Weeks 24 & 25

In my last post, for Weeks 22 & 23, I made mention at the end that this next week was rudely interrupted... and was it ever... by the dreaded and nasty Norovirus! 

On Saturday night, Tot began throwing up around 9pm, and her poor little not-even-understanding-what-was-happening self just kept going until about 2am.  After the first few rounds of yak, we had the towel-covered mattress set up next to our bed and grocery-bag-lined buckets near by.  We settled in with reading material, knowing we'd be up for a while.  She would try to sleep in between, and sometimes she would out of pure exhaustion, but it was rough.  Her diarrhea began around midnight, and although we'd had 3 successfully dry days in her cute little underwear, we were solidly back to diapers, because the diarrhea lasted 10 whole days!!  Being our youngest, she obviously had less of a built-up immune system to knock out the germ.  We helped it along by giving her Digestive Advantage Probiotic Gummies, which eventually helped her get out of the watery, explosive, noisy, blow out kind of diarrhea and headed more towards solid poo. 

After that, we cleaned and sprayed and Lysol'd... but it was in vain.  Kinder Kid hopped out of bed around 11:30 Tuesday night (which never, ever happens) and announced his stomach hurt.  I traded a look with Hubs and said, "get the buckets, here we go again!"  He began in the bathroom, but then got the spot on the towel-covered mattress next to our bed and yakked for several hours, all the way until 4am.  While Tot was a Deer-In-Headlights kind of puker, Kinder Kid was an All-Out-Scream-In-Agony kind of puker.  By now I was pretty darn tired after being up for 2 nights of this.  He was finally done snarfing and we went to sleep. 

And then I was woken up by a puke-covered 3rd Grader standing next to my bed, crying.  At 6am. 

We quickly added some thick towels to the floor space next to Kinder Kid and moved the buckets down, switched the laundry, changed her sheets.  While Kinder Kid is very aware of his body and knows when something is up, 3rd Grader is almost never aware, and any time she has thrown up she is pretty much waking up as it's happening.  Super Mega Fun for us changing gross sheets way up high on a bunk bed!!  There was no point in trying to go back to sleep so I just told Hubs to get the coffee on.  I was a little cautious, though, because at this point I was convinced I was next.  But, in the Current Mom Mode, I was just going to have to get it over with and continue taking care of people. 

3rd Grader was neither a Deer-In-Headlights Puker or a Scream-In-Agony Puker.  She was an angry, bitter, questioning Why-Does-God-Even-Make-Bad-Germs Very Talkative Puker.  Eventually I had to shut her down and beg so that I could lie down and catch a few minutes of rest. 

That Wednesday, while we laundered and cleaned and Lysol'd and Lysol'd and bleached and all that, the older 2 kids stayed the heck away from the master bedroom where we'd quarantined the Germie-Germ kids.  Surely, since they hadn't been here since Saturday morning, they were fine. 

But, no.

Thursday night at bedtime, 9th Grader says his stomach hurts, which I shrugged off since it's actually kinda normal for him.  But then, after he'd gone to bed, 6th Grader came out of the bathroom crying.  Which is kinda normal for her.  But when I asked why she was crying, she leaned on me and sobbed, "My stomach really hurts."  And it dawned on me that we were NOT DONE with the virus.  I went and pulled 9th Grader out of bed and put him over top the toilet in the hall bath, and her on the steps next to the bathroom with a bucket and I went and got changed into something comfy so I could sit with them.  I told them matter-of-factly what was to come and told them not to fight it, just let it happen. 

9th Grader announced that he was tired and just wanted to get it over with, so he got down and just did it.  He then said he felt fine and went to bed, successfully not puking again and not getting the diarrhea at all.  Go immune system!! 

6th Grader was a cryer.  Just sad, lengthy sobs throughout.  She also, and this has happened before, it's like once she starts, her esophagus spasms badly and she literally cannot stop puking, over and over again even when there's nothing left.  Unfortunately for her, she went the longest, and I agreed with her, it wasn't fair at all.  She and I were up until about 4am. 

Hubs and I, although feeling a bit yucky while cleaning up after everyone else, never did get the bug, thankfully.  And we're banking on the fact that the kids are now immune for 14 weeks!!

In amongst that, we did get some school done, somehow.   So here it is.


Week 24
February 12th through 16th

Cutting out flashcards for her Vikings unit

Counting by tens and writing it, too

LEGO break

Tot practices letter matching

Jazz Concert, which only I could attend because of all the Yak Attacks in the house.  Poor 9th Grader went down with the bug 2 days after this.  He is the 2nd trombone from the right. 

Kinder Kid dressed up for Valentine's Day.  Here he is having a sensory break.

Rainbow Loom is great fine motor. 

Gluten and dairy free Valentine's Day cookies

Yum!

It's warm out again!  February weather is all over the place!  Outside we go to play with water tables, food coloring, medicine plungers and test tubes.  Don't mind that big white chunk of old mattress in the background, that's the end of our backyard zipline.  They just crash right into it.

Tot in her favorite GNR onesie.  I mean, Mom's favorite GNR onesie.

Week 25

February 19th through 23rd

This week was considerably more productive, since no one was spending all night barfing.  It even got warm enough again (2 Wednesdays in a row!) for us to visit a playground.  

Tot handles our corn snake, Ramona.

Kinder kid used to HATE these with a passion, so we put them away for a while (like months).  But now he is kickin butt with these sentence builders.  They are printed on card stock, laminated, and numbered on the back (5 cards in each sentence).

He does quite a bit of this looking across at things sideways.  In this setting, he likes watching the cards slide across and into place.

Tot cranks out her color sorting.  She never, ever lets us forget that she wants something to do, too.

As the day goes on, the table gets pretty busy.

Kinder Kid does a worksheet which has him printing numbers.  He has a cheat sheet for formation that we pull out when his printing is just not coming out the way he wants.  Some days it works just fine, others not so fine.

 

9th Grader got a sword... as a totally random gift. 

Reading and snacking.

Kinder Kid does the sentence building activity later in the week and completes it much quicker and is so proud of himself.  He's wearing one of his sister's headbands to give some squeezy input to his head, and a rubber band on his wrist so that he can snap it if he needs even more input, instead of bouncing on the bench or ramming his head into a sibling.

We visit the park.

6th Grader listens to her music while doing school.

While Tot naps, older kids and I do our 2 hour block of world history, which includes geography, art, and a writing assignment.  We are currently studying Australia.

Australia studies mean we make Meat Pies and Lamingtons for dinner.  Kinder Kid rolls out the Gluten Free dough for the meat pies.

Here they are!  Meat Pies for everyone.

On Friday, 3rd Grader pulls out a Science Experiment book she's been reading and asks if we can do a few things.  It happens to take up most of our day, which is just fine.  Here we are experimenting with Surface Tension.

Coming up next week... Kinder Kid and I have a big trip down to the city.

Almost caught up! Weeks 22 and 23

Cruising right along with getting caught up!



Week 22
January 29th through February 2nd


While beginning our Five In A Row studies, loosely of course, we found that after reading the books and doing some of the listed discussions and projects, we still had some time to explore other things.  So one day we made some homemade playdough.  We didn't have most of what the internet said we needed to be greatly effective, so we substituted and substituted.  And came up with glittery, colorful and super-greasy dough.

We dug out some old fun bins, the dried rice has always been a hit.  Tot is ready for it in small, supervised doses.  Our funnel stand broke so we had to come up with some different ways to use it.  I hid some lowercase letters in the rice for Tot, and she enjoyed finding them, and much to my surprise, she named more than half of them correctly.  I wrote off the first few as a fluke, until she kept naming more and more.  The way I "teach" my very young kids is when I notice their interest in something, or see them being successful in an area, I'll then make a few simple resources to reinforce that concept.  And they are never pushed, simply offered the opportunities.  I love that when the activities offered are in their interest, they just soak it up.  Since Tot surprised me with her knowledge of letters, I have a plan to make a simple laminated sheet with lowercase letters which she can match up the magnetic letters to.  We'll see if she's into that.  

Math review with noise-canceling headphones as she's very easily distracted

The Wolf reads for the entire hour that Kinder Kid is at OT and Social Group

Hair appts at the end of the week.  I've just started scheduling everyone at once, it puts us out a half a day every 6 to 8 weeks.  The pre-teen gets some permanent bright red streaks in her hair.  She totally rocks it.  

Week 23

February 5th through 9th (and into the 11th)

We are full on going strong again, even though it's February, notorious in the homeschool world for being a sluggish, low-motivation month.  

Kinder Kid gets "homework" from his social group.  The red cup in the background with the yellow lid has a spinach, banana and mango smoothie in it - having to suck the thick smoothie through the straw is a good sensory trick for sensory seekers like him, it helps to keep his brain alert and on track.

We are hitting the gym 2 to 3 times per week now

After school science continues

Dad brings home someone else's trash, which is actually bins and bins of craft materials.  Oh, and that cool kid table and colorful chairs.

Tot, at bedtime one night, demands to go on the potty for the first time since September.  I quick switch her from footie pajamas to pants and shirt (ever try to wrestle footie pajamas off while a toddler yells Mama Pee-Pee over and over?).... and we are off on the Potty Journey!  

This is the weekend, but it's adorable so I included it.  He told his grandma to stay still, he's drawing her.

Tot is dry in underwear ALL DAY.  Woohoo!  I try to convince her to put on a diaper in case of poop, but she's not having it.  She just goes on the potty.  In case you're wondering why I'm not all that excited about the self-directed potty-training, well for starters, this is my 5th time, and secondly, we don't have a bathroom on the floor we spend most of our time on.  So, potty means we have to go either up or down half a stairs.  I know, I'm terrible, right?

On Sunday this week, we somehow get the idea of doing a massive amount of Valentine's Day crafts.  Thanks, Pinterest.  Oh, well, it IS raining like the dickens outside, and my car is dead so I'm stuck with a pick-up truck that doesn't fit my whole family and has carseats that need my assistance (think, my butt hanging out in the pouring rain to buckle said carseats), so, home we stay.  And craft our little hearts out, pun intended.

An animals-out-of-hearts module.  With glitter.  Can't forget glitter.

The rain lets up in late afternoon.  There's nothing to do when it's muddy outside, except to give in to messy floors and extra laundry, and let them go play.

And, in a sneak preview of the very next week.... it's a good darn thing we logged some homeschool time over the weekend, because our upcoming week is about to get rudely interrupted!  Stay tuned. 

Catching up! Weeks 20 and 21

We had a vacation!  Mid-January we went to the Great Wolf Lodge with a bunch of other homeschool families.  It was a well-needed break for everyone and all ages had a super fun time.  Before we went though, we made sure to make good use of the weekend prior (homeschoolers mostly venture out on weekdays to avoid the crowds) to get our schooling time logged first.


Week 20
January 13th through 15th
(and then vacation!)

Kinder Kid goes to the Greenberg Train Show with Mom.  We drug along zero extra children so that he could fully enjoy himself.

It was new water heater week for the bizness!  Dad brings home giant boxes to play with.  They make rocket ships and alien spacecraft.

Playing with new trains from the train show

It's like a Jack-in-the-Box

The Kid Cabin at GWL!

We alternate our time in the waterpark with MagiQuest, the magic wand game that keeps kids running amuck in the hallways at GWL all hours of the day.

Week 21

January 22nd through 26th

We are treated with a warm weather blast upon our return from Great Wolf and we take full advantage.  Wet, yucky sandboxes are my favorite.  NOT!  Some schoolwork gets done as well.  In re-entering the elementary kids' school bins, I realize we have pretty much used what's in there to the best of our ability and both kids are in need of something fresh.  In addition, I've decided I need more time to spend with my older kids, and there is always a need for more office time as our small business grows (and grows and grows).  So, we pack a lot of the redundant resources away and I get some used Five In A Row books for the elementary kids.  Follow-along curriculum, you say?!?  Don't worry, that would surprise me, too.  But, we are going to use it more as a very (very) loose guide.  It gives us a book list to grab, and resources to talk about.  I like that it focuses on sitting together and reading, something that despite our best intentions, wasn't happening in our homeschool day.  Even the big kids come around the corner and end up in front of me while I read the interesting books aloud.  The 3rd grader read the first book listed, The Boxcar Children (which is well beneath her reading level but very much her age level for content, and which she'd read previously but hadn't been very into) and took off with the series.  She was hauling 7 books a week home from the library and reading 2 a day, and as long as we get in some mapwork, art, and discussion about the book, I'm fine with her running with it.  Kinder Kid's list includes some really interesting books we probably wouldn't have come across on our own, and we are making Country Cards for every country we come across in the books.  

If Tot disappears at the library, this is where you'll find her.

Sharing music with Tot

Online artwork on the library's workstations

This was Robot week for Elementary Science!  We had a blast making tiny motors go with wires, alligator clips and batteries.  We used a template from Pinterest and made these cute coloring Bots, substituting what we had, of course.  We spent most of Tot's nap figuring and re-figuring out the best connections, why our motors wouldn't go (they needed weight on the spinning part) and which weight worked best for making the Bot color.  We also figured out that our Bots went crazy fast and traveled off the paper in a second, so we just let them color on the floor.  Magic Erasers (or it's cheaper Amazon foam sponge counterpart) are wonderful things.  

Ever creative, 3rd Grader makes a rainbow from alligator clips

Now we're getting some action

Mess!

Kinder Kid began a soccer program at a local indoor sports center.  The goal is to get him moving, and give him social opportunities with same-aged peers.  I am nervous because this is a parents-stay-behind-the-glass situation, and I have no idea how he's going to do behaviorally, sensory-wise, and socially.  But we're trying it! 

Using magnets to do math and other things

3rd Grader goes to an after-school program on Science.  It's amazing!  Our unsocialized homeschooler knows 3 out of the 7 students there!  One from mom's club, one from church, and one from theater camp.  Gosh, she is so not social.  ;)

Tot creates art with foam peel-off stickers.

The after-school science program focused on Snap Circuits which causes a flurry of re-interest in the elementary kids for the rest of the week.