Well, our school schedule sure picked up this week! Alongside our regular schooling, we worked on three projects: a detective week, Olympics prep, and Valentine’s Day prep. A lot of times, these projects tied into our regular work and made it lots of fun!
This is my only picture from “normal school” this week. We’ve been in the 15- and 1600’s in England and have studied the Tudors and Stuarts. This week, we learned how Charles I lost his head, Cromwell was grumpy, and Charles II was a partier. Here, Anna is depicting the return of the bubonic plague to London, and the Great Fire of 1666. Taking a cue from her brother’s history notebook for the day, the plague (“black death”) is saying, “I’m baaack!” And the fire is saying, “Not for long!” (Because, see, the fire wiped out the plague.)
I was so happy when that very day in quiet reading, Luke’s book referenced a building having survived the Great Fire of 1666. He was super-excited about it, and so was I. I love those kind of connections, which is why I try to always have our literature correspond to our history.
The book he was reading was a spin-off of Sherlock Holmes. It’s part of a series called “The Sherlock Holmes Files,” is set in the present, and features Sherlock’s great-grandchildren as they solve mysteries. We got it when we went to the library on Sunday as part of our detective week. This theme was Luke’s idea: he and Anna had a lot of questions about fingerprints over the weekend, and so we decided to spend a week on forensic science and detective books. It ended up being so much fun!
On Monday, we read and worked through this cute story about a puppy-napping case. On every page, it had some sort of detective experiment to do. We dusted for fingerprints, lifted lip prints, made teeth impressions, calculated our height from the size of our foot, and learned how to read what was on a missing page of notebook paper. I was really glad to find this book because a lot of the kids’ books on forensic science and fingerprinting featured some pretty gruesome real-life crimes, including kidnapping children from their house at night. Yeesh! Could we not just talk about a hypothetical robbery or something? I’m wanting to teach about fingerprints, not give my kids nightmares! This book was a winner though!
Anna loved the Science part, but was not as in to the mystery books as Luke. I picked up a couple of easy reader mysteries, thinking they might engage her better, and I was right! We read them on Monday, also.
On Tuesday, we had a “Nate the Great” day. Luke went through a Nate the Great phase a couple of years ago, but I got these, again, with Anna in mind. I’d also found some fun “Nate the Great” printables online, including a mad lib mystery, which provided a nice grammar review. I was a little surprised at how well this went over.
On Wednesday we took our own fingerprints and completed a Science lesson from our actual curriculum. I skipped ahead to it (the Genetics one instead of the Circulatory one which we were supposed to do—but will work great for Valentine’s week next week! Because, you know, hearts??:)) It turns out that it’s harder to take decent prints than you would think, but we were able analyze how many loops, whirls, and arches we each had.
Speaking of Valentine’s Day, I, of course, have found loads of free Valentine printables to reinforce our learning. I’m a big believer in holiday-themed printables; I just think they spice things up a bit.
Here, Anna is doing a “Candy Adjectives” worksheet, while eating a corresponding “candy snack.”
We also worked on our Valentines for the tutorial party next week. For handwriting one day, we filled out the “From” portion on all our Valentine’s. We don’t have a class list yet, but it was good practice on trying to write our names perfectly.
On our cold and gloomy Thursday, we put our Valentine’s together. The kids enthusiastically decided on a “build your own Olaf” Valentine this year, since they both love Frozen. I thought it was perfect for us—thank you, Pinterest!
And then there was the Olympics. I was a bit late to this party, as it hit me about mid-week that the Olympics started on Thursday. I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to prepare for it, though. After all, the Olympics are a great way to reinforce Geography, especially since we are trying to learn the countries of the world this year. Also, there are just so many lessons to be learned from the hard work and perseverance of Olympians. At different times this week, I had to show each of my kids a motivational Olympics commercial to get them over a hump in piano practice. Both times, it was very effective.
To prepare for the Games, I found loads of free printables, including one that explains the meaning behind the Olympic flag and then asks the child to design their own. The kids both liked that, but our big project was a medal book that had a page for each competing country. It involved a lot of flag cutting and pasting, along with another good handwriting practice session consisting of writing the country’s name. Together, we got through fifty countries, but we’ll have to finish up on Monday. While we worked, we listened to all of our Geography songs. It was always exciting when a song mentioned the country we were working on. Added bonus: during the Parade of Nations, I was able to recognize the flag of Azerbaijan!
That brings us up to the Opening Ceremonies. I was already scheduled to watch my bff’s two older boys this weekend while she was at a speaking engagement. She loves the Olympics as much as I do (plus, her family did long term mission work in Russia while she was a child), so she was as enthusiastic as I was about our Olympic plans. During the kids’ afternoon snack, I read to them some facts about the torch, and then we watched a cool Youtube video showing all the places this year’s torch had gone (underwater?? a space station?? So cool!). My only worry of the weekend was that Anna might find herself left out from the boys. She and Canon are good friends, but lately, Canon has been gravitating more toward Luke and Tyler. As an extra precaution, I invited one of her friends from church to come hang out this weekend. That ended up being a good call, as they have been immersed in all things princess and domestic (playing house, etc) this weekend, while the boys have veered more toward Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Batman. Here the girls are just before the Opening Ceremonies. Such beautiful princesses—although poor Anna looks exhausted!
I try only to use the simplest Pinterest ideas, so for the ceremonies, I ordered a cheese pizza and put pepperoni rings on it. It didn’t turn out super-visible, but the kids liked it anyway. We also made edible torches out of ice cream cones and Cheetos. Pretty gross, but the kids thought it was the best thing in the world. And later in the evening, I popped popcorn and sprinkled some flag-colored M&M’s in it. It was a lot of junk food, but it definitely boosted the kids’ enthusiasm! We also played Opening Ceremonies’ BINGO and designed our own medals. My favorite was Anna’s, which had an “E for Elympics!” Poor child—spelling is just not her forte! Those were hits, but even so, the kids only made it through part of the Parade of Nations before the desire to go play overpowered them. I called them back in to see the part about St. Basil’s Cathedral because it was so pretty, but then it was time for them to go to bed.
I’m pumped, though, because our History just happens to shift to Peter the Great next week. I’m definitely going to have my kids watch that part of the show when we read about him. Plus, the free Olympics app has a good intro video to Sochi, so we will do a bit of Russian geography next week, too.
As I type, Anna and Janessa are getting ready to have a “ball” in the family room, and the boys are all with Greg at a Star-Wars-themed basketball game at Lipscomb. He had planned to take his team tonight and saw no reason why Canon and Tyler couldn’t tag along.
It has been such a fun and busy week, and more than once, I’ve marveled at just how much I genuinely like my family. I mean, I guess that sounds obvious, but guys—we spend A LOT of time together, and I am a total introvert…and yet, I still rarely feel like I need to get out of the house for some alone time. That’s pretty amazing.
Still, this week we also had a couple rough patches, and I want to write about those, too, because they are both ones that I want to remember. One was that Luke had a bit of a breakdown in his basketball game today. I was already worried it might happen because he was running on precious little sleep, and I knew he was self-conscious about Tyer and Canon watching him and his team (which, bless them, are just not good this year). I won’t go into all the details, but I ended up going over there and taking him to get a drink of water. He hadn’t done anything wrong on the court besides fallen hard and hurt himself, but he was sobbing that he couldn’t do anything right and that he was the worst player on the team. I assured him that that was not true, and generally tried my best to put everything in perspective for him. I finished by saying that it was just a silly basketball game, and it didn’t matter who won. What mattered was that he was a smart basketball player who was learning so much (which is true) and that his teammates needed him (also true—there were only six of them total), and sent him back in there to go in the game. After that, he calmed down and even got his first rebound! He also made a few bone-headed mistakes, but overall, he really did have his best game! I was really proud of him!
The second rough patch we hit (well, chronologically the first) was that Anna came home from tutorial Tuesday in tears. At first it was because her art project got wet, but then it morphed into the fact that she had no friends. I keep typing and then deleting, simply because both of these anecdotes can easily turn into novels, but suffice it to say, Anna seems to be having her first experience at struggling to make friends. Usually, that comes easily to her, and she doesn’t even seem to care much about it, but this year at tutorial has been different. No one has been mean, but she just can’t find her place. Anyway, she ended up really depressed on Tuesday—that’s the only word for it. She was weepy and gloomy and just didn’t bounce back once she got home, which is rare for her. I ended up pulling her into my lap and having a big, affirmative talk, and in desperation to turn her mood around, I suggested we go to Chickfila for lunch. That really cheered her up, and ended up being just what she needed. I’m not joking when I say that if it hadn’t turned her around, I would have gone to any lengths to do so—we would have canceled school and gone shopping! Her mood was just so unlike her, and it worried me.
Neither of these situations were pleasant, but honestly, it’s these tough times that seem to cement our relationship. To pour love and affirmation into my kids when they are so vulnerable is honestly a privilege—albeit a painful one. I know that I’m gushing, but I just think that they are amazing people. And the thing is, they have no idea. Especially Luke. He has no clue how special he is, and I consider it my job in inform him on that point, not to give him a big head, but to fortify him against life’s challenges. After all, it’s a lot easier to handle your weaknesses when you know your strengths, and it’s easier to handle rejection when you know you are loved. Lately, Luke has had opportunities, both in piano and basketball, to “hit a wall,” and then to keep going and succeed. I love when that happens. As for Anna, I’ve already been planning and brainstorming about how we’re going to handle this friend thing at tutorial. Part of it was working diligently on our Valentines this week, because I know that when I’ve been the loneliest, what has helped me the most was to stop focusing on my own situation and reach out to others. Luke and I have repeatedly interrogated her about her tutorial situation this past month, and it doesn’t seem like she’s really making the effort to make friends. I think in the past, it’s just kind of happened, and this time, she’s going to have to put some work into it. So again, it’s a hard thing, but one that I think will help her in the long run. It’s an opportunity to grow and develop some new skills.
Hard times or good, this week has brought us closer as a family. We’ve cried together, learned together, celebrated together, had adventures, worked on projects, and watched history unfold. It’s been a big week…but then again, I have a speaking suspicion that they’re all big weeks…
