Homeschool-Week 5

Since we were learning about body parts in Spanish the week before, we decorated sugar cookies on Monday to help us review. One was in the shape of a person, the other was just a circle on which they made a face. So they had to tell us about their cookies in Spanish: "He has a yellow head, green legs and arms, his eyes are blue and a red mouth, etc..." 

 The kids were especially fond of this Spanish lesson. We saved the cookies to eat for snack. We had some extra cookies, too, so I used up the last of the icing making the circle cookies into an earth to celebrate Earth Day that happened to be last week.

 For art we traced and cut out each of the kids with their arms outstretched then colored them as self portraits. These are mail-able hugs, perfect for social distancing.

 Megan wanted to give hers to Mrs. Hager, so we went and dropped it off on/under her doormat. She didn't find it until the next morning, then she posted about it on Facebook:
"Woke up this morning to find on my doorstep a paper hug from one of my students! This is so sweet!!!! Thank you Colette Knight Campbell for having such wonderful children. Give sweet Megan a hug back from me! I miss my kinders SO MUCH!!!! "

Megan was so glad to hear she liked it so much and thought it was cool to be Facebook famous.

Rachel helped us trace the hugs for everyone else, but did not make her own. Instead, while everyone else colored their hugs, Rachel created a virtual kiss on Piskel. She was introduced to the website through her art teacher this quarter and loves making animations on it.

For the afternoon activities at Grandma's house last week the kids participated in a building challenge. The older kids built their own bridges with toothpicks and hot glue, trying to make theirs the strongest.

 The younger kids created a town with certain requirements Grandma had listed for them.

 These turned out to take two days to complete. On the third day we tested the bridges.

 The pictures were severely backlit, but they held up to a lot more weight than anyone thought. We had to get more and more creative to figure out how to add more weight as the bridges just kept taking all we gave them.

 Annie's finally broke with about 5 pounds of weight, I think. But the bridge didn't collapse, toothpicks just broke from the direct weight on about 3 toothpicks. Rachel's took a lot more weight than that, even.

We had to go get rocks for weights for Rachel's. Hers topped out holding more than 11 pounds.

Thursday for art the kids made paper bag puppets, then put on a puppet show of sorts.

 Thursday I went to pick up lunch for all of us. The kids were willing to wait a little while if it meant they got Eegees for lunch. The Eegees out here is pretty new so there is always a long line for the drive thru, but going in for take out isn't any faster I found. At least the food was worth the wait.

 I decided it would be nice for a treat for us, and to help support local businesses so they don't go out of business while they're not allowed to have anyone dine in, so we're getting lunch out once a week.

The kids swam at Grandma's that afternoon and I stayed home for some quiet time. Friday afternoon they swam again for a couple hours with cousins, then came home to change and went right back over to Todd and Savannah's for another movie night and to watch Robin Hood.

Wednesday Ryan was in a no-work kind of mood and it was kind of a rough day, but other than that we're doing pretty well with our schedule and we're in the hang of things. Taking some alone time for me is super helpful, and I think the kids need some alone time sometimes. With nowhere to go sometimes the only breaks they get from each other is when they go to their room and close the door. We may be starting some enforced alone time soon just to give everyone a chance to detox from being around the same people all day every day. We will survive.