Isaac cleaned the toilets today. He wasn't thrilled with it, but in the past he's been happy to clean them. Maybe it's because I made him clean the outside too, which is not as much fun.
Joshua's Lego challenge was to build a bird. (We're pretending to do a unit on birds. It involves him looking out the window and counting a lot of birds.) Anyway, he made a hummingbird mech with a parrot controller.
Isaac: I was thinking. There are 24 students in the class and 24 hours in the day, so Mrs. Jonker could spend an hour with each of us!
Amanda: yeah, but...what is a problem with that plan?
Isaac: We'd only get to see her for an hour.
Ben: What other problems are there?
Isaac: Some students would have to be awake at 3am
Ben: Pretend you're the teacher. Then what is the problem?
Isaac: Um, I wouldn't have time to eat? I could do that while teaching.
Well, we continued on with school today. We made it through the day. Hopefully some learning is going on. Also, I think Joshua got accepted into EC next year (as expected) because I had to sign up for a screening time. However, we haven't been officially accepted so I found the order of things a bit crazy. Well, it's crazy times everywhere. We also got an email that said there would be more distance learning after spring break (when the governor announces schools will be closed for longer). I think that would be helpful, but it might be annoying too. We'll see how it plays out I guess.
Joshua's lego challenge was to build a shark. He built a shark mech with a shark on top of it.
We got groceries today. Well, I guess Ben picked up groceries that I ordered today. It turned out that we ran out of milk first. How boring. I was surprised some of the items that were out of stock: yogurt tubs, pizza rolls, and canned potatoes. There were a few other things too, but they were replaced with similar items at least.
We did church from home again. It's a bit weird, but so is everything in life these days. The church has a playlist from youtube for us to go through with the songs. It works pretty well, but I wish they'd stick to songs that I know. It's hard enough learning new songs at church, but when it is just the four of us it's awkward. Sometimes we just watch the song because it seems to be meant for watching more than singing, but still... Afterwards I made it to the live Q&A session. I think it's a cool way to get people a little more engaged. I didn't say much and did take apart a Lego set during it, but it was still good.
Beyond that, not much today. Some cleaning. Some pretending we're ready for next week. Some "why do the boys keep trapping us with mountains of stuff I'm over it".
We started the day off with a survey: Who is the silliest person in our family? We called several relatives...because what else do we have to do?
Isaac kept the tally and won by a landslide. Somehow I didn't get any votes; it must mean that the rest of the family is really silly.
Yesterday Joshua and I cleaned out a cabinet. I don't have a before picture, but I'm pretty proud of the after picture. The plan is to put the drinks in here once the weather warms up for easy moving to the fridge. But for now, the garage is a great refrigerator.
We had an actual rest time today. Joshua hasn't had a nap in two weeks and it showed last night. So everyone had to stay in their beds, although they didn't have to sleep. (I'm not actually sure that Isaac stayed in his bed, but this rest time was mainly for Joshua. Isaac at least stayed in his bedroom.) Joshua fell asleep and slept quite a while; I had to wake him up.
Isaac read and measured some resistors. Surprise! They were within tolernce.
This week Isaac's activity is to read in the tub.
For Joshua's spider unit he made a spider web. We did it outside because the house is too messy. It got left up all day so that the walkers could smile at it. (It went across the driveway a few times.)
Here is Isaac's finished Scratch project: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/380307939. I was pasting the link in an email to his teacher and he asked me, incredulously, how I typed it that fast.
We had a slow start to the morning because we had a special breakfast of blueberry strudel that needed to be baked. And by slow, I mean not-really-much-slower than normal. Isaac wore his sleeping bag for half the day.
We're having serious mouse problems with the computer on the left; it sometimes recognizes the mouse and then it just stops. We've tried multiple mice. I think we might bring Isaac's desktop upstairs for now; that way he also won't bother Ben as Ben is trying to work.
Isaac is doing an alegra unit on Khan academy, but there wasn't a review for the unit he was working on so he got to use the white board.
Joshua's life skill was finishing up the muffins.
In keeping with the Lego challenge theme, Joshua altered his challenge. It was supposed to be an ice cream truck. It ended up being an ice cream place that shoots out ice cream.
Work time. I gave a small exam today. It was exceptionally boring, as I flipped through the screens and watched the students not cheat. (Or cheat well enough that I couldn't tell.)
Isaac's life skill was making meatballs. He dealt with touching the meat better than I expected. We also finished up two containers of bread crumbs and started a third...Italian ones, normal ones, and Japanese ones. I'm not sure why I have so many bread crumbs, but I'm glad to get rid of some. Pantry cleaning for the win!
Joshua is apparently doing a unit on spiders, so I told him to go in the basement and look for spider webs. Of course, he doesn't just go down and look, he wants to clean them too. It's not just a clean though, it was a banish. Basically, he was playing a game with the spider webs and not learning anything at all. (Of course, he couldn't find any so I had to go help him. Perhaps what he was learning is where to look for spider webs, another important skill?)
During recess the kids were playing their new favorite game of delivering stuff to the door so they could be thieves later and steal it back. I decided I needed a guard dog. Of course, with no dogs around I used the next best thing...a guard kitty. (The video isn't great.)
Soon after that I get a note from my guard kitty asking for his friend. Now Tornado doesn't like the carrier, so at first a circled 'no'. But Horizon "really, really" wanted him, so I forced him in.
I pretty much lost track of what was going on after that. The thieves came into the house and stole THE WHOLE BAG of cat food. The thieves decided the best way to get the cats back into the house was to stroller them down the hill to the back slider door. Luckily, the thieves also decided to clean up after themselves.
We continued Joshua's spider theme with his Lego challenge by asking him to build a spider. He continued changing the spider theme to suit his desires. May I present the spider mech (i.e., robot), controlled by a spider. It does at least have eight legs.
Isaac's life skill was to weight the loose lego. Ben and I have been curious as to how much we have, so now seems like a good time to do it. (It's not necessarily the weighing of the lego that's the life skill, but keeping track of what he's done and the results.)
It was nice enough to go on a walk around the lake this afternoon. It was busy!! I don't think I've ever seen that many people out walking at once. But we all did a great job social distancing. We were only 6ft away from someone a few times when we were going in opposite directions on the sidewalk, otherwise we were closer to 15ft.
Ben finished work right after Joshua and I got back, so Joshua (and Isaac) brought Ben on a walk around the lake. Joshua takes his job of making sure we get exercise very seriously.
