Yes, I finally got caught up in history, only to be behind again.
I'll tell you why: Utah.
Yes that's right, we escaped COVID jail.
I talked to the border guards, and since I am a US citizen and half of my children are US and the last two (who are only Canadian) can be proven worthy of naturalization because of their older brother's citizenship, we could go to Utah to see my mom who has a brain tumour.
Utah has no quarantine travel laws, but I was not about to get my parents sick. We all took COVID tests, which were negative. We didn't go anywhere from the time of taking the tests until getting to my parents. I mean NOWHERE. We brought a composting toilet in our van so we NEVER GOT OUT OF OUR VAN except for paying at the pump.
Once we were there, we only got groceries through Walmart pickup, and only did very socially distant activities. Now that we're back in Canada, we are on our last two days of quarantine, and no one got sick so...success!
I'm so glad we went because Canada just came up with crazy new restrictions, and I don't think we could have gone now. Also, as it was, the government phone called me, asking how close I was getting to my husband in my own house, and telling me I couldn't walk my dog. If I wanted fresh air, I needed to crack a window!
Yep.
And we were supposed to be studying the Great Depression and as an activity, we were supposed to go around the sidewalks and have chalk hobo symbols tell us about our neighbourhood. I totally would've done this in Utah before I left, but I procrastinated a little, and never dreamed that my government would keep me from doing something so socially distant as going OUTSIDE ALONE.
Thus all history came to a halt because I got depressed I couldn't do an activity about depression.
And the ironic thing is, during quarantine, I was studying for (and took) my Canadian citizenship test which told me all about all my rights......
Yep.
But hey, we got to see my parents.
My mom read Abraham his book he wrote and illustrated:
She spoiled them rotten. Seriously, everyday was like Christmas, and it was fun things like puzzles and educational things:
And best of all, my mom gave Daniel an art lesson where she passed down all her Encaustic Painting secret techniques. SO special
I don't regret going one bit.
And learning did not stop because we went to Utah. While there we went to some hot springs (which are educational in and of themselves.) No one was there-social distant muddy paradise.
And we learned about Gandhi. We spent quite a bit of time on him. Four years ago, we went down to the ocean in our back yard and made salt from saltwater. Eight years ago we put salt in water only to boil out the salt, but now that we had done it for real, it felt silly to do it the fake way, so no salt march for us this time around, but we did make our own clothes in Gandhi's honour.
And on the drive down, we listened to "My Side of the Mountain" and on the drive home, we listened to "I am Malala." Both of these books are being read by the Alternate school with which we are doing zoom book chats. I've really appreciated these calls. Listening in, I've heard the deep thoughts that the children are having in connecting what is happening in the book to themselves. LOVE IT!
We also had enough time to listen to "Secret Garden," which is perfect, because we are also reading "Little Lord Fauntleroy" as a family, and they know it's by the same author, so they are able to hear writing styles coming through.
Also we were able to listen to MY GRANDPARENTS! When I was in Jr. High, I was asked by my history teacher to interview my grandparents about the depression, and I not only interviewed them, I recorded them, and I still have the recording!
We listened how my grandpa would put paint on his foot to hide the fact that his socks had holes, and how my grandma was the first one on her street to have a toilet, and how the whole neighbourhood would come over to see it flush!
SEE!? We DID study the depression. In fact, among reading and talking, we've seen Kit Kittredge the movie, and we've watched the two Ducktales that are about inflation to talk about the German depression and Hitler's rise to power: Doe Ra Mi, and Land of Tralala. It was so hard for me to find these episodes in years past, but now I just log onto Disney+!
And other Zoom classes we have been able to go to have been:
Creators, which is for Hyrum
Inventors for William
and Bakers for Daniel.
I feel so blessed that my kids can do these classes (although I've not been as supportive as I should...I don't make them do anything, they have to do it themselves.) THANK YOU CAYLEEN!!!!
And now for the core subjects:
Abraham is basically caught up in Math. He's doing great. He's adding ones, tens, and hundreds to numbers. He's also learning about balancing equations. Love it.
He's moving right along with Logic of English. I HATE how Logic of English has him memorize ALL of the sounds of all the letters before sounding out his first word. IT'S RIDICULOUS! and then he's supposed to know the FIRST sound and only use that one? He has said "rate" instead of "rat" when none of my other kids were like that. Not impressed.
BUT we're plugging along anyway, and one thing I WAS impressed with was how they have him read these simple little books and instead of him guessing the words because there's pictures, he has to draw the pictures himself! Ingenious! And if your child doesn't want to draw it, they have pictures you can cut out and paste in the correct spots.
See his Eyebee playing tag and wearing a wig? So Abraham.
Sadly, this crazy world has been Abraham's childhood. He drew a picture the other day. "This is a brain tumour, this is COVID 19, this is the cold, and this is a virus that just duplicates and goes." How did the world get so insane?!?
William is DONE with All About Reading level 1!!!
For the last week he's been using his glasses to help him to read, which he LOVES.
Now to start AAR level 2 and All About Spelling. It should be very enlightening. I'll be honest, I'm not sure if we'll stay with it because I doubt it will be what he needs. I think Barton is in our near future. I'll continue as long as we can, but I'm sceptical.
He has been doing writing. He started a cute story about a boy that was forgotten by his parents.
Here's an example of his math lately:
But more than this, he's been doing long multiplication!! I LOVE Rightstart math's way of gently introducing this. They have them add the same number a certain number of times and then have them compare it to that number being timed by that certain number.
And here's him doing word problems as well:
Daniel has been doing more trigonometry. He made a homemade clinometer to get the degrees to measure height using trigonometry.
He has also gotten into solid shapes and has been learning about volume.
Hyrum is DONE with Video text level one!!
Here's a couple of pages of his final:
I'm not sure how to do the next level since I need new worksheets, but I don't want to wait to order them. I'll call them and see.
His Murder mystery writing has been going right along
And now Maxwell: I know that h'es not in WAS, but I must tell what's going on with him.
He's done with his first semester with Hope virtual Highschool, but I convinced him to drop out of high school.
WHAT!?!
Bwahaha. Okay, so he's changing from teacher led to parent led so he can go to Coursera full time to prepare him for COLLEGE!!!
Yep, that's right, he's taking BYUI concurrent enrolment classes that start in April. I'm really excited about this trajectory for his education.
I've had mixed feelings about Hope Highschool. We've liked his science class. I feel like he had an awesome teacher and he learned a lot. His English wasn't as great. This was the main reason I wanted him to go to the high school, so that was a bit disappointing.
He also did art, but that was basically Janet helping him go through the checklist. I was proud of a few of his art pieces:
So now he's going to go to Coursera for two classes:
an English class that will hopefully prepare him for college work. https://www.coursera.org/specializations/academic-english
and https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being which is the Science of Well-being by Yale. My son will have a certificate from Yale. Oh la la.
And then, he will be taking a photoshop course on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFfd0RYax5k&list=PL7JpMMpENaD3KL_lvmw4eS5U5AD746yKB because that's what he's actually interested in.
And I'm going to be doing Wordwasp spelling and probably spelling/typing with Touch-type, which I probably will make all three of my older boys do. https://www.readandspell.com/?fbclid=IwAR3YLqWSLErK9mToMRTcAq87gNApBk5B47kjXDpEBq9rUKyluAElHNJRozY
So there you go! I'm going to have a college boy soon!
Yep I'm getting old. I'M 40!!!!
And this is how I feel about that (I put this on a face book post)
