries, library, farmer's market, boot store, and more. 

Sunday we had a great day at church, then spent the evening at a family birthday party. 

End of Summer and Homeschool Plans 2021-2022

Daniel finished this articulated albino catfish
made from his imagination and a bin of Legos.

We really have spent the end of July just soaking in the end of summer fun. Family time, visit to the park, walking trails, watching ducks, visiting the local science center, building, crafting, creating, and catching a show at the planetarium. We start back to school on Monday. Today I will be sharing about our curriculum plans. 

Family Studies

World Geography and Cultures 

The high schoolers (11th, 10th) and one of the middle schoolers (8th) will be using Notgrass Exploring World Geography as their main curriculum this year. It integrates language arts and geography, among other things. We will be choosing our own literature titles, using a guide from Brave Writer or The Good and the Beautiful to go with some of them. 

The rest of the kids (7th, 5th, 4th, 3rd, K, PreK) will do a world geography plan I wrote 7 years ago and used with the oldest kids, along with a hefty stack of books from the library for the many countries in each continent. I have rearranged my original geography plan to coordinate with the order of countries/continents studied in Notgrass. We will do some read alouds and independent reads related to each continent. A great resource for book titles is Give Your Child the World: Raising Globally Minded Kids One Book at a Time by Jamie C. Martin (Affiliate link to Amazon).

Science

This year we're doing a mix of science studies as a family. We will use Ranch School from Five Marys Farms to explore agriculture, preparedness, cooking, and many other topics. We will also use science units from The Good and the Beautiful. The key to doing this with such a wide range of ages is to allow older kids to go deeper into areas of interest. Neither of my current high schoolers wanted to take another lab science this year. One of the perks of homeschooling is stepping off the one-size fits all educational model and into the freedom of our own path. 

Fine Arts

We always explore art, music, and fine arts as a family. We will use a wide variety of resources along the way.

Individual Studies

Language Arts

All kids 7th grade and younger will do a level of language arts from The Good and the Beautiful. We love these because they include: reading, writing, grammar, spelling, geography, art, and more. These kids will also have independent reading beyond TGTB. Some of those books will have Brave Writer guides to go with them (Dart, Arrow, or Boomerang), while others will be read just because reading is something we do here. 

My three oldest students (8th, 10th, 11th) will have the majority of their writing and language arts integrated into Notgrass World Geography. They will also have some books to read with Brave Writer guides (Boomerang or Slingshot), and each has chosen at least one Book Study from The Good and the Beautiful as well. 

Math

The 10th and 11th graders are doing Math U See Algebra 2. The 8th grader is doing Math U See Geometry. The 7th grader is doing Math U See PreAlgebra. The 5th grader is doing Math U See Epsilon. 

The 4th, 3rd, and Kindergartener will do math from The Good and the Beautiful. While the company is currently releasing a new math program, we loved the old program and so we are sticking with it. I'll have kids doing Math K, Math 3, and Math 4. 

Electives

My high schoolers have some electives chosen to start the year, and will either continue those or choose new electives, for their second semester. The 11th grader's electives are Culinary Arts and American Sign Language. The 10th grader's electives are Culinary Arts and possibly Theater. 

All of my kids also have a wide range of personal interests that they spend afternoons enjoying. From art, piano, and writing to building, crafting, and coding, they do things they enjoy, and usually surpass my abilities quickly in any area. 

Quick Thoughts

The next few weeks will be interesting. Even though we have been homeschooling for over 16 years, no two years are the same. Kids are different ages and personalities, life has different things going on, and my number of students is at an all-time high with kids in the following grades: PreK, K, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11.

 I also have lessons to prepare five days a week for a group of youth who will meet in my home at 6am every school day to study the scriptures together in a seminary class. My oldest two teens are part of this early morning seminary class. First semester we will finish our study of Church History and the Doctrine and Covenants. Second semester we dive into the Old Testament. 

We also have some more painting projects we hope to tackle in August, starting with the living room and piano room area next weekend. I will be glad when all of the painting projects are done.

July 11th- July 20th: Theater Camp, Painting, and a Baptism

Sunday we celebrated Samuel's 8th birthday with our usual family party. His dessert of choice was cupcakes, and the icing covered faces on some of my younger kids were quite hilarious. We also enjoyed church and a rainstorm.

Emma auditioning

Monday Emma started Theater Camp. She spends a large chunk of each day at camp, with their performance on Friday. Today was a lot of warm ups, auditions, and casting. They will actually be doing two small plays. For one she got the role of Jack's mother (from Jack and the Beanstalk fame). This is a small part and something she was comfortable with. For the other play she hoped to be cast as one of the fairy godmothers, but to her surprise was cast as the lead - Cinderella. She's excited and nervous and having a blast. 

At home on Monday we made a lot of progress preparing our dining/school room for painting. Lots of mudding, sanding, and repairs were accomplished. Paint was purchased. The trim was taped. 

Tuesday was my day to focus in on back to school prep. Today's focus was our world geography study. I gathered books, worked through book lists, and sorted materials. The only subject left to really organize is science. 

Wednesday was a laid back day at home, lots of playing board games and crafting things. The house feels pretty cramped with the contents of the dining room split between our piano/living room and our bedroom. It is very motivating for me to want to actually do the painting on Saturday. Does anyone else not enjoy painting? It just isn't my favorite thing to do. 

Emma had a bit of a surprise at theater camp today, when she was asked to take on a larger part in the first play, as the sports reporter for the Fairy Tale News station. She has more lines and blocking to learn now, in addition to everything she's learning for her role as Cinderella. She is getting a bit nervous. Today was also costume day, so they got fitted for costumes. 

Emma as Cinderella

Thursday and Friday have blurred together. The highlight for everyone was going to the theater camp performance on Friday night. The kids did a great job. Emma remembered her lines for both parts and had a wonderful experience. 

Saturday was painting day! The kids got right in on the action, painting the walls with us and with Grandma, who came to join in the fun.

Nearly everyone wanted to help. Rebekah was especially enthusiastic about painting on the walls.

We chose Sherwin Williams color Naval. I was a bit nervous to go so dark. 

We spent part of the morning painting coat number one. Then everyone played and visited with Grandma until it was time to paint coat number two. 

Once that was done we took the kids to the library to turn in their summer reading program tickets and choose the books they earned. 

Sunday was a special day in a different way, because it was Samuel's baptism day. 

It is hard to believe my eighth child is 8 years old! He was so excited to get baptized. 

Monday was a lot of running. I had a doctor check up with a new general practitioner. Then Mason and I drove 2 hours round trip to spend not even 10 minutes at Children's Hospital picking up his new glasses. After lunch back at home, I did a grocery trip.

In the afternoon we put the dining room back together, hung the new dry erase boards, and put some of the books back on shelves. Here is a quick picture from one doorway, before we brought all the chairs back in to the table.

Here is the view from the other doorway. It's a wonderful space for eating and learning! Now we're moving on to mudding and sanding walls in the rest of the downstairs, with plenty more painting ahead.

Phew! If you made it through that rather long post you deserve a round of applause. While my biggest reason for blogging is simply to have a family journal of sorts, I also love sharing our life with others. Thank you for reading! 

July 3rd - July 10th: Tie Dye!

Saturday morning we did our annual family tie dye day. Everyone had clothing already folded and rubberbanded, ready to dye. We always use Tulip dyes, and this year the kids chose two color packs: Celestial and Shark Island. A few hours and lots of fun later, we now have plastic bags of dye and clothing on the porch, curing for 24 hours. Tomorrow we will rinse and wash everything.

Other things we did on Saturday:

• Grocery shopping
• Mailing a package
• Picking up library books
• Visiting with Grandma
• Grilling dinner
• Visiting with the missionaries

Sunday morning we rinsed and washed all the tie dye clothing. It was dry by the time we got home from church. Everyone sorted out their items and ooo-ed and ahh-ed over the results. No two shirts were the same. In the afternoon we made ice cream sundaes, and in the evening we played 'Gathering the Sheaves', a game about missionary work. 

Monday we had a failed attempt to go to the library to turn in summer reading program papers and get prizes. It turns out they are closed the day after the 4th of July. Oh well. We headed home for lunch and then went swimming at the YMCA in the very hot afternoon. 

Tuesday Caleb headed to the dentist to get four baby teeth pulled. The orthodontist sent him because he has some impacted canines they are hoping will be able to move down with the extra space opened up. Caleb was a champ, and now has a very cute smile missing a lot of teeth. A couple of kids requested to play board games with mom today, so we played Dinosaur Escape and Ticket to Ride: First Journeys. The day was mostly just relaxing family life.

Wednesday the kids all did Writing Wednesday, with more or less enthusiasm depending on the kid. The elementary age kids chose a prompt from a calendar of writing prompts, while the teens chose an essay from a different set of prompts. Daniel did an argumentative essay about the Federal Trade Commission's ruling that bloggers, athletes, and celebrities need to disclose paid relationships with companies, and asked him to take a position in favor or against this and write about it. Joseph did a reflective essay on a childhood memory. Emma chose a different reflective essay on worries.

Thursday Mason and I headed to Children's Hospital for his yearly checkup with his eye surgeon. Everything is stable, his vision has actually improved a bit. We will go back in a few weeks to pick up new glasses. 

Friday only two of my teens ended up going to Youth Conference. The third wasn't feeling well and opted to stay home and rest. The kids who went had a great time. They went to a park in another city and painted for most of the day. Then they headed to a swimming pool to cool off for the evening. 

Back at home we mostly played and planned. After 14 years we're finally getting around to doing some re-painting on the main floor of the house. We decided that it was time for an update to our dining room, which also doubles as our homeschool room and houses a large bookcase and a large shelving unit of bins. We still have to pick a color for the room. 

Saturday after dropping kids off for day two of youth conference I headed to the grocery store. While I was doing the shopping, Jason and the kids started tearing apart the dining room, removing the old dry erase boards from the walls (made from melamine shower board 13 years ago and desperately needing replaced), the art line, and other things. 

Our late morning and afternoon were spent sanding, mudding, boxing up books, moving shelves, and basically making the rest of the house a mess so we could empty out the dining room of everything but our table for 12. We will continue mudding and sanding over the next several days, and then have a painting party next Saturday.