Homeschool Week 2

I didn't keep up with the daily photo documentation this past week (March 16-20) and because of that, it's much harder to go back and remember what we did (even though it was less than a week ago)!

I know that we did still hit all the items on our daily agenda, mostly in order - the kids got dressed, brushed teeth, fed the dog, did chores, did their math app online, did the math that school sent home with me, did school in the afternoon with Sam, wrote in their journals, read independently, practiced piano, took a walk, ate lunch and dinner as a family, cleaned up, watched a movie together before bed. I was having them read nonfiction for a block of time in the morning, but that's basically switched to the one who's not doing "school" with me entertaining Leah. (I'm entertaining Leah when Sam's doing "school" with them in the afternoon.)

They've been playing constantly with the very large dog crate my mom got and then gave to me because it didn't fit in her car. Sam's been doing a recording project, which I can post later.

Anyway, here's what I remember!

Monday
Which is apparently not much from Monday. Amelie finished her opinion essay and printed it out.


Tuesday
We went on a wet, rainy walk - still keeping up the daily walk streak even though the weather has not been super cooperative. The kids next door banged on the window and waved as we went by in our rain gear.

I succeeded in getting James to wear his raincoat, but not in getting him to button it up.

Here’s me convincing James to do his journal:

And James reading (Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.) 

Wednesday
We saw a bone on the small trail at the park. I said that I thought it was a deer, and then was immediately validated when we found a deer hoof with hair still on, and then just a tiny bit later, at least two HUGE vultures sweeping around at the park. (Nature study!)

Amelie started narrative essay, again using voice-to-text, about a rousing game of capture the flag.

James helped make beer bread, then we ate the whole loaf while it was still warm. He was enthusiastic about opening the beer and pouring it in. "IT SMELLS TERRIBLE!" he said.

Thursday
The playground equipment at our small neighborhood park was roped off with caution tape.

It made it look a little like a crime scene, though of course we know it is because of the stay-at-home order. My friend Todd in China (Beijing) was under a true stay-at-home order wherein they put an alarm on his apartment door so that he couldn't even leave to go outside, and an Australian-Chinese person who defied the order to go out jogging was deported. We're still able to use the (non-playground equipment) outdoor spaces as long as 6 feet distance is maintained. James was pretty upset the other day when we had to leave/move on when another family came to the park. I was kind of glad when they put up the tape since we'd just been telling them they couldn't get on the equipment and this was easier for them to see and understand.

I gotta say, Spark is loving it.

Notice Sam's walking stick.

 Amelie making a clover chain.

Leah looking suspicious, with her leaf.

They like to explore this area by the bridge.

Back home. Leah playing with the riding toy from Aunt Holly. I adore this romper (it was Amelie's), but Leah's just enough older than Amelie was (March vs. May) and just enough bigger (40th percentile vs. 15th) that it may only fit this one sunny weekend. Anyway, I took some pictures! And I have a friend I can pass it to :)

One really great thing about all this time at home is that I've made chores (the actual running of the household versus just cleaning up their own messes) a much more intentional part of the day (it's on the schedule taped to the refrigerator, enshrined in the daily routine), and the big kids have really stepped up to the plate. Here's Amelie, cheerfully unloading the dishwasher, putting things away, and then loading it back up with what's accumulated in the sink. She was singing to herself as she did it.

 One more pic of Leah in the romper :)

Friday
It helps James to write his journal if he has a snack handy. He's also convinced himself that the "detailed picture" he's supposed to draw with it has to include 3 colors - I think he might be mixed up because Ms. Newkirk said "at least 3 sentences," but I'm going along with it.

We went out to Grindstone. Leah rose to the occasion and got fantastically wet.

This was at the end of the trip - we went down a small dirt path to an area we had completely to ourselves.

Amelie found a pretty purple shell and a fossil.

Usually this bridge has lots of people on it - it was such a nice day.

 James playing Pokemon Go.

I found this cool mold fossil.

Sam laughed at this picture of me and Amelie and said Leah was being neglected in the background.

Sam, Spark, and the bridge.

Another cool mold fossil.

Sam and James skipped rocks across the creek, but Leah just chucked them in.

Leah Says & James Says

These are from before the quarantine: 

James: Leah, can I tell you something?
Leah: Nooooooo!
James: You’re a googleplex mean.
Leah: YOU’RE a googleplex!

Leah calls the whole library "story time." We walked in the other day, and Leah sighed and said, "I love this place." There was a little bit of a protest when it was time to leave, and she said, "This is  NOT FAIR." To be fair, we had attended a program, read several books, played with blocks, and ridden the elevator up to the to third floor to take a drink out of the water fountain, so basically two-year-old heaven, and why would I want to leave after only two hours?

I had to tell her no for something, and she responded, "I do not! Like it! When you! Say that!" with emphasis, in case I didn't know.

Leah says to me: “I'm proud of you for reading that story." (short pause) "So proud."  This was after I'd read her a picture book!

She's been saying some things with a schwa sound at the beginning. She calls it the um-puter, and we frequently lose the uh-mote for the TV, and thunder is "under."

Sam was trying to get Leah to go to bed, and he said that her stuffed toy was getting sleepy. Sam, to Leah: I think Mickey is tired and need to go to bed.
Leah: I don’t think he is - he just p’tend.

Sam and Leah were playing a game (of Leah’s invention) where you pressed a button and then said what would happen. Sam pressed a button on her shoulder and said she'd turn into a banana. Leah laughed and went along, then after a pause said, "This game too hard. I sorry for that."

Leah, to Sam: Here’s your coconut. (Long pause.) it’s a p’tend coconut. You p’tend to eat it.


These are from after the quarantine: 

Everyone has been eating constantly the whole time we've been cooped up at home. Requests for snacks within an hour or a half an hour of mealtime have been starting to wear on me, especially since they've been grazing the entire day.  Leah, to me: I want something to eat. NOT supper.

James: “Isn’t there anything to do??? Anywhere to go????” He’s particularly miffed about the ARC being closed. “There’s nothing fun!!”

James: There's this kid who used to go to my school, Martin. He's popular because he's really good at four square. But do you know why he got really, really popular to the whole school? Like he went viral? (pause) Do you know what he brought to SNACK? (pause) REALLY spicy beef jerky. Like it had JALAPENOS in it.

Leah, asking for some taffy (that we'd shared earlier): Where are those (long pause) little yummy things?

Leah told Sam that he was "the meanie-iest."

James, to me: Why do people think the ocean is sad?
Me: Because it’s blue?
James, thinking quick: no, it has salt in its eyes!

Sometime later, James, to Amelie: Why is the ocean sad?
Amelie: Because it’s full of plastic

Not a specific quote, but I had forgotten just how much a 7.5 year old could talk (and talk and talk and talk).

Quarantine Weekend One

Okay, here are a bunch of random photos from our first weekend sheltering in place (this is last weekend - I'm one weekend behind) - leaving only to go on family walks (maintaining 6 feet of distance) and to the grocery store (like I said, much less frequently than before - at least a week between trips).

When we told him to get ready for the walk on Saturday, James exclaimed, obviously very disappointed, "But it's the WEEKEND."

I had a conversation with my next-door neighbor where she called Amelie a "hippie child" (and that wasn't even when she was wearing this outfit - it was just in relation to her constantly collecting and examining nature).

Amelie has been walking the dog some.

Here's Sam and Leah attending Zoom church on the laptop.

Oh, that's just a first grader reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. James did an online photo scavenger hunt earlier in the day - that's his list on the arm of the couch.

Family walk / album cover:

They stuffed pillows up the backs of their shirts to be turtles, and after a bit of that, they did this - Yertle the Turtle pile.

The kids also built this puppet theater and there were several different iterations of actors and audiences. Here's James doing his bit:

Amelie putting on a show for Leah and Sam:

 Slightly blurry, but so sweet - James helping Leah while Spark comes around the corner.

Leah being goofy with her bear hat and squishy ball. 

James made this tower out of batteries that need to be recycled and insisted that we take a photo:

Sam finished his work-from-home setup.

Leah found this bright spot of yellow.

Since I wasn't in any of the weekend pictures, I had to take a selfie (not really). I've been drying my hair in a t-shirt when I want it to be curly because the internet told me to and it seems to be working, and then since I'm not going to work or church or anything, it amused me to put on a tie-dye shirt to match my tie-dye hair t-shirt. (I made both of them myself - one was 9 years ago!)

(Mostly) dry curly hair:

Homeschool Week One

Okay, I posted yesterday about some of the preparation leading up to our first week of the kids being home from school, Sam working from home full-time, and me being on leave from the library.

I'd come up with a basic schedule, and we were ready to get started the first full day the kids were home (Wednesday, March 18th). Lots of people online had lots of opinions about this apparently, basically none of which were helpful. What was helpful was messaging with one of my friends who normally homeschools and talking to other parents who were also adjusting from elementary-aged kids in public school to a month (soon to be more) of homeschooling/distance learning at home.

I decided to go ahead and start right away for several reasons: 1) because I decided to intentionally limit the amount of school I was asking the kids to do each day to about a third of the work that the school sent home, 2) because it seemed like a way to restore some kind of normalcy to a frankly scary and chaotic time, and 3) because I thought this would work best for our particular family situation, including one kiddo who does very, very poorly with changes to routine and another who requires a great deal of academic support at school.

The first day, I took several pictures throughout the day and then the Ridgeway parent-teacher facebook page posted a prompt asking for photos of kids' working at home, and it was fun to see (and show the kids) the pictures of their classmates working away at home. I decided it might be nice to keep up the photo documentation.

Wednesday

On Wednesday, I had a bonus 3-month old that I was watching for my friend's last day of at-work work because her daycare had closed. Leah was mostly left to her own devices. Notice the (purely decorative) bandaid on her forehead.

Each of the kids did 30 minutes on the computer for ST Math, which is the app they use at school.

Here's Leah again, still with the bandaid.

Pointing. 

More mischief.

I did 30 minutes of math in the morning with both kids, and Sam did 30 minutes of Language Arts with both kids in the afternoon. (Like I said in the last post, we're shooting for 1 hour of total instruction per day per kid, and then there are things - like the math app, independent reading, and journaling - that they can do on their own as part of the routine for a total of 2-2.5 hours of "school" per day.)

The baby, kids, and I took a walk in the (light) rain after lunch.

I wanted to get a picture of Amelie in her rain gear.

James is supposed to write 3 sentences and draw a detailed picture in his journal each day and Amelie's supposed to write a page. 

Thursday
It was not raining for our post-lunch walk on Thursday, and Sam got to come with us (and then he's come every day since that first day).

We walked down to our neighborhood park.

Carrying the big kid without the carrier!

Journal-writing and snack in the afternoon.

We haven't been letting Spark go in the backyard (he's looking sad about it here). With all the rain, it's a gigantic muddy mess, and with us being home all the time he gets plenty of walks.

Just look at that head full of curls!

Sam and Amelie doing Language Arts (etc.) in the afternoon.

Friday
The theme of Friday's homeschool was lots and lots of various Pokemon games (mental math!)

James got Dad to play with him, too.

We did our after-lunch walk and it was COLD - we wore our winter coats.

This is how Leah helps to make the bed for the "chores" portion of the schedule.

James took it upon himself to create a Pokemon knockoff type game while I was working with Leah. He'd accomplished a lot by the time I took this picture. 

Here he is with the cards he made.

Amelie had THREE zoom meetings set up for Friday. She took the first one on the couch with Leah and James on the sidelines, then we couldn't get the second one to work, and then the third one she took in bed. They were mostly just socializing and getting to see her classmates and teacher after being off and practicing how this would work when they come back to "regular" distance learning after break.

I must say that all the meetings somewhat disrupted our schedule/routine that we had set up, though it really does just include the basic things I want them to get to throughout the day and they did still get to them.

All the kids in Amelie's class were issued iPads at the beginning of the year, and one of her teachers set up her Zoom account on the tablet and showed her how to use it on that hectic last day. Amelie was miffed that I wouldn't let her eat during the meeting. Gotta follow proper teleconferencing etiquette.

I'm thankful that they're such good independent readers and that they were more than willing to read basically all morning. Sam's been thankful that he doesn't have to wake anyone up in the morning and rush them through breakfast and out the door.