Monday was kind of rough with the kids fighting a bit more than usual. Probably a combo of Easter the day before and that it was super windy (for some reason wind makes kids crazy). For PE we went to the park to try and fly some kites Savannah had come across the week before during brush and bulky pick up. They were the super fancy kinds. I remembered that we had some kites that had been in our garage for years, so I grabbed those, too. They were the dollar store kind. Out of 3 fancy ones and 2 dollar store ones we were able to get one fancy one and one cheap one up in the air .
Being out with so many kids and so few kites and the kites not flying super easy reminded me why those kites had been sitting untouched in our garage for so many years.
The kids had fun, but also got easily frustrated when the kites didn't go as they wanted it to. Finally they went to play kickball while I ran over to Fry's to pick up my grocery order. Unfortunately there were a lot of people picking up their orders at the same time so it wasn't as quick as I had hoped. By the time I got back there had been more fighting and Grandma was ready to go home and have some peace and quiet.
Megan was so excited to have a zoom meeting arranged with her friend Emma. She's been missing her friends at school and her class hadn't done any zoom meetings, so I texted Emma's mom to set it up. Megan read some of her favorite book, Dragon's Fat Cat to Emma, and Emma read a book to Megan. They showed each other their rooms and stuffed animals and just had a real good time.
Friday Megan's class had a zoom meeting and she was excited to see the rest of her classmates, too. They'll do one every Friday for the rest of the school year.
For science on Tuesday Grandma had the kids build their own tornado making machine. Then we watched a Smarter everyday about the Coriolis Effect.
During school Rachel just sits and works on her assignments. I have to work with the other kids and have a list of what they should be working on ready for them, but Rachel just organizes her time nicely and plods right though. She was done with her work for last week by Wednesday. One of her assignments was to create a coat of arms. This is what she made:
Upper left is latin for knowledge is power, lower left is latin for the pen is mightier than the sword.
I've started going on bike rides a few times a week first thing so I can get some exercise in before I have to get the kids going on their chores and school. It is lovely to be out in nature and enjoy the fresh air.
I decided to go every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but then last week our workout group decided we should have a Zoom workout group on Fridays, so we did that. It was nice to see my friends again.
We even got to see Jillian and Alayna that have moved away. Super fun.
Annie finished one of her school assignments recording some of her dreams and goals for the future:
Annie often feels overwhelmed on Monday mornings about how much there is to do for the week because her packet of printed work looks a little thick, I guess. But by Wednesday she is usually nearly done with the whole thing. If only she could remember that come Monday again.
For Spanish we've been learning about body parts. We traced a couple of the kids, then had two groups work on labeling the body in spanish.
With watching the daily broadcast from their school at 9:00, we usually end up having about 15-20 minutes for Spanish class. We're learning to sing I am a Child of God in Spanish, then we watch a video on Rockalingua and either do a worksheet or other activity before we start regular school at 9:30.
Grandma does so much with the younger kids each day. She helps them stay on task and get worksheets done, play learning games, and practice reading. She's such a good grandma.
We went down to the Cienega Creek Preserve again because the kids love playing in the water there and it's a relatively short drive. I found a caterpillar climbing on my sock, so the kids took turns holding it on a stick.
We had decided that instead of packing lunches for our trip, we'd just take advantage of the free lunches the school is giving out during the school shut downs for all kids 18 and younger. We expected sandwiches, but that day there turned out to be pizza and breakfast burritos for lunch. There are no microwaves at the trail head to warm up the food. We decided to make use of our cars as solar ovens. We brought the sides along with us for snacks on the hike, and left the pizzas and burritos on our dashboards to warm up.
With the temperatures in the mid 80s that day, our cars warmed up well enough to melt the cheese on the pizzas and warm the burritos all the way through.
We pulled out a blanket and ate in the parking lot and no one threw up, so the food must have been cooked through just fine. :)
Back home on Thursday night Annie and Megan had a gymnastics zoom class. Siblings were welcome to join in, so Ryan jumped in, too.
They did their best to find space for all 3 of them, and seemed to have a good time.
For Come Follow Me study last week we studied Mosiah 1-3 and focused a lot on service. We brainstormed some ideas for doing service and did some though out the week. We made a Boredom Buster Box for the ladies I minister to. Actually for their kids. My kids decorated the box and included some toys that were ready to head to Goodwill, plus some sidewalk chalk and stuff to make paper bag puppets. My neighbor gave us a few bags full of workbooks and activity books that her kids had accumulated over the years (mostly from grandparents) and were mostly unused. We kept some and passed some along in the Boredom Buster Boxes, too.
Friday Ryan reminded us that we hadn't chalked anyone's sidewalk, which was one of our service brainstorms. So we headed out.
We hit the Hager's driveway (one of Megan's teachers, and our neighbor around the corner) (above), then headed to our backyard neighbors, Shannon and Joanne and Eileen.
Shannon was so appreciative that she gave the kids a Thank You note along with a gift card she called our chalk fund so we can continue spreading joy to those around us.
We had also talked about sweeping the sidewalks in our neighborhood when we brainstormed service ideas. So we swept all the way to the Hagers, all the way to Shannon's and Joanne's, and all the way back home, hitting both sides of the streets. Rachel stuck with it the whole time and her and my arms were dying by the end. Who knew sweeping was such a good workout?
Friday night Eloise had her birthday party. After pizza and a movie and presents the kids had a blast singing Disney (and other) karaoke. It was fun (and funny) to watch. One person holds the microphone to do the karaoke, but really everyone is singing along.
McKenzie and Peyton stayed over night with Eloise, so Saturday morning we had to take advantage of having them out here. We went to a small neighborhood park across the street to play soccer and frisbee for a while. Later they all went swimming, at Grandma's and Grandpa's.
Teacher appreciation week is coming up and the PTA at Rachel's school decided to make a video of students thanking them. Since I had a ton of chocolate apples I thought it would be funny to show Rachel eating them all since she couldn't give them all out. She agreed, so we staged this picture:
We actually do plan to drop a few of the apples off at the office for her core teachers. I'm debating offering to do a video or something like that for the elementary school since technically I am still the Teacher appreciation chair person until the end of this school year... There's only a week left, but I could probably pull something together... We'll see.
