Was it worth going, only to be quarantined? YES! Buenos Aires has been on my bucket list since I was two (when my brother, Craig, left for his mission there.) And to go there with Craig (who was on sabbatical there) was a once in a life time opportunity.
And now that we're back, I feel a lot like this meme:
Okay, so we're not that bad, but I feel extremely blessed. This shouldn't impact us negatively financially, Dustin works online from home, we homeschool, and we went on a big shopping spree before we went to Argentina. (Yes, we bought toilet paper, but that was back in the good ol' days when the shelves were overflowing with toilet paper. No judging!)
But we are used to doing something with our homeschool community daily, and now that's out of the question. Art classes, literature classes, robotics, gym, and alternate school classes etc. are all cancelled.
Thankfully, while we were gone, our kids were at their friends constantly all day long. Feast or famine lately eh?
Interestingly, this quitting of all activities hasn't let me have more time. Those classes would keep me on my toes. "Daniel needs to go to art in an hour, so I need to do his one-on-one right now." Nothing was motivating me this week, so I was mamzy pamzy about getting everything done, and would be teaching until 6 or 7pm at night!
Not that we had anything else to do!
I have a confession: I've been on social media and news and youtube WAY too much this week. That's the REAL reason it's taken so long to teach. Teach William, check my phone, teach Daniel, call someone and talk for an hour about our crazy world, teach Abraham, get lost on Facebook.
Yep.
It's been fascinating to me to see the world become more Homeschool-friendly. All the things online are now cheap or free, and there's a million new "virtual" experiences. Even Mark Rober is going to do a science class next week. WE ARE THERE!!!
But it's sad that our hands-on school is suffering. No science. And I don't have all the supplies for history activities.
For history this week, we learned about the gladiators. I LOVE learning about gladiators. Eight years ago, when I first taught my kids about gladiators, I was reading Hunger Games for the first time. I geeked out about the parallels, and this time I pointed out all of the parallels to Maxwell, who has now read all the books, but he wasn't quite as excited as me.
I brought out the morbid colouring book of gladiators that I've done every four years. I've ran out of these books, and I don't think it's in print, so I don't know what I'm going to do four years from now.
Daniel decided to draw his own gladiator.
Isn't he good?
We also learned about Constantine and the Nicene Creed, but I didn't have supplies for our activity, and I wasn't feeling very creative for something else. There are no good youtube videos for kids about Constantine, and I could't find any kids books either.
HE'S ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FIGURES IN HISTORY FOLKS!
Blah, well, reading a section of Story of the World will have to suffice.
BTW, we've been reading awesome Usborne Readers about Ancient Rome.
I LOVE these books. They are not boring. They don't just tell you facts and dates. They have you experience a fun story. So happy to have found them.
We've also started reading The Bronze Bow as a family. I've never read it before, but it's turning out to be very Ben Hur-ish. I think it will be good.
We also learned about Pagans for history by doing our annual Leprechaun traps!
Thankfully I had almost everything we needed for this already. No proper boxes, but they figured out ways around this. They also started leaving food for the Leprechaun.
We watched the traditional St Patrick's day video:
And talked a bit more about pagans to officially make it a history lesson.
Thankfully, my boys haven't complained too much about being house bound. Abraham has been a lot more invested in what I'm doing, however, and has even been insisting on how I do my hair.
"Now Daddy will love you more."
Abraham and William have started All About Reading Level 1.
Honestly? All About Reading seems totally inferior to Barton. Fun, colourful? Yes. But I am missing the complete instruction and comprehension of Barton. I don't know if all the experimenting I've been doing has been fair to William, but hey, it's only been a few lessons, so I'll stick with it.
I couldn't resist doing the "down in the mud" hand symbols that Barton does to explain the difference between p and b because they were having trouble with it.
But, they love the colour and fun, so maybe we're doing something right.
For Maxwell, he's done with Stareway to Spelling, but I know he's not done with spelling drilling. I figure spell check can help with most things in his life, but not homonyms, so I have created my own version of Stareway to Spelling using nothing but homonyms.
Maxwell is thrilled (sarcasm.)
So, this whole "school's out" thing complicates my life just a bit. Mainly, I don't know how this effects my relationship with Westwind. THANKFULLY they cancelled PAT tests!!!! I have a kid in grade 9 and 6, so I am super stoked about this.
However, I actually like having some accountability, feeling like SOMEONE is reading this, and happy that I'm recording evidence of learning (Hi John....but are you even there?) And I love the Westwind classes, and their help in teaching my kids.
This is a photo of Hyrum making things for more multiplication contests at WAS
In fact, Hyrum has fallen in love with a project that John started doing with him, called ClassCraft. I guess it's a game where the storyline and quests can be made by the teacher, and the quests are math problems.
Hyrum has been so excited about it, he has been writing his OWN storylines and math quests and sending them to John, who puts them into the system.
But will this even continue? I don't know. Will I have to report all the checklists of learning this year? Well, I wouldn't be too sad if we don't.
We have found fun ways to spend our quarantine. Dustin created an awesome pool in our garage, complete with ball-pit balls and floatys. SO FUN!
(Those extra kids are the cuties living in our basement)
And today for church we decided to do a full-out church, which meant dressing in church clothes and having talks and songs. We learned about the allegory of the olive trees with the rest of the world, but there were some bare feet while giving talks!
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