Ownership

We just finished one of my favorite weekends of the year. I'm waiting for some of the talks to be uploaded before I properly talk about General Conference. But I will share one of the only pictures I took over the past two days. For the first time, Topher had his own Conference Notebook. He was delighted. He understood that he had his own book just like the big kids. His book contained about five coloring pages I printed out of the Friend magazine. He alternated between coloring the pages, coloring the book itself, dumping out all the crayons, then ripping the pages out. Conference Notebooks have a learning curve when you're not quite two.

The Edible Joke

I am not one for pranks. I'm not even too keen on surprises, though nice, gentle, happy surprises are okay. April Fool's Day isn't really my holiday. But my dear friend loves it and has so much fun with it that her enthusiasm was contagious this year. I pondered throughout the day about what I could do for the kids. Inspiration struck when I walked into my basement pantry to gather supplies for dinner.

I somehow managed to smuggle the ingredients upstairs and then subsequently prepare them without anyone noticing, which doesn't say much for my children's observational skills. I called everyone to the table and put the pot, lid on, on the table. We prayed, then I started serving. The kids all had looks of shock. They thought I had burned the angel hair pasta. Then they smelled it and started smiling.

Did you know that angel hair pasta covered in cherry pie filling, melted chocolate chips, and shredded coconut kind of looks like regular pasta?

When they realized what I'd done I whipped around and grabbed a second pot off the stove which contained regular pasta and meat sauce and called out, "April Fool's Day!" I think I was only supposed to say "April Fools!" but I'm a novice and was focused on other things. Then the kids were really confused. Peter decided I had double pranked them, first with the sugary impostor, then with the real thing.

Peter ate five plates of the chocolate cherry stuff, then announced it was starting to taste weird and stopped. Topher tasted it and threw it off his tray, after making sure he was wearing a fair portion of course. Phoebe thought it was okay but too chocolaty. Cooper and Sophie both loved it, sort of. This was Cooper's review: "It's not gross, but it's weird. The pasta and chocolate is a weird combination, but the chocolate and cherries is good. It's weird, not bad weird, but not good weird, it's like weird in a neutral way. It's like your mouth wants to keep eating it even though it's not a good flavor."

They all agreed I should do this again in the future.

Thophie'th New Thmile

"Mom! I have a little lithp now!" -Sophie, delighted at finally losing her final front tooth.

In a Pickle (Jar)

One of Cooper's school assignments this week was to draw a picture of a fish in something other than water. Have I mentioned that Cooper really loves pickles?

Educational Agility

Yesterday was our first day of e-learning. It was...okay. Each grade kindergarten through sixth has a Choice Board with six learning activities for each major school subject (math, science, social studies, reading, writing), plus a category for specials (art, gym, music, library) for the week. The kids are supposed to pick one thing from each category each day, totaling five or six (depending on the grade) tasks each day. In theory it should take no more than two hours.

It took more than two hours.

I sat down with the kids in the morning and went through the offered selections. Then, using a variation on the agile board method, we wrote down each task they were responsible for for the day on a sticky note in their assigned color. Then we made one door of our TV cabinet the To Do side and other door the Done side and stuck the Post-Its on the appropriate side. Peter used the mirror on the sideboard for his sticky notes since his assignments are due at the end of the week instead of the end of each day.

This method actually worked pretty well. The kids had some autonomy over what they did and were aware of how much they had accomplished and how much they still had to do. That didn't necessarily mean that they moved faster or worked harder, just that they could see the big picture for the day up front.

We attempted to plug the schoolwork into the schedule that we've been using for the last two weeks. Instead of finishing at the appointed time and moving on to free time, everyone kept doing schoolwork right up until dinner, then Sophie did a little more in the space between dinner and Family Home Evening, just to finish the day's tasks. Some of that extra time was because of tantrums or timeouts or strong negative feelings about needing to make and follow a plan to get the work done. I'm hoping we can cut those particular things out and get through the required stuff faster today.

Quarantine Week Two: The Pictures

 

 

Crisis Management

Tomorrow marks two weeks into this brave new world of living inside our house all the time. Here are my thoughts so far, in no particular order:

• I'm a confusing combination of extrovert and homebody, so I'm happy staying in, but I miss people. 
• I really wish we could spend more time outside. The park/walking trail that we visited last week is now locked down, so that's out. We tried to play outside our house but found at least a dozen peanut shells around our home. There weren't any around our neighbor's homes. It's been going on since shortly after we moved here, but never so many at once. For a long time I wanted to think maybe it was someone snacking while working on the grounds crew (but they haven't been here in months) or a squirrel (but that would be a very particular rodent to only choose our house). Whatever the reason, we can't play outside. 
• I wish we had a yard.
• We have eaten very well. Bryan and I both like to cook and we've jumped right in to making use of time to prepare meals. And we're being extra diligent about eating all the leftovers.
• We go through a lot of food.
• I learned how to make Tartar Sauce this week.
• And coleslaw.
• And hoagie rolls.
• Our regular weekly shopping trips look like we're hoarding. Bryan got groceries yesterday and overheard another pair of shoppers judging the abundance of items in his cart. He turned to them and said, "I have seven people in my house, this is just a regular shopping trip." They scoffed and walked away.
• This whole thing is pretty scary.
• Our school district will officially begin distance learning on Monday. Thankfully they're not requiring daily teleconferencing meetings for each child (imagine a class full of Kindergartners on a video conference), but instead will post daily assignments to be completed by the students that day. We'll see how that goes.
• Peter is going stir-crazy at the lack of socialization. He really wants access to online gaming all day long so he can talk to his friends. He'll have to make do with what I think is a generous hour and a half. Yeah, he's an extrovert too.
• I asked Cooper if he wanted to video chat with his good friend from church and school. He said, "No, I'm okay." He is not an extrovert.
• Phoebe has a daily check-in with her class where they type messages to each other on a Google Doc. I think it's the highlight of her day. She's also an extrovert.
• I'm not sure if Sophie is an introvert or an extrovert, but I do know that she's loud. So loud. 
• Topher really, really, really loves having all the kids and Bryan home.
• I love it too.

Lunch Selfies

Advanced Reading or My Brother's Kindle

Quarantine Week One: The Words

Last week went exceptionally well. We had a good balance of school and work and play and family time. We can't really play outside (I'll explain that in a later post), which has been hard, but opening the windows has helped.

Many states canceled school last week and had the kids jump right into online learning as their teachers were scrambling to set it up. The state of Pennsylvania just canceled school without sending home required work. Based on what the superintendent of our school district has said (that every child in the district needs access to a screen and the internet) and what's happening with the spread of COVID-19, it appears that our time at home will extend beyond the original two weeks. That means our teachers are spending these two weeks getting ready to move their classrooms to online formats. But for now, we don't have that in place. So while the rest of the country complains about being suddenly thrown into homeschooling, we could take the two weeks as time off.

We aren't.

I mentioned last week that we put a loose schedule in place. We also setup some ground rules for each weekday (chores and school) and we chose to make Saturday (fun breakfast, more chores) and Sunday (church at home, attempt at resting) feel different from the rest of the week. Here are the ground rules:

• get dressed everyday, no pajama days
• open all the blinds in the house and let in whatever sunlight we can
• the kitchen is only open during certain times of the day, no all-day grazing
• we study the scriptures as a family as soon as breakfast ends
• everyone does chores
• everyone does school
• everyone exercises
• each of the three big kids has a thirty minute turn taking care of/playing with Topher in the afternoon so I can make dinner

Depending on who you are these either sound restrictive or lax, but they were just right for us. These rules meant that by 3pm each day all the kids had their charts done and were eligible to play video games. Peter and Phoebe are good at getting stuff done when they want to, but Cooper and Sophie really struggle. This plan helped them a lot, which means Cooper and Sophie love the schedule while Peter and Phoebe are not fans.

School consisted of Khan Academy, Prodigy, First In Math, Scratch, Starfall, PBS Kids, piano, reading lessons for Sophie (a review), worksheets that her teacher emailed, and lots of reading. My mild obsession with having educational materials on hand has really paid off this week. I guess I'm still a homeschooler at heart.

We did have rough spots. 

I am now on the clock and working with at least one child all the time from about 7am to 9pm, depending on when kids wake up and if Peter goes to bed on-time, so I'm very worn out. I've eked out time for my personal scripture study, but beyond that my usual reading has taken a major hit. Plus, I am an extrovert and, while I do love the extra family time, I need other people too. This means I've been on Facebook waaaaaaaay too much after bedtime. It's not real social interaction, but it's something. I've texted with several friends and family members, checking in to see how they are, and we've started using the app Marco Polo to connect with people. That helps too, but it's still tough.

Overall though, it was a good first week.