Learning and Teaching 2019-2020

Well, the official school year has come to a close & it was a good one, quite possibly the best we have ever had!  I think this is due to the addition of converting the home office to a school room, the age of my little students & of course, God's grace in building a special bond through learning together. 

In the past I have divided Classical Conversations and our actual school at the Nest but over the years they have become so intertwined it makes sense to keep them together. That's the beauty of learning overflowing into all areas. That being said, it's just a long post. 

We will begin with the last day of school. Once Covid-19 started, weeks 19-24 of our Classical Conversations year was completed via Zoom & it went surprisingly well. The kids adapted to a completely different experience, some struggled more than others.....like three brothers ; ) We have a different family presentation each week on community day & that continued through Zoom. 

Our family was the final week & while Robby didn't get to join us due to a meeting, he sported his jersey in honor of our Australia themed presentation. We started with saying "G'day mates," which my children thought was so funny. I shared our family history of Australia beginning 17 years ago when Robby moved there, my visit & our engagement & our special friends we miss dearly. The kids picked facts to share. Charlotte spoke about the didgeridoo and attempted playing it, Eloise talked about Rugby, Owen was all about the AU Zoo & some animals native to the country while Anson showed a boomerang. Little Arlo, oh my. It's a good thing he's cute! The entire time others were talking, he was sticking his face in view of the camera & holding things up next to the presenter yet when it was his turn he crawled under the table as fast as possible and refused to play the drum he promised he would play. It made us laugh AND is a great family video. 

Let's move along through the year in no chronological order. The kiddos favorite part of our day other than recess is piling in the school room snuggled with blankets & ready to listen to a read-aloud. We enjoyed a new CC book that was published last year called Old World Echoes. It lined up with our weekly memory work with History & Geography & was filled with stories from all around the world. Some were fairy tales, some set in Medieval times & each week contained a poem. I think we enjoyed Robin Hood & Rumpelstiltskin the most although they did have more than a few giggles about the birthday suits in The Elves & the Shoemaker....eye roll. They usually had a piece of paper to draw or write down what they heard. That is a win-win for everyone just about every time I read- aloud. Here they are minus Charlotte who likes a little personal space.

This was year SEVEN of CC which is hard to believe! My sweet friend Courtney taught Owen's and Anson's class. They had a lot of energy ; )

After two years with the 4-5 year olds, I jumped up to the 8 year old class and LOVED my time with Eloise & her buddies! It was really fun to have kids that could read and follow simple directions like "sit in your chair and don't touch your neighbor."

Charlotte was with another friend named Leslie. I would have enjoyed spending time watching her model teaching through all of our segments each Monday. She is creative & intelligent. Minus the fact that there were only two girls in the class, Charlotte had a great year.

Arlo has come a LONG way from the first two years when he cried so much that I strapped him into a stroller, rolled him into my classroom & that little dear sucked his thumb while rubbing his belly button for two hours. Jones is his best bud ever & belongs to Courtney. They are happy as can be when together & we can't believe that they will start Foundations class in the fall!

Here is Courtney, mama to the blondie pictured above. This was crazy sock day : ) 

We have a map challenge each year where every student has the opportunity to turn in 4 maps per week. They can be traced or hand drawn with older kids labeling countries within continents. Our goal this year was 2,020 maps to represent our year. Our class total was 459! My class has won three years in a row which means that the 4-5 year olds beat the big kids the past 2 years! We won the semester total with 302 & got a donut party. We also award the top kid in each class at the end of the year. Charlotte won for her class & Eloise tied for top in hers.

Geography is a favorite at the Nest. We draw maps everyday & have begun a lot more hand drawn rather than traced. I am blown away at their precision. Owen & Anson mastered drawing and labeling the Circles of Latitude, the Prime Meridian, continents & oceans. Can't wait to see what they can accomplish next year.  For Challenge A which is the equivalent of 7th grade, the students finish off the year by drawing the entire world & labeling countries and capitals. They should be able to do it from memory. These two girls are well on their way. Here are Charlotte's maps followed by one of Eloise's.

Even Arlo learned his continents this year! He knows a song that includes "Kangaroos hopping in Australia, Penguins waddling in Anarctica." It took us quite some time to wean him off the song & just say the continent name, ha! I laminated this one & put Velcro sticky tabs on it. At the end of the year, I switched him over to looking at a few other maps to correlate continent shapes without the colors he is used to. Next year my goal is to have him trace a blob map then draw by himself. It's always amazing what they can do! Like that bump on his noggin? 

A week in Science that we all enjoyed was learning about vibration, pitch and frequency with our very own bottle organ. The kids got to take turns blowing across the opening and playing with the spoons. They were so funny with their rhythms and dancing. 

Charlotte completed year two of Essentials which is an English Grammar & writing course. I SO enjoy each week of being in class with her! I have learned more than I expected to & sure love watching her interact with her teacher and classmates. They write and read a paper to their class each week and for the final week, they present in a Faces of History day. We studied World Wars I & II during the second semester and she read about Anne Frank. She was the perfect character for Charlotte and we learned much about life over the course of those years for a young Jewish girl. I found it very helpful to lead into conversations about the time period through the story Anne told. It was a cheap costume with my sweater and earrings, a printed Star of David taped on & a journal wrapped in some fabric we had. She was overjoyed to be presenting on Zoom from the waist up so she didn't have to wear dress shoes, haha! That's my girl! Her paper was incredible and we were so proud of her.

Speaking of Zoom, here was a morning and afternoon....

One of the first weeks, kids could present on their pets & Anson talked about his new Sea Monkeys....oh my, it made me giggle! Prior to the crippling Coronavirus, there were a variety of topics including Ireland for Owen, Spain for Anson & the Redwood Tree for Eloise. She prepped with Dad on that one and her drawings were beautiful & detailed as usual as she compared height with the Statue of Liberty and a Blue Whale. Charlotte was the master of reading, jotting down & reciting to near perfections. 

While Charlotte & I were in class Monday afternoons the other four were in an art class where they focused on the techniques of artists in the Middle Ages. During the week where they studied the Italian painter, Giotto, they created quite the masterpieces! He lived in the 1300s and one thing he was famous for was painting halos around the subject's heads. They were painted and/or made of gold leaf. In order from left to right, Eloise, Owen, Anson & Arlo. Anson painted Robby with a beard (picture number 3) & it might be a favorite for a LONG time, ha! 

Charlotte was a blast to teach this year. I am always apprehensive of a new year with an older kid thinking about how I don't know anything about teaching that age. I am always learning something new to teach her and to help her mature.  I think we were working on some math in the picture below. I love how there is a picture of some animal with the word "poop" next to it. The joy of un monitored markers & gross kids ; ) 

Speaking of un-monitored markers, after a spelling lesson about how the vowel directly before an "r" often follows the sound of the "bossy r," someone had added on a picture and my name calling me bossy. I always remind them that I am supposed to be bossy, since I'm the mama right? 

There was a conversion of an awful green office to a lovely gray school room complete with new chairs, boards & decor, a built out closet to house supplies collected over the years and even a little corner for Arlo. It has been SO wonderful! I am thankful that Robby was willing to give up the little space that was his. It is a joke now that the garage is all he has left and we all dump junk in there all the time ; ) 

Here is Arlo's little corner where he gets to learn about the calendar and all sorts of other things. Those letter magnets were an Ellis family original from the 80s. They are well loved around here! I told Robby that I'm sure he had no idea how cute his safe could be with all the magnetic additions! It sure is convenient & he doesn't seem to mind.

Science experiments for the last six weeks were super fun including constructing towers, bridges, catapults, paper airplanes and our very favorite, egg protectors. Eloise and all three boys made their own which we tested from the top of the playground. It has been absolutely wonderful to have Robby home especially when he gets to come participate. All the eggs survived! I think the secret was a blown up ziploc bag & duct tape underneath. I would not have survived catapult week without Robby's assistance!

Everything is more fun with food so we learned about the phases of the moon with Oreo cookies...I'm not sure if anyone actually learned anything but they were happy ; )

These goofy boys have grown so much this year & their reading really took off even with their surfing shenanigans during a lesson one afternoon.

Anson needs a little more work with his spelling. "Stoopid is as stoopid does sir" said a nice man with the last name Gump.

Charlotte can be found helping others whether they like it or not. She is actually a huge help to me as she reads to or plays with Arlo or sits on Eloise so she can't run away during a lesson ; ) 

Charlotte also plays photographer & snapped this picture of us reading one afternoon. It's not a surprise that our best days are days when we read the most. Even the girls still enjoy a good picture book & the boys have finally become accustomed to chapter books with no pictures. It's fantastic to be in a place that I never thought we would reach! 

That picture looks so peaceful and the things we have photographed over the last year of learning make it look delightful.  In a grumpy mess this afternoon, following an awful math lesson and a sibling brawl of ugly words, everyone was put in solitary confinement for an hour while I took a breather. 

I had lost my temper and thought about how hard it is to do this all day long everyday. I grabbed my computer and began this post and the Lord used it to refresh my soul. He used it to remind me that there are more enjoyable days than stinky ones, that we are capable of having fun, that I'm not a grump all the time and this opportunity is priceless. They are still so young and I am thankful for the years ahead! There are many a conversation to be had and likely many more tears shed on my part as I strive to lead them well and fight feeling like a failure. God knows my deepest desires and my deepest struggles. He doesn't leave me and I know he will sustain me in the coming days, weeks, months, years of this homeschooling journey. 

Goodbye Jobblers, Hello Binny Gigs!

Oh furry friends, you bring so much excitement to a home! Poppy & Buttercup, the girls' beloved gerbils graced us with their presence for 2-3 years before we said farewell. More on them later. Petless for awhile, which I kind of liked, we added two new furry friends to the Nest over the weekend!  

Meet Daisy & Delilah, our new Guinea Pigs or as Arlo starting off calling them "Binny Gigs." Definitely didn't want to correct that one, ha! We knew we were ready for another pet and though we want to enjoy a family dog, now is certainly not the time. When our kids say we are grumpy, all I can think of is how incredibly more grumpy we would be with a puppy! We look forward to it (I think) when the time is right but for now, these little ladies will provide the snuggles all the Valentine children desire! 

Prior to life in quarantine we began discussing the possibility of a furry addition or two to the family. Initially, it was the girls requesting. They had chosen the names, Sugarplum & Honeysuckle, had a plan for where their cage would stay & could hardly wait to pick them out. After some discussion and the realization that Guinea Pigs live for 5-7 years, I was excited at the possibility of pushing off the dog dilemma a little further but it meant that the boys would not have a pet. Our decision was that we would get two and they would be family pets. You can imagine how well that went over when we delivered the news.  After the girls regained composure, all agreed that it sounded fun!

Robby has kept me laughing through this entire process. Early on in quarantine, we did not know how long it would last. He kept telling the girls that if we got guinea pigs & things got really dire, there was a possibility that we would have to eat them. We all giggled about it until the meat plants began to shut down. Over the course of weeks, I spent some time looking at cages & reading about how to take care of these little creatures. All the people in our home thought I was a little insane & I might have been ; ) I want to be a responsible pet owner. I will admit that the search for the perfect cage was a little out of hand. I came across one for a bunny called a Wabbitat that was quoted to work well for our animal of choice. All said and done, we settled on something else but I sure loved the name "Wabbitat!" For as much time as a I spent looking, I should have practiced saying Guinea Pig instead of Gerbil. It was ridiculous. Everyone was constantly laughing at me. In fact, when I went into the store Robby said, "you better not come out with gerbils!"

We held out until Mother's Day weekend when it felt a bit safer to be out....it was not an essential trip right? Although, it was essential that we needed some entertainment around here.  Apparently, the rest of DFW felt the same because there was a piggy shortage by the time we were ready to make our purchase! Who knew they were so popular! Robby said, "See, I told you. People are eating them." Hahaha, maybe he was right! 

My first online search for Guinea Pigs pulled up a rescue group. They had dozens of pictures of named ones that I should have not let the kids see. They were attached to a trio & we were a firm 'no' on getting that many! I called the place & they said people were on a two week waiting list & to submit my application. Well, we looked through the application & I read the questions aloud to Robby in the kitchen one night. It was a little too extreme like we were adopting a child and they would need to perform a home study. Robby said that if I let him fill out the application we could rest assured that we would not be cleared for an adoption. One great question, "How much are you willing to spend in a Guinea Pig emergency?" Hmmmmm..... nada? 

This pushed us on to Petsmart & Petco.  The cage arrived Saturday and once we put it together I thought I would call a store or two.  Zero available. The search turned into nine calls. Robby joked saying that customer service was calling other stores to report me, the crazy lady that was anxious to make her meat purchase." Maybe he wasn't joking. We all cheered when we found out that the Rockwall store had two boys and a girl. The kids were shocked that we said, "Hurry up! Get in the car!" It's really a delight to be fun parents every now and then! We raced there & joked that everyone was going to beat us there and we would be left pig-less. We wanted two girls but the kids thought it would be fun to have a boy & a girl. Robby said we could teach them about the "pigs and the fleas" instead of the "birds and the bees."  We pulled up & I jumped out of the car as we rolled past the entrance.  The plan was to text pictures & let the kids vote. Robby texted back and said everyone was arguing so I could pick. As I was making my decision, a dad plus two kids walked up a little too excited to get the same pets as me. Thankfully I had first dibs or I might have gotten into a fist fight. Robby would have been pleased to see me escorted out in cuffs.  No cuffs, just a mask. A sign of the times!

I arrived at the car & presented the newest member of the family who would later be named Delilah. She is about 9 months old & brought a squeal to all the kids! Arlo has been calling her July-lah. She looks a bit like a possum.....

We took her home, got her settled & headed out back for a Mother's Day Eve camp out. The next morning I thought we should get a jump on finding a sissy for Delilah so round two of searching began. Embarrassed (a little bit) to say that I called 15 stores before I found one! Who knew they were so popular! Again, we hopped in the car and made a mad dash to Frisco. It was the most driving we had done since early March and the Expedition was about to run out of gas. We were willing to walk to get her though ; ) 

The guy that helped me had a hard time catching her in the large, elevated enclosure she was in. He said, "excuse me ma'am" hiked up his pants and went face first, up to his waist, into the cage. Oh my goodness, I had a hard time not bursting out in laughter! Soon enough, I was exiting the store, a proud owner of another piggy! 

I happily presented Delilah's little sister, Daisy. Anson immediately started calling her Skunky due to her skunk like similarities. 

 Skunky is a perfect nick-name don't you think? 

So far, they have been mostly held or played with by all seven of us. Robby had some as kids & actually had the opportunity to learn about the "pigs and the fleas" when six baby piggies were born. I told his dad that our were both girls & he said that you just never know, ha! Let's hope we don't end up with a bunch of squeaking pigs! They are noisy & welcome snuggles. Daisy sat with me for a bit while I composed this post. Arlo REALLY likes them and covers them with hay any chance he gets. He talks sweetly though and thankfully hasn't given them too tight of a squeeze yet!

I have been teased that I am more excited than the kids.  Maybe it's true : ) 

I mean Daisy did help my write this post about her.

Here are a few snap shots of the last 48 hours...

 Arlo has been looking out for those girlies....inside & outside the cage.

Now let's back track to a few years to March 17, 2017 when we gave the rodent thing a try. I HATE the species title of "rodent!" I only remember the date because it was on Bella's birthday. What a horrible gift for her! The girls were convinced if the gerbils made eye contact with Bella that their hearts would stop beating. I think that was false. Here is Lolo at the check out counter. 

Poppy & Buttercup were the chosen names & belonged to Charlotte and Eloise.  The girls' buddies provided all the attention and affection needed while we were out of town & their five year old could not remember how to say 'gerbil' and kept calling them 'jobblers or jambles' hence the title of this post  : )

Preparation for a  presentation at school quickly began.

When the kids and I went out of town, Robby was put in charge with very strict instructions....

This is the contract they wrote up with promises and consequences. I'm pretty sure they broke every promise.

Soon enough, design and construction of a gerbil maze was in full swing.

There were lots of "helpers" and onlookers.

We were pretty impressed with the final product.

Some had to be restrained.

This picture was taken on their first birthday. At some point during their lives, the girls talked about how neat it was that they brought the gerbils in from the wild.  Robby said to me in private, "those gerbils are 10th generation Petsmart." Haha! They were well loved but super squirmy & they chewed holes in SO many of the girls' clothes. Speaking of chewing, if you put any piece of cardboard or paper in their cage, they neurotically chewed it to bits without stopping. SO creepy. The girls always swore they could tell them apart...I'm not so sure.

The boys were never allowed to hold them unless the girls were gone & I let them. They had a blast and we never told their protective owners. One time when the girls were cleaning the cage on the driveway, they could not locate the bucket in which they had left the pair in. I did a quick search & couldn't stop laughing when two year old Arlo came around the corner swinging the bucket like it was a ride at the fair! Those little rodents (yuck) were pretty durable till they weren't.

Poppy's life ended abruptly last August when she had what looked like a seizure then fell to the ground from Eloise's hands. It was quite traumatic. My friend Courtney was over with her three boys which always makes for an extreme amount of activity between all six of the boys. I ran from the room when Elo screamed and scooped Poppy up from the ground. Her life ended with both of them watching. I should have thought through the next steps before I did them. We put her back in the cage so Buttercup would realize she would be alone. This brought on tears from the girls. Chaos was going on outside the door and I had to sneak out to get a box. Courtney said, "What happened??" I told her & we both had wide eyes....sad but hilarious that they were all there. We put her in a box & once the girls dried their faces, they exited the room. Immediately, six year old Moses said loudly, "I'm sorry your gerbil died!" Owen & Anson, who had no idea what was going on,  were like, "What?? It died?!" We attempted a burial in the backyard but it was mostly rock under the spot we were digging. It ended with Charlotte putting the box in the freezer until we decided what to do. On trash day, she said, let's put it out there & let them take her. I was shocked and went with it! So, that was the end of Poppy.

Buttercup survived until a couple months ago when she likely had a stroke. We told the girls that she would probably die soon but she went on to live a few more weeks. The kids and I were out of town & Robby reported that she was doing fine but could only turn right. She got around okay but once we were home just a week before official quarantine began, things worsened. Eloise was devastated. We gave her some time alone to say goodbye. She watched her closely & reported her last breath had been taken. Robby went to get her out of the cage and she jerked a little bit. Eloise squealed, "She's still alive!" Robby told her that he didn't think she was but he wasn't a gerbil coroner and that she could ask me to use my stethoscope to confirm a time of death. I am so glad he is funny. In the end, I think she went out on trash day too.

Well that is a sad way to conclude this otherwise happy post! We will end with a picture of the proud "parents" of our furry pals......

Also, big thanks to the man not photographed often. He can be credited for being the driver, comedian, photographer & fun dad.