Homeschool Notes for Week 23 and 24

Saturday was cold. We woke to several inches of snow, which was beautiful. I headed to WalMart for our online grocery pick up at 8:30am. Once home we did a few quick projects and made lunch. After lunch Daddy got picked up by Grandma and Grandpa for a Trans Siberian Orchestra concert along with one nephew thanks to free tickets Grandma got. They said it was fantastic when they arrived home 7 hours later. I'm glad he got to go (and that I didn't have to, it's not my kind of music, lol).

While Daddy was gone our Saturday moved forward as usual. Medical care in the afternoon for Mason, a nap for Tobias, and just play. Dinner was beef stew in the crock pot with some rolls. I dropped Makayla off at a friend's house to ride to the Church holiday ball for youth an hour away. Then it was just mommy and the younger 8 children until bedtime. We watched some tv, played with Legos, and stayed inside where it was warm.

Sunday was even colder but everyone was well enough to go to church so it was a great morning. After church we pulled together a Harry Potter themed Would You Rather game for our family New Year's Eve party and prepared snacks to share. We had a fun evening of snacks and games together!

Monday was the first day of the new year. It was extra cold (-9 degrees F). We gathered as a family for our Morning Basket at 9:30am. I have to be honest and say I'm a practical mom. Not all of my kids are enthusiastic about doing a morning basket. I'm okay with that, they are welcome to miss our time together. However I do practice a little bit of encouragement and consequences. The encouragement is a treat. If you show up there is a treat waiting for you. If you don't the consequence is you miss out. (Today was a couple M&Ms, sometimes it might be a cookie, strawberries, apple slices, hot cocoa, peanut butter crackers, you just never know). And of course when we do a read aloud we pull out our trusty read aloud bin of candy. If you are sitting and listening to the read aloud you get  a piece of candy. Today's morning basket included the following:

• Hymn: I'm Trying to Be like Jesus
• Prayer: Oliver
• Devotional: Kindness Isaiah 63:7
• Scripture Memory: Romans 8:16
• Other: Star Wars Mad Libs
• Read Aloud: Esperanza Rising

At 11:00am Daddy, Joseph, Daniel, Oliver, and Caleb headed to the local movie theater for a matinee viewing of the new Star Wars movie. They were excited. The girls and the youngest three boys and I stayed home and enjoyed the quiet. It is amazing just how much quieter the house can be depending on which children are home. The rest of Monday had things like laundry, cooking, and family time. Pretty much my happy place!

Tuesday was still cold. I got an appointment done, a trip to the store for peanut butter and vegan mayo, and then it was babysitting a nephew and 2 nieces at our house. Of course, it really is great to babysit them because they match up with several of my kids ages and everyone just plays and laughs and has fun. I have LESS work to do when more kids are over. I even got to read a book just for me for a while. The kids had piano lessons in the afternoon and then we did family time all evening.

Wednesday my sister came to watch the kids while Mason and I headed to the city to get his cast off. Yay! We have a lot of things to watch for, he's not done healing yet, but not having the cast on is wonderful. The day was uneventful and on the quiet side. Cub Scouts and youth activities happened in the evening.

Thursday started off with a phone call to the fire department because our oven heating element started sparking everywhere. Thankfully they were able to contain it easily. Now we wait 5 days for a new oven I ordered from Home Depot to arrive - and we feed 11 people without a stove or oven. When I finally looked around I discovered plenty of cooking options already in the house - microwave, toaster, crock pot, griddle, rice cooker, etc. It just takes rethinking how to prepare meals and possibly cooking them in batches if using something like the toaster or microwave.

I also had a doctor's appointment on Thursday and baby is looking good. We're closing in on the end of this pregnancy and just taking things a day at a time.

Friday found two of us at the dentist and scheduling appointments for next week to get some work done (a baby tooth pulled and a filling redone). Beyond that it was just a regular day.

Saturday hubby and I went on a date while Grandma watched the kids. It was great to get out and just talk without little ears around, go to the store together, etc. We also picked up the ice cream sundae and root beer float supplies for Mason's family birthday party on Sunday since we wouldn't be able to bake a cake with no stove/oven.

Sunday Mommy stayed home from church with the four youngest boys who all are congested, runny nosed, and fending off colds. In the evening family came over for the birthday party (Mason will turn 6 next Thursday). We also watched the last episode of Extinct as a family - it was good but hard to say goodbye to the series.

Monday we got snow and ice. Daddy started back to school for the new semester with two classes. A lot of the kids started the day out with a playdoh party.

We kept things low-key. There was playing in the snow and ice in the afternoon, reading aloud Esperanza Rising over hot chocolate after that, dinner in the crock pot, and a stove delivery at lunch time. Yes, I was so happy to have a stove again!

Mason is healing somewhat post-cast removal(that happened last Wednesday). The incision is doing good so far, no infection. His leg and foot swelling has settled in and isn't increasing now, so we just have to wait several weeks for it to go down. The only iffy part is the pressure sore on the top of his foot/ankle, and we're following instructions for another week and a half before we get things re-evaluated. Unfortunately wounds like this don't heal well when you are paralyzed because your body doesn't always get the information that it needs to be healing something.

Tuesday I announced to the kids that after breakfast they needed to read something, either history or literature, and beginning readers needed to read to me. It was just one simple way to remind them to keep those learning routines going. Here is what they read:

• On Board the Titanic - Makayla
• 100 Cupboards - Joseph
• The 12th How to Train Your Dragon book - Emma
• Poppy - Daniel
• Ice Wizard Magic Tree House - Oliver
• All About Reading At the Pond - Caleb
• All About Reading Fox in a Box - Mason

Our day kept rolling peacefully from there. Mason was especially happy to move to the bigger chalkboard for his Handwriting Without Tears work as he moved into lowercase letters today. One interesting thing I've noticed with Mason is that lately he is reading text in his environment - words off of signs or the spines of books. It's a fun stage.

In the afternoon Daniel and I both had dental work done. Ouch. I'll be sore for several days, Daniel's didn't really hurt at all he said.

Another random thing: our new bed frame arrived today. We've had a big wooden frame and box springs for years and it was breaking, creaky, and always woke babies when my truck driver husband gets up between 2 and 3am for work. I decided if I want a decent chance of sleeping well once baby Rebekah is born that the frame and box springs had to go. So we ordered this frame on sale for $60 on Amazon. I'm typing these notes a couple days later and have to say I love it!

Wednesday we got back into a morning learning time rhythm. Was it perfect? No. But it was productive and felt good. I also tried a new recipe in my instant pot on this day - potato soup. It was delicious! In the evening we had Cub Scouts and Mutual (youth group for ages 12-18). I spent the whole time having contractions of course which is my usual evening pattern, but the kids had fun.

Thursday started with my 38 week pregnancy checkup (more on that here) and I spent the rest of the day having contractions. It was a good day with the windows open to take advantage of the unusually warm temperatures (55F! It felt like a heat wave even though it rained all day). Tomorrow the temperatures are supposed to drop as we go from rain to ice to several inches of snow on top of that. Back to winter.

It's Friday morning and we're taking the day off of formal learning. I'm feeling like a broody hen, wanting to nest. So I'll make a short list of deep cleaning chores and projects for us to do around the house and we will work on those today.

Happy Friday everyone!

January Homeschool Plans Until Baby Arrives

I made some relaxed plans for school to keep us in a bit of a routine until baby Rebekah arrives. We could probably take off most of January and February and still finish the school year on time since we started early but the lack of routine would be bad.

Core Subjects - All kids will continue math and either assigned reading or reading lessons. The 7th grade and under crowd is continuing history with the Liberty's Kids dvds. The 11th grader is continuing chemistry and writing.

Morning Basket - This will happen each day and has the following categories:

• Hymn - This varies. We're starting with I'm Trying to Be like Jesus and Let Us Oft Speak Kind Words, but I'm also open to kid requests.
• Prayer - We take turns praying as a family, a different person prays each morning.
• Devotional - We're going to use 52 Weeks to Fortify Your Family (Amazon affiliate link). It's a simple book that has a theme for each week. The first week is Kindness. Each day of the week is a verse or set of verses to read aloud and discuss on the theme. The end of the week has a couple of questions to talk about and a general conference talk to take our learning further. The best part is the daily readings will be 5 minutes or less, just right for our morning basket.
• Fine Arts - We will rotate through different things in this slot. For the first week I have: Picture study, Composer Study: Mozart, Doodle Prompt, Picture study, and Composer Study: Mozart.
• Scripture Memory - We're starting with Romans 8:16 and will change our scripture verse every few weeks. We simply read it aloud together until we have it memorized.
• Read Aloud - I decided to pull one of the history books on Makayla's shelf for this year to read aloud to everyone. It's set in the 1930s and tells the story of a Mexican family who becomes migrant workers in the US due to unexpected circumstances. It's called Esperanza Rising (Amazon affiliate link) and I love what I've read ahead so far!
• Other - This will vary every week. This week the slots are filled with Mad Libs (Star Wars themed), Mathemagic, science exploration, Mad Libs (Mad Scientist themed), and a writing game.

That's it! The kids are always welcome to pursue their own learning interests, ask for resources to help with that, or pull out a game to play. They have a variety of interests and there is often something going on. 

Rookie Homeschool Mom Fail and Getting Back on Track

Me, all cheery, positive, and ready for January.

It's January! I love the fresh, open horizons of a new year! This week started off just like a typical year for us. Monday we had a solid day of homeschool work. We kicked off the day with our Morning Basket time. Today that consisted of:

• Singing a hymn - Choose the Right
• Reading aloud and discussing a scripture verse we will be reciting for a few weeks (memory work) - Helaman 5:12
• Reading a few notes from the book This Day in History
• Reading a bit about our new poet - Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Wait, you don't know who that is? Well, he also wrote under the name Lewis Carroll, of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland fame. We are using Poetry for Young People: Lewis Carroll. Each poetry day we read a bit about his life and then a couple of his poems.
• Discussed what we know about bats and then looked at the pages on bats in Nature Anatomy.

This layered liquids experiment was a fun density exploration on Thursday.

This semester is our science focus for my 6th grade and under crowd. We began this next, while my 10th grader headed to her bedroom for some individual studies. For science we are using Apologia's Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics. Today's lesson had us playing 20 questions to learn about properties and then experimenting with water, a graduated cylander, and a bullet to understand the property of volume (the space an object takes up). We also got into a discussion of density because the kids commented on how much heavier the bullet was than they expected. We pulled out a ping pong ball and a golf ball to show how they have nearly the same volume (size) but are very different weights because one has a greater density.

Other assignments today included math lessons, Oliver reading aloud half of Green Eggs and Ham to me, independent literature reading, scripture study, notebooking about something from their learning today, and listening to Little Women during lunch. My high schooler had geometry, writing, biology, literature, and art as well.

My husband's next semester of school also started today so he was on the computer navigating three new classes. He's studying to become a software engineer through BYU-Idaho. It's great for the kids to see Daddy working hard to study and learn for his classes!

Mason with the IV of medication for his osteoporosis.

Tuesday Mom and Mason spent half the day at Children's Hospital doing appointments for his osteoporosis, including a DEXA bone scan, checkup, and IV infusion of his medication. It was a no school day, which is always nice, to break the kids in gently to the every day school routine.

Tobias - look at that expression! It sums up Wednesday perfectly.

Wednesday the real 'back to school' attitudes hit. It wasn't pretty. Everyone realized that this wake up on time, do chores, do school, be productive and media-free until afternoon routine was back in place and nobody was quite ready for it. Whining, complaining, and dragging out work took up a lot of the morning.

We did do more science done involving density. Water, salt, and a grape tomato were ingredients to see if we could change the density of the water enough to make the tomato float. Then we colored four cups of water and put increasing amounts of salt in them. We used a straw to pick up each color/density of water, beginning with the least dense, and watching it stay in layers without mixing. Fascinating!

We got through school and by afternoon I recognized I had made a rookie homeschool mom fail - I was trying to herd everyone through their work, hovering, nagging, and not leaving the responsibility and consequences in their court. I apologized and told them I would not do that anymore. Instead, we will operate on the following rules:

1. Breakfast and chores are to be done before 8am, when mom calls everyone together for Morning Basket.
2. For the 6th grade and under crowd science will follow morning time, led by mom.
3. After this everyone is responsible for doing the rest of their day's work. Mom will give each person a daily list of assignments. If you need mom's help you are responsible to go to her with your materials. (For example, Oliver needs me to do reading lessons with him, but is independent in scripture study because he can use his kindle to listen to and look at the scripture readers.) You can work on things in any order.
4. When the alarm rings at 1pm anyone who has not completed their list of assignments (and their chore room) forfeits their personal media time for that day.

Caleb and Samuel were playing together and wanted their picture taken.

Thursday we began again. The kids understood that mom meant business, I was not responsible for dragging them through learning. I am happy to help them, team up with them, or stay out of their way. Everyone finished their work before the 1pm alarm. Some worked mostly independently on everything. Oliver grabbed me to read aloud to me from The Cat in the Hat for 15 minutes. Caleb brought me his alphabet game to play and asked me to sit with him for math. Daniel asked me to do scripture study with him. I helped older kids with math questions, and one biology question as needed. It was so much more peaceful! Nobody felt pushed, rushed, or dragged through the school day. Will it always go this smoothly? Of course not! Will someone miss the deadline? Yes, probably more than once. But that is their choice, and the consequence is attached.

In the afternoon Samuel was supposed to do speech therapy. He was not okay with that. He started crying when it was time to go to therapy. He sat in the chair crying or hiding his eyes and ignoring both his speech therapist and I, which he has never done before. Miss Sarah and I did the activities and played with the toys instead. He didn't care. We'll go back next week and hopefully he will be on board with it. However, I'm not too worried about it. He has been making some great progress at home over our Christmas break. If he truly refuses to resume speech therapy we will just carry on at home like we're doing anyway.

Emma's turn loading her boat. The boys were leaning over to see below the water surface.

Friday was cold and snowy. We had another uneventful day. The property of the day was buoyancy so we made aluminum foil boats to see how much weight they could carry depending on their design. One thing I want to remember - Oliver grabbed a set of actual scriptures to 'see if I can read them yet Mom'. Yes, son, yes you can. He made it through about 3 verses with some help on names and unusual words. He told me now he is going to read from them every day too, at least a few verses. Then listen to the scripture reader stories too.

Books this Week - Here are books that were read or listened to this week:

• Little Women - Yes, we're still working away at this one.
• Fire of the Covenant - I'm reading this one for my 2017 Reading Challenge.
• Magic by the Lake
• Eragon
• Inheritance
• The Ranger's Apprentice Book 2
• Green Eggs and Ham
• The Cat in the Hat
• Snow
• Three Little Dinosaurs
• Winter Poems
• Snow Globe Family
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Looking Ahead:

Next week is relatively quiet on the appointment front. We get to celebrate a certain little boy turning 5. We will be doing art class with friends. I'm excited for our projects but need to do a shopping trip to Hobby Lobby for a few supplies this weekend.

That's all for me this week! I'm linking up at Weekly Wrap Up , Homeschool Blog and Tell, and Homeschool Highlights.

Morning Basket Plans 2016-2017

We have done a Morning Basket for a few years. Basically it is a time where the family is gathered together for a devotional or studies that begin your day with truth, goodness, and beauty. The contents of this morning time are as varied as individual families are. I have a mix of ages from high school down to a baby. We also incorporate a loop schedule into our basket.

Every day we begin this way:

• Sing a hymn together.
• Pray
• Read a devotional - this year we'll read the day's entry in Stand a Little Taller by Gordon B. Hinkley. It has a scripture to read and a quote. We'll discuss this.
• Article of Faith memory work
• 50 States - We are learning the shape, name, and capital of each state this year. Some of my children may already be familiar with these, but we're doing it together. Daily we will look at a couple pages about ONE state. We may take 2 days per state sometimes, I don't really care how quickly we go through this. We will be going in alphabetical order. The picture books I've got in my basket for this currently are Celebrate the 50 States by Loreen Leedy, The United States of America: A State-by-State Guide by Millie Miller and Cyndi Nelson, and Our 50 States: A Family Adventure Across America by Lynne Cheney.

After these four daily tasks we move into the looped portion of our morning basket. Each day we will do 1-2 things from our loop, picking up where we left off the last time. I am still deciding the actual order for our loop items but here they are:

• Bedtime Math - It's a great website, a free app, or daily emails. We'll use the app for our Morning Basket. Each day there are three or more math problems for a variety of abilities from the very young to better mathematicians than I happen to be. It includes a day's topic with information about interesting things, the problems, and the answers, which you can't see until you click on a specific button.
• Picture Study - We are starting with the art of Bev Doolittle using the book The Art of Bev Doolittle. It's got the story of her art as well, so we will be able to read and learn more about her along the way. After a couple months we will move to a new artist. On tap this year we also have Beatrix Potter and John James Audubon.
• Poetry Study - We are reading a few poems each time from one of our poetry books. The first two poetry books in my basket this year are A Child's First Book of Poems illustrated by Cyndy Szekeres and The Golden Books Family Treasury of Poetry selected and with commentary by Louis Untermeyer, illustrated by Joan Walsh Anglund. We also read poetry during Poetry Tea Time every other week or so.
• Civics Study - We'll be reading from The Land of Fair Play (2nd edition from Christian Liberty Press).
• Ohio History Stories - We'll read from Critters, Flitters, and Spitters: 24 Amazing Ohio Animal Tales by Rick Sowash and Heroes of Ohio: 23 True Tales of Courage and Character, also by Rick Sowash.
• Grammar Fun - We'll do Mad Libs, look at the World of Language series by Ruth Heller, read Punctuation Tales, etc. Did you know they have really fun Mad Libs themed books like Star Wars and Doctor Who? Yep, my kids will be thrilled!

Did you miss any posts in this series?

• Homeschool Plans for 2016-2017
• Morning Basket Plans for 2016-2017
• Our Large Family Homeschool Schedule
• Nature Study and Art Plans 2016-2017