Eclectic Homeschooling: Week 5 of 2023

Monday: Asa and Owen started a yucky cough and draining nose on Sunday, and they woke up about the same this morning. We have been so fortunate that they haven't gotten every sickness that went around this summer, so I am not upset or anything. They are their normal selves, just coughing more than usual. 

It was rainy today. I remember reading through some of my old journals from when I was a kid, and many entries started with "Today is our third rainy day in a row! 😔 I feel as dreary as it looks outside right now. When will the sun come out?" I miss having weather like that. Rain for days on end. Having nothing but sun, sun, and more sun during the summer is so boring. We occasionally have random flash storms, but it just isn't the same. The sun did come out towards dinnertime, but it was just a good and proper rainy day. It was predicted that we would have a few rainy days, even one with some thunderstorms, but I just checked the weather and now it says today was the only one. 😕 Oh well. I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

The boys wanted to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (again) after Owen found the disc's they borrowed from the library. So I used it as a motivation for them to do their schoolwork quickly and with a good attitude. After they watched the episodes I quickly put the DVD cases in the library book bag so hopefully they forget about them until after I return them, haha. 

We are doing a pumpkin unit study this week. We read a book about how many seeds are in a pumpkin, and then today we read a book about a ghost haunting a house until the Grandma made the perfect pumpkin pie. I asked the boys if they want to learn how to make pumpkin puree so we can make some pumpkin pie, and they all excitedly said yes! So we will make some pumpkin pie from scratch this Friday or Saturday. I have only made pumpkin pie from canned pumpkin puree, so I am excited to learn. This will also be my first time making sourdough pie crust so Matthew can have it too. We will see how it goes.

I pulled the boys away from Legos before I started to make dinner to go for a short walk. I wanted to get some fresh air without making their sickness worse. 

Rain boots and umbrellas always make me smile. Another reason why I wish it would rain more. 

Both Ean and Owen got tired of carrying umbrellas, haha. They only held hands for a minute or two before Ean got tired of walking slow and ditched Owen. But it was cute while it lasted. 

I am almost done with the first baby sweater I am making. Just got started on sleeves. I am a little nervous it is going to be too big, but I have decided I should worry more about sizing after I have washed and blocked it. It might end up being just right. No pictures right now. Hopefully soon!

I just listened to a podcast addressing the question of when to start teaching composition for children. She said she doesn't suggest doing anything other than reading out loud, handwriting practice, and copywork until children are in 6th grade! 😳 It made me wonder if I yet again am doing too much. I love English, and so I am excited to do it with the boys. But is it worth the time? I am unwilling to throw out the curriculum because I already spent the money...but I am reassessing my expectations on the boys. Both of their Summer Bridge activity workbooks wanted them to compose answers to questions every couple days. Usually I let them write down one sentence, although there was space for a paragraph, but I felt pressure to make sure we got that taught this upcoming year, because they struggled answering the most simple questions. Now I wonder if we should even do Summer Bridge this upcoming Summer. They ended up hating most of it anyway. I will have to keep thinking about this. 

Tuesday: Today was a very typical day, but we did art today instead of yesterday. We had to make a painting from a photo.

This was the most excited they were to stick with an art project. Ira picked a giraffe. Asa picked a rhinoceros. Ean picked a photo of himself walking in the rain. And I did an owl.

If the boys learn to like using watercolor crayons, I might need to get some more colors.

 

Asa was frustrated that his rhino was as black as the background. He tried to get it right twice. A gray would be helpful. This isn't the first time someone has asked for one.

Wednesday: Today was a whirlwind and not much happened. We didn't get in any schoolwork. I had a doctor appointment, and then we had errands to run after lunch, including our weekly library trip. As usual, once we were done with that I made dinner, then it was bedtime. It is hard recording days like today because although we were busy, there really isn't much to record.

Thursday: I was up all night with "real" practice contractions. The super uncomfortable ones that are a tiny bit painful. And those contractions just kept up throughout the day. By the time they were less intense, I was just exhausted and not feeling well. So we didn't do anything too exciting. 

We did get individual work in this morning. Since we watched a movie, we didn't get in any read alouds. Oh, well. They are getting quite use to school on Fridays now. They might be extra motivated to get it done if we use cooking pumpkin as a motivation.

We did go to the park that we had to leave prematurely last week, and stayed for an hour. They loved it. I did too. It was one of those times when the weather was perfect, the sky was blue, and the kids were playing happily. I found myself just sitting on a bench feeling content and happy. I just closed my eyes and soaked it up since I was feeling yucky. 

We bought 2 pumpkins that we are going to de-seed and cook tomorrow. We are excited to make pie, cinnamon rolls, and bread using the pumpkin. I was able to get the pumpkins for 25 cents a pound, so if all goes well I will be buying a few more to put pumpkin in the freezer. Canned pumpkin is so expensive. 

We ended the day watching the animated "The Addams Family". Watching movies that go with the holiday coming up is always fun for us. I do feel bad because they had a lot of screen time again today.

You know, this is the second week in a row I have relied on screentime to give me some quiet and the ability to take a nap or a deep rest towards dinnertime. Maybe I need to stop regretting it so much and make it the set time to have screen time if I need that rest. Am I just being lazy, or am I needing that time right now, especially since a lot of that exhaustion is coming from pregnancy? I don't think I am going to magically not need that rest anytime soon, because it will be like this the first weeks after the baby is born. When I try to rest without the screen, it really isn't rest because someone is screaming, fighting, or crying every few minutes. So maybe I just need to be more intentional about when they get their screentime, even if it is daily. It won't be like this forever. If I don't let them watch stuff in the morning or before lunch, I won't feel so bad about an hour or two of screens in the afternoon.

Friday: The pumpkin really was a great motivation to get school done today. And Matthew was home, so they wanted to spend time with him. I was much recovered physically, so we were able to have a pretty normal day. 

Asa, who is really good at math and usually loves it, put this in his math book and showed me. It was suppose to say once he did the problem, "Math is fun." Instead, it said:

"Math is not fun." Maybe I shouldn't have thought it was funny, but I couldn't help but laugh and I couldn't stop laughing. So all the boys thought it would be funny to say "English, reading, poetry, Spanish, etc...is not fun." I hope they don't actually believe that, haha.

They ended up not liking de-seeding a pumpkin as much as they thought they would. They were grossed out by how slimy it was. I don't blame them. I hate it too.

Then they were double disappointment when they realized it wouldn't be until Saturday until we could eat a pumpkin treat. But, they learned a valuable lesson in working hard and patience. We are having pumpkin cinnamon rolls tomorrow, yum!

We worked on Minecraft Lego sets for an hour or two while Matthew and Owen took a nap. Legos are exhausting to look through, haha. But we haven't done it in a while, and they loved looking through the huge box of Legos for the pieces they needed. We will need to do it more frequently. They actually helped look for pieces, so it was fun.