A rare late work day for the Papa.
Iain and Elijah took it upon themselves to try to bring down a bunch of wood off the driveway before the storm started. Over the course of the day they transported an entire cord (that comes out to enough wood to make a 4′ x 8′ x 4′ stack, for those who aren’t conversant). By evening time they were out with a head lamp, with little ones helping, trying to sled down the last couple of loads before Steve got home. They like to surprise him.
A gnome a day?
I was informed that this day required a ballet bun.
They danced…
and they danced…
and danced.
They put on several shows, all with a Valentine’s Day theme, in case you couldn’t tell from their costumes.
Writing about Elijah’s horse book inspired Galen’s current school project. I thought how nice it would be to write out, illustrate and bind one of his stories. He’s hit a tricky age in regards to school work. He’s coming out of that oh-so-excited to be big enough for school phase and entering one where there is a lot of frustration over what he perceives as inadequacies. He wants everything to turn out perfectly, but that’s just not possible for a not yet 8 year old body and mind, very frustrating, poor little guy (though please don’t tell him I called him that, as we’ve hit that stage as well!). We have some experience with this as his older brothers went through similar phases, but it’s still a challenge.
New topics for the older children.
Valentine’s tea party…
with Pumpkin Gingerbread. They insisted on spinning for place settings and things like in the Tea Party game. Elijah downs the tea in those little cups as if he’s doing tea shots.
Slow Cooker Sesame Chicken with broccoli and quinoa as an attempt to make the single parenting dinner/bedtime easier.
After Steve got home we wanted to show the big boys how much we appreciated all of their help with the wood. We finally settled on watching a movie together.
That’s wonderful that the older boys were able to help Steve with the firewood!! I’m glad you included the recipe for the pumpkin gingerbread. Looks like something fun for me to try with the granddaughters. How much longer until baby arrives?
That’s pretty much up to the baby!
I love when you include recipes
Looks like you all had lovely days! Do you “school” your older boys together? It seems to me that at some point, that is the only way to do it with larger families, no?
For some things yes and others not. For example they are at different, grade appropriate places with math. Though in this last week that I’ve been documenting they were actually doing a review math block together, so even that’s not true all the time! For the late elementary/ middle school grades I’ve found combining for science to be extremely helpful. It’s way too much to have to set up months worth of experiments and field trips only to have to repeat them 2 years later (and they are far less impressive the second time around!). For English and social studies it depends on the subject. Sometimes they do it together, sometimes not. But it’s true that more and more I’ve been combining lately. I only started teaching them together last year. When they were younger I felt it was important for them to be working on topics that suited their separate stages of development. The older they get, the more I feel that the range of what is appropriate expands, if that makes sense?
i love this update. your dancing children, the homemade book and the hair bun, i love it all