Quarantine Weekend 6

So last weekend, Sam entered a 48-hour short film making contest and I accomplished three whole hours of work from home. Here are some photos from last Saturday and Sunday.

I woke up Saturday morning and James had placed notes all over the couch telling us not to sit - you’ll also notice another note on the book on the floor instructing us not to touch it, either.

"Don't sit here, you bum!"

There was also this note on the piano bench helpfully directed at me. "Do not sit, Mom!"

The kids put on swimsuits, and James found  a 3T swim shirt and they played in the hose. Leah was very industrious in creating her own water table by filling up the wagon. Then all three stood in the wagon as a miniature wading pool, but my camera died so there isn’t a picture.

I finally got out a super cool toy of a floor piano (I was saving this in the back of the van for desperate times), that James and Leah are lying on, instead of playing it with their feet (they did that too.)

James thought these sunglasses were cool with one lens out. 

 I’m trying to get my hair to be curly.

Sam took the kids out to Grindstone. It was flooded and muddy. They had a big time.

As you might imagine, they came home completely covered in mud (Sam, too).

Here's a still photo from his short film, a suspenseful mocumentary:

Homeschool Week 6

This is for the week April 20th through the 24th.

Monday
James had his class meeting online first thing. He wrote his teacher penpal a note on a card and drew her a picture on the back instead of doing his journal.

Leah wanted to take her doll on our walk. You might remember Kyle, who used to be Amelie's.

James made this robot with and a human for scale.

Tuesday
Amelie worked on directions (North, South, East, and West)  and clockwise/counterclockwise today, so James did a little bit, too. James did some review with money. James is 98% done with the first grade curriculum for the math app that they're doing daily. Amelie's only about 40% done, but looking at the progress, she's made almost all of that in the past 30 days, so I think that she wasn't doing it at school while school was in session the way that James was - probably we were supposed to have her do this at home the whole time!

Also, I took a meal out to our friends who just had a baby Saturday while Amelie did her remote piano lesson. They humored me and held the tiny sweet baby up to the window while I left the food on the porch. What interesting times we live in. (I asked the kids if they wanted to make "Happy Birthday" cards for the baby and  they said no!)

Sam took the big kids to Three Creeks Conservation Area out a little bit south of town.

Spark came along, too:

Wednesday
Amelie has 3 Zoom meetings on Wednesdays. Her first one was with Ms. Malveaux, and they worked on dictation sentences - it's just her and one other student. The next one is math right afterward, and then she had a half-hour break until homeroom.

James wanted to ride his bike on our after-lunch walk, but despite warnings, he zoomed right through an intersection and then in a somewhat-separate-but-related bad choice he rode off the path at the park, down a hill, and crashed in the woods.

James drew and then went on a hunt to find several 3D shapes (geometric solids!) throughout the house (cones, rectangular prisms, cubes, pyramids, cylinders).

Thursday
Amelie had her online meetings for literacy (they're reading and discussing City of Ember) and science.

James struck a deal with me, and for math, we played a game of Yatzee and he kept score by himself (making a chart, writing numbers, addition, multiplication, comparison!). He also checked the time before we started, wrote it down, checked the time that the game ended, and figured out it took us 35 minutes to play. (We were interrupted by the pre-schooler.)

James agreed to take the lone remaining training wheel off his bike. One of them fell off, and he'd been riding with just the one training wheel, which I have to imagine is actually more difficult than not having any at all.

Sam made a cherry pie, and with persuasion added our first initials to the crust.

Friday
James campaigned to play Yatzee again for math, and then as he was making the scorecard (a chart!), he says, "Hey this is a lot like math!" He's on to me. Apparently, I took no photos Friday. James did a lot more bike riding, and even went out with Sam also riding.

Quarantine Weekend 5

Some photos from last weekend. Sam's on a nature photo kick, here's one of a redbud from our park. I've learned during this quarantine period that the redbud blossoms are edible - everybody's turned into rugged survivalists. 

They can't play on the equipment, so they climb the trees:

Or read:

Look how long the clover chain they made is! Don't worry, they know the drill about hand washing immediately when we get home.

More reading.

Even more reading. The book is Just Annoying if you were curious (a chapter book! not even a graphic novel!)

This is in our overgrown backyard.

One thing that has made this whole ordeal a heck of a lot more bearable  (pleasant, even) is the glorious spring we are having. Look at James's goofy face!

A big weed/tree/thing was growing up around our apple tree, so Sam trimmed it up (with help).

Homeschool Week 5

This is for April 13th through the 17th. I just started to write it last night, and I am not remembering much at all and I didn't even take many pictures to jog my memory, so here goes. We are still chugging along with our daily independent reading, chores, journal, walk, math app, and 30 minutes one-on-one with each kiddo, and they're still reading tons, but they're already long done with the nonfiction they brought home from school so I've slacked on enforcing that in the morning (we'd started out having them do independent nonfiction reading while I was doing 'school' with the other kid).

Monday

James had his online class meeting at 8:30am, and the kids went around and checked in with their news. This is how it would go, with each kid telling their news, Ms. Newkirk repeating it, and then James yelling it out to me even though I was just a few steps away from the laptop:

Kid on the teleconference: I had my birthday
Teacher: Oh, kid had his birthday
James: Kid had his birthday!
I say: Oh, kid had his birthday

Kid 2: I lost a tooth!
Teacher: Kid 2 lost a tooth!
James yells to me: Kid 2 lost a tooth!
Me: Aw, Kid 2 lost a tooth

When it was James's turn, he talked about dying Easter eggs on Sunday. He wrote a thank-you note to his teacher penpal instead of having to do his journal for the day.

Tuesday

Amelie had her piano lesson online again, and it's going surprisingly well - better than some of her school lessons, but then again it's one-on-one. She also worked on recording the first two lines of a poem for one of the videos they'll play for online church. 

Wednesday

Amelie watched a cool science demonstration with her homeroom class over Zoom, and James got his next work packet from school in the mail. We all went out to Rockbridge State Park. They've set it up to be one-way for better physical distancing on the wooden trail paths, but we went on a different (empty) path anyway. 

Thursday

Amelie's work packet came in the mail (this was for work that was technically supposed to start on Monday, though they did put links online.) Also, we got word that they wouldn't be collecting the packets back, they are just enrichment activities that won't affect their final grades (not that the kids get letter grades anyway at Ridgeway.)  Anyway, we're continuing to putter along. James wanted to get up and ride his bike, so I was able to go around the block twice with him and then down one of the dead-end streets near us. 

I learned yet another new way to do 4th grade multi-digit multiplication. It's called "partial product multiplication" and it seems a little easier than the traditional way with the added benefit of paving the way for factoring and the distributive property later on in Algebra. Here's the youtube video I used to teach myself how to do it (just the first two minutes): 

A while ago Nana Jana got us this book, called What Shall I Paint, and we did an activity from it on Thursday. 

Here's my cat: 

And here's a watercolor Sam did with Leah: 

We also played several games of hide-and-seek. Here's Leah hiding: 

And Sam took this one of Leah being cute outside when they were supposed to be hiding: 

James invented this sock monster: 

Friday

I made banana blueberry bread with Leah for breakfast: 

And other than banana bread, I don't remember much from Friday, except I know we let the kids skip school with Sam in the afternoon.