Home school-week 6

I've been pretty good at getting out for a bike ride a couple times a week. We switched our Come Follow Me/Family Scripture study to morning at Rachel's suggestion after several nights of scriptures ending up in arguments or disruptions. Which means I have to get out on my bike ride early enough to get back for family scriptures early enough for Jacob to get to work and/or the kids to start their chores and piano practice on time. My friend started a #writecoronachallenge to try to bike or run in a pattern that spells Corona or virus. I tried last week with mediocre results. But it kind of worked. It took longer than I thought it would, so I had to try to hurry home, but still had to hit a couple spots on the way back to complete the O and A that I only partially did on the way out.

 Savannah is wrapping up her classes, so she came to help with school a couple days last week, giving Grandma Knight a break, and now will come most days as long as she doesn't have a final to take.

For art one day the kids painted a canvas. Here are their creations:

This is Megan's backyard when she grows up with an apple tree, a big purple ball and a dog that has a face mask on.

 Annie did some cool stained glass window effect art.

 Ryan's abstract art:

 Rachel painted a dragon she drew freehand. She's got a lot or artistic talent and has been working on her sketches lately. She keeps begging me to buy her a sketchbook next time I go to walmart (which I will, I just don't go hardly anywhere these days, so it's been weeks since she's been asking and I still haven't gone).

 She added some details a few days later and this is her final product:

Grandma had the kids work on Rube Goldberg Projects last week during Grandma's afternoon specials. They watched some videos to get ideas, then sketched some out on Monday. Tuesday they split into groups to build them, and McKenzie and Peyton were able to come join the fun. Then Wednesday Rachel, Jared and Ryan wrapped up their big one, trying to incorporate ideas from each of the other groups to meet the official Drop the Soap Rube Goldberg challenge.

 On the 6th try the big Rube Goldberg machine worked and we got a video of their success.

Tuesday Rachel was invited to a social distance book exchange at her friend Lydia's backyard. The girls all brought a stack of books they could lend out, talked about the book/plot, then let someone claim it. It's their solution to the library being closed for now.

 They also did some social distance trampoline jumping staying around the side while taking turns doing tricks, I guess. Rachel enjoyed seeing some of her friends in real life (and so did I). And she was glad to get some new books to read.

The other kids enjoyed some time swimming in Grandma's pool. We are so glad they put up that pool. It hit 100 degrees last week, the first time I remember it hitting 100 in April (though apparently it has happened a couple of times since I've lived here). The kids spend hours and hours each week in the pool, then on the trampoline, then back to the pool. And they are all really good about obeying the rule of waiting for an adult to be in the backyard before they get in.

Grandma has a lot of great manipulatives for school. She regrets having gotten rid of a lot of her school stuff a few years ago, but she kept enough that it has really come in useful as she has been working with the kids. She has big dice which made this addition game more exciting.

 She has pattern blocks, cubes that attach to each other to make 10s rods, a set of base 10 blocks with rods and cubes and hundreds flats, and lots of fun learning games, both in her brain, and in her files. She has been such a great asset to have around.

 Ryan's schooling this week has looked like this:

 He loves his little corner and spreads out all his work, going from one thing to the next, then getting out a laptop to do some work on, too. Occasionally he'll go into the office to work where Annie and Eloise are working while listening to songs from Frozen 2.

Annie did a lot better last week about just doing her work and not worrying about how much there was to do. One of her assignments was to balance a pencil vertically on a craft stick. Then to try it with a pipe cleaner and two clothespins to help. She thought it was cool to see how the pencil could balance even without it being straight up and down because of the extra weight added below.

 I decided to do a 500 piece puzzle last week. With nothing much going on in my afternoons it took me about two afternoons to put it together. It felt good to accomplish something in this world where we all just sit around and wait for the go ahead to get back to normal life, even if that something was just putting together a puzzle.

 Some of Rachel's sketches:

 A couple of Rachel's friends invited her to join Marco Polo, so I joined on my phone and she borrows it to talk to them. She occasionally texts the one or two friends of hers that have their own phones. So I sometimes find pictures she has taken on my phone when she's talking to them. I believe this is her version of a face mask:

 This coming week is teacher appreciation week, so the kids took pictures to add to a video I put together as my last act as the Teacher Appreciation co-chair for the year:

 More selfies from Rachel:

 The other day I was telling all the kids something, I don't remember what exactly, but it was along the lines of needing to clean up after themselves, I think. Rachel got offended that I was blaming her (which I wasn't, it was a blanket statement, not talking to any child in particular). When I pointed out I was talking to everyone not just her, she said "You're always talking about me!" So that has become our new joke about our narcissistic pre-teen. It's all about her. Then I get on the computer to find 20+ selfies, find all these selfies on my phone, and again think it's all about her. :)

The week before last I took Ryan to an appointment, then on the way home stopped for an Slurpee, and I decided we should use our Friday afternoons as a rotating mother-child date. So Annie and I went on a mommy-daughter date on Friday. We went to Viva coffeehouse, a locally owned business that has donated a lot to our school, and has Italian sodas I'd heard are good. Since business is slow for everyone we are trying to share the love a little, and spend some money locally, so we go out to lunch once a week to a nearby restaurant, and now on Fridays I'll take a kid out to get a smoothie or soda, too. And a chance to get some one on one time when that is rather lacking lately with us all together all the time. It was the first time Annie has been in a business since the Coronavirus shutdown started. We went over to Safeway afterwards to buy some candy to share with everyone for movie night and she said it was really weird seeing everyone walking around with face masks on. The new temporary normal, I guess. Small businesses are allowed to start reopening this week, so that's a sign that we are at least starting on the road back to normal. Yay!