Recent Events

This past week was sort of eventful and we really didn't get anything done with school since the following occurred:

• We had that snowstorm which knocked out our power for a few days 
• Mark broke his elbow and will be in a cast for 6-8 weeks
• Nora also had a cast put on her right leg to stretch it out for the next month or so
• We found out that baby #4 will hopefully be here in October (!!!)

After I get the hang of being my husband's right arm and fitting in extra therapies with Nora, make it through this week's expected snowstorm and get used to the always-there nausea, maybe I'll get around to attempting some educational activities.  Or maybe not.  Unschooling is looking like a better idea by the day!  

Oo Octopus & Ww Water

This week we combined Oo Octopus with the words to remember: "Even the octopus praises the Lord!" and Ww Water: "Jesus gives me Living Water."  We didn't do a whole lot with the curriculum, but we did start the unit off by watching a Blue Planet episode.  It is just fascinating.  While we were watching it, Nora asked if there were Psittacosaurus' that lived there. (She remembered that name from a dinosaur book we read through two weeks ago - I had forgotten that one!)  I said no, since they were not swimming dinosaurs and all the things in this show live in the ocean.  She said, "Oh I mean the ones that their mothers don't have to say "Henry, chew your food!" ... Me: "Oh! you mean Ostracoderms!  Yes, you're right - that kind of dinosaur did live in the ocean."  We reread the poem and tried to find some sea creatures that reminded us of what an Ostracaderm might look like.  Nice to know things are interesting them and being retained.

I am enjoying finding new recipes with our wheat free diet. I still bake whole wheat bread for Mark and the girls but I've been wheat free since the new year with one or two exceptions which I have paid for immediately.  Turns out that I'm very very sensitive to wheat and I didn't need to be feeling as bad and sluggish as I've felt all this time!  Wheat doesn't seem to bother anyone else very much, but they've been happy to eat far less grains than we had been eating.  The cashew flour pancakes with raspberry syrup were delicious...

Nora will be getting botox next week in her right leg followed by a series of casts over the course of a month.  Hopefully that will allow her to increase her range of motion since she is getting tighter with every growth spurt, making her walking even more of a challenge.  We keep up her stretching routine....Claire even helps out.

Here are the pictures from the week...

Sledding!

It's a loooong way down and back up.  He carried Nora up so many times.  What a good man.
Claire even went down all by herself!

Talking to Grammy on the phone - little teenager

Thanks for the matching hats, Grammy!

Reading...

Nora can sound out so many 3 letter words now

A popsicle stick and clothes pins help us make a problem.  Dinosaurs, chalk and a slate help us solve it.

Now we put the babies in their cribs - this was a big hit, of course.

Now 2 bears invite 3 more bear friends to a picnic....5 bears all together.  Nora kept doing this on her own and came up with stories to go along with her figures.  

Handwriting...

Visiting...

We had a lovely visit with Nanny and Poppop.  All of the knick knacks got a lot of love.    

 Playground...

She kept saying "Higher, Daddy!!"

Baptism...
We celebrated the anniversary of Claire's baptism on the 29th by talking about it and doing this Godly play Baptism story.  I did it pretty much word-for-word as the woman on the video demonstrates.  They were enthralled.  It was a really beautiful way to remember our baptisms.  They enjoyed playing with the story materials for a few days afterward.  One time I was able to grab a quick video of "Baby Bella's" baptism before they started fighting and they spotted me:

Chickens...
I love this video.  The weather warmed a bit today and Claire was able to visit her friends. You just have to see this chicken love...

I don't even know what to call this week...

Bleh.  It happened again. 

It's been a relatively long stretch since I've been depressed or whatever.  On Wednesday I woke up with sort of a paralyzing fear of facing my life that day.  I didn't want to get out of bed.  

When I did manage to emerge around 1pm, I did it from the safety of a hoodie.  (Mark was home and took over.)

For the rest of the day I tried to collect myself and be a functioning human being again but all attempts failed...

Yup, just something that happens to me.  I'm trying to be ok with that fact.  It only prolongs the sadness to be angry at myself for feeling that way.  So I ride it out and try to be patient with me.

Occasionally telling myself things like this helps:

(either that or it's really annoying)

Of course that's only helpful for a little while - until the novelty wears off.  

In the past I've been able to climb out of it by working myself into an excited tizzy about some project:

That usually makes me feel better about life for a little while, because at least I'm productive.   And being productive is good, right?!

Nope.

I've been keeping a journal for a few months and I can see that for me, too much productivity easily leads to a crash.  

In the interest of being "real" and transparent, I'm letting you all know about it.  No concerned phone calls needed.  I'm ok.  The girls are fine.  They have a mommy who just sits around and is available for snuggles.  They seem to enjoy it. 

This is just life.  It's all part of the journey.  But it's not my favorite part.

 (Thank you, Allie Brosch for providing the illustrations and humor to this post.)

Dd Dinosaur

Our tree is coming down this week.  At least we can save some of the Christmas balls for our January "mantle" display.

I had plans to do several neat dinosaur activities this week: Archeological Dinosaur Painting, Dino Eggs and Dinosaur Fossils.  We didn't end up doing any of them.  Before the new year began,  I dubbed 2014 "the year of use what you have".  It has served me very well so far.  There has been a lot of money and effort saved by choosing not to buy things and to be creative with what we already have.  I didn't have the necessary materials to do any of the activities above and it turned out just as well.  I've found over the last 4 months of homeschooling that any of these grand thematic ideas I have seem really neat and the girls might be excited about it but the actual learning and retaining that happens is close to nothing.

I'm working toward changing my approach to home learning.  In the new way of doing things, we have a dedicated "school" time from around 9-11am 4 days a week.  During this time I give them some ideas to work with and then I kind of sit back and study them while they work with those ideas.  I am totally present with them during that time, answering their questions, exploring along with them and suggesting ways to deepen their thinking.  (It'sort of like watching an episode of Mister Rogers - I've learned so much from that man in my adult years! It's my goal to be in a constant state of "Rogerdom".  More on that another day.)  Anyway, it seems to be working really well.  I try to lead them toward some sort of reading, writing and math work each day.

Here are some pictures from our week:

We began the week by talking about our words to remember: "Big and small, God made them all" with a brief introduction to dinosaurs.  We read the book "What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs" which gives information from a Creationist perspective.  They enjoyed that book tremendously.

I sat at the table with them and started drawing some dinosaurs.  The girls didn't want to do that.  Fine. Nora wanted to work on making a crown to wear.  Claire covered her paper with pretty blue and purple scribbles.  Then she wanted me to draw a dinosaur for her.  I had an idea to show her how Eric Carle makes his famous artwork.  So I cut out dinosaur pieces and she glued them onto her paper to construct a Plesiosaurus.  It turned out so well!  Then I got out Eric Carle's book "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear" and we compared artwork.  It was a neat impromptu session.  Claire immediately wanted a crown like Nora's with a lion this time, so we did another piece.

Almost everyday we were able to have our "poet-tea" time.  We all look forward to this after naptime.  I read from a book I found at our library.  They were discarding it so I picked it up for 25 cents.  What a gem!  We made coconut-lemon balls for our tea time treats this week to go along with our wheat-free diet.  They were really very good.

Here is one of our favorite poems from the book:

Ostracoderms were ancient fish

Who had no jaws to chew. 

With open mouths their food was slurped

As water filtered through.

Perhaps that's why ostracoderms

Kept such a pleasant mood - 

They never had to hear their moms 

Say, "Henry, chew your food!"

And here is the recipe for those yummy coconut-lemon balls.

Reading

They played with these foam letters and we made up a game to construct the alphabet.  26 is a lot of letters!  C & L lost interest around "M" but Nora kept going until she finished.  Then I helped her to spell out a few words.  She is really starting to understand the whole phonics blending thing. 

Writing

Math

We talked about big and small things and measuring.  We did some measurements with legos.

Nora is 16 legos long.  Claire is 14 legos long.  Lucy is 12 legos long. 

We got to see Poppi twice in one week.  He stopped by for a visit and then we went over there for a family dinner on Saturday.  He graciously participated in a yoga session with Nora as his teacher:

Twists

Plank

Child's Pose

Swinging Tree

Lion's Breath

Cat and Cow

Have a Great Week!