A Day at Our House: School's in Session

Well.  It's taken me all week to finish this post, for various reasons.  The day in question was a good day.  In fact, aside from the accident around suppertime (which turned out all right), I felt quite together.  We accomplished a lot.  Which was good, considering that on Monday we'd spent most of the day in Albany for a doctor's visit and on Wednesday we were in Albany again for therapy (and no one seemed to be able to pay attention to anything in the morning).

Tuesday, September 26

We started our school day a little late, around 9:15.  Pip has been teething, and I was up with him until almost 1 AM on Monday night.  When I finally gave up and passed him off to my husband  (who'd gone to bed with a headache) in desperation, the little mischief-maker curled up and went right to sleep.  Apparently, all that rocking and walking I'd done had worn him out.

So, after Mommy and Daddy oversleeping a little and the morning diaper changing marathon (three in diapers still), we sit down in the learning room at about 9:15.  I'd been going through a stack of materials the day before, so this morning I pull out a book I'd found: a Cuisenaire rod activity book called On the Farm, full of farm animals, tools, machines, and plants to build with Cuisenaire rods.  (I'm not sure it's even published anymore.  I bought it back when Gareth was small.)  Farmerboy and Katydid have fun building the pictures:

Gareth draws while I read from The Seven Sacraments and Seeing Lessons: The Story of Abigail Carter and America's First School for Blind People. We have a good discussion about grace, and before we start reading the book about Abigail Carter, we have a discussion about first person narration, and then about second and third person, with examples.  Katydid wants to know if the story is real, and it is. I think it was brave of the author to write in the first person from the point of view of a blind character -- having tried it before I know how difficult it is -- so this book is a good find all around. 

This is the picture Gareth draws:

It's an alien rainforest.

Around 10:30 I decide that it's time for Latin and Spelling and then math, but Gareth wants to go outside.  His frustration is clearly building.  I tell him to go take a break.  He heads back to his room, grumbling, and I brainstorm: maybe we can just do math this morning, then Latin and Spelling at lunchtime instead of reading for so long.  I go back to his room to present the change in schedule.  He's reading Extreme Dinosaurs by Luis Rey and listening to a book on CD.  (I don't know how he does this, but he really can divide his attention between a book and a CD.)  Dinosaurs are having a renaissance around here.  We spent most of Gareth's second grade year following an extended dinosaur trail, but now he seems to be using his knowledge of dinosaurs to invent alien animals.  The Luis Rey book has fantastic artwork -- most of the dinosaurs are drawn with feathers -- so it's good for that. 

The schedule change makes everyone happy.  Gareth stays in his room reading his book while I sit down with Katydid in the learning room to show her some days of the week materials I printed out.  For some reason she has had a very hard time learning the order of days, so I'm in the process of making a file folder for her.  She does the Montessori chart and makes a booklet out of the Jan Brett bulletin board cards.

(It's still in progress.)

After I work with Katydid, I sit down with Gareth to go over his Saxon 5/4 lesson.  Now it's 11:15 and the kids are out the door.  Time to attempt to get the babies to take a morning nap.  My husband absconded with the stroller in the back of the van, so I can't push them around until they fall asleep.  As busy as they are, one might assume that they would sleep well.  But, alas, this is not often the case.  Although they have absolutely destroyed the learning room this morning (here's a photo from the end of the day; you can't really see all the mayhem, just a slice of it, so remember that)...

... only Pip, who was awake half the night, goes to sleep.

I give up trying to get Pop to sleep and attempt to outwit the children by eating my lunch while 4/5 of them are otherwise occupied.  Alas, this is not to be either.  I still end up eating standing up by the microwave.  I ate breakfast in brief snatches as I walked by my cereal bowl en route to other tasks.  My biggest problem right now is actually sitting down to a meal.

At lunchtime, which seems to be entirely dairy today for some reason -- cheese sandwiches, leftover macaroni and cheese, and yogurt smoothies -- I read from the KJV: the story of Joseph.  I am expecting to only read briefly, but my kids beg me -- no, I am not exaggerating -- to go on.  This takes a little of the sting from the results of Gareth's achievement testing in math, which we had done over the summer in addition to a bunch of other testing, which drove him nuts. (I'm still not sure how helpful it was.)  My kids are begging me to read seventeenth century prose from the Bible, I think.  Hey, this is really cool.

No, I am not gloating.  Really.  Well, okay, maybe just a little.

After lunch, we try to do Latin and Spelling (Prima Latina and AVKO, respectively), which are subjects I do with both Katydid and Gareth together.  Gareth and Farmerboy make so much noise during Latin that Katydid -- who probably has an auditory processing disorder -- gets very frustrated because she can't hear me pronounce "discipulus".  When we switch to spelling, both she and Gareth get very silly.  I tell them I am going to stop making up interesting sentences with the spelling words and give them boring ones instead if they don't behave.  Farmerboy has a stinky diaper and is trying to cut forbidden objects with scissors.  The babies are eating veggie puffs off the floor.  Finally spelling is over and I release Gareth and Katydid to do their chores while I change three diapers, clear off the table, sweep up the veggie puffs, and scrape off all the encrusted goo on the high chairs.  The babies are happy and occupied elsewhere, so I decide to do some quick Swiffering.  When Farmerboy realizes what I am up to, he asks to Swiffer, so I hand off to him.  He has finally learned not to spray too much cleaner, and I am happy to see him work in such a concentrated fashion.

From 2:00 to 3:00 we are outside.  I attempt to write out Gareth's Saxon problems and cursive handwriting sheet while simultaneously keeping the babies from eating the bushes, dirt, and grass, and crawling into the garage.  I start to feel a little ridiculous.  Humans were not built to multitask like this.  Finally I am done with the worksheet, and I play ball with the babies.

3:00 -- quiet time.  I read a board book to Farmerboy and the babies, who mostly just try to crawl in different directions off the bed, so I have to hang onto them by the waistbands of their pants and try to read at the same time.  I finally get Farmerboy settled, then take the babies into the other room to settle them for their naps.  This time Pop goes to sleep, but Pip wants to stay up.  I finally wrestle him down, and then I have fifteen minutes for a snack before Pop wakes up crying and needs to be rocked.  As soon as I put him down, Pip gets up. 

While I'm rocking, I read Dressing with Dignity.  I'm still not sure about this pants vs. dresses issue.  I was a tomboy, and my daughter's a tomboy, and the last time I tried to wear a skirt and get anything done around the house, I stepped on the hem trying to lug a shop vac up the basement stairs because Farmerboy had left the bathroom faucet running and flooded the bathroom, and nearly broke my neck.  (My husband was out of town, of course.)

Somewhere during this time, Gareth and Katydid present me with the work they've done independently in their rooms.  Gareth does a homemade cursive worksheet

and a math worksheet which this year is taken from the Mixed Problem Set in his Saxon lesson:

Gareth has fine motor difficulties, low muscle tone, possible visual processing difficulties, and he's easily overwhelmed.  He's also a visual-spatial learner.  Most math books are not set up for kids with his needs.  But I think the way we do math deserves a post of its own.  (Coming, I promise.)

These photos are actually of worksheets done last week, because today he has mistaken a whole row of subtraction problems for addition problems, and since I'm rocking the babies, I have to let it go until later.  Both kids wrote out their Latin vocabulary words, and Katydid did copywork in her Memoria Press Copybook (level B), plus a homemade cursive sheet.  I'm still trying to figure out what her math program will look like, because Singapore was not really working.  So her math has been light this week.   

From 4:30 to 7:00 PM when we finally have dinner (I'll get to the reason why it's so late in a minute), Gareth and Katydid are busy outside.  When I get a chance, I go outside to have a look.  It turns out that this is what they've been doing:

Gareth built this "dinosaur skeleton" on our driveway out of rocks and sticks.  Katydid built one, too, but she didn't finish until it got too dark to take a picture.  Looks like dinosaurs are enjoying a renaissance.

We don't eat dinner until almost 7:30.  This is about an hour later than usual, because a)I was buried under a pile of babies until about 5:30, when I was finally able to put them down to play; b)Andy disappeared up on the roof as soon as he got home to work on our chimney, which needs to be repaired before cold weather; and c)Pip burned himself on the bottom of the oven door while I was cooking.  (The door was closed.  He touched the top of bottom drawer before I could get to him and tried to pull himself up.  The edge of the closed oven door was so hot it gave him a second degree burn on one of his fingers.  Then while I was carrying him away, Pop crawled up and tried to do the very same thing.  So I ended up shouting, "NONONONO!" while hauling him away across the floor by one arm and carrying a screaming Pip sort of on top of him.  Thankfully, it didn't take long for Pip to be back to his old self, and the burn seems to be healing okay.)

After we eat, the kids do their kitchen chores, have computer time, and pick up the learning room and family room -- a big job today -- and Andy reads to them while they eat a bedtime snack.  Gareth and Katydid take turns picking their snacktime book from several choices I provide: tonight they're reading The Journeyman by Elizabeth Yates, which is Gareth's pick.  Andy read almost no fiction growing up, and I know what kind of books he likes to read with the kids now, so I usually try to save the books I think he will enjoy reading for nighttime, and then I read the others as morning read-alouds.  Andy likes American history, and he likes books about farming and pioneer life, and the kids like listening to those books when he reads them.  I do, too.  (In fact I cannot now think of Nathaniel Bowditch without hearing my husband's voice as he read Carry On, Mr. Bowditch to Gareth, when Gareth was interested in ships.)

And what do I do while my husband reads?  Why, I am involved in putting the babies to bed, otherwise known as The Nightly Wrestling Match.  We cosleep with the babies.  Since they're still waking up in the middle of the night for a bottle(s), this means we're still taking shifts on the sofa bed.  This also means that for at least twenty minutes every night, I am hanging onto their pajamas for dear life, trying to keep them from crawling off the sofa bed.  The little boys' room still isn't ready -- it needs wallpaper and baseboards and, well, organized -- and this sleeping on the sofa bed thing is getting really old. 

After I finally get them to sleep, I round out my evening routine by turning off lights, locking doors, starting the dishwasher, and switching the laundry from washer to dryer.  Most nights I also sit down at the computer for a while, but not tonight; I am tired and Pip is fussing again, probably because now he is teething and his finger hurts.  So I crash when he does, around 10:15.  Gareth and Katydid are still reading in their rooms, and I can hear Farmerboy talking to Andy in the back bedroom about the picture book Andy has just read to him.  But now it's time for me to go to sleep.  Wednesday is therapy day, and we'll be gone all afternoon tomorrow.

Comments

[Jennifer]

Oh my goodness. You are amazing! And the photo of you beautiful house with your beautiful babies is amazing.

[Theresa]

What a crazy, beautiful life!
And I love the dinosaur! That is incredible!

[Wendy @ WMF]

Aside from poor Pip getting burned, it sounds like you had a gloriously crazy day!
My favorite part was the Alien Rainforest. I suspect your Gareth and my Katherine would get along famously.

[Kim]

Very full impressive day! And I LOVE your learning space. I want that floor! (and couch,and bins....; ))

[Angel]

Kim, the floors were a big draw when we were thinking about buying the house... but oh, how hard on them we have been!! The bins are from Wal-mart (I see now they have striped ones in the store, but I can't find them at all online.) And my husband wasn't too sure about the couch when we first brought it home, but it sure is a dose of needed color in the wintertime!!