A Day In The Life ~ February Edition

Last week was filled with illness and high fevers around here. Everyone but me got sick. Now everyone is much better, but they are filled with grumpy moods. I think they feel like they can do more than their recovering bodies can do, which is causing frustration. So when I randomly decided that this would be our Day in the Life for February, I did not know that kids would be recovering and grouchy. It made for a day that required my utmost patience. However, it turned out to be a good, productive day. With all that said, here is a look at our day.

8 am ~ The kids woke up (about an hour later than usual). They collected their hygiene checklists and did their morning chores. Then they played with the dog and ate breakfast.

9 am ~ The kids changed all of the pet cages in the house. They are getting so much better at doing this on their own. They changed the bird, rat, and gerbil.

9 :30 am ~ We got down to school. First the kids did Explode The Code and then we did a page in Draw Write Now. They made the "Don't tread on me" snake, and we discussed how the segments of the snake represent the 13 colonies.  The kids then took turns copying the sentences under the snake. An occupational therapist told me about this neat way to help kids struggling with space between words. You have the child put a finger print in between their words to give them a visual of proper spacing. I am noticing an improvement after only a week. Tom Sawyer, who had a very rough sensory day, would have nothing to do with the ink pad. You can see his middle sentences are running together much more than the girls.

10 am ~ I tried to get some sensory time in for Tom Sawyer. Sometimes catching a weighted ball while balancing on a balance board helps him. It was marginal help today. We moved on and did a guided picture study using A Child's Book of Art Discovering Great Paintings. We studied The Death of Major Peirson by John Copley and Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour by Boucher. The kids love this book and would have looked at more if the timer had not rang telling us it was time to get ready to leave.

11 am ~ We arrived at speech therapy for Tom Sawyer. The kids all made adorable 3D hearts at the Art for Life table while waiting for the speech therapist.  The girls played in the waiting room and did two pages of Horizon Math. They also ate our packed lunch.

12:30 pm ~ Tim and Goldilocks got their hair cut.

1:30 pm ~  When we got back home, Timothy and the kids all took turns playing a Lego computer game.

2 pm ~ I had a long phone call with my mother while the kids watched two Liberty Kids shows which ties in perfectly with our history lessons.

3 pm ~  I played Sequence, the board game, with the kids. What a fun game. It was my first time playing with them.

4:30 pm ~  Tom Sawyer went to all-boy Dance and Theater Class, and Tim went to advanced Fencing and Saber. Tom Sawyer is very excited about his next performance. He will have a solider part in Beauty and the Beast. The girls and I ran a few errands and had dinner. Everyone but Tim was home by 6:30. -Tim will be home soon from his two hour class.

6:30 pm ~ After the boys had dinner, there was more board games with Dad. Then story time and bed time rituals. I did chores and worked on this blog entry. Little Red Ridinghood and I did her vision therapy. After watching her struggle to learn how to read, I suspected a vision problem.  Sure enough, she is losing her focus on objects every three to five seconds. The hope is that, after 21 weeks of therapy, she will have normal focusing issues and will find reading much easier. She also has very poor peripheral vision, which will be corrected as well.

Another day of homeschooling complete.

Blessings,
Dawn