The week started off with an ice storm, followed by this snowstorm, followed by a couple days with below-zero lows. All in all, it was basically winter, and we treated it in the way winter should naturally be treated, by hibernating. We did not do much of anything on Monday, a bunch more nothing on Tuesday, and a "lite" homeschooling schedule the rest of the week. No sense in going crazy with plans the first week after a big holiday break, especially when it's painful just to walk out the front door.
J's depiction of our weather -- everything all at once. The boy in the picture is dressed in winter clothes (note the scarf blowing in the winter blast!), holding an umbrella to keep off the falling rain and snow (and sleet and freezing rain, which is a new weather concept for the kids this year -- not that we haven't had those before, but we've not had so many opportunities to talk about it before!), falling from the cloud overhead. He then boxed off this little picture of our delightful weather, and drew next to it a tornado (which we have NOT had any experience with, thank goodness). So I guess the title of this picture could be "It Could Be Worse".
Anyway, the animals all survived the icy blast,
the horses inside their warm toasty blankets, the pig by eating anything that wasn't strapped down, including the kids' gingerbread house (which is being devoured in this photo). We did lose one of our chickens -- they just don't tolerate that sort of frigid weather very well, and I'm lucky it was only one, although none of them are laying very well at this point, which is not making our egg customers very happy. The sheep just don't care -- they just lie around in big piles of hay-munching coziness. The dogs were only happy outside for about 10 minutes, then were looking for a way back indoors. They'll probably be the happiest (next to me!) with the milder weather predicted this week.
There were two big firsts this week for us with our curriculum. I changed our formal movement circle to a story-driven
Adventure Circle, which the kids have just been eating up. And we introduced
woodworking, at least the drilling part of woodworking. Every so often I hear a soft "whir, whir" from the other room and know that one of the kids is drilling away at the work bench, and it makes me smile. The work bench will be left set up for them to use whenever they feel inspired.
We did not have our Family Circle Time this week, but the boys repeatedly read The Littlest
Matryoska by Corinne
Demas Bliss, illustrated by Kathryn Brown, and acted out the story with their set of
Matryoska dolls. It was much more popular than our curriculum story this week, which was a simple folk tale called "The Straw Ox", which was cute but not as imagination-capturing as those
Matryoskas. We also did not have our Special Story Time by the fire this week, because we got home late on Friday evening from a
playdate with homeschooling friends. Our regular story schedule will resume next week.
The week started off with an ice storm, followed by this snowstorm, followed by a couple days with below-zero lows. All in all, it was basically winter, and we treated it in the way winter should naturally be treated, by hibernating. We did not do much of anything on Monday, a bunch more nothing on Tuesday, and a "lite" homeschooling schedule the rest of the week. No sense in going crazy with plans the first week after a big holiday break, especially when it's painful just to walk out the front door.
J's depiction of our weather -- everything all at once. The boy in the picture is dressed in winter clothes (note the scarf blowing in the winter blast!), holding an umbrella to keep off the falling rain and snow (and sleet and freezing rain, which is a new weather concept for the kids this year -- not that we haven't had those before, but we've not had so many opportunities to talk about it before!), falling from the cloud overhead. He then boxed off this little picture of our delightful weather, and drew next to it a tornado (which we have NOT had any experience with, thank goodness). So I guess the title of this picture could be "It Could Be Worse".
Anyway, the animals all survived the icy blast, the horses inside their warm toasty blankets, the pig by eating anything that wasn't strapped down, including the kids' gingerbread house (which is being devoured in this photo). We did lose one of our chickens -- they just don't tolerate that sort of frigid weather very well, and I'm lucky it was only one, although none of them are laying very well at this point, which is not making our egg customers very happy. The sheep just don't care -- they just lie around in big piles of hay-munching coziness. The dogs were only happy outside for about 10 minutes, then were looking for a way back indoors. They'll probably be the happiest (next to me!) with the milder weather predicted this week.
There were two big firsts this week for us with our curriculum. I changed our formal movement circle to a story-driven Adventure Circle, which the kids have just been eating up. And we introduced woodworking, at least the drilling part of woodworking. Every so often I hear a soft "whir, whir" from the other room and know that one of the kids is drilling away at the work bench, and it makes me smile. The work bench will be left set up for them to use whenever they feel inspired.
We did not have our Family Circle Time this week, but the boys repeatedly read The Littlest Matryoska by Corinne Demas Bliss, illustrated by Kathryn Brown, and acted out the story with their set of Matryoska dolls. It was much more popular than our curriculum story this week, which was a simple folk tale called "The Straw Ox", which was cute but not as imagination-capturing as those Matryoskas. We also did not have our Special Story Time by the fire this week, because we got home late on Friday evening from a playdate with homeschooling friends. Our regular story schedule will resume next week.
1 comment:
oh! i love the woodworking! dave and fluffy start their woodworking class this weekend but i love that you have something set up all the time for the boys. will you walk me through what you have? so i can do the exact same thing???
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