Week 7, Day 30 of the CrononaCrazy Day Drills

Birthday-eve. We are trying to prep today and finish all schooling so we don’t have to do too much tomorrow and instead celebrate our wonderful 8-year-old. We even have planned in the birthday cake-run to Rachel’s Cakes in Anna into the schedule.

Kicking off today, it’s Spirit Day in #InThisTogetherOhio. I made the kiddos get on clothes and Elida spirit gear at that! A picture from our front porch of them trying to get in the spirit on this very dreary Thursday.

We plowed through the homework today too.  Olivia had a big day as she moved on from subtraction on XtraMath. She is so very excited to have this accomplished before she turns 8.  I printed out her certificate and tried to make a super big deal like they would at school.  I don’t want her to not be as recognized as she would if school was still in session.

 

Most of the pictures from today are the kiddos on iPads taking tests, so that didn’t make for great and exciting pictures. I do have a pic of the disaster (Isaac’s vocab word this week) on my kitchen table. This evening we got yarn elephant craft project from our dear friends the Zigenbusch family. Of course, she’ll stay up until this project is complete. Last night she went to bed a shade after 2 a.m. She has too much of our night owl tendencies in her.  She’ll sleep in half the morning, and I’m good with that! I will do the same. 

The last picture today is from tonight when they were just snuggled up watch cartoons on Isaac's iPad. Does any other Momma's heart melt when you catch an impromptu snuggled up session in place with your kiddos?  This momma's heart does, so grabbed my phone quick to snap.  Although they yell and scream at each other, there are moments of love. 

Week 7, Day 29 of the CrononaCrazy Day Drills

I have one VERY excited little girl for Friday.  Not because it’s Friday, but because it’s someone’s birthday! We are trying to work ahead on our projects so we don’t have to do school on Friday.  We are also still participating in #InThisTogetherOhio week and today was hero day. Keeping this in mind, we kicked off our day with our typical reading and math. Olivia nailed her spelling test at 100% and went ahead and took her vocabulary test as well.  Isaac still missed 3 on his practice test, so we’ll practice one more time tomorrow until we take the test. But his vocabulary test he was confident he’d do great so we took that today.  100% baby. 

 

Bible time included the second half of Moses and the 10 commandments. They watched it while I sat online watching final presentation for my IMC class. I have one more online class to sit through on Friday and then just finals left. Not that I’m counting down or anything.

The other big thing we needed to complete was the art project. If you remember we attempted this last week and we didn’t shade or do half the project according to the rubric because they did it while I was teaching.  So this time, I was the teacher.  There were so many steps.  We worked on this for at LEAST 2-2.5 hours. I LOVE the final project, but gee wiz, that was too much.  And I’m not dragging this stuff out a third time, so we are getting this done.

 

In our Ohio spirit week, today is Hero Day.  In honor of the day, we watched Big Hero 6 and I asked the kids to pick their hero.  Isaac said Paw was his hero since he jumped out of planes for the Army.  Olivia picked mom and dad (she’s sucking up good for her birthday!). I took them Walgreens (I needed to pick up a photo) and Olivia spent her own $ to buy us a gift.  Isaac said he wanted to get Paw Sugar Cream Pie from Kewpee. While we were there, he said he needed to grab Maw a strawberry Mt. Dew too since he was adding her to the list since Olivia had two.  So we picked up the goodies and went to Maws to drop off our goodies.  Happy #InThisTogetherOhio day to all our Heroes.

The last thing Olivia worked on is her fun goodies that the Franley family sent to Miss Olivia for her birthday.  It's 10:40 p.m. and she just opened them at 8. She's already completed on frog keychain and now is working on sewing up some mini animals next.  Thanks so very much for you all thinking of her during this quarantine birthday.  It's meant so much to her to know that you are thinking of her. So excited for Friday! 

Week 7, Day 28 of the CrononaCrazy Day Drills

Hello #InThisTogetherOhio spirit week. We are pumped to participate. Although it said, plant your garden for today…come on this is Ohio and it WILL frost at least one more time.  I’m not planting my $ flowers for them to die.  But, we will take a field trip to Amherst and buy our herbs (which Olivia kept calling them Herb with the H sound), veggies, and flowers.

But before our field trip, we must get our schoolwork done.  On the docket today is always Math and Reading.  It takes us most the morning to complete these two subjects. Isaac continues to work on fractions, but Olivia has moved onto time.  I sent this one fraction to the wonderful Math teacher who is annoyed by the online program that attempts to trick the kids.  I thought you had to put something in that last line when Isaac came to me and said, this doesn’t make any sense.  Nope, it doesn’t. There isn’t an equivalent.  I write the teacher to let her know we are leaving it blank.  She said that’s right and the program is trying to ‘trick’ the kids and throw them off.  Are you kidding me?  Ugh.

Olivia is working with time.  I thought she would nail this like everything else academic-wise she does, but apparently she operates on her mother’s time that is not entirely efficient or correct.  Therefore, she’s requiring a little bit more attention with this subject.

I have been saving our writing prompt for today!  It reads, “Imagine you had your very own garden. What would you grow?”  I made them complete these before we headed out to Amherst.  They I let them pick a few of the things they wanted to grow in their garden.  How fun!

Like I said yesterday in my blog post, we needed to move the recycle day to today. We piled the back of the truck with our cans to take in. The kids earned $8 and they were thrilled. They certainly won’t get rich off the endeavor, but they’re helping out and they think they’re rich!

Amherst didn’t disappoint.  I love this place. It was the first time I’ve taken the kids with me. Because I typically get lost here for HOURS, I’d rather go by myself. But when the hours are during the day and your partner is an essential employee, you take the kids. They wore their masks and loved this place as much as I do. I let them pick some veggies and herbs to grow, and we spent about 1.5 hours roaming through each of the 22 rows.  We won’t plant yet, but we are excited to get started.

Week 7, Day 28 of the CrononaCrazy Day Drills

Here we are on WEEK 7 😳Who said this could go on for the rest of school?!  I came home. Yep, my sabbatical weekend was just what Jeremy ordered. LOL.  It was what I call a power weekend.  Where you rip off at least 15 post-it-notes (Ashley knows what I'm talking about!) and you are killing it in the productivity department.  Not only that, I got to sleep in and not feel guilty. I got to day-drink. 🍹 I got to go run for miles in decent weather.  I got my 🧠 brain back and I'm ready to move forward and power through these last few weeks at ONU and then this homeschooling thing should be fun!

Today was filled with half school and half home stuff.  I really needed to run some errands, so the recycle cans and bank made the list. Turns out, old aluminum cans stink in the car, so that got moved to tomorrow.  Transferring money from bank to bank is a big pain too.  Good news is one of the banks in Delphos and so is the Creamery.  Double win.  The Creamery is the ice cream place in Delphos.  We came home with a 1/2 gallon of strawberry dole.  Totally worth the trip. 

Bible time today was a two-part series.  You can see they were watching it in the house on the big screen. I love that we can play YouTube through the television. That's amazing and wonderful.  Now if I could just get the internet as a whole up there!

Isaac is still working with fractions.  I won't let him hit submit anymore without checking his work with this magnets.  Is 4/6 = 2/3? Check it first with the magnets.  I am hoping if he can visual see it, it will sink it even longer. 


The writing prompt today had Olivia writing poems. She loves to write, so even though the writing prompts aren't graded, we still do them every day and sometimes submit them to her teacher. 

Overall today was a pretty good day.  We are looking more into the campaign for Ohio to start tomorrow.  Today was PJ day all day, which is us pretty much every. single. day. 

The video today is Olivia playing with her new Easter gift that finally arrived.  A balance beam to go with her air track.  She's in her little tumbling heaven.  Thinking we might be investing in some parallel bars next.  😳

Week 6, Day 27 of the CrononaCrazy Day Drills

Kicking off Friday with a Zoom call. That's what Olivia found herself doing at 10 a.m. this Friday. It's the first time she has seen her classmates since the CrononaCrazy has started. She was so excited she went to bed early and set an alarm for an hour earlier so she could be sure to be up in time. To say she was excited is an understatement. She asked to use my computer so she could use my headset and change her virtual background to something Disney.  I was laughing on the inside, but of course let her set herself all up.  She then told me I could leave. I heard her from the other room telling her classmates they were on mute. 🤣

 Isaac and I worked on his reading this morning and then I asked both of them to fill out the writing prompt.  Isaac didn't really feel like writing, but coloring. His favorite sport he listed today was track, which prompted an outdoor trip to the track. It was 63 degrees and just a perfect day on the track. So much so, I sent the pic to a few track buddies and said I wished I could include the smell- you know what I mean if you spend years of your life there. Ah, that smell.

We got home to a super sweet surprise. My SIL Wendy stopped by and left some treats on our porch.  She put cute cards to both me and the kiddos inside and then texted me down the road and said to go out to the porch before they melted. She also left me some Truly's 😘 It's like she read my blog and realized how bad I needed a drink!  I've never had one, so I'll let you know what I think.  I hear the student's talk about them all the time, but never had tried. So thanks Wendy for the drinks and trying to make me 'cool.'

Because I'm leaving for my sabbatical later this afternoon, I left the kiddos choose what they wanted to do. They picked this game that their grandparents sent to them called cups. It's a cute game and it has a bell.  Who doesn't love to hit the bell? We played several games of this before I said I had to get packed up to leave. Homework for this week is done and handed in.  Until next week my friends.  The hope is to come back rested, ready and refreshed!

Week 6, Day 26 of the CrononaCrazy Day Drills

Everyone has their calming trigger.  Mine is organization and OMG perfectly swept carpet. So what do I do when I need a reset?  I organize the heck out of some spots and I get out the sweeper. I'm just sitting here on the edge of the couch in my happy space. All is back in perfect balance, and thankfully I did my hair today because I didn't shave it off yesterday.  Good call self.

We kicked off today earlier than normal.  Why? The goal is to have all school work done for the week that can be done.  I'm leaving for my sabbatical tomorrow remember? I am not returning until my other students who are paying my bills are taken care of and feel good about their last two weeks at ONU.

So the writing prompt for today was fun. It challenged both kiddos to make as many words out of the word SPRINGTIME as they could. Toward the end, some of the words weren't words anymore. LOL. Reminds me of scrabble when you are checking if the word is legit or not.

We spend a good hour doing some more of their music homework.  We did some of it earlier in the week, but we finished up some of the required things for the grade. Again, don't get me started on why we have to grade Art and Music during this time.  It's hard enough to get to all the core requirements.  See rant from Monday. I counted today.  Yes, 12 different websites links 4 that are password protected with different passwords. My kiddos are pretty savvy when it comes to this, so I'm not too hung up on getting there. It's just the TIME required. So you have to go back to each course on the LMS and make sure you are going out to all the right places and completing all the assignments.  Maybe in a future post, I'll show you what this looks like so you can fully appreciate it. While I understand wanting to get through all the curriculum for the school year, the amount of time to get my kiddos to these websites, logged on, watch whatever, then back to Schoology to submit homework assignments tied to these other website...it's just hours upon hours.

Schoology - LMS they use and won't work with direct link. Must go through the Elida Home page.
Art: Three Youtube Videos to do their project that is due April 30 (all between 5-10 minutes)
Music: One PowerPoint (which means I need to let kids on my laptop) and a video
Reading: Read Theory and Wonders
Science: Powerpoint slide and two YouTube videos and one was AWFUL for those who struggle with reading already. Olivia has BrainPop website to grab the videos
Social Studies: One 12 minute video that was uploaded to Schoology

So I'm finishing up todays blog post with some videos of their music homework assignments. Also our gym time in the rain 😀Enjoy!

Week 6, Day 25 of the CrononaCrazy Day Drills

Happy Earth Day friends! I had such an exciting day planned today.  I stayed up half the night planning it.  Complete with writing prompts and outdoor activities.  That was until I felt Isaac beside my bedside whispering...mom. mom. mom.  

"What Isaac?" 

I took my math tests so you don't have to do them when you get up, but I got 57's on them. 

I spring out of bed. What????? Screaming no, no, no like someone had died.  Except, no one had really died, except half of me on the inside. Are you freaking kidding me?  No seriously.  We've been doing fractions for the last 3 weeks.  He knows this stuff.  HE KNOWS THIS.  And he waited until the TWO, not just one, but two unit tests to try to read these ridiculously worded questions and do it on his own? I was dead inside.  I turned into the ugliest 9-headed monster you have ever witnessed in a movie.  I could have won the role in heartbeat. 

Next I FaceTimed Jerm so he could witness my award-winning production. I then proceeded to lock myself in my room with my phone, computer and told them if they touched their iPads I was burning them. I decided to literally cool off with a shower and get all dolled up (cause I was losing my mind and it was this or have a Britney Spears moment and shave my head). I stayed there for 2 hours.  I got notes under the door.  See exhibit A. I was even sent a pencil, knowing I wouldn't respond.  For 2 hours I primped for no reason and sent notes under my bedroom door to my kids.  

I did write the Math teacher to explain what had happened and she gave us a redo- thank goodness.  The only video and the picture from the day is him retaking the test. Everything else we didn't do. I am going on sabbatical. No seriously.  Next week is dead week at ONU.  I'm running away this weekend and won't be back until my grading is done, my finals are prepped and I honestly throw in the towel until next week for homework with my own kiddos. Tomorrow morning we will power through all tests and everything for the week we can and I'm out. ✌🏻

Olivia did get her Earth Day writing prompt, and I've posted it here cause she's so sweet to complete it so nicely.   It was the best part of the day.  I'd post Isaac's but it's just another I'm sorry note, and it didn't have anything to do with what Earth Day was about.  

Happy Earth Day 🙄

exhibit A

Week 6, Day 24 of the CrononaCrazy Day Drills

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

This is ONLY day 24 of homeschooling.  

I know it seems like we've been doing this for MONTHS, but honestly, if we are just counting the days of actual school, we haven't hit the first 30 days...yet. 

With spring break dipping into last week, I think I forgot to do the interviews. Since this week we had the announcement that we'll be doing these CrononaCrazy Day Drills until the end of May then jumping into summer, I thought this was a good time to get some reactions of the kiddos.  Olivia always thinks that this might go viral, so she is very much into short, brief answers. Isaac thinks this is a monologue and he could go on for hours. I try to cut him off when he's going off on something that really doesn't answer any questions, he's just talking. 

Today was a pretty good day.  I only had to be online for one class, but it was a pretty important one, as it was my senior capstone students and they were presenting their final projects to the client. Read here BIG DEAL.  So during that time my real kiddos ate lunch and had their free time. 

Both of them had Science work to do today.  I was impressed with Isaac who liked learning about energy. I'm certain I had the glazed over look and found the one video to be absolutely dreadful- no really.  What kid wants to READ the video slides with these hard words? Nope, stupid. 

Olivia worked hard today on her spelling words.  I think she missed three and was losing it, because she is getting to the point where you have to memorize and you can't just spell it like it sounds. 

Then there was their Art project.  SUPER cute project.  Did take HOURS to watch the videos and then get all the supplies and complete the work.  It's also something that can't really be done unsupervised. UGH. I thought the final projects were totally cute though.  I might even run down and get a few blank canvas' to let them do again and hang up in their rooms.  Who doesn't like to look at a bubble gum machine?!

Isaac's machine says go Ohio State- guess who is missing his sports?

Best part of today was the dressing up for the "family meeting."  Apparently they've seen too many meetings where we dress up, so they thought this meant their Sunday-best too! I was cracking up when they came out all spiffed up.  Isaac even had a tie on at one point.  So naturally, I called both sets of grandparents to show them how the kids had dressed up for our family meeting to discuss our summer plans.  My Dad said since the meeting had to do with coming to his lake house, that he should be able to attend the meeting and vote. Isaac said he'd have to wear a tie.  BLAHAHAHA. So Jerm got home from work and we held the family meeting. Things decided included that we would head to the lakehouse, Olivia would get a fastpass to CedarPoint one time to ride coasters, and arcade games would be played. But, the best part was around 7 we got a Facetime call from my mom and dad. Mom had makeup on with her dress and dad had a suit jacket on with a tie. OMG we lost it.  We went back in and reconvened the meeting to give them a vote on whether the boat would be taken out and if we would visit one of the islands. Both passed. LOL.