Easter 2020

Well, Easter was one of the roughest quarantine days yet, I think due to the kids having a lot of frustrated expectations meeting reality. It was the first time that the big kids didn't get to go out and do a big egg hunt with their cousins at Sam's folks, and then it stormed the night before, so we hid eggs inside for them to find when they woke up, and James was hoping to go immediately outside for an egg hunt. However, I think we made some good memories with throughout the day, but I was glad to get back to the new normal 'school' routine on Monday.

I bought the girls matching dresses, which they got a big kick out of. I got James a suit, too, but he wasn't interested in putting it on just for a picture.

Leah was not cooperative for the pictures, but at least she was having a good time. The kids wanted to stand on the big rock, of course.

Here's Leah showing off the tulips.

I just wore my Easter dress from last year, since we didn't go anywhere.

This is the apple tree I bought on a whim at HyVee (still too small for apples, but it has nice blooms).

At this point, one of our neighbors (they were also outside in their front yard doing Easter-type stuff at home), very gingerly tiptoed over and asked if it would be okay if they took a picture of all 5 of us, which was super nice of them, and here we are: 

Spark was very interested in the goings-on. Sam put the blinds up for him so that he could see us better since he really doesn't like it when we're in the front yard without him.

They did do an egg hunt in the backyard later as well:

Grandma Mary and Papaw dropped off Easter baskets the day before, and Nana Jana also brought over notebooks, bubbles, and more eggs for (us to hide for) the kids.

It looks like Leah lost her pink ribbon.

We hid more in the  house:

I think Sam was giving them hints:

Later in the day it rained again and James and Leah went back out and played with the umbrella. 

We'd told the kids that it was my friend Shauna's birthday and Leah insisted that we paint pictures for her.

We also dyed a dozen eggs, and they lasted the rest of Sunday as pretty Easter eggs and then the kids and I ate the boiled eggs over the next two days. (This was a bold move since we're not going to the store very often!)

Finally, here are James and Amelie playing with their Easter slime. Leah got hers all over her cardigan, a bath towel, and our bath mat, but she had a grand time for those 12 minutes before it had to be thrown away.

More Videos

Sam made another video, and this one includes the kids as helpers. He created this one for last week's morning on-line UU church service (that one included a montage of pictures of church members which has been removed here).  He claims after this one, he's taking a small break to focus on other things for a little while. It's #95 in the gray hymnal. 



They've also been doing a thing on the church facebook page, where they'll pick a hymn and then folks will each sing a line and then upload a video and then you can watch them all in a row. They needed another volunteer for this one, so Sam recorded Leah singing the second-to-last line. 

Leah and James playing in the rain: 

Homeschool Week 4

Typing out "homeschool week 4" for the title is a little sobering. The governor also announced  this week that schools were closed through the end of the year as well.

James is basically finished with the original packet the school sent home. Amelie is more than halfway through the math, and wrote 2 of the three essays. They're supposed to be sending out new packets Monday. The kids also each have a pen pal on the staff at school. Amelie's got the librarian, who sent her a bookmark that she'd drawn a character from the Wings of Fire books on, so Amelie enthusiastically wrote her back, described the plot of a book in the letter, and included a picture she'd drawn of a character from Wings of Fire as well. James has not been so enthusiastic, but the teacher he has sent a vellum pokemon which Leah and I colored to hang up in the window, and her return address shows that she's close enough to walk by, so he and Sam are going to walk by her house on their big walk today.

The various zoom (online meeting) schedules changed AGAIN this week, and new guidance came out that the teachers are not going to grade students' work over the period of distance learning - that they'll practice and review. At Ridgeway, the elementary school students don't get letter grades anyway, so that's not much of a difference. For the high school and middle school students, they'll be able to improve their grades if they do extra work remotely, but they will be "held harmless" and grades won't be lowered or failed based on what they're able to do (or not able to do) remotely.

I know from several of my friends teaching or who have kids in other districts that the communication has not been as clear, and also that expectations for students (and their parents) have been much more overwhelming. I'm hoping that'll change because of DESE guidelines.

Monday
It looks like I didn't take any photos on Monday. I poached Sam’s phone and found this one:

I promise that we’re still checking off the list each day: chores, walk, piano, math app, journal, school with me in the AM, and school with Sam in the afternoon. Though I did let them skip out on afternoon school on Friday.

Tuesday
Leah spilled water behind the chair, so I overturned the chair to clean, and these two were THRILLED with the overturned chair/cave.

One of the parents in Amelie's kindergarten class donated a set of manipulatives to all of the kids, and we have used the set every single day with both kids this whole time during math time with me in the morning. There aren't many pictures of math in the morning, since I'm the one doing that part, and I'm the doing the blog/taking most of the pictures

They have especially come in handy for fractions and time. 

Wednesday
I think Amelie has been eating blueberries. She's also been collecting violets in the yard.

James is making yet another set of Pokemon-esque cards.

James was having a pretty unmotivated day, but then Sam did an impromptu music lesson with him, and he liked it enough to write his own song after the lesson was over (the higher note is a “d,” and the lower note is a “g.”

More unprompted writing from James. I don't know what she did, but this says:
Wanted 1000,000 pay if caught. Description: Name Amelie, Height 56 inches, Weight 900000000 pounds, long (hair?), two eyes, two ears, one nose, glasses. If found call 911.

Sam took the kids to Grindstone for several hours for homeschool PE, and I stayed home in peaceful silence and fixed the vacuum cleaner. Here they are wading across the creek. 

Here they are on a hike: 

Thursday

We're playing lots and lots of games. (Spider plant on the table was a gift from Amelie's unit B teacher, and the oversize mug, which was just a bit too oversize to work for coffee -- even for me -- was a gift from Nana Jana.)

We took our walk to the small neighborhood park. The playground is closed, so they're climbing more trees than usual. 

Friday
Friday was munch-and-read. Amelie's making her way through Harry Potter 5.

Leah and I have been painting and doing playdough. 

She requested that I make a crocodile eating a fish.

Quarantine Weekend 3

This post is an update about the past weekend and then some miscellaneous catch up from Sam’s phone photos - I thought we were set up to share these on Google Photos but I guess that wasn’t entirely successful.

Well, Sam spent the weekend working on another video. The one they played at church (over the internet) had a photo montage of pictures folks had sent in. I spent most of the morning Saturday sewing us two masks by hand since my sewing machine has been missing a cord for ages. They’re actually probably really both for Sam since he’s our designated grocery shopper and I haven’t gone anywhere and am not really planning to until work and school open back up. Unless, I guess the recommendations change and we’re asked to wear these on our daily family walk, in which case I’d need to make the kids some, too. I used the Victorious STL pattern with t-shirt strips for straps and a layer of fusible interfacing in one (so three layers with a pocket to add an additional filter - coffee filter or my friend may drop off some of the blue shop towels that do the best job). I had some interfacing  (already fused to fabric swatches) leftover from a very old baby shower project. The first one I cut out my two front pieces by sliding the pattern over instead of flipping the pattern over and got two right sides instead of a right and a left so I wasted my other piece of interfacing, which is apparently all sold out and hard to come by. I also put a coffee bag bendable metal closer in for one nosepiece, but I only had one of those so I used a folded-over pipe cleaner for the other. Sam was surprised we just had all the stuff to make the masks around the house.

Sam also said, “I guess we don’t have to smile for the photo.”

I was scheduled to teach Potter Class at church, and our DRE asked if I’d be willing to lead it over Zoom and I said yes. Then I worked myself up about preparing for it since I had participated but not led a Zoom meeting before, and then I managed to get the time it started wrong and missed half the class. Anyway, I read a story about rainbows to a handful of preschoolers and at the end we encouraged them to make rainbow art and hang it up in their windows for the people walking by to see. Amelie, Leah, and I cut shapes out of craft paper and hung them up in rainbow order in our big living room windows. I had to nudge Amelie to do the arts and crafts with me, but as I knew, she was into it once we got started. James and Sam and Spark took a gigantic nearly two hour walk around the neighborhood while we were crafting. Here’s Amelie standing on the end table:

And this is the view from outside:

After my very, very, very brief stint as an online Sunday school teacher, we watched big church on the laptop and for the 3rd week in a row the kids are just not interested in it at all. This would not be so much of an issue if they’d be content to play somewhere else - perhaps independent of each other, maybe outside, the way they are perfectly willing and able to do many other times throughout the week - while Sam and I listen but they inevitably bring out the rowdiest, oneriest behavior right on top of each other right in front of us in the living room. I cannot imagine how incredibly difficult it must be for families where both parents are attempting to work from home if this is the way they act for the 60 minutes they have to suffer without a parent’s attention.

For example, I went looking for James and found him quietly lining up his figurines (on one of the desks Sam made).

Leah loves to paint. She frequently wants me to sit and paint with her, and I frequently (now that they’re home) try to get the big kids to sit and paint with her instead (this has been almost entirely unsuccessful, but I did convince James to play alongside her with play dough last week).

I told the kids to stand next to my tulips so that I could take a picture and James obliged.

Leah practicing social distancing. A bit later she wanted me to carry her, dropped her stick, then needed to run back after it yelling, “My stick! My stick!”

We’ve been successful at limited to no screen time outside of their school math app for the kids (because I’m on leave), but we’ve been watching a nightly family movie. James gleefully reported this to his class at their homeroom meeting - “Every Single Day!!” We rotate who gets to pick the movie and without fail, James has chosen Sing every third night or so every time it’s his turn to pick.

Okay, these are from Sam's phone (still super recent). Amelie's so stylish:

James:

I've mentioned before that their favorite quarantine toy BY FAR is the dog crate that the dog won't use. They tip it over on its side so it's harder to get into and out of (I guess, I don't really know why). They're also in the process of filling it up with ripped bits of scrap paper "hay." Notice all three are crammed in there (they argue about who gets to be in the crate!) 

Me (and Leah) helping James with Zoom.

Wow, look at that climbing!

Grindstone nature area:

This one's at our neighborhood park. I did not carry the other kids on any kind of regular basis once they got to be as big as Leah. My options for the walk are to amble along very slowly at her three-year-old pace or to carry a 35 pound pack.