May 2020 homeschooling in review

Well, I’m starting this post on May 14, which means I’m not doing quite so well at this weekly updating thing. But the days kind of all smash together after awhile, and it can be tricky to remember what day is what. As I finish this up on May 31, things are a little bit better on that days blurring together thing.

 

(There are affiliate links in here from time to time)

May week 1

At this point there is not so much homeschooling going on. They’ve finished up most stuff, now it’s mopping up the final bits. Mainly biology and math. Oh those classes, I hear a lot of gnashing of teeth as they work on biology because it’s quite a bit harder than their last science.

I don’t really feel sorry for them. They need to get used to it. The complaining really isn’t that bad now, but it does amuse me every time they hit that study guide at the end of the chapter and complain.

Starting with that annoyingly blurry picture in the bottom left, the first weekend that parks and all that was opened up we went out to one of our favorite local parks and the kids had fun wading in the creek as Jeff and I pretended to be capable of hitting a badminton birdie back and forth. I have finally admitted I am terrible at sports like this, so I mainly laugh as I miss everything by about three inches.

We picked up a copy of Codenames from our local game shop to help keep them in business. I got to play a friend of mine’s copy, and then insisted the entire family play it, and they all loved it. Even Princess who isn’t as big of a fan of games.

The sketch middle left is part of the game my 8th-grade girls play every week. One person describes what to draw and everyone draws their own version of it. At the end, we all share how we interpreted what we were told to draw. I always seem to start off with a huge image in the middle, and then have to gradually shrink everything else I’m drawing and it becomes this slowly smaller and stranger creation.

Top right is our family acting out The Tempest. Each Thursday night (though not this Thursday when I’m writing) we have no technology night. We act our way through one act of the Tempest and then do something else together as a family. Once we’re all done reading through my cutting of the play, we’ll watch a movie version of it. I’m really hoping we can find a good production. Sadly, our local group that was going to put a live production on delayed it from this summer.

I am super bummed about this.

The absolute middle is my electric kettle. It finally gave up the ghost after a few years of hard use. I don’t think most electric kettles get used to heat hot water multiple times a day. Seriously, at least 10 or so times a day, and it’s got a temperature gauge. it was amazing. Of course, I also like my new one just as much. The year I was given the first one I told my Mom how I wanted an electric tea kettle with programmable temperature. Little did I know that Jeff had also decided that would make a perfect Christmas present for me. I saved one of them up on top of my refrigerator knowing I would wear out the first, and now I’m using the second one.

And the final picture next to it is, of course, one of those pictures I texted to my child to remind said child to clean up the mess they’d been told to clean.

I’ve had to learn how to refer to my kids on social media in such a way that it’s not always clear which child I’m referring to because my kids have OPINIONS now. Very strong opinions.

Oh, and the bottom right picture is me starting on putting together notebooking pages for next year’s history. I’m up to the American Revolution. There are SO MANY people. SO MANY PEOPLE. It’s kind of insane. My kids are going to complain so much when they put the timeline together because the people will overlap so much.

 

May week 2

Most of these pictures are from Mother’s Day. I got up for the day to a wonderful breakfast, and a giant pile of blankets wrapped “mommy style,” which means wrapped up in blankets. I was given all sorts of fun stuff, but the most amusing was the start of fairy houses. So we spent Mother’s Day making fairy houses. Princess had put together a stick house with glue sticks that you can see in that center top section. I put together the fairy house in the top right.  The other middle picture is a new picture I have hanging up. My brother and his family stopped by and his daughter made me an adorable picture of her, Princess, and me all holding hands. It’s adorable.

When they came by, my Christmas present had come in, so I now have a brand new Lego Dice Tower, I SUPER LOVE it.

The kids and I played Tea Dragon Society, which is a fun beginner deck-building game that Princess got for Christmas from Aunt Tara, and I want to make it a bit more now. Afterwards the boys and I played Clank with Jeff while Princess worked on crafting. I went with the murder hobo strategy, which was kill all the goblins. It worked well for me because I won.

The bottom left is from our Prince and the Pauper night. I even tracked down a few “authentic Tudor recipes,” which were somewhat popular. Right next to it is a random sketch I did of an awkward unicorn in honor of what my 8th-grade girls are calling themselves.

May Week 3

I opted to put the pictures in from this week completely in chronological order…

First are pictures that are in that overlap period when the cousins spent the night Thursday, and were picked up on Friday. I had some very tired but happy kids.

Then a picture from watching Cats with Princess. We’ve been thoroughly enjoying watching an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical every Friday during the quarantine. We were quite sad when we discovered it was going to change to random musicals (I was looking forward to watching Princess’ reaction to Starlight Express in particular, that is quite crazy). We were even more disappointed when this Friday (May 22) the promised musical, Sound of Music, wasn’t able to air in the US because of copyright reasons or something.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Then, I’ve spent this past week writing an insane number of posts, including updating my Homeschool curriculum page with actual pinnable images (that took gathering a bunch of random curriculum hiding in my house).

Next we played a round of Tiki Topple, where I learned I apparently am ridiculously loud as I play that game, gleefully shouting, “Tiki Topple!” at the top of my lungs.

Not conducive to a husband working in the other room.

Next is my drawing from our weekly drawing game with the 8th grade girls. They really love this game and it’s fun to see what they come up with for their ideas.

Bottom row is what it looks like as my kids watch the Personal Purity course. Then in the middle is from our first time eating in a restaurant since the Pandemic. I was wildly amused how they had taped off every other table to ensure no one was too close to anyone else.

And the final picture is part of an expanded Creation Story lesson that I’m going to be adding as a product once I finish making all of the samples (so many samples, and I keep thinking of more projects to do with that story).

 

May Week 4

The funny thing is, most of these pictures are from the weekend as the month ended.

You know what’s not from May 29-31? The picture of my kids heroically hanging off of the car as Jeff moves from the driveway into the garage. They think this is hilarious and fun to do.

 

 
 
 
 
 
View this post on Instagram
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Because when you clean the garage then you need to ride the car in.

A post shared by Ticia (@ticiam) on

I think it’s hilarious my boys are so tall they had to duck to get into the garage.

In my new attempt to be more productive, I decided to try a version of batching, so I spent all of this week working on a whole slew of Creation story projects to add to my Creation story unit, and turn into a product to add into my store. I created 10 different projects, and took so many pictures and created so many different things. As I finished each idea, I came up with new variations on that idea. It was kind of funny. So, that top middle picture is of Creation prayer stations.

We started off the weekend watching Sense and Sensibility, I always forget how very much I enjoy this production of the story.

We’ve been trying to work on projects around the house each Saturday, and this week I slept in as Jeff and the kids did yard work. I woke up and Jeff was working with Princess to fix her swing. He had to buy the heavy-duty swing hardware because she’d worn out every other type we’ve tried.

That afternoon we had friends over again for playing more Shadows of Brimstone. My assassin, Stub Yoto, who works for Wam Yo Shins, has been very frustrated to see the Village Market blow up each time she attempts to go to there. Hopefully the third time will be the charm and I’ll make it there. She needs some nice walking sandals to improve her mobility.

Today, Sunday, I finally got the quilt block for my Murder Mystery quilt done. I got a few points off, but otherwise, I like it. Then Princess and I dropped off packages for the 8th-grade girls for a Bible study we’ll be doing later this week. I’m eagerly looking forward to a study on Lydia. I finished off the day going on a walk with Jeff at a local park. It’s the park we’ve been going to for park day with our co-op, and there was this statue I’ve noticed all month long, but it wasn’t anywhere near where we went, but today we walked right by it. I was going to take a picture of the statue when Jeff offered to get a picture of me with the statue, which made me smile quite a lot.

And that’s the end of May. June is going to be fun, our church is starting in person events, slowly, very slowly, and we’re going up to Dallas to get a new puppy! I can’t wait to meet her!

 

9th Grade Months in Review

 

2020 in Review


Comments

One response to “May 2020 homeschooling in review”

  1. I am a little jealous that you guys can meet up with friends again. That fairy house Princess built is quite impressive! Yay for almost the end of the school year!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *