Covid Homeschool Wrap Up (April & May)

The end of the school year has been nothing like we planned it would be, but it's been wonderful nonetheless. We've been staying home - together, all-day, every-day - and even though the kids miss their friends (and even though there is a lot of outside stress seeping in), it's been a good year. In fact, I feel like now that Lucy is getting so big, we are really just settling into a good routine and a lengthened stride. I am more grateful than ever before for the blessing that Homeschool has been in our lives. The last three months have been SO hard for so many of the people around us. Schools closing down meant that teachers were trying to teach via Zoom and through email. Most of the responsibility of the actual teaching fell on the parent's shoulders, which made me hopeful for people to see how wonderful homeschool could be - but the reality turned into endless homework assignments, busy work, teacher-directed fact memorization, and a lot of struggle for all involved. I'm not saying that people weren't trying their best, in fact, I think that teachers did an amazing job considering that they had ONE WEEKEND to change their entire curriculum to an online format and still see to the needs to their students. It was a tough task but people did their best and really did well with a hard situation. I just am grateful that our schoolwork was consistent, individual, and inward-paced. Of course, our schooling still adapted to the outward factors but the kids didn't experience as much turmoil as others did.

Here are some highlights:

April:
Architecture+ Stem, Joseph Smith Stained Glass Art, outdoor play, building with blocks.





About Lydia- She enjoys math, and I am so grateful that she hasn't been caught in the "girls can't do math" trap. Whenever other girls say things about how they hate math I silently wish they would stop talking about it because I 100% believe that girls not liking math is a peer/social induced trait. In our math lessons, we learn about famous mathematicians (boys and girls) and the amazing things they are able to do because of their knowledge and hard work.  I don't think that everyone has to love math, but I'm grateful for Lydia to be able to develop her confidence and push herself to learn and grown. She's already such an avid reader, and I think that her future will be blessed by the ability that she has to learn about the things that are interesting to her and to learn in a space conducive to HER personal growth. I love her, I love coming into her room in the morning and laying by her to wake her up. I love watching her take care of her siblings, finding her folded up in a corner somewhere reading a book, and watching her laugh when she tells a knock-knock-joke. I just love her.




About Austin- He LOVES games. Since Covid started we have played even more card games than usual and Austin is in heaven. I think that we've played Cover Your Assets approximately 568 times. He doesn't always love working on his learning time, but I have found that if we play a game at the same time (occasionally taking a break to do a few sections) he's happy and even more successful. It makes me excited for kindergarten. I'm looking forward to being able to teach him with games and focus in on the way he learns. He's so funny and has such a sharp and determined personality. I love spending time with him and can't wait to see him blossom in this focused environment. He's working hard at his Upstart and really enjoys learning in that format, too.



Building Towers, Floating Boats, and playing Sharks and Minnows and Freeze Tag in the backyard. (Our spring has been spent with hours and hours of playing these games in the backyard. It's been wonderful and I'm SO grateful for this home that we live in. Being quarantined at home isn't so bad when you are with people that you like, have a great backyard, and the weather stays perfect for weeks on end!)



David's been reading books with Lydia at bedtime, Caleb is loving our hands-on sensory activities.


We'd been learning about otters for a mini-unit, at Lydia's request, and we learned that some otters actually live in the Provo River. I decided that we could go for a mini-field trip to Provo Canyon to look for some otters. I haven't been letting us go on any of our Spring Hikes, because there are just too many people to be comfortable, and even when we got to the place that I was planning to go - there were too many people there. We kept driving up the canyon until I found a pullout by a little dirt road and we walked down to the waters edge. It wasn't a great location, but the sun was shining and the kids were over-the-moon excited about being outside and in the mountains (and lets be honest, just being outside has turned into a novelty). There was a fisherman about 50 feet away (which felt really close in this crazy world we live in) and I tried to keep the kids quiet so we didn't bother him. At one point he walked past us and we asked him if he'd ever seen an otter - and he had! Which was cool. Mostly the kids just enjoyed throwing sticks and rocks into the river and breathing the fresh air. It was a great afternoon (plus we picked up donuts at my favorite donut shop on the way home, so it was a win-win for me).


As an extension of our Otter unit, Lydia really wanted to go and clean up garbage from the access road behind our house. She's been learning about how damaging pollution is to our environment, especially Otters and wanted to do her part to help. So we did. We took three Walmart sacks and two big garbage bags and filled them ALL. Lydia even climbed through a bunch of pampas grass to fish some big pieces of garbage out of a (filthy) inlet of the Jordan River. At one point she got scratched and she said to herself,"I'm doing this for the Otters!" I was so proud. Austin prefers not to touch other peoples garbage with his own hands and so his job was to take care of Lucy in the stroller and he did a great job. Caleb was just excited to be out for an adventure.


Making "Jesus Christ" jerseys when we talked about "taking his name upon us". Lydia built me a home for my special stuffed animal "Bunny Sue".


Poetry Treat time is still a favorite activity around here.




Change of Heart- STEM and Come, Follow Me activity- We made hearts out of baking soda while we read some scriptures and at the end of the week we used vinegar to change them. (After the kids finished making their hearts, I secretly stuck little heart-shaped buttons in the middle for them to discover when they used the vinegar on them. It was a win, and I hope that they absorbed the gospel lesson, too.




Making Balloon powered cars:



And then a self-led extension to make a balloon-powered boat.


Homeschool - Social Distancing Style. Lydia earned the chance to visit with Lilly for 5 minutes while sitting on opposite sides of the porch. And more Zoom piano lessons with Sister Lewis.




Baptism PrepI wanted to stick these pictures in here because they were a big part of our homeschool at the end of April and beginning of May. Lydia made a goal when she turned 7 that she wanted to read the entire Book of Mormon in the year before she turned 8. She had been working on reading/listening to the chapters during her wind-down routine at night, but about 10 days before her birthday she was only at 61% done. We talked about it and she insisted that she wanted to finish! I knew that it just wouldn't be possible with her just reading at night, so I decided to pause the rest of our homeschool studies and do a full-fledged Book of Mormon Study. She did one Math Lesson in the morning, then we read the Book of Mormon together for almost 2.5 hours each day. We drew pictures, made lists, highlighted verses, did fun things, and talked about what we were reading. It was a big investment of time, but it was important to Lydia and we achieved her goal! She finished the Book of Mormon the day before her birthday.









We did some other Baptism preparation with her, including having her teach a lesson on baptism for Family Home Evening. It was awesome. With all the Covid stuff going on, we were only going to be able to have our immediate family at the baptism. Lyida shared a story about a little girl who was sick and wasn't going to be able to get baptized, but she prayed day after day that she would be able to get baptized and then she was. Lydia started praying that she'd be able to invite a few people to her baptism and that everything would work out so that she would still be able to be baptized.


She was baptized on May 9th, and she shared a testimony that she wrote herself. I was so proud of her. Proud of how hard she worked to understand the ordinance and of how determined she was to make those promises with God.


May Homeschool


My dad brought his DWR Bear Box and gave us a lesson about bears and the different types of bears. It was the first time that we'd seen other friends (we invited the Middletons) and only the second time we'd seen my dad in person since March. It felt weird, but so fun.




We went on a nature walk and it felt so good to be outside. Things are slowly starting to open back up, and even though we are still trying to avoid other people, it feels so much better to just be able to have a tiny bit of normalcy again. (I love the age that Caleb is at right now. He gathered these sticks one by one through the course of our walk and carried them all around. He also got too close to the edge of the lake and fell in, so #threeyearold.)









We ended our school year with a bunch of end-of-year activities - but the favorite activity was our Family Read-A-Thon. David took the day off of work and we all spent the day reading books together.

Now we are looking forward to summer!

Actually I've thought about homeschooling through the summer and then taking our break in the fall when the weather is nice and hopefully the virus has become more contained. But the kids are excited for summer - and I'm not sure exactly what things are going to look like. Right now I think that I'm going to homeschool on a reduced schedule.
Monday-Cleaning/Chores day
Tuesday&Wednesday-Homeschool (consisting of Math and Unit studies, without formal LA)
Thursday-Saturday- Summer
Sunday - Church @ Home

I'm not sure exactly what it will look like. But it seems a shame to have a summer break when we can't go to the pool, or park, or spashpad, or anywhere! But I'm grateful for the last three months of homeschool (and really the last two years of homeschool) and grateful to know that we will be homeschooling again in the fall - so I don't have any uncertainty about what our life is going to look like then. Homeschool is a blessing for us and we are signing off on another successful year!