Where It Happens: The New England Edition

Snow! The flakes are there, I promise, and the girls are
desperately trying to catch them. (FYI, the purses have
car activities for the outing we were embarking on when
the snow started falling.)

This move wasn't just a matter of rearranging all our stuff in a new space. We packed just 12 suitcases full of the bare necessities (I know that seems like a lot, but the airline said we could bring 20), and unpacked them into a furnished house that's normally rented out by week during the summer.

Two things were immediately most puzzling to the girls: how they were going to sleep (the house has 3 bedrooms with a queen bed in each, but the girls are used to sleeping in bunk beds in one room) and how we were going to function without a study (actually they were baffled as to how anyone functioned without a study or even any bookshelves. I think it was their first inkling that we're not normal.)

After a temporary stint with Bug in a separate room (self-imposed nightly quarantine because of a nasty cold), the girls decided they really did need to be all together again, so we made a Saturday day trip to visit IKEA and found a mini twin mattress that fits perfectly between the bed and the dresser. We also repurposed a large decorative basket from the living room to hold an overflowing pile of books in their bedroom (the fake flowers have been relegated to the basement. I may or may not remember how to redecorate this place 6 months from now.)

Can't you just picture me there--peacefully sipping tea and
making lesson plans? That never actually happens, of course,
but it's a nice idea, isn't it?

To replace the study I took over the sideboard in the dining room. It's now lined with books and folders instead of froufrou, the caddy for touristy brochures is now full of pens, pencils, scissors, rulers, and Brain Quest cards, and a small mixing bowl from the kitchen holds glue, tape, and a small stapler. The magazine rack was emptied in favor of 2-gallon bags organizing school materials by subject, and the basket containing more froufrou is now overflowing with craft supplies (I'm going to need to dig up a bigger bin). We no longer have a project table, but I bought a clear vinyl tablecloth to protect the poor dining room table. Oh, and the printer occupies space on a kitchen counter. Weird, but there's just no where else to put it.

Of course, the house was also lacking an obvious playroom, but what it does have is a semi-finished basement that the girls commandeered our very first day in the house. It was basically a large concrete-floored empty space with a washer and dryer on one side and random things stored around the edges. So . . . the girls and I got to work. We brought down the rug that was under the dining room table (a disaster waiting to happen), an Adirondack chair and a couple of beach chairs from the garage, an empty cabinet and old telephone table from among the stored heaps (which their collapsible toy bins fit perfectly under). We also bought some flowery masking tape and put down a hopscotch game.

Voila!  Mission accomplished.

More with Less at Playtime
Our serious downsizing of their toys when we moved has certainly inspired creativity! Even with only the very basics in craft supplies, they've created all kinds of fun. They've used pipe cleaners and fabric scraps to create little dolls and jewelry, and they've used construction paper and tape to create doll beds, boxes, dress-up armor, more jewelry, and interlocking building toys. Of course, the Legos have gotten lots of play as well; their biggest project was creating a series of mech suits for the Lego mini figures. We also bought a couple of cheap unframed white boards from Home Depot that the girls have been drawing on and creating whole story lines (my personal favorite was the dragon battle. As a project, and to help them acclimate to the new place/climate, we decided to make no-sew fleece blankets. I let the girls pick out their own fabric: Bug went with her classic purple and zebra stripes, Goose went with typical cute flowers and orange, and Monkey decided to pair an Avengers print with red. Good times.

Library Days!
We haven't actually established a weekly routine of outings yet, but we did make it to the library--a location we are very excited about. The children's section is awesome, featuring easy to flip through racks for picture books; kid-sized tables, chairs, and couches; and a large collection of puzzles, building toys, puppets, etc. The librarians were very friendly and could even assure us there were lots of homeschoolers frequenting the library that they'd try to connect us with. Of course, we couldn't visit the library without coming home with a stack of new books.

A couple of fun Christmas stories:
The Drummer Boy
The Donkey's Dream

A new book for our history studies:
The Rhode Island Colony

Never-read-by-us books by familiar authors:
Ladybug Girl and the Big Snow
Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse
Mr. Seahorse
Big Anthony and the Magic Ring
Mouse Tales
Bravo Amelia Bedelia
Berenstein Bears Learn to Share
I'm a Frog!

And of course some entirely new books that just jumped out and had to be read:
Pinkalicious
Little Bear Sleeping
Mother, You're the Best (But Sister, You're a Pest!)

We came back the next week to try out their story time, and it's exactly what we're looking for! Story time takes place out in the middle of the children's section, which allowed Monkey the freedom to listen in from the tables while she worked on puzzles and set up a castle. Bug and Goose decided they wanted to go in for a closer listen. The librarian Miss C is lovely and very approachable--even to my little introverts. Bug noted that, unlike our last librarian, "this one actually likes books!" Four or five good books were clearly the focus of the event. In fact, the "theme" was simply Miss C's favorite picks out of the brand new box of books she received that morning. The storytime crowd only involved about 10 kids, and the in-between-books activities were just quiet counting/colors/rhyming games for a change of pace (not the noisy, boisterous interruptions that so put off my girls at our last library). Bug and Goose both actively participated, answering questions and putting pieces up on the flannel board.

The Three R's
Yes, these are still happening in the midst of everything else! Obviously, we've had days off from formal lessons for travel days and Thanksgiving, but the girls are still hard at work. In fact, since we've been in our new house, Goose has also been joining in and picking out one or two worksheets or a Bob book to go through each day while her sisters are doing their lessons. She's been doing a lot of tracing letters and numbers, and she's really improving her pencil control.

For math, we did a lot of manipulatives work and flash cards when we first arrived. The girls really had fun with the fraction bars--seeing what different fractions they could combine to add up to 1, 1/2, or 1/4. The other math thing they've enjoyed is going through the math questions in the Brain Quest cards. It was a fun switch that hit on lots of different topics. Of course, once we got the printer finally set up, we they did some worksheets touching on the usual topics--addition, subtraction, time, money, skip counting, and graphs.

They are reading tons, and I've been terrible about keeping track of every book--even just for the formal reading lessons. Little Bear stories continue to be a favorite pick, and the both girls have gained enough confidence to tackle "regular" picture books like Ferdinand, Blueberries for Sal, and Snow Day. They've also been much better about doing incidental reading like the story problems in their math work.

For writing, they've both dictated journal entries, we completed a couple units of spelling words, and they each did a story prompt. We also reviewed nouns, verbs, and adjectives (by finding and labeling words in photocopies of a Little Bear story), capitalization, and contractions (I found cards for a matching/memory game to print up).

This season has required everything I may have gained in the way of superpowers as a military spouse and homeschooling mom (superhuman creativity and flexibility just come with the job, right?). Over the next week I'm hoping to post about our adventures in the holidays, moving across the country, and adjusting to our new home, along with the usual homeschooling fun that we've had over the past several weeks. Here's the first installment:

Thanksgiving: Goodbyes and Moving Day
Last year we celebrated Christmas in a hotel as we transitioned into our new house in California. This year we celebrated Thanksgiving in the same hotel as we transitioned out of that house and prepared to move clear across the country to New England! For the feasting day itself we actually joined several other military families at a friends's house, and the girls had one last day to hang out with some of their best friends. (It was quite the gathering: at one point we realized we had 14 children aged 7 and under all gathered in their living room!). We also managed to meet up with a few other families at a local park for a farewell picnic earlier in the week.

This photo doesn't nearly do justice to the crowd of people or
the vast quantities of food that day.

The cactus garden did make for an
excellent alien landscape.

For the most part, the girls enjoyed our almost week-long stay in the hotel (although Bug did grab a pillow, blanket, and book and turn the bathtub into a fortress of solitude for a while). Their favorite part was probably exploring the formal and cactus gardens. My favorite part was eavesdropping on their play while doing so: They were walking in circles around the cactus garden trapped in a time loop! They eventually discovered they could escape the time loop by changing their identities! But, when they did, they landed in a parallel universe where magic is real! This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when you take the toys away from children who've been fed a steady intellectual diet of classic science fiction and fairy tales. We're calling it a parenting win.

The day after Thanksgiving the real adventure began, and the girls got to take their first airplane flight. Of course, this involved more than just an airplane--the girls also experienced moving sidewalks, a tram between terminals, and a hotel shuttle for the first time. They were a little nervous about going through security, but we tried to prep them as much as possible for what they'd need to do and they did beautifully (fortunately, they don't make kids go through the whole body scanning process, just a metal detector). They thought the whole taking off and landing process was pretty exciting. Getting to see a birds-eye view of the city lights of our temporary hometown as we came in for a landing was also a highlight. The low point was the crew's discovering that the cargo doors were stuck shut on arrival. About an hour later someone managed to climb through a vent, I think, and we finally got our bags--well, except for that one that ended up in Kalamazoo (literally, the one in Michigan).

Some friends we knew from California who moved here a few months ahead of us picked us up from the hotel the next morning, and we finally got to see our new house! Living in a furnished house is a weird adjustment, and the girls are definitely building the virtue of flexibility that's so crucial for military kids! (More on the creative ways we're making do in a future post.)

All buckled in for our first flight!

Dinner in the airport between flights (Monkey's excited
because we were finally far enough east to find an Arby's--her favorite)

Thanksgiving: The Formal Educational Segment
Of course, Thanksgiving segued nicely into our next history unit about Colonial America. Before Thanksgiving, we read a book and watched several videos (a reenactment, a virtual tour of the living history museum of Plymouth Plantation, and a retelling of the story while touring the modern locations where these events happens). We didn't just cover the first Thanksgiving; we got into whole story of the Separatists/Pilgrims from persecution in Scrooby, England, to the flight to Amsterdam to their migration to Massachusetts, the hardships they experienced upon arrival, their interactions with the Native Americans (good and bad events), and the establishment of a successful permanent colony. To conclude our study about this particular colony I had the girls tell me the story (with a few prompts) and write a few sentences about it.