Week 8, Day 33 of the CrononaCrazy Day Drills

As you can tell from the schedule made for today, my students are BEYOND excited to get school done for today so they can get packed for their remote learning trip. The next few days we will be finishing up school remote for the remote learning. We are immersing ourselves into this experience and can’t wait to social distance ourselves from everyone except the great outdoors. That and Jeremy is defending his thesis this week and could use some quiet time without everyone around.

After yesterday’s announcement, there were plenty of notifications on Schoology today updating us on how we’d be finishing up the school year. We started by doing the regular Reading and Math to get those subjects completed before noon. After lunch both kiddos announced they didn’t have Science work assigned to them.  Perfect opportunity to work on our Garden Jars that the kiddos got for Easter. Olivia has mint and Isaac has cilantro. This was a fun project.  I hope they sprout and it actually works.  They look beautiful, so that is bonus.

We also worked on their puzzle books that a wonderful friend sent for Olivia’s birthday, but was kind enough to include one for her brother too.  They like to race with the maze puzzles to see who can conquer it first.  We did two today and they both one once, so we quit while there was no complaining.

Looking forward to grading from our remote location tomorrow while the kiddos finish up their few projects. Olivia has an Art project that was dropped in today to completed before the end of school.  Nothing will be assigned after next Wednesday, so looking forward to wrapping up all their schoolwork and getting our summer started!

Week 8, Day 32 of the CrononaCrazy Day Drills

Somehow it’s Monday again.  I really don’t know how this is happening. Many have referred to it as the movie Groundhog Day. I’m starting to feel it.  This week is finals week at ONU, so I feel the stress and pressure on an entirely new level this week.  I MUST enter grades. Procrastinating and doing other “fun” things is now longer an option. So I think we will head to the lakehouse mid-week for something different for the kids to look at and entertain them while I buckle down and grade.

So for Olivia’s birthday, her grandparents from Arizona sent her something she’s wanted for a few months. My STEM-loving child has wanted a microscope and slides. So during science time, when I’ve been working with Isaac on other things, she’s been looking through her new microscope at her National Geographic slides. She’s loving these slides.  I would HIGHLY recommend the slides. If anyone has any other suggestions of cool things we should be doing with our microscope and slides, please let me know.  She is absolutely enthralled with this and I want her to keep her love for it.

Isaac continues to work on these ridiculous Math problems.  I’ve put a few pictures of them here so you can join the fun.  The one with the markers is simply me visually trying to show him what we are talking about in the problem. 

The last picture is a screenshot of most recent and uplifting news I’ve ever heard.  Elida school board have THANKFULLY decided to end school two weeks early. Can I get an AMEN?!  I’m so thankful and grateful for this decision. Next week I won’t have ONU and I’ll get to spoil my star students all week at homeschool.  I can’t wait. 

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 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 3, Day 15 of the CrononaCrazy Day Drills

FRI-YEA!  We tried to put an energetic spin on today.  Trying something different, we listed everything we needed to do for the day on the white board. Starting with Olivia we were able to randomly pick a task and tackle. 

The order? Hot dots/xtraMath first. That is what we typically start with, so not surprised they went with that. It's a good warm up for the day and also teaches us that school is all about schedule and order.  This is what we typically do and they like to have order. 


Second, Bible Time. Today we learned about how the world started and the Garden of Eden. 

Next, we went to Math. Isaac had a test and Olivia said she was done with her assigned work (she was) and so I gave her some worksheets from a workbook I have here at home.  After that, we went to lunch! It wasn't on the board, but the kiddos didn't let me forget about it. 

A cool thing I found on PBS was a kid version of COVID-19 in a video.  They watched the entire thing and seemed pretty interested in what he had to say. The didn't understand the 6 feet rule applied to only people outside our home, so we talked about that. We also discussed why it's important they stay home when I run to the grocery. Of course they wanted to know when this would all be over.  Still didn't have a good answer for that. Probably not before June 1 would be my guess. 

Gym rocked. It's beautiful at 65 degrees here today. We set up my laptop and did Ruthless exercise video outside. Then we all went for a 3 mile walk.  It was perfect to step outside and escape the house. 

The pic of the bat and broom? Well what do you do when mommy is online working and you're bored? Apparently you throw rocks on the top of the pool tarp. Then you decide how to get it off before mom sees the rock. So you try to reach with a ball bat. That doesn't work and you lose the bat too.  So you get a broom. Except you lose that out in the middle too. They you resort to going and getting mom. UGH. 

We finished up today with reading and spelling. Both had tests in both subjects. It took us a good 1.5 to complete our reading assignments with both kids today. The good news is that next week is spring break for half the week, so we will have a nice break and some easy catch up time.  We didn't get to Olivia's closet or Social Studies today, so we'll chip away at those assignments this week and next week. Happy Fri-YAY!