Weekly Wind Down {Working Out the School Kinks, Morning Basket, Hours Outside, Rainbow!} Aug 14-20

The first week of school is checked off.  We're ready for the journey of this year.  

Sunday the kids and Mike went to church and classes and I stayed home with a stomach bug.
Day one went really really well.  We were all excited and ready to begin!

Day two was less magical.  Natalee had early morning PT.  Regarding school, I felt like my little students all went from "excited and cheery" to "how fast can we get our checklist done and go play?"  No one was inherently bad, but no one seemed as glow-y as on Monday.  Tuesday afternoon we went through another couple hour long power outage - and supper was in the crock pot.  Ha.  Tuesday was a little rough.

It wasn't terrible - just rough.

Getting to science with my little ones since we forgot Monday!

Evalynn was excited for her school on Tuesday!

I chewed (and stewed) a lot on what happened Tuesday to make it so much different from Monday and realized that after the excitement of the "back to school" we had reverted back to our end of the year 'tudes.  Last year ended a little rough - less relationship building and more "check the list" and it was exactly what I wanted to avoid this year.  But....if you don't clue in the students they won't know that the expectations have changed.  

I explained to everyone that they hadn't done anything wrong, but shared my heart and gave them all a fresh schedule that I'd worked out.  I should have done this the first day, but didn't realize it's importance and hadn't made mental space to work it through.

The key to our day for me, is that 9:30 block when we gather together to do our morning basket time.  A quick game together (mom, too!), a worship song (right now we're singing Colton Dixon's Build a Boat), read alouds, a bit of art appreciation, a poem (LOVE that new animal poetry book!), and some light theology.  I LOVE this time and think it sets the tone for our day.

The things we're using daily. ^^

These are in our baskets - we aren't using them daily.  ^^

Armed with our new schedule I got up ready to conquer Wednesday.  Natalee and Mia had OT and I made a batch of breakfast cookies.  

Xavier used the remainder of his breakfast time chunk to play a game with Evalynn, which she loved.  

Morning time was a huge success and then we were off and running to our sit down subjects with great attitudes.

Natalee is loving her new math and it's going very well.

The youngest pupil though...she skipped her school...she went outside when the kids went out to do their school, and stayed out there most of the day except for naptime.

But listen to what she was singing while she was swinging.

We put water beads in her sand table so we called her school "sensory play."  Somedays that's plenty.

After school everyone worked hard on a chalk town.  I love it when they do this and I hope they are making core memories.

While they were still out playing, Grandma and Papa stopped by on their way home from the IA State Fair.

It was nice to see them and catch up a little.

Thursday was another great day.  The game we play during morning time seems to be hanging around and the kids play quick rounds throughout the day.  Shut the Box on Thursday.

We haven't been succeeding at watching our news during the lunch time chunk, but we do it before bed and that works, too.  I'd love to do it in the morning, but we are just not quite functional before Mike leaves for work.

Friday was our day off.  When co-op and field trips start then our fifth day will be full with those activities, but until then, we have a swing day.  Imagine my delight when, at 9:30, the kids came to get me for morning time basket.  Joy!

We snuggled up to do our read alouds and Zayden asked to get the cajon out during our song.  He's doing quite well, I think.

I tried my hand at homemade yogurt and left it to incubate in the oven with the light on over night. 

The kids played hard outside Friday for several hours.  They drew a chalk hospital and had a good time with their imaginations.  Following the 1000 Hours Outside challenge has really helped me be conscious of our time outside.  Living in town like this is not natural to me, even though I've done it most of my adult life.  I think it's a strange comparison to my childhood - a childhood where I didn't have to ask permission to go outside and could roam quite a large area at my will.  Living in town I feel like it's not okay for my kids (especially the younger 3) to be outside without me being cognizant of their whereabouts (and directly supervising Ev), so the reality is that it's easier to be inside the house walls.  Easier does not equal best.  We got another 35 hours outside this week and even on days it rained made the effort to go out when we could.  At times I would have just categorized the whole day as "rainy," but instead I looked for our open windows of time or just played in the sprinkles.

We did get a nice big thunderstorm on Friday night and we welcomed the precipitation!

Showing me his creative build on Friday's rainy evening. ^^

The kids asked to have a living room sleepover Friday night, and since Mike had to work Saturday again, I couldn't think of a reason to say no.

They stayed up too late but made a good memory.

Saturday we lazed in the morning but then got our chores done throughout midday while Mike worked.

The yogurt was a success!

I sweetened with liquid stevia,

and used some of it to make strawberry yogurt popsicles for Friday's breakfast.  Having a menu plan again has been AMAZING and I'm so glad I put the time into it.

The day was rainy off and on, but later in the afternoon the kids went out to play.  They got muddy, sure, but the fresh air was worth it.  Mike and the boys ran for hair cuts when he got home, we ate supper outside, and we ended the day with a rainbow that the kids spotted.

Despite Mike working long hours it was a good first week of school and we're ready for the next one!