Today is…Wednesday
7:20am: Scripture Study. (sing, pray, read, sing, pray)
8-9am: Cleaning Time. (Mommy works on her chores. Giant works on his jobs. Ettin helps.)
Despite my stressing that Giant wasn’t doing his jobs for the first 45 minutes of cleaning time, he ended up finishing his jobs before I was done mine.
9am: Gathering Time. (We greet each other, clap for good work, pray, study a gospel picture, and read the morning message)
Tragedy after tragedy this morning. Mommy wrote the message, boys were happy (yes, Ettin lives with his finger up his nose):
Mommy went potty (because mommy’s baby is due in a couple of weeks and mommy can’t last very long without visiting the necessary facilities), and boys played. Then tragedy. Two heads are clonked and two sad boys need comforting before we can actually start Gathering Time (this really messes with mommy’s need to be on time).
One sad boy:
Other sad boy:
Two semi-comforted boys learn about the childhood of Jesus and about how He worked hard and learned from Joseph, which prepared him for his later ministry:
Mommy goes to get chalk, Tragedy number two occurs. Ettin falls off the table while I’m momentarily away. Not that he ever goes on the table.
Bloody Ettin:
Brother to the rescue:
Third Tragedy. Self inflicted. Ettin was kicking Giant while he sat beside him on my lap. I have none of it and plunk him down. And get this sad face (oh my heavens he is cute!):
He eventually gave his brother a hug to say sorry. Giant was not impressed with the bloody/booger faced boy giving him a hug, and quickly checked to make sure none of that mess got on his arm (I was trying to get a shot of the hug, not the disgust. Not fast enough, I guess):
We finally finish the message:
Then boys clean up (Ettin puts the picture on our fireplace, and Giant washes the chalkboard):
And then on to…
9:30am: Independent Play. Boys play without mommy. Theoretically. Today they crawled around Giant’s bed while I finally brought out the summer clothing and put the winter clothing away, using Giant’s bed as my work area (and thus their pick of play area). I reminded myself to breath. A lot.
10:30am: Snack/Lesson Time. (Have snack and a lesson, and then work on a project together) Today’s snack and lesson were combined. Since this week we are looking at the life cycle of the butterfly (*snort*—sorry, that just sounds so official for what we actually do), we made cocoon biscuits (a cheese “caterpillar” wrapped in a biscuit round).
Here come the helpers:
We assembled our ingredients from this recipe (since there was no way I wanted to turn my back on boys in the kitchen, I got everything together before we started!). Flour (yes, white. I wanted poofy cocoons!). Milk (a little on the sour side. Note the big X’s) and yogurt that didn’t set (still runny). Butter. Baking Soda. Salt. Cheese (still in the fridge).
We sifted the flour (not because I’m precise, but because I really squished the flour into my bucket and have had to deal with very lumpy flour ever since):
How did Ettin get so covered in flour so quickly? ….um. I just couldn’t help myself. His cute little shorn head was just begging for a flour hand print. Forgive me:
The boys measured and added while mommy became increasingly distracted (no, not putting flour handprints on other things):
No clue how much salt and baking soda actually went into the recipe. I take over and add some butter while Giant cuts it in:
Ettin thinks this new gooey mix is a marvelous addition for his head (why did I start this?):
Then we roll it out:
Taking turns, of course (Yes, that means I completely took over in the end and rolled it properly):
Cut out some circles and tucked our caterpillars inside:
While our cocoons bake, we clean up/play joyfully with water until mommy boots the boys out of the kitchen:
Hot and Yummy!
Poor fried caterpiller:
Finally (only an hour after we started) we sit down to enjoy our snack. Phew!
Mmmm. Since we used white flour, the biscuits had no taste. Thus we added jam, which resulted in a tragic scene:
11am: Independent Play. (Ha! Today I think we finished snack at around 11:40. Which left me just enough time to clean up and make lunch for when daddy got home.Yes, the boys were still covered in flour by the time he got home.)
What I noticed today was how doable homeschooling has become lately. Any other day I would have made a half effort at doing something in the morning, which would have been given up as tragedy ensued. With the stress of having a new baby and wanting to prepare/ completely purge the house (a quirky nesting instinct?), I wouldn’t have considered doing a time consuming and mess making project like making biscuits (“cocoons”) with the boys. So what has made the difference? Prayer and Planning come to mind first. Really making an effort to pray with the boys, and to pray for peace and patience has helped. Planning is also huge. It gives me something to do without thinking too much (which is good for those chaotic mornings). If I had to exert brain effort mid morning and come up with a fun lesson idea (or even try someone else’s lesson plan), I don’t think I’d try it. I also like having 2 critical coming together points (Gathering Time and Snack/Lesson Time), not a minute by minute day plan. This gives me flexability without feeling like I’m failing for being 10 or 15 (or 60) minutes behind schedule. I think this might be working! Now, lets see what happens when a baby comes 😉
Tomorrow is Canada Day!!!