Homeschool Week 9 plus Mother’s Day 2020

This was the last full week of school for the year! Also our last week of strict lockdown, since I’ll be returning to in-person work this weekend. In a lot of ways, this 9 weeks feels like forever, but my imminent return to work and the kids being done with school for the year feels too soon. This post is for the week Saturday May 9th through the 15th.

Mother’s Day/Weekend
Amelie had a Girl Scout meeting via zoom on Saturday. They’re working on a photography badge, and she had to take pictures of things that appealed to her five senses. She spent a long time trying to get a picture of a bird in the backyard. Here is one of her photos. It's of a Pomsie and was for touch:

The kids gave me homemade cards Sunday morning, and we had pancakes for breakfast.

Later, Sam and James secretly snuck out for a Dairy Queen ice cream cake that they'd ordered earlier for me.

Then the kids and I went to the big park by Nana Jana’s house and flew kites. Sam stayed home and rested his foot - he's got a terrible blister. James’s kite lasted about 2 minutes before it got caught in a tree and ripped, though he had a very fun 2 minutes.  Here’s Amelie:

We had the whole park practically to ourselves.

They also played in the trees/brush and got a tick.

Monday
Here are the kids watching an educational documentary about the ocean.

Tuesday
James and Leah and I made gingerbread cookies from the recipe on the back of the Ninja Bread Man book that we've been reading over and over.

The kids declared that the initials were reserved - only Amelie could eat the "A" cookies, for example. They were good!

Wednesday
No photos!

James is done with the online math app - he's in the "Challenge" portion and has reached a section that is just incredibly difficult. He said, “Is this what second grade math is going to be like??” And I told him that it was supposed to be a challenge. We’re going to switch to having him practice touch typing.

Thursday
Amelie got a letter from her teacher penpal and then later that day another of her teachers came by to deliver a package and Amelie got to wave at her from the car. She'd signed up for painting club, but they obviously didn't get to meet in April and May, so the teacher brought over a goody bag with a canvas, paints, candy, balloons, and friendship bracelets. James ate some of the candy:

James also likes to doodle on the whiteboard we use for school: 

I gave Amelie's hair a trim (so that's me, Leah, and Amelie with DIY haircuts so far - all the girls) and then she recorded her piano pieces for a virtual recital.

Friday
Amelie re-recorded her piano pieces the next morning because she was not satisfied that we could hear her singing.


Here's the website with the whole recital: https://amajormusiclessons.com/recitals/may-15-2020-virtual

See, we are getting some use out of those matching Easter dresses after all! Family movie:

Leah's explaining something to Sam: 

There was a rabbit casually munching right outside of our window. You might have to zoom in - he blends in pretty well!

I called the kids over to look, and they watched for a long time before Spark wised up and barked and scared it away.

James took a picture of the beautiful sunset and brought it back in to show Sam.

Homeschool Week 8

Well, I've said this almost every week, but I didn't take many photos and don't remember much! We've reached the portion of the quarantine where I'm cutting my own hair and making doll clothes. Sam's continuing to make music videos and paint. We also did school! This is for the week of May 4, which was when Missouri was supposed to "reopen." I thought there might be some additional traffic on the roads in our neighborhood - it's been so nice with the bikes and walks that there hasn't really been any - but I didn't notice a difference. Still not many people driving as far as I can tell, but a lot of dog walking and kids on bikes. I'm supposed to do a tiny bit of work from home this week and then I'll go back in person Saturday and Sunday (just staff). Sam's still working from home.

Monday
James built a too-small fort out of a small table and a sleeping bag.

He enlarged the tent, but then more siblings joined and it was still too small.

I gave myself a haircut using the unicorn method popular on youtube. This one is easier to see (because her hair is straight) but this is the one I actually followed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTlT1hH_VwE&t=14s.

It didn't take much length off (maybe 3.5 inches), but it's shaped a lot nicer.

Tuesday
Here's what my quarantine cut looks like when my curls have fallen out somewhat. I'm old enough to know that you're supposed to take the selfie from above, but I was trying to get all of my hair in the shot.

Sam repainted a redbud for his area in the basement.

We moved the vehicles out of the driveway so there would be more room for the kids to ride. You see James is on the grass.

Journal time.

 I think they wanted me to stop taking pictures:

 Wednesday
Amelie in her gear, unicorn helmet and all.

I'm not sure how effective the pads are (the hand/palm protection seems like a good idea) since she's still using the training wheels and hasn't had a big crash. She was very anxious about crashing, though, so they've helped with that. Now maybe we won't lose all of the pieces for when she takes the wheels off and might need the crash gear!

Some of the kids wanted pedicures. I scrubbed James's feet with sugar scrub and he said I didn't do as good of a job as the professionals.

Amelie had zoom homeroom with her student teacher and they did a scavenger hunt/PE activity. I didn't know what was going on until I spied her doing sit-ups on the kitchen floor. The teacher would call out an item for them to go get and bring back to show the class (shampoo bottle, remote control, etc.), and if they didn't make it in the allotted time, they had to do different exercises (pushups, jumping jacks) that she'd call out.I heard Amelie tell the class that she had an advantage because our house is small (which is true!) 

We watched City of Ember for our movie, since Amelie just finished reading it with her literacy class. 

Thursday
Leah has been carrying around Amelie's old doll Kyle. Back when Amelie had him, he had clothes, but I couldn't find them, so I made some more out of scraps. Here are some little drawstring shorts:

And here's his Hawaiian shirt:

Poor Leah's got some spots around her nose, and we have several more days of topical antibiotic ointment.

James finally lost his wiggly tooth and has quite a large gap. 

Friday
James got a letter and project delivered from his teacher pen pal. I'd never met Ms. Lillig and she dropped it off at the house and I was so confused! After she left and we saw what was inside the bag, I asked James if it was Ms. Lillig and he didn't know - she was wearing a mask and he didn't recognize her, but I'm sure it must have been her. There were lots of goodies in the bag:

And he wanted to do the project right away:

After that, we peeled the wrappers off our broken crayons, snapped them into pieces, and melted them into big rainbow crayons in the oven, using our muffin tin. James did show and tell with his class later in the afternoon and showed them the crayons.

More Videos

Amelie recited the first line of a poem for a video for church. “We thank you sky, for your blue / also breeze, for what you do.”

Link to the whole thing.

James twirling a stick from our apple tree clean up.

Leah singing an improvised verse of “Singing with you is my prayer.” She’s building with Lego, so her verse is “building with you is my prayer.”

Quarantine Weekend 7

Saturday morning, Leah and James continued playing dress-up out of the costume drawer. Leah brought this piece of fabric to me (“it’s a beach”) and asked me to put it on her (“so I can be a beach.”)

It got decently warm and the kids wanted to play in the hose again. (I mean, it was still a little cool!) James found a better-fitting swimsuit. Leah sprayed me right after this.

We dragged this baby pool out of the shed.

Amelie was very excited.

Not as excited now, it seems. She filled up the wagon to wade in as well.

Sunday was more overcast. While I was helping facilitate a preschool Sunday school online about imagination, my own kids were outside being “tree dragons.” Not rabbits, don’t be ridiculous.

Then they built this fort around all this grass they’d gathered.

Figet spinner.

This game took a lot of planning/directing it looks like.

Leah wanted us to “hug together.”

Not pictured: several short bike rides. Amelie even went around the block once.