Sink Me! They Seek him Everywhere!

 If you don't know the reference of the title of my post, you had a monstrous intolerable childhood, and you missed out on the best movie ever: The Scarlet Pimpernel (Jane Seymour version of course.) We watched it again this week as our activity for learning about the reign of terror, ----but I'm getting ahead of myself.

For our school, the first thing we learned about in this year's social studies was The Enlightenment!!! 

(We are just following the same Modern History schedule I did four years ago.) https://lindyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2016/08/modern-history-outline-for-2016-17-year.html

And the first person we studied for the Enlightenment was Isaac Newton. We did experiments for his three laws of motion as our activity.

And then we learned about John Locke. We watched a few videos about him because he was so important to history. One video I liked so much I added it to our daily devotional.

Then we moved along to learn about Marie Antionette. Honestly, I just feel bad for that girl. Society made her, then society killed her. (It reminds me of Britany Spears.)  My kids were SO EXCITED to realize that they could make cake from scratch by themselves. They've insisted on making cake twice since we first did it.

And THEN we learned about the Reign of Terror. It was the first time that I realized that Robespierre was actually "against the death penalty" and thought he was following the ideals of liberty from the enlightenment. SERIOUSLY? This is why we can never elect someone who's main motivation is hatred. Regardless of their "beliefs."

For science, we started our club. We've had them outside for the first few lessons. This year, we are learning Biology. 

For our first club we learned about what actually qualifies something as living. We also talked about Natural Selection. One of the highlights was looking through my telescope at some pond scum where we were able to actually see some moving single celled organisms!!!

Our second lesson was about cells. We made a couple of cell models, including one out of CANDY. Always a hit.

See the DNA/sprinkles inside our Oreo/nucleus? Classic.

We also talked about osmosis, and I had made a "naked egg" from vinegar, and took it out to show the little class (I have two classes, one for littles and one for bigger kids) how big it was, and it exploded on me! I guess I hadn't left it in vinegar long enough!

The next lesson we learned about classification, bacteria, and fungus. For classification, we took a million shoes and created our own taxonomy to decided how to map every shoe. (This is actually something I did in middle school, and I've never forgot it.)

For our main bacteria activity, I had them take a queue tip and try to find some bacteria in my house, and put it in a petrie dish. I'm not sure if it worked, but they had so much fun hunting for nasties!

Also, we ate active yogurt, as you can see.  For fungus we looked at mould and mushrooms and yeast. It's weird to think that mould spores are already on all our food long before they mould!!! 

 And as for the standard subjects, I have slowly but surely gained steam in accomplishing everything I need to with math and English.

It makes it a little easier to not have to worry about Maxwell. Well I still worry, but I'm really not in charge. 

Abraham did all his games with All About Reading that were super fun, and we have now started on his Logic of English.  We'll see how that goes!!!

And for Daniel I found this super awesome book called "Canadian Story Starters" to help in his writing. When Daniel is done with Rightstart Math, I'll get him started on IEW, and I think he will be done with this writing prompt book about the same time.

For Hyrum, he's been doing pretty good with IEW. I find that kids don't love it, but it works. Also, I just read about how to properly teach writing for my college class, and IEW ticks all the boxes.

It's honestly so much easier now that Hyrum and Daniel are reading fluently. My two dyslexic are reading for fun and writing without help.

It was funny last week. Maxwell is not the only teenager going to virtual school this COVID season. The internet went out in Leavitt, and a gang of teenagers rushed to my house to connect to my Wifi to do their school.

And they aren't the only ones who are doing online school, I AM!! It's been quite the learning experience, and I feel like I'm going super slow compared to my super sonic husband, but I've been learning and stretching, and although I wish I had a real-live-proffesor, it's good so far. I'm totally old-school though and I bring out pens and notebooks and flashcards. I guess I'm really not a millennial after all LOL!

 I also have been reading for our Cardston reading group. It's been so wonderful, but lately it's been a big item on my checklist of all the stuff I need to do. Here's one of my favourite paragraphs from our last book "Rest Play Grow" my Nacnamara. SUCH a good book! To me, this paragraph means we can't be frustrated with how are children are (specifically-for me-learning challenges) and to delight in who they really are.

As for AWESOME field trips, we went to Royal Tyrell Dinosaur museum. IT WAS FREE! What? only one weekend a year is free and we randomly go the right weekend? And then the city's swimming pool/slide was free too. 

I couldn't help think back to our night at the museum last year, when social life was a bit more simple.

And it was Orange Shirt day on the 30th, so we talked about the tragedy of the Native Residential Schools.

And we went on a few outings to enjoy the last of nice days before the weather turns. Including to Waterton and their fire-marked forests.

A Some-What Productive Summer

 Well, I actually did schooly things this summer!

First I didn't stop teaching Abraham and William "All About Reading," and half way through the summer, we got half way through the book!.....and then I got very comfortable with what we had accomplished and didn't really progress that much after that.

Here's William doing one of their cute activities:

Abraham is not at the same level, but I hope to teach him using "Logic of English." I'm really excited about using yet another dyslexic-focused program to see how effective it is.

I also taught Daniel and Hyrum cursive. I'm sure they don't know their upper case as well as they should, so maybe I'll have them practice this more during the year.

And I continued to do work with Maxwell.

NEWS! I decided to put Maxwell into a virtual high school! It's School of Hope, a private online Catholic school in Alberta. I'm really excited about it. He really needs to be accountable to someone other than me. I specifically did this for English. I hope this goes well!

When Maxwell turns 16, I plan on him taking the GED. We'll see how that goes and then perhaps he can transition to college classes.

Also I did some awesome things (If I do say so myself)

I helped Abraham make a book about "Front Flipping Dinosaurs" that he illustrated and wrote. He wants to inform the world that this book is NOT fiction. It's totally nonfiction.

This was quite the accomplishment. It ended up being 32 pages long! He's so excited for everyone to buy his book...I didn't really explain how this works. We made it using Blurb, but hey, maybe I could figure out how to put it on Amazon.

Also, I started making a movie of Maxwell doing "The Great Canadian Baking Show" but the McKay edition. With only one contestant: him.

He's pretty excited to finish the episode.

Also, my olders have started doing Dungeons and Dragons pretty regularly.

Also, I STARTED SCHOOL! I'm going to Athabasca University to get 30 credits of educational psychology so that I can combine that with my BA of Arts as prerequisites to apply to get into the Master of Education- School and Applied Psychology program at the University of Calgary. All this to get to be an Educational Psychologist. Whoo Hoo!

ALSO I've recovered the furniture in my school room. The before and after:

ALSO I've made two and a half videos summarizing the book "Leadership and Self Deception." This book holds some of the most important lessons I could ever teach my children, so this was really important to me.

ALSO I wrote the FIRST CHAPTER IN MY MOM"S BIOGRAPHY!!! I'm making a novel-type biography about my mother. It will sound a lot more like "Little House on the Prairie" than a normal biography.

ALSO I did two science clubs. The first one we learned about emulsions and colloids. We did this in my back yard and lots of kids came. It was pretty fun making mayonnaise, looking at oil in water and other fun things.  This is milk being effected by soap:

We also had a class about the PH scale. We made cabbage indicators that worked and Turmeric indicators that didn't work and tasted lots of acids and bases. It was a pretty fun class.

ALSO Daniel, William and Abraham did swimming lessons. I was especially proud of Abraham who really swam for the first time on his first day of lessons! (Yeah, living in a house with a swimming pool with the ocean in the front yard wasn't what did it--a stranger saying "okay it's time to swim now!" was all it took.....yep)

ALSO Hyrum, Daniel and William did Acting Summer Day Camp! They LOVED it and they preformed cute little COVID-friendly skits and dances at the end (they weren't allowed to sing because of COVID....weird.)

Notice William NOT touching Rosie? They weren't allowed to touch each other the whole time LOL.

ALSO I read "God's Design for Sex" with my kids. They are awesome very-Christian books that are for each age group. They talk about practically EVERYTHING about sex, which was perfect. My kids weren't that impressed LOL, but I highly suggest these books.

ALSO I organized and cleaned my school closet!!!! Be impressed. Be very impressed. Behold the before and after:

ALSO We went camping:

And Camping (this is our camper)

And Camping (Rory really got into it)

And Camping

And Camping

And Camping:

But then Dustin got sick of our Camper and wanted to make his own....which he spent the last of the summer making and making and making.

Cardston tried to make things fun during COVID this summer with things like a new spray park:

A new group called "Cardston Rocks" that encouraged the painting and hiding of rocks across town:

And "Parking Lot" Pow Wows:

And we had friends who went around making chalk art on everyone's sidewalks. We felt very loved to be included on their hit list.

ALSO there were three birthdays in our house:

And since it was William's 8th birthday that meant BAPTISM!!! He had to meet with the missionaries outside, and he got baptized outside too! How special.

And with all my things I did, I didn't take my littles to the creek or to Wally's beach enough, but I have a downstairs neighbour who took them for me. THANK YOU!!!

This year has been so crazy, but it's been VERY crazy for the homeschool community in the past month. EVERYONE realizes that homeschool is actually an option, which I don't think everyone considered before.

Now the most popular homeschool curriculums are all sold out, and virtual schools are full. It's weird. 

Westwind had to hire a new teacher and there are new faces at our mom's nights and at our homeschool get-togethers. When we had our Cardston and Area coordination meeting, there were many people I had never met there.

This is us in a big back yard all being far apart from each other. I'm so ready for this COVID stuff to be over.

This is what I feel like sums up our summer: