Large Family Homeschool Life – Week 16 of 2021

This week, illness affected our entire family – here’s how we handled it in our large family homeschool!

Read all of the Large Family Homeschool Life posts HERE >>

MONDAY

Woke up to more sick kids (see last Thursday’s post). Seems like the kids are puny for about 24-48 hours, mostly a sore throat, and then they improve remarkably after that. So, today was Aspen’s (6) turn. I simply excused her from doing school and plopped her in front of the Odd Squad in my bedroom.

By the way, we recently got a Samsung Smart TV for our bedroom. We have a much larger one in the living room, but decided it would be nice to have one in the bedroom for things like date night and girl’s night, and now Special Night since we decided to change things (see last week’s post).

This is the TV we purchased:

For Morning Time, we did our Grapevine Bible Study and a Hymn Study. We also used our new book Impressionism for Children to do a Picture Study. (My 15 year old has been inspired to try his hand at some Impressionist painting!)

In Tapestry of Grace, we learned about the rise of Feudalism, and then rounded it all out by reading aloud from The Secret of the Swamp King (which needs to be returned to the library soon!).

Curious about Tapestry of Grace? Get a FREE SAMPLE HERE >>

You can also see how we use Tapestry of Grace HERE >>

Micah (12) is working on multiplication. Creed (8) is learning his soft c sound in phonics; although, at this point, he’s really just reinforcing what he already knows. And Mercy (4) is learning the number 9. I am still blown away by how much she knows, and I’ve even caught her working ahead in her numbers book!

I decided to make a quick run to the library to return some books that someone else had a hold on. I am starting to wonder if someone else nearby is doing Tapestry of Grace!

For lunch, the kids had leftover biscuits and gravy Ty’s mom made the other night for dinner. I ate a salad with chicken on it since I’m not a big gravy fan.

After lunch, I finished editing last week’s Large Family Homeschool Life post and sent an email out to my readers with some extra tidbits of info.

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After sitting a while with Aspen while she rested (sometimes I just watch the kids sleep – especially when they are not feeling well), I took a 2 mile walk. Ty and I took a short jaunt to the local English tea shop (boy, it seems like I spend a lot of time and money there!) to buy clotted cream and Builder’s tea. We also ran by the commissary (military grocery store) to get some lemon curd and Irish butter, and ended up finding corned beef at a really great price ($2.18 per lb.), so I bought 2 of the bigger ones. My kids LOVE corned beef, and it makes a nice crock pot meal.

Lia (16) made Crispy Oven Baked Chicken Thighs and green beans and served the leftover biscuits with honey from Ty’s uncle’s hives.

The kids played outside tonight since we have bad weather coming. While they played, Ty made crumpets. We don’t have any crumpet rings, so we used biscuit cutters which are really too deep for crumpets. We enjoyed them so much – lathered with the clotted cream, lemon curd, and/or Irish butter! We decided to buy these crumpet rings so we can make more!

That evening I read chapters 8 & 9 of Live Not By Lies and answered the discussion questions for our online book club. Such a thought-provoking book!

I intend to take some of the things I’ve learned from this book and share them in future posts and podcasts!

I got the little girls ready for bed and put them both on a pallet on my bedroom floor so I could keep an eye on their colds overnight. We use these trifold mattresses for pallets.

Then, I crawled into bed and watched “Should Christians Take the Covid Vaccine.” WOW! Such an insightful video from Todd Friel of Wretched. Well worth the watch!

TUESDAY

Woke up to several inches of wet snow! Yes, I said SNOW!

The trees are weighed down with the heavy snow, so I’m guessing this means no sandhill plums and no sandhill plum jelly again this year. Boo.

Since it was snowing, we made hot cocoa, and my 16 year old cooked up some bacon in our new microwave bacon grill. This gadget is pretty nifty, folks!

For Morning Time, we worked more on our hymn study and Impressionism, and Grapevine, plus we watched some of a YouTube video on Knight’s Armor.

Being that it is April, by noon, all the snow was gone! We ate sandwiches for lunch and the kids called Megan (20) at college on Google since she doesn’t have class on Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester.

During the afternoon hours, I worked on planning the rest of Tapestry of Grace Year 2, Unit 1. I ordered all of the Inter-library loan books we’ll need and mapped out lessons.

I also ordered Illustrated Family Bible Stories to use for Tapestry of Grace Primer. As I mentioned last week, I’m going to be doing this with my 3 youngest kids, and I promise I’ll have a review up as soon as we’ve had some time with it! Until then, you can get a FREE SAMPLE OF PRIMER HERE >>

It’s the 15 year old’s night to cook. He decided on a Baked Potato Bar with all the fixin’s! Everyone was really excited about that! It has been such a blessing to have my older kids cooking during the week!

It is Mercy’s Special Night. She chose M&Ms and root beer for her special snack and drink, and we hung out in the bedroom watching shows and playing games on my phone. Her Special Night always ends sooner than the other kids’ because she’s so little still.

After she went to bed, I watched a Christian neural retraining seminar on Facebook. Retraining my brain out of fear-ridden thought patterns was huge in recovering from my health anxiety and panic attacks. It’s nice to see a Christian group tackling this important topic.

After that, I began a study in Ephesians, and then worked through some emails until I realized I was getting sick. I could feel the sore throat coming on, and it was horrendous! I spent most of the night sucking on cough drops since nothing I took seemed to touch the pain.

WEDNESDAY

I knew the second I woke up there would be no Morning Time this morning. I was too sick.

I spent the morning drinking Throat Coat tea and doing my best to help kids with their independent school work – barely raising my voice above a whisper.

I finally gave up and spend the rests of the day in bed, watching tv, reading, and sleeping. I am praying tomorrow is better for me!

THURSDAY

While I am definitely better, I now have even more sick kids. I’m pretty sure this is the last of the crew to get sick!

Realizing it wasn’t going to be a very good day to do Morning Time (yet again), I let the kids focus on helping Ty’s mom (“Grammy”) get ready to leave after being her nearly 3 weeks. We helped her pack up and Ty filled her vehicle with gasoline, and we said our goodbyes.

Later in the day, I had the kids do their independent work, and I took a short walk.

I am trying hard to make walking every day a habit again. I didn’t want a cold to set me back too far in this goal!

When I got back from my walk, I pulled a few dandelions in the yard, but realized I was just too worn out for such activities.

I had meant to put frozen hamburger patties in the crock pot this morning, but forgot. So, we had BBQ meatballs and salad instead. The kids also made popcorn – a usual Thursday night treat since we clean the next morning and anything that gets dropped ends up vacuumed up the next day!

FRIDAY

It’s House Cleaning Day!

A couple of the kids didn’t feel well, but still did their chores anyway. I gave them the option, but they both decided to try to do their own chores.

Today, is also the 12 and under crowd’s Game Day. They get to play games and watch shows a few hours after they are finished with their house cleaning chores.

READ >> How to Set Screen Time Limits When You Homeschool

In the afternoon, I recorded Podcast #103 – How to Homeschool Ages 6 & Under:

That evening, Ty and I went to our favorite Irish Pub for date night. He had the Beef Stout and I had his usual standby – Fish and Chips. We had such a good time!