April Homeschool

We've had a great month of homeschooling. After our (two-week) spring break, I felt rejuvenated and ready to make the most of our spring homeschooling months. I typed out exactly what lessons we needed to do to finish the workbooks I wanted to finish by summer and outlined what we need to do for each day to keep us on track. This has been helpful for both me AND the kids. I love homeschool for the flexibility and don't usually use a planner - we just spend the time that we need on each lesson and then move to the next making sure that we are participating in deep learning along the way. I don't love rushing through a certain number of lessons - but I really want to finish a few things this spring and this is working for us right now. 

Even with our structured schedule we have plenty of time for doing math while snuggling in bed and making a 144 cube rectangular prism after learning about calculating volume in a lesson. 




We've been doing our rotations - the kids LOVE the cooking rotation, the girls have dropped their science rotation and are doing our Final Projects for Utah History, including "Plan your own field trip", and County Study project. We are also still doing swimming lessons and it is made more fun by having the Youngs do swimming lessons with us, too. 



For our sewing class, I set up a field trip to Sister Roxanne Becker's house across the street. Roxanne and her daughter-in-law Robin are AMAZING seamstresses. They are especially talented at sewing costumes and they costume whole theatre productions regularly. They just finished the University of Utah's production of Sweeny Todd (Lydia asked if we could go see it after I helped Roxanne with some final details for the costuming and I was like... well ... no. Ha. But sometime it would be fun to go see one of their productions that wasn't so dark.) and already Roxanne was showing us some things that she's working on for their next production about a Chinese princess. After showing the girls around her amazing workroom she taught them about her sergers and the girls made a serving sample and then serged the outside of the pocket for their quillow blankets. It was an awesome field trip. The girls are making quillows right now (blankets that fold up into a pillow), but they also just finished making banners for their junior ranger pins and that was a super fun project! 

The other kids didn't get left out of the sewing adventures, I let Austin. Caleb, and Lucy pick out fabric and we made them quillows, too. 

Lydia did her state RISE testing in Math, Language Arts, and Science. We didn't do much prep this year, but it was a great experience for her to practice test taking skills and be able to go and sit and take the tests. I'm so proud of her. She also just started on a softball team and even though she's never played before - she's working hard to learn and improve her skills and she just does everything with such a happy attitude. I'm so grateful for her! 





We had some great field trips this month, too. 

We went to the zoo. 





Lucy was watching this snake and it slithered over and brought its head right up to the glass. The two of them were just starting at each other and when Lucy moved her head to the side, the snake would move it's head that way too. They were both touching the glass, so that only that thin pane was separating them. I have to wonder if Lucy is a parseltounge! 



We went to the tulip festival with our big homeschool group and we also went to Highland glen to scooter around the pond and feed the ducks with some other friends. 

Lydia and Iris teamed up and they planned a field trip together for one of their final Utah History projects. They decided to go to Mrs. Cavenaughs Chocolate Factory, then go to a nearby park for lunch and lawn games. It was one of the best field trips of the whole year. The tour was excellent and the kids had SO much fun playing games together at the park. I have prayed for a long time to find a group of homeschoolers that we could connect with and build relationships with and I feel like this group is an answer to my prayer. The group will look different next year, but for this year, I'm grateful for them. 






We went to the free day for Arbor Day at The Red Butte Garden. It was a beautiful outdoor area and the kids had fun jumping from rock to rock in the pond. We are so glad for good friends to explore with in this beautiful place that we live! 

Zoo Day with Aunt Amy

Even though we haven't been able to use our zoo passes as much as we had hoped to use them this year, we've still be able to go several times and it's been wonderful. To make a trip to the zoo even better, this time Aunt Amy came with us! 

Amy is such a wonderful Aunt. She cares about the kids and does special thing to make sure that they know she loves them. She listens to them, laughs with them, and she's a great friend for me, too. In fact, over the past several weeks we've been reading our way through a favorite book series (The Jonquil books by Sarah Eden) together. Each time we finish a book, we send a message to each other on Marco Polo to rate the book and discuss the things that we liked/thought about the book. 

I remember when I first started dating David and he was texting with his sister "Trigger". You could tell how much he loved his sister and how important their relationship was to him. I'm incredibly grateful that now I, too, get to have Amy in my life - and in the lives of my children. We love our Amy and were so glad that she got to come to the zoo with us, carousel and all! 

(Austin used some of his birthday money to buy an excavator/animal fossil kit at the zoo. It was the BEST thing he could have spent his money on because buying something at the gift shop is like a dream for a child and he really loved digging the animal out of the stone.) 

 

Starting the year off right.

One of my very favorite weeks of the whole year is the week following the holidays before David has to go back to work. Sometimes its a short week between Christmas and New Years, but this week we were busy with family stuff all the way through New Years and David was able to take some extra time off before having to go back to work, so we had the whole first week of January to rest and enjoy each other's company without having to jump back into our regular routines/regular life just yet. I loved this week. It was the best part of Hygge. Slow, cozy, filled with just our family. 

We had some slow mornings with book reading and making pancakes with chocolate chips. I think the picture of Caleb and Lydia shows them eating a cookie. Because what's a week of hygge without a giant cookie to stick in your mouth.?

Brooklyn and Matthew stopped by for a quick visit with Juniper. When we first met little Juni, she and Lucy looked SO different size wise (2 weeks vs 2 months is a HUGE difference) but now they are getting close to the same. I hope that these two will be great friends as they grow older! 

Our biggest highlight of the week was heading to the Hogle Zoo for their Zoo lights event. Sue (and Cal) gave us a season pass to the Zoo this year for Christmas and we are SO excited to be able to use it. We loaded up and it was brisk outside, but really not very cold. But because of the weather the lions were RIGHT by the big windows and it was AWESOME to see them up so close! I mean, you know lions are big, but I was amazed to see how big they really are.  (My mama instincts definitely kept telling me that I shouldn't let my babies so close to these big cats. Even though I knew we were safe, I had to laugh at those subliminal instincts.) 

One of my personal favorite nights of this week was when David and I finished our Logan UT puzzle that we've been working on for... well... for the past year. I think we started it last New Years Eve-ish? We'd pull it out every once in a while for a movie/date night and really enjoyed it. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, as long as I'm doing it with David, it's my favorite thing to do. 

But if that this is watching While You Were Sleeping (my favorite New Years Movie) and doing a puzzle while eating snacks together- then it REALLY is my favorite thing to do!