March 2020 homeschooling in review

March kicked off with a bang. I’ve just put together the first week’s worth of pictures, and I had so many pictures, they wouldn’t all fit in my collage. I’m hoping that is not what I’m in store for as March continues, but I’m pretty sure it is. Ha ha ha ha ha, looking back at the sentences I wrote on March 7, I just have to laugh as I sit here on March 21. I wonder how I’ll feel at the start of April. Humph, I’m finishing this up 3 days from the start of April and I’m kind of reeling with how the world has changed in the course of a month.

March Week 1

We started off March with Princess getting her expander removed and then the two of us heading over to give a going-away present to her friend moving overseas. That top left picture is Princess and her friend. She was overwhelmed by all the goodies Princess had fit in that box. Her friend’s siblings were all super jealous of the present.

I’ve got a few different curriculum I’m reviewing for this blog, so I laid out all of the different units and said, “Here pick one!” Superman chose physical science, Batman took astronomy, and Princess took biology. It was kind of amusing because that’s what I would have guessed they would pick.

Oh, that bottom left picture is the only picture I included for our Frankenstein movie night. This was a night where nothing went right. I attempted to make cookies, and defrosted some dough I had, only the dough wasn’t right, and when I cooked them it all spread too much. I attempted to make a special rice Krispie treat based snack (that’s the picture, my hands covered in rice Krispies and marshmallows), but it just wasn’t turning outright. The snacks were all ever so slightly off and everyone was snippy, and then we made “Frankenstein pizza,” and as I attempted to put my pizza on my plate. I dropped my plate and it shattered into a million pieces, so I was left standing there and trying not to laugh or cry, or all of the above. Then the movie went downhill, and it was all just horrible.

Monday I went to Barnes and Noble with Jeff and picked up a copy of Irish Fairy and Folk Tales. In our family campaign, we’re dealing with a bunch of faerie creatures, and it’ll help to figure out all of the parallels. That’s actually the picture on the other side, in the campaign the Greek gods continued on and became the Norse gods and then became the Celtic gods, and so on and so forth, so we’re trying to figure out who is who in these different characters.

Tuesday we had Game Club with our co-op and the boys played Smash Up with their friends and a few other games.

Wednesday was the boys’ birthday, and Jeff took the day off of work, so we spent the day playing board games and Shadows of Brimstone. We made an all-new group of orphans working for Wam Ur Shins (the gangster we made up for the Forbidden Fortress expansion). My character was Buster Shins, an orphan who believed she could be anyone she wanted to be, so she believed she could become a fox, and became a kitsune when she grew up. Superman got Star Saga for his birthday, so after our Shadows session, we played a round of Star Saga, which was amusing.

Thursday the kids did a video call with Aunt Tara to wish the boys happy birthday, and it was quite hilarious to watch her attempt to talk with the kids as they sat there passing around the phone. It was giving her motion sickness to deal with it.

Oh, and that middle picture is part of my “I’m making this cool new product for my Bible stuff and I need samples” kick. It also confused the heck out of Princess when I told her I needed a paintbrush to paint jello. She was very very confused.

I don’t really blame her.

March Week 2

March week 2 2020 9th

It’s probably an indication of how long this month already feels that I saved this week as week 3, instead of week 2.

This would be the week everything went crazy in the world. When everyone went from Coronoavirus is something on the news far away, to the Coronavirus is on the news and it might be in your town.

We started off the week with an international meal. I had each of the kids pick a different country to gather information about, and pick a dish to make. Superman made a delicious fried cheese appetizer from Greece. Batman had a dickens of a time finding a main dish from Netherlands that wasn’t using intestines or stomach of a sheep. Finally, he found something that was essentially a variation on chicken fried steak, or that’s how Jeff and I thought of it.

Batman did not appreciate that comparison.

I don’t like chicken fried steak, so I wasn’t excited by his meal. We finished off the meal with some cookies from Denmark Princess made, they tasted a lot like a peanut butter cookie with a glaze on them. (the pictures in the bottom left are from that meal).

The kids are helping me go through some new curriculum to let you know about them, and that center picture is Superman looking at his science curriculum. It’s a welcome break from their Biology, except for Princess who doesn’t like change. She is letting me know just how much she hates this. Which is QUITE A LOT.

I’ve taken to ordering loose leaf tea online since the local tea shop I had been buying from closed, and I got another big shipment in this week, I greatly amused the kids when I grabbed a random kitchen knife to open the box, “Mom! You can’t use that knife to open the box!” I completely ignored them and happily got out my Brigadoon tea that won’t be sold for another 4 years when Leap Day comes back.

I got a quick picture of the picture books I used for our study of Oklahoma, and I’ve decided I really want more literary coffee cups to pose with books. Because that’s always a great reason to buy a new coffee cup….

Those top two lefthand pictures are of my local grocery store on Friday as everyone suddenly panicked and went, “Oh no! I have to stay home for two weeks. I better buy ALL THE TOILET PAPER and ALL THE CANNED GOODS!” Seriously, I’ve got about a dozen pictures of all the craziness in the store. I wandered around different aisles just to get better pictures of it all.

Finally, Princess and I went camping with her American Heritage Girls troop. We worked at the campground on different service projects, and cleared brush and rebuilt a fence. That small picture with all the girls together is a picture of all the girls in our group working together to carry a dead tree the Dads had cut down.

And that’s week 2. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in week 3 with everyone in mostly voluntary quarantine.

Week 3

I just reread everything I wrote for the first two weeks. It’s amazing how much the world can change in a week. I have a feeling this week will be what I remember most about March…

March 2020 week 3 9th

This week the local grocery stores limited the hours they were open so they can restock, rationed what you can buy, and then limited the number of people who can be in the store at a time. All the local grocery stores have set up where the lines start and keep a count of how many people are in the store at a time. I was at the store on Wednesday and saw baby wipes, which have been sold out at every other store I’ve been at. I bought two packs (the most I could buy) and shared it on FB to giveaway to someone who couldn’t buy for their baby, and within a few hours they were claimed by a friend. The local foster home near us is running out of baby wipes, so I’m keeping an eye out to get more and send them over to Starry Foster Kids.

I started keeping a plague journal, it’s been interesting to see how much the world is changing day by day this week.

Princess has worn out her swing’s rubber covering, and while she’s waiting for the new part to come in her Dad showed her how to use a rope to act as the shock absorber (I don’t know what that part would even be called on a swing), but she wears through those fairly quickly, and it’s a good thing the new part finally came in. That child is on the swingset at least an hour each day.

I discovered my snips (embroidery scissors) covered in glitter, and I might have scared Princess a bit with my reaction to the glitter getting on my sewing machine and fabric, but she cleaned them and I don’t think she’ll be messing with my scissors anytime soon. I hope.

Our family campaign has an extra NPC called Reynard, he’s a phooka, and is not quite human (obviously, phooka and all), so his disguise looks rather like a 1930s Zorro.

I made a collection of “Do Not Fear” verses, and later today Princess and I will go out and deliver some cookies to friends to encourage them.

But overall, life is going on, and the kids are continuing to work on grammar and science (the two pictures) and we’re closing in on the end of the history lessons I had planned for this year, but I’m thinking of getting a jumpstart on my history for next year. I’m not sure…

On blogging front, I keep getting more and more ideas of what I want to write, and finding less and less time to write and less and less focus this week. Which is frustrating. I keep hearing all of these amazing hideas I could be doing, and just am not focusing to follow through.

Sigh, there are times my lack of ability to focus well is kind of annoying.

March Week 4

Total honesty, I’m finishing this off on March 29, so if the world ends on March 30th, it’s not going to be written down.

It feels kind of funny to have to put that disclaimer in here.

While stuck in quarantine my kids are coming up with all sorts of ways to amuse themselves, like Batman’s plan to travel around the whole downstairs without ever touching the floor with his feet. This led to his sister grabbing onto his rolly chair and being dragged and me saying, “Please don’t break anything while doing this hairbrained scheme.

That’s just the way we roll here I guess.

I finished off my cookie deliveries and have now delivered to all of the 8th grade girls at church, our small group, and several other friends we added onto the list. I’ve made more cookies this week than I have in a long time, but everyone who got the cookies appreciated the deliveries, and it very much encouraged them.

I cleaned out my pantry, which needs to be done from time to time because for some reason my kids will leave an almost completely empty container of something in the pantry and then go on to open another container. I found so many monstly empty containers and a large number of stale chips or various other things. It was tremendously frustrating.

But plus side I can finally see the floor of my pantry again. That means both my pantry and second pantry (as we call the closet in our laundry room) are clean. I don’t know how long that will last. Next project is either my library, the movie room, or the school room.

If I’m particularly ambitious I could make the kids clean their room, but I don’t know that I’m up for that much of a fight.

We played the Order of the Stick game on Friday, which did not go super well because everyone was in a foul mood with not being allowed to leave, so Batman who was doing super well kept getting bent out of shape because things didn’t go exactly as planned, and then he ended up winning because of the sheer number of points he had. So we got into a long discussion on how your attitude while playing a game really does change how much fun playing a game is.

We ended the week with watching Hunger Games. I’ve been having a blast discussing the book with the kids and seeing if they see any fun parallels between that and Greek mythology or Roman history. They still need to write a 5 paragraph essay about the book, so I’m curious to see what they come up with by the end of the week.

I did attempt to get our usual bluebonnets pictures, but Superman had a super terrible reaction to some poison oak in our backyard and so was feeling miserable and was not super happy, which means I have a bunch of rather blah pictures.

I’m hoping to sneak out tomorrow (March 30) to try one more time before the bluebonnets disappear.