Saturday: Easter parade

We had and Easter parade in front of Grandma's house today.

The boys made cards to go in the mailbox.  They both put more effort into them than I was expecting.  I didn't get a picture of Isaac's, but he was making an intricate maze.

Friday: vacation

Today was another screen time day for the boys.  Isaac played Mario Rabbids all day.  Joshua stayed on the couch by him, but did a variety of things.

Ben and I also took it pretty easy and it was lovely.

Thursday: too busy?

It was a busy day today.  Most days feel like that.  Today though, I wish it hadn't been quite so busy.  A bit more time to remember would have been nice, but I've also found that memories come when they come and that is fine too.

Wednesday: back to school

Joshua's Lego challenge was to make a pizza.  First, he drew a picture of a pizza monster.  Then he added a guy the pizza monster was chasing.  Then he made it out of Lego.  The guy is smiling because he doesn't realize the pizza monster is behind him.  The pizza monster can shoot sauce out of his mouth.

The floor got sticky again, so Joshua got to clean the kitchen this time.

Isaac worked diligently on his math and reading packets.  Well, pretty diligently...better than Monday.  I'm now optimistic that he'll finish his required things by Friday.  He ended up in this corner while trying not to be distracted.  Of course, he let the vent distract him.  "Why isn't there an ant trap in the vent?"  "There's nothing in there that ants want."  "But couldn't they come in anyway?"  "It's not connected to the outside, but to the furnace."  "Oh."

I had the possibly stupid idea of using water in the marble run for today's water activity.  I think that if Joshua hadn't put the straight long down pipe in the set-up it wouldn't have been too bad.  Maybe.  A lot of water splashed out and the floor got a second cleaning of the day.

It turns out that when I'm not teaching I can handle the boys' school and keeping the house clean.  But I can only do two of the three.  The kitchen has been especially bad the last few days.  Also, Hope College canceled next Monday's classes (Friday was already off.)  I don't have strong opinions on whether or not they should cancel classes, but it feels a little unfair to have another MWF class off and not an TR class.  I'm a bit short on material.  I know, I could cancel.  And my classes have gotten rather short.  But still...  (Also, I've heard from some of the students that they are spending a ton more time with remote learning than if they actually went to a classroom.  I'm not sure why this is, but perhaps my short classes will give them a bit of a breather.  At least, that's what I'll tell myself.)

Tuesday: yesterday and today

Yesterday Isaac and I were struggling over some of his reading packet.  He had to read a story, list some things about one of the characters, and then using that information write what he thought of the character.  What did he write?  "I don't know what I think of the character because I don't know him."  I was rather dumbfounded.  I know I was busy and am not the best teacher, but seriously?

We made it through though.  Isaac's life skill was to make the frozen cookies...but I didn't give him any help at all.  Well, a few comments.  What I was surprised to find is that he thought the cookies stopped baking once he turned the oven off.  He was going to leave the cookies in there until it was a little cooler and not so scary.  We had a fast discussion about how it was the heat that was still in the oven that cooks them and the cookies would burn if he left them in there.

Today was a screen time day.  (Almost) as much screen time as they wanted.  They spent most of it playing or watching the Switch.

Yeah, they were in those spots a lot today.  They did go to the beach for a bit, took a walk around the lake with us, and had a karate lesson, so they weren't there ALL day.  (Isaac considered going to the beach in his footie pajamas.  While I wasn't going to forbid it, I did ask him if he really thought it was a good idea.  He changed his clothes.)

I tried catching up on my work.  While I'm not caught up, I'm at least closer.  At one point I was looking through my files to see if I had any back from when I was at Hope.  (I was looking for some data to import into excel, and I knew the instron had some.) (I know there's a lot on the web and I did find some of it, but wanted to see exactly what I had in case it would act differently.)  About twenty minutes later Ben put a whole bunch of old CDs on my desk for me to sort through.  What was on the top?  My files from Hope.

Monday: Spring Break?

Today was the first day of spring break.  Hahaha.  As though I'm going to let the kids off that easy.  I know times of rest are important, but we can't do much other than what we've already been doing.  So we had school.

Now, I did remove some of the normal school items and replace them with slightly more fun items, like water play, watching a show while taking apart Lego sets, and games.  But there was still stuff to be learned.  Isaac didn't finish his packets for school that came home three weeks ago, so I told him he needs to finish by Thursday in order to get screen time Friday.  He also needs to have his bedroom cleaned by then.  It might be a struggle as he isn't on track to finish and doesn't use any 'extra time' to do it.  We'll see.

Anyway, today's challenge for Joshua was to build something using only green bricks.  He built a dragon on a dragon mech.

Horizon enjoyed sitting on the laptop keys today.  It was a bit of a problem.

Sunday: Palm Sunday

Happy Palm Sunday!

The boys made palm branches and then we made them walk around the couch shouting 'Hosanna'.  They were not thrilled, so it was more of a saying Hosanna.

Joshua really likes these Lego Challenges and asked for another.  I gave him sun or lady bug.  He did both, although with a rock and some dirt for the lady bug.