When Mom is Sick . . .

Wait-- I thought moms don't get to be sick? Don't all moms wish this was true!! Well, the truth in my case is that I have been sick, sicker than I've been in a long time, and its miserable. Kurt has been sick too, and my baby girls, who are always happy, have been sick and miserable too. We had about four days where it was every man for himself-- Kurt or I managed to crawl out of bed to change diapers or put meals together for whoever could eat, but our kids' best friend during this time was the TV, sad but true.

So by Monday I started feeling better, and thought we'd get going on some of our school, but another horrible thing happened-- I lost my voice. All of our school lessons, in some way or another, involve me reading out loud, and Monday morning after reading just one thing I couldn't even make a sound for most of the day.

So our school work has been limited to those things I don't have to read or even say much to do. Because Jolie is still pretty miserable we wait until she takes her morning nap and Olivia either hangs out with us or watches a PBS show. We've stuck with the 3 R's - reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The kids practice their handwriting by writing over words that I've written out using a highlighter. I alternate with a poem from the poet we are reading (Christine Rossetti right now) and scriptures (verses from Luke 2 right now). I also leave space for the kids to illustrate the poem/scripture if they want to.

Because we were in the middle of a math unit when illness struck we haven't had to do any new concepts and so its easy to have them do one of their workbooks pages each day with little help from me. Usually when they master a concept we move on to the next, skipping any workbook pages I feel like we can, but for this unit we are going to get them all done.

Having Austin read out loud is an easy way for me to not have to read. I let him pick the book- sometimes he picks one as long as Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel, and other times (like today) he picks a baby board book with one or two words per page "Grumpy frumpy, Happy snappy" and so on. Whatever he picks, the girls crowd around to listen.

While Nyah can read and sound out words etc., she is far from being confident about reading and usually panics when asked to read. Which is how she reacts to most things "I can't do it!!" even when she's known "D-A-D" is Dad for so long!! So we are doing lots of review. A favorite resource is http://www.starfall.com/ This morning as she "played" everyone wanted to watch, as seen in the picture at top, and I didn't have to say a thing.

We are also listening to a lot of things these days. A new favorite soundtrack is "The Ark" from the off-broadway musical by Michael McLean and Keving Kelly, as well as our old favorites of Phantom, Les Mis, and Joseph's Technicolor Coat. And I've been utilizing the Librivox website for books and other things. We are still listening to Howard Pyle's Robin Hood, they have some poems from our poet, and yesterday I found short bio's of some of the historical figures we are studying for the middle ages (search: Famous Men of the Middle Ages) which I'll review before we use for school, but it was a great find.

We have been doing our nature study by watching PBS nature shows, and Planet Earth, and our bird feeder, and now that Austin and Nyah are much better they are spending lots of time in the great outdoors!! It seems spring arrived while I was hiding in my bedroom.

Well, Jolie is wailing, um, calling for me so I better report for duty!

Sick Days

What do we do when someone is sick?

The last couple weeks we have had plenty of time to figure it out!! It started with Austin getting flu-like stuff, and then it moved through the rest of the kids, and now Nyah has cold-like stuff, and its moving through the rest of the kids. I'm a Mom so I just can't get sick right?

Whether we do school when someone is sick depends on who is sick and how they are feeling. When the younger two are sick, I can usually keep the older two on track with their school stuff, though there are more breaks as I attend to whoever isn't feeling well. When Austin and Nyah are sick how much school we do depends on how they are feeling. If they are still able to do chores and play around, we do school too. It may be abbreviated, such as just reading, writing, and math, but if they can run around they can work too.

But, as has been the case the last few days, when they are stuffed-up-feeling-horrible-listlessly-laying-around-sick, we don't do school work. How can I tell when we do work or not? When they said they didn't want to do chores this morning (and really, they say this most mornings!) I told them to go lay on their beds. They did it without complaining-- Austin stayed on his bed for over an hour and when he came down he lay on the floor with his blanket, and Nyah took a three hour nap. Nyah napping during the day is totlly weird. But if they put up a fight about having to go to their beds then they get to do chores and school.

Even when they are stuffed-up-feeling-horrible-listlessly-laying-around-sick it doesn't mean they get to sit in front of a TV for hours at a time either. Which is how we usually end up doing some school work when they are sick-- they don't like to be bored! Some things they have been doing this week are playing board/card games, reading or listening to books, snuggling with our dog, quietly playing with legoes or toys on their beds or the couch, and of course, we do watch some movies or cartoons.

Playing games together-

they actually cooperate and get along better

when they are sick- no fight in them I guess.

Listening to an audio version of Howard Pyle's Robin Hood.

Austin lined up our stools and lay on top of them-

Nyah and Olivia are underneath the blanket.

Listening to the story and

playing around under the blanket.

Later, after Jolie was awake from her nap, still listening.

Austin and Olivia were playing some type of game,

and Nyah was trying to coax Jolie under the blanket.

Having a leftover frosty someone found in the freezer-

a nice cold snack for sore throats.

Right now the younger two are napping, and Austin and Nyah are curled around my feet, snuggling in a blanket with the dog, reading a book about animals.

Literature

My kids and I are always reading!!

We read books for fun: "The Tale of Despereaux" by Kate DiCamillo-- we are having a hard time reading this one right now because Kurt wants to listen too!

We listen to books in the car: I almost always have an audio book for us to listen to, mostly because I don't want my kids listening to the radio all the time. We have times when we do listen to the radio, just to let everyone know they aren't completely sheltered, but when I turned on NPR the other day and the discussion was about sex services (nude house cleaning- isn't that just creepy?) found on Craig's list, I thought "What else can we listen to?" and thankfully we had a book! We just finished "The Vacation" by Polly Horvath, which I will review on my book blog soon, and we just started "Charlotte's Web" which we have read/listened to so many times I'm starting to have it memorized.

And we read books for school:
1. Chapter Book: We are currently reading/listening to "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood" by Howard Pyle. We read one chapter a week, over three days.
2. Fairy Tales: We are reading "The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde" by Osacr Wilde- I found a great version illustrated by Michael Hague at a yard sale for a couple dollars- yard sales and thrift stores are my friends :) We read a couple of these a week.
3. Shakespeare: I know what your thinking- HOW? We are reading/listening to "Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare" by Edith Nesbit. Here is an awesome website- "Shakespeare for Kids" which lists tons of online resources for reading Shakespeare with kids. My favorite part? The Librivox free online audio recordings of the book!! We use this with so many of our books- anytime they have one we are reading. We are using it with Robin Hood right now too. We only do a couple Shakespeare stories a month.
4. Poetry: We use Ambleside Online's poetry selections because they are grouped together and free!! So our selections for this year are on the Year 2 Booklist- We are reading Christina Rossetti right now. I also pick a poem each month for us to memorize, which is on the sidebar- "The Falling Star" by Sara Teasdale.
5. The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan- Now this is one of those classics often recommended by other homeschooolers, its on both curriculum lists that I use (Ambleside & Milestone's), but when we started reading it at the beginning of this school year, none of us were very interested in it, so I stopped and figured we'd pick it up in later school years. But I think we are going to give it another shot using the Librivox recordings. I can be a horrible read-aloud-er (??), especially with books I'm not familiar with and those that have an older style, which describes this book. So hopefully with someone else reading we may come to enjoy this, we'll see.
6. And of course we read books for other subjects too! Morning Devotional, Phonics, History, Science, Nature, Geography, and so on.

Happy Reading to Everyone!!

Winter Insects, Follow-Up

Our Burlese Funnel was finally successful!! After finding another place to collect soil in our backyard we had bugs!! 2 in the water and 2 crawling around the floor-- ANTS, who apparently go wherever they want, including climbing down the counter and checking things out on the floor.

Post 1 ~ Post 2

Burlese Funnel

2 Ants in the water of the jar

More pictures from our visit to the Hutchings Museum.

They had a great bug collection.

More from the Hutchings Museum in Lehi

Even though it was a small museum I was really impressed with how many items were in all of the collections. The kids had a blast in the old jail cells, and playing with all the hands-on stuff like trying on period costume hats, trying out morse code, playing with the different time-period car horns, handling indian pottery, grinding corn with rocks, and being able to touch the different kinds of rocks/minerals. I wish I had taken pictures of them doing these things, but I forgot about my camera until the end of our visit.

The museum had an awesome Rock & Mineral collection. I'm glad I know about this for our future studies of this subject.

We were all excited about the meteorites!

Nyah's Favorite: Natural Glass

(I cut my finger pretty good on a smaller piece in the hands-on section)

Austin's Favorite:

My Favorite: Calcite- so delicate and lacey looking.
Lots of Fossils

Shark Jaw

Fossilized Alligator from Wyoming

Cast of Allosaurus print

They had also had a great collection of Marine Animals & Shells

Devil Crab

Porcupine fish, Coral, and Horseshoe Crabs

More of the Insect Collection

Stuffed Orange Crocodile ?? Whoever heard of that? I googled it and only came up with ballpoint pens, ties, and orange-eyed crocodile skinks.

More from the bird section:

Nests

Close up of egg display

Winter Wednesday- Birds- Week 8

A hawk we saw on a drive during the week.

Somehow we have fallen behind in our Winter Wednesday and Outdoor Hour Challenges!! But we are catching up. This week for our Winter Wednesday on Birds we decided to learn about the only kind of bird we have seen at our bird feeder: the House Finch. Our bird feeder has issues, but we are working on solving them, so we hope to see more types of birds in the future.

The house finches come to our feeder in the morning, around breakfast time, and are easily scared off by kids clamoring at the glass to see them. That is the extent of our observations this week, though we have seen them feeding from wild sunflower plants on our nature walks in the past. For a coloring page, I borrowed the purple finch page from the Cornell coloring book, as it very closely resembles the House Finch.

Austin, age 7:

Nyah, age 6:
Today we visited a small local museum-- John Hutchings Museum in Lehi, UT. I especially wanted to visit because of their bird egg display which fits in with our other science lessons. They have a great free lesson on bird eggs at their website, which we modified and used last week. We had a good time comparing the eggs with each other- size, shape, color, eggs laid in nest vs. those laid on ground. The display included eggs, nests, and stuffed birds. I find stuffed birds and animals a little weird and interesting at the same time.

Eggs:

House Finch Nest:

Another House Finch Nest:

Nyah's Favorite Eggs- American Robin

Austin's Favorite Eggs- Golden Eagle

Smallest- Hummingbird

Biggest- Ostrich in middle, Emu to right, Rhea to left

Part of display:

Another part of display:

There was also a very interesting insect display,

and the kids loved the Owl butterfly:

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Today the kids had a good time making Cat-in-the-Hat hats, dressing as the Cat-in-the-Hat, watching the Mike Meyer's Cat-in-the-Hat, and reading Dr. Seuss books. What's your favorite Dr. Seuss book? Mine is Green Eggs and Ham.

Try our new gadget for Jackson Pollock on the sidebar--you can make your own Pollock-style painting!! Clicking with the mouse changes the color.