P.E. Fun

My kids have the greatest teachers. We have a school Facebook page and the teachers post regularly, including reading to them every day via video chat. There was a thread where parents were asked to share what they were doing at home and how they were making it work. I commented on how we were incorporating a lot of P.E. and recess time. The P.E. teacher asked me if I needed any suggestions. I have one kid who LIVES for sports and another who hides in the bathroom during P.E. and recess. He had a great suggestion, because he knows my kids so well. Here we are trying it out.

Beckett and Roslyn had a “snowball fight” that was more like military style-dodge ball. They balled up socks (Roslyn thought it would be more effective to make hers like “Snap Peas” and put four balled up socks in each sock. 

Every time Carter got hit, he had to drop down and do two push-ups. It was great fun!

 We also learned about germinating seeds. We are going to grow sweet peppers from seeds, rather than buy starts. We started our seeds today and hope to grow them in our outdoor, covered play area (which used to be a greenhouse).

Homeschooling back when it was cool

This sums up what I've been feeling. The days just wrap together now. I cannot believe this is our third Monday. I miss our teachers so much. Not just because they take my kids off my hands for SEVEN hours a day (which is way too long for the kids), but because they are my friends. Beckett's teacher's birthday is coming up and I am going to miss it because she is home and I am home. 

We have gotten into a good groove. Carter is so motivated by tickets, he has done some amazing things. Last night I hadn't cleaned the pots and pans from dinner. Well, Carter had them scrubbed, dried, and put away before I got up. He also had a load of laundry all queued up - but not started because he was waiting so it didn't disturb my shower! If I didn't have to teach them anything new and I could take them on field trips - I could do this full time.

The lady down the street home schools her own kids - like back when it was unique and cool not like now that everybody's doing it. Her girls are building a gazebo in the back yard. They have to design it themselves. That takes a lot of real world math. I hope I can teach my kids real world things too.

Church

Sometimes church goes well and sometimes it goes like this:

Saturdays

Saturdays are tough to keep the kids indoors. Rain or shine, Carter wants to be out on his bike. This week marks a big step for Beckett. He now gets to go out with the big boys. They take a Walkie-Talkie and out they go. Carter has to take a slower pace, but Beckett has to work harder to keep up. So far, it is working. I am very proud of the other boys – who almost all have little brothers of their own – who don’t even balk at Beckett joining along.

 Roslyn and I played some games inside. This game was given to her for her birthday a few years ago by her friend Zoe. It is great fun. It is called “Kids on Stage” – it is a game of charades.

Roslyn involved her “Cheetah Snake” to be her tail, and her hair is being held down as a mane to act out a Lion.

This is her “Scissors” – which took a lot of thinking. She has one handle shorter than the other, and she was moving her legs back and forth.

Then, her and Vortex did beads together. He was thrilled.

What's a digraph?

Today, Carter’s teacher held a video chat. This woman is a saint! Most of the class showed up. Carter said that only five kids didn’t make it – out of thirty. They all struggled to not talk at once, and there was a horrible echo. However, they worked through it. Because of the chaos, she scheduled smaller videos during the week, with only five or six kids at a time. But, she is still planning on doing weekly class meetings.

Their work is still hard! Carter had this word problem. It doesn’t even make sense. How can they eat more than one whole sandwich? My sister suggested they were birds: Mom, Emily, ate more than half, then regurgitated it up for baby, Jordan. That was the likeliest scenario. Still too much thinking.

I mentioned two of my kids are lefties, right? All kids struggle with spacing their words out. It just all runs together like one big long word. We are working on using “Finger Spaces” in between each word. Well, now I see how impossible that is for left-handed kids! 

And what is this? It could go either way?! I made sure she knew what sound these “digraphs” make (she knew that they were “digraphs” – more than I knew. I had to look it up when Beckett came home from Kindergarten last year using that word. What happened to learning your ABCs and how to read in Kindergarten?!)

Non Traditional Learning

Yesterday, the kids wanted to wash my car. I thought this was a good team building opportunity. However, the spigot at the front of our house was leaking, so David tightened it up and covered it until he had enough time to fix it. It was on my list of things to do while he was home. Unfortunately, the kids put that at the top of the list. I told them they could not use the spigot and offered to fill a bucket up with water and dump it on my car. Carter took the bucket and said he’d do it himself. Then he ran off. I reminded him not to use the spigot and went inside. He decided I was wrong and turned on the water anyway. Then he could not shut the water off. It just dumped and dumped. We had to shut off the water to the house. David had to run to Home Depot to get something to fix it with. Thank goodness they were open. They have reduced their hours, so he only had 30 minutes until they closed. He pulled the thingamabob out and tinkered with it, but he still couldn’t get it to seal. Fortunately, he has a scope that can be hooked up to his phone/tablet/laptop. He was able to go in the water pipe and see that there was an old screw and a washer that had washed up or broken off. He pulled them out with some long pliers (because his fingers would not reach) and sealed it up.

Meanwhile, Beckett and Roslyn realized the water wasn’t working and panicked. They took cups to every faucet and collected water. Then, they went to the basement and realized water was still coming slowly there. They filled up a water jug. Water dripped and spilled EVERYWHERE. Their biggest concern was that they couldn’t use the toilet. I told them we have three toilets and they all flush once, so we will be okay. Apparently, the water in the toilet was not what bothered them – it was the fact that they couldn’t wash their hands. I am proud to say, all our hand washing conversations have paid off!

Ah, the adventures of home ownership and raising children.

Today, David taught the kids about car maintenance. He pulled each child in the shop at a time. Beckett got to help change the oil, check the fluids, and check the tires on my Saturn wagon. Carter got the same education on David’s Subaru wagon. Roslyn got an age appropriate version on my white Mazda. These are the things I am hoping to teach the kids while we have this awesome opportunity to take a break from classroom learning.

We had two celebrations today: a birthday party and a missionary homecoming. The birthday party was celebrated from 11 to 12. We drove by, honked, and waved. The missionary homecoming was more of a parade. People decorated their cars and we drove by her home in a procession. Everyone got the chance to yell something out the window while she stood on her porch. I miss socialization so much. These were definitely bright spots to the isolation.

The church is true! How our prophet guides us today

I cannot tell you what a testimony builder this COVID 19 experience has been. Everything our governments are doing is reactive. They are trying to handle the situation as it develops, in varying stages of success.

However, almost everything our church has done has been proactive. Today, the church closed all the temples completely. On the outside, it seemed reactive. However, I see now that the Lord prepared us for this.

Less than one year ago, the church announced that couples no longer have to wait a year to get sealed if they have been married civilly. I just shrugged at the time and thought it was a great policy.

However, today I see that the Lord knew the temple closures were coming and He took away the waiting period for couples who had no choice but to get married civilly while the temples were closed.

It solidified my testimony to know that Lord, through our prophet, is not being reactive. He is being proactive. 

• Setting us up with Come Follow Me, and giving us time to become familiar with it (even if we were unsuccessful in our homes, we were still exposed to it at church),
• Letting us know that conference was going to be different (even if it wasn't in any way close to our speculations),
• Today closing temples - but already having a policy in place for couples whose lives are held in limbo!

 A great group of ladies on Facebook helped me see other things going on:

• We were commanded in 1979 to have food storage. We will be in lock-down soon, and I know I will be able to keep my family safe because we have enough food to get us through however many weeks we are on lock-down.
• One told me about how they started an online seminary program in her stake program this year, now their stake seminary kids still get to do seminary.
• The shift from Visiting Teaching to Ministering which moved visits outside of the home to a more wholistic approach. I was pretty bummed about that move, but now I see it was totally preparing us to serve our sisters outside of their home when we could not be IN their home.
• The age change in passing the Sacrament has allowed many more boys to participate in Sacrament in their homes, not just in church.
• All the self-reliance classes the church has been doing! Those have prepared so many people!
• There was a news article about how much money the church has stockpiled away. A lot of people were really upset about it. I have friends who are in leadership in their church and without this time for them to meet with their congregations and collect tithing, they are really hurting. I know that our church will continue to function and take care of the aftermath of this virus all over the world.
• The fact that the church had already been preparing the Salt Lake temple for an earthquake when one hit on the 18th of this month!
• Missionaries all over the world have been using technology and social media, and now that is all they can do!

 The signs are everywhere!

Their Math is Hard!!

Their math is hard! Their schoolwork in general is rather difficult. I looked at Carter’s math workbook and was very confused. I could not figure out what was going on. I called my sister, who is a teacher, and she explained it to me. I get what he is doing, but I do not have a good enough grasp on how they do it to teach it. I have decided we are just going to keep up what they have already learned. 

David’s cousin asked how she could use math while her kids were doing laundry. Someone suggested fractions and I thought that was pretty good. I asked Carter to give me the fractions of the laundry. This is what he gave me:

I thought Roslyn’s math was too hard for her. I knew Beckett was doing “Fact Families” – but he struggled with it at first. I took one look at Roslyn’s work and told her it was too hard, I would go find something more on her level. While I was searching, she did the page and brought it to me. She made up her own family on the first one, but used the numbers provided for the second! 

Now, Roslyn’s English Language Arts. That is tough. I can’t figure out what this kid is doing that that the man is not and what the heck is the kid sleeping doing? He seems to be doing more than nodding off. Anybody?

Hunkering Down

The governor issued a “Shelter in Place” order. The containment of this virus is not working with so many people out and about. It takes effect Wednesday. The list of people who can still be out and working (because they are considered essential) is staggering. I can’t see this being any different than it is now. I didn’t know fast food was considered essential. When I was a girl, I was always told if anything like this ever happened – I should know how to make bread. Apparently those days are gone because the drive-through will always be open.

Our mailman, Chuck, is back. He has been out since July because of a torn rotator cuff. His long-term sub, Trong, was really nice. My kids always called him “not Chuck” like the character from Cars. Poor Trong didn’t understand the reference when I tried to explain it. He doesn’t have kids.

Our UPS guy, Erick, stopped to chat. In the 6 ½ years we have been on his route, he has never stopped to chat with me. He always rushes off. I understand, he has a job to do. But, our last guy, Chris, always took a couple minutes to catch up with me. Anywho – this social isolation thing is really hitting people hard because Erick stayed to shoot the breeze with David and I for about 10 minutes. Erick said that his entire truck was just full of toilet paper. People emptied store shelves and now they are buying it en masse online. I’m not sure where they are getting it from because I have it on Subscribe and Save through Amazon and it didn’t ship this month. They said they were out. When I looked for a replacement – they had none. Like ZERO NONE. Not a single roll of toilet paper on Amazon. The rest of these yahoos must be ordering directly from Charmin. I’m good. We were commanded to have food storage, and to me that has always meant supplies. While I have a years’ supply of toothpaste, deodorant, and shampoo – I only have 2 or 3-months of toilet paper.

Yesterday I reluctantly started an incentive program with my kids. We already had a program where the kids could earn tickets for being in bed on time and sleeping in past 7:30 (or at least laying in bed quietly). So, I expanded it to cover good behavior as well. It was my friend Julia’s idea. I didn’t want to bribe my kids with cheap toys that would end up in the garbage soon or candy. But Julia said her kids use their tickets to buy P.E. time on the Wii, choose what she makes for dinner, and get extra time awake past bedtime. So, I let the kids choose. They chose things like buying a toy out of toy jail, extra snacks, and a pass on jobs for the day. This morning I woke up to every job on the list done (even though not all jobs get done every day). Carter has even started doing jobs that I have never asked him to do!

Julia also gave me the letter writing idea (that I incorporated into our writing rotation). I mailed NINE envelopes out today – some carrying a letter from each of the children in it!

Sacrament in our home

Last week, home church was pretty laid back. We had a very informal meeting. This week, David got the green-light to bless and pass the Sacrament. This ordinance reminds us the covenants we make when we were baptized: To remember Christ in all we do, represent Him in all we do, and keep His commandments. In turn, we will be blessed to have His spirit with us.

In preparation, David made his own Sacrament tray. He designed it to hold the 3oz Dixie cups we have in abundance. I had to talk him down from blessing milk and cookies. When I realized he had broken an entire piece of bread into 6 pieces and filled the 3oz cups halfway, I made an audible giggle – not very reverent! I am used to a flake of bread and a couple drops of water. So, these were very large portions.

Our Garden

We prepped the garden. That neighbor boy came over and I told him Carter couldn’t ride bikes until his garden prepping was done. To speed the process up, he offered to help! He pulled weeds with us until the kids had finished their part - it turned out to be 30 minutes! I love this kid.

The governor closed playground facilities and sports courts today. Beaches and trails are still open and holy cow have they been packed. The weather is nice and I have NEVER seen so many people outside, EVER. They are everywhere. People who live in my neighborhood that I have never seen have taken up walking or jogging as their new hobby! The trails are crowded. I think it defeats the purpose of staying home from work when you take a walk on a crowded trail.

Living Scriptures, a website that streams animated scripture videos as well as other good family movies, announced they will open their website to everyone through April 6^th. I signed up for a subscription last Saturday because I was worried we wouldn’t have enough to keep the kids entertained on Sunday. I appreciate what they are doing because a lot of families cannot afford the subscription price. Heck, in six weeks if my husband is not able to get students back in his classroom – I may be regretting paying the subscription fee too. But for now, I am glad we have it. 

I have taught the kids the words to a song we used to sing in church when I was a kid. I'm hoping to avoid a mess like above when we are trying to have a spiritual meeting. I guess all but the "Shop at the store" applies.