March is certainly a weird month to look back on. It started out normal enough. Here is a photo dump to get a visual of our experiences transitioning into a quarentined life.
At the beginning of the month, I got to be a surprise mystery guest in Miles' Kindergarten class. He didn't know I was coming and was so happy to see me in his classroom!
Back when I got up early to take my kids to the school bus.
This boy was determined to bring the recycling bin back to our house (uphill on rocks) all by himself. He made it. Also, notice the purple flowers coming up.
The egg in the middle is normal sized. The one on the right is a double yolk and the one on the left was miniature. Chickens like to surprise us!
Haha, one of Charlie's assignments, back when Max went to do his week long sleep study.
Always trying to find Spring. We were still so hopeful at the beginning of March, granted Quarantine would have been way more stressful if it was in the dead of winter. So we are grateful that the weather was improving, even if we didn't get to enjoy all our favorite places.
Back when people could visit a hospital we had a lunch date with daddy.
Waiting at the library while brothers were in gymnastics. The library and the beach have been the places we've missed the most!
making energy bites
"give me 2 turbo boosters and a wrecking ball" Edwin
More archery practice
Charlie was giving out tractor rides to his brothers and some twin boys visiting the neighbors.
Sometimes the morning sun looks quite lovely and a phone camera can't capture it.
And then we had our first snow on the boys' last day of school.
The boys like to "help" Max work on the rental properties.
Miles is making a Leprechaun trap.
Edwin's glasses were missing for a couple days, we finally found them in Miles' backpack.
There's been a lot of dress up!
He tried to pee on a tree by himself with very messy results, so then he waddled into the house.
Making the boys start the garden.
The chickens help with the garden too. Delores likes to stay right near anyone working in the garden and will collect all the worms.
We usually have our first backyard fire during Spring Break so that needed to happen since Spring Break started early.
On St Patricks day a Leprechaun left Lucky Charms. I found it interesting that each of my boys ate it differently.
One boy saved the marshmallows for last..Charlie
Another boys ate all the marshmallows and left the rest of the cereal....Edwin
And then another boy took his marshmallows out and sorted them to eat separately...Miles.
Doing some Science kits.
Another project was rock painting after learning about sea otters and how they crack open a lot of their food on rocks and how they play with rocks. The boys were laughing hysterically watching the sea otter (from our zoo) crack a sea urchin open on the rock.
Another Egg-celent experiment
We sewed some rice bags which is the only thing I know how to sew.
I went to buy baby chicks one morning but their shipment hadn't arrived yet so I went for a run and I was in my childhood neighborhood so I got to run on some familiar trails.
Crazy times!
But it sure was a lovely run!
But then I went to pick up the chicks and bring them home.
And they got lots of little boy snuggles
I think they're about 7 weeks old now and a whole lot bigger.
And in case you're wondering, their names are Chuck, Shimmer, Starla, Madonna, Violet, Tiger, and Dot.
Moving on, we did a movie night with our boys and watched A Goofy Movie and somehow ended up making a family pile when it was over, Edwin was not interested.
They tried to wear each others clothes and tricking me into thinking they were the other one. Can you tell the difference? haha!
Lots of outside explorations.
And a box will always become something else in this house and it is always a struggle to get them to the recycling bin without a fight
Sunday worship in our home.
This isn't a very good photo but Charlie is constantly making machines and inventions. This was a chopstick tied to his remote control car with a cymbal tied to it. He would use the remote to spin the cymbal to hit the other cymbal, he also did this to hit the drum.
Charlie likes to give the chickens Lego sculptures.
Once in awhile they would do a worksheet.
And we may be making more treats than usual.
Anyway, that was March including some of what we've done for homeschool before it became this big online thing. It's weird, I kinda liked homeschool back before the teachers gave a lot of assignments and filled our day with zoom calls, which we rarely join because of our house being a madhouse and my boys can only handle so much screen time before they're insane. Don't get me wrong, I appreciated all of what our teachers have done to reach every student and so much has been built from the ground up to be able to do this online. It is incredibly impressive. But I know my boys can not spend very much time in front of a screen without it affecting their day. A couple weeks before this quarantine started, I had a meeting with Charlie's teacher about his ADHD and his distractibility in class and how to help him be motivated to write. She even said "Charlie would thrive in a Montessori or Waldorf type school with more hands on activities." So that has been more of my approach with homeschooling, lots of hands-on activities, lots of outdoor time creating and exploring and lots of books. I know he is not writing as much as his teacher would recommend but the writing he does is self motivated (letters to friends and family, scavenger hunts for his brothers etc. ) Maybe he will be behind when he starts 3rd grade, but he naturally wants to learn and explore on his own and I can't get myself to tell him to stop that so he can sit at the computer or work on a worksheet. Anyway, that's how we're doing homeschool. He still does quite a few of his online assignments I'm just saying that we are making it work for us by other means and that's working well for us.
