Family Schooling Summary: The Ballet

 

On Saturday we went to see the Akhmedova Ballet Academy perform. Here is a video summary of the show: https://vimeo.com/250816738. Our friend's daughter is studying there. She is a home schooler because she spends so many hours a day dancing.  It was a fabulous free cultural experience. This was their pre-show that they put on at a local community center.

 It was a perfect length too -- only a little over an hour-- and had the kids' wrapt attention for the first 30 minutes.  As the show started Miss L, who was sitting on my lap said knowingly, "Oh! This is a princess show, mommy."  We hung around a bit afterwards chatting with our buddies. Miss L wanted to try being on stage, but when I asked them if they wanted to be dancers they all said no... Hmm. They must not take after Grandmama. 

While Aunt H was having her baby...

We got a very exciting 3am phone call on Monday. Aunt H was having her baby! The cousins came to stay with us for the day. 

 With 9 kids all under the age of 10 it was a wild rumpus!  We made personal pizzas for lunch.

 The kids are all matching as part of a fashion show game that they were playing.

 It's important to appreciate the aftermath of so much pizza making:

Everyone was in and out a lot.  They held chicks and bunnies. They played explorers and rock collectors outside. 

 The youngest crew spent the first hour after they woke up playing with the calico critters. This is one of my kids favorite things to do indoors.

They "decorated" slime, which I do not recommend.  Hence the glitter and beads all over the living room rug. The slime got on clothes and cushions and all kinds of places where slime should not be.  I ended up not allowing anyone to play with by the end of the day.  Then the boys invented this funny game which they all, including cousin JJ, thought was hilarious.  M stood on the coffee table and S threw pillows at him until he fell over onto the couch. I guess you had to be there to appreciate the hilarity...

Farm Fresh: Stump Grinding

 Over Christmas vacation we rented a stump grinder. It was the last phase of taking clearing the land behind the barn and garden. The weather was very cold, but dry and clear.  I counted about 40 stumps one day when I wandered around the yard. Some of them were 3 feet wide or more.

 I am so grateful for this hard working husband of mine. Power tools with blades really scare me.

 We have been using our wood stove a lot this winter. We've burned about 2 cords so far.  Part of that is that we are still learning how to use and adjust the wood stove. It makes our main floor extra toasty. The kids always gather in the den, where the wood stove is, to do their school work.

 Shark follows me around while I am doing chores. Sometimes she even leads the way, she knows the routines so well.

 

 We have had several dustings of snow and ice.

 I worry about them sledding too far down the driveway. They know that that green transformer box is as far as they are allowed to go.

Little Sister Turns 3!

 My dynamic baby girl is so grown up. She is a fire-y red-head full of spunk and sass.  She can hold her own with her older siblings and when all else fails, she screams loudly until someone caves in. Baby L loves the animals and often comes along with me during chore time just because she likes to make the rounds. She got potty trained in December and now wahoo! -- All done with diapers in our house!

 Baby L loves pink and princesses, candy and cars, Thomas the Train minis, and most of all playing with the big kids.

 Grandmama and Grandpa Jim came to the party virtually. Miss L had an ice cream cake for her birthday.

Calico Critters are the next big thing around here. Some of our older kids' friends have them. Now everyone is excited to play with L's new toy together. 

Family Schooling Summary: Science, Field Trips, and Ice Skating Lessons

 A lot of indoor learning is happening during these cold days. Big sister A grew rock crystals with a little kit that she got for Christmas:

 We spent several nights making and painting this volcano. It has to dry after each step.

 We will probably set it off tomorrow at FHE.

 We chose the Maryland Science Center for our family membership thing this year. We are planning to do a better job using the ASTC program on our travels this year (membership to one state science museum gets you into a lot of other museums for free).

 It has been 2 years since our last membership expired.  A lot of things were the same.

 We spent some time in the gallery about optical illusions and then watched a presentation on it. 

 The kids thought this "bed of nails" activity was pretty amazing.

  Brother M has improved the complexity of his ball ramp building since the last time we came.

  Here are the big kids getting ready to go into ice skating lessons with their friends.  They did ice skating camp for a half day with their cousins and had a blast so we signed them up for that instead of swimming for the next 8 weeks.

  We also went to the National Electronics Museum in Baltimore this week.

 We went with a big group of homeschoolers and had an excellent tour guide.

 Big sister A and Brother M both participated in the demonstrations:

Farm Fresh: New Chicks ALREADY!

It's hard to believe that it is already chick time again. We got 20 Rhode Island Reds in the mail last Thursday and here we go again!

I know you are thinking, "but you already have SO many animals!".  That is actually not as true as it was before Christmas.  A little Romanian immigrant woman came over needing live birds for their traditional Christmas and New Year's feasts. I sold her 4 chickens, 2 ducks, and 2 turkeys. That left me with only 8 laying hens and our fair rooster (plus about a hundred other animals).  My new Romanian friend would like to buy more birds from us as well. Hence the influx of these lovely ladies -- they are a good dual purpose breed so we can eat them for meat or keep them for egg layers, depending on how many she wants to buy.