Large Family Homeschool Life – Week 13 of 2021

Charlemagne, Vikings, and Easter preparations abound! Plus, a new book recommendation for homeschool moms!

Read all of the Large Family Homeschool Life posts HERE.

MONDAY

It’s Holy Week! We read in Stories of the Resurrection to start out our Morning Time. (I recently heard another homeschool mom call it Together Time – I like that!)

This week, we started our unit in Tapestry of Grace on Charlemagne. My 15 year old also started using Khan Academy to brush up on some math facts – much like my little kids use Math Seeds.

I needed to do some Tapestry of Grace planning, but I got sidetracked with blog issues that ended up taking me half the afternoon to solve. Then, Ty and I did an audio interview with Christian Healthcare Ministries for an upcoming promotion.

Read about our cost-sharing health insurance:

Christian Healthcare Ministries as an Alternative to Traditional Insurance

Thankfully, I had put on a roast in the electric skillet, so dinner didn’t require much thought. Here’s the recipe >> Electric Skillet Roast

Ty and I had “Date Night” in our bedroom that evening – a nice, inexpensive way to have some time with just the two of us.

READ >> Frugal Date Nights

TUESDAY

We started Together Time (see what I did there!) with Stories of the Resurrection and a Folk Song from Music in Our Homeschool.

READ >> Making Morning Time Easy

Surprisingly, we finished our unit on Charlemagne today! Yikes! I should have found the time to plan yesterday! Now, I definitely need to plan this afternoon!

After my 6 year old finished her independent school work – Handwriting, Phonics, and Math – I had her do some Math Seeds lessons. My 8 year old has his new Apologia science book now. And I also checked in with everyone concerning their assigned literature. They are all getting along well with their books and they are getting close to finishing them and being ready for the next round of books!

In the afternoon, we all dyed Easter eggs with food coloring, vinegar, and water. We’ll use them as a centerpiece on Easter Sunday.

After lunch, I called an old friend and mom of 12 to talk household stuff. I was looking for practical advice concerning the transition I was seeing in our home from me doing most of the work to the kids doing most of the work and the guilt I was feeling. Instead, I realized during the conversation that what I really needed was a renewed spirit and a reframing of my role as mom. My motherhood has transitioned from lots of physical labor to lots of mental labor, and it was good to have this affirmed by a mom further down the path!

I did end up reworking Table Chores a bit and also setting up a Cooking Schedule for the older kids which I think will help greatly!

I also got that planning for Tapestry of Grace finished! 3 more units are fully planned and ready for us to dive in to the middle ages!

For dinner, our 16 year old made skillet spaghetti with the leftover spaghetti. But, we still didn’t get it all used up. Several nights ago, I made spaghetti to use up the extra elk burger a friend gave us. But instead of using it up, we ended up with a huge pot of leftover spaghetti! After Melia made the skillet spaghetti, she took the rest and put it in a disposable casserole pan and put it in the freezer for another time. That elk burger has certainly been the gift that keeps on giving!

It was our 12 year old’s Special Night, so we took him to Applebees and talked over school stuff, upcoming vacation, and Easter plans. We also took a quick trip to Walmart to get dog food and poster board for some school projects.

When I got home, I answered a few discussion questions for an online book club I joined. We are discussing Live Not By Lies by Rod Dreher. Really great book and it sure is nice to have deep, intellectual conversations with other moms! It’s been years since I’ve been in a book club!

WEDNESDAY

After Stories of the Resurrection, we began studying the Viking Age. The kids talked me into doing school in the living room and using the Apple TV to screen mirror photos of viking longboats. We also read in The Secret of the Swamp King.

Mercy (4) finished her first book in the Rod & Staff ABC series! I am amazed at how well she is doing with it! Some of my kids were not able to handle it at age 4, but she is doing great.

The kids listened to Wulf the Saxon audiobook on Hoopla – a free digital lending library that works in conjunction with our local library. This is a G.A. Henty book, and rather than have them read it, I thought it would be nice to let them listen to it. However, they do prefer the more dramatized versions of his books which are produced by Heirloom Audio.

After lunch, I went to a hair appointment I have been looking forward to for quite some time! I had all of the old color stripped out of my hair and a balayage technique done on it to give it an Ice Queen look as my oldest daughter calls it! It took nearly 4 hours to do, but here are the final results:

It’s been a little difficult for me to come to terms with my grey hair as seen in this video. But, I must say I like this!

Our cooking schedule is working out nicely! Keian (15) made chili and corn dodgers from his Little House on the Prairie cookbook. We put honey from Ty’s uncle’s bees on our corn dodgers – so yummy!

Ty and I took a few moments to discuss the upcoming month of April and lined out the new Table Chores for the kids. We will be rotating every month from now on and the child who is in charge of loading the dishwasher will also wash the extra dishes and wipe down counters. We were having issues with the child who was supposed to wash the extras disappearing after meals and never coming back to do their chore! This will hopefully solve that.

I decided to give all the younger boys Easter haircuts. How I cut their hair has changed over the years, but I do have a really old post from when my 15 year old was little all about my haircutting skills (ha!). Read it here >>

After they all got through the shower, I took a bath and read in Gods & Generals. I’m having a bit of trouble getting into this book. Perhaps because I didn’t follow the Read 3 Chapters Rule – always read three chapters when you start a book because it helps you get into it sooner.

I am happy to say that I have been consistently reading since I first mentioned my intentions to do so in this post. Having a GoodReads account has been a nice way to keep track of my progress!

We rounded out the evening watching Password – an old gameshow – with the older kids.

THURSDAY

After Stories of the Resurrection and our viking lessons, the boys started in on designing their coats of arms and Melia worked on her medieval cottage presentation using the poster board I purchased earlier in the week. Keian is going to be giving a lesson on falconry, but didn’t think he needed any poster board to do so.

I worked with the littles on their schoolwork and then quickly got ready so I could take the older 2 kids to work and stop at the PX to shop for an Easter dress. I don’t have any nice dresses for upcoming summer weddings we will be attending, so I figured an Easter dress could definitely double for a wedding attendee dress!

On the way back home, I stopped at the library to pick up some holds – Canterbury Tales and Leif the Lucky.

Later, I did a quick grocery shop at Aldi, and then Ty and I went out to dinner with a guy he was deployed with who happened to be in town. We ended up inviting him for Easter dinner, so now we will be 20 people! Wow! What fun!

When we got home, I took a quick run to Walmart with the 15 year old to get him some jeans and a few extras for Easter.

FRIDAY

Today, I headed the 3.5 hours to pick up Megan from college! I made the executive decision to delay house cleaning chores until Saturday so the house will stay nicer for everyone arriving tomorrow night and eating dinner with us on Easter Sunday. Everyone was happy about that, and that evening, I safely arrived back home with Miss Megan and the weekend celebrations began!