How we deal with a sick day

I woke up to Kayla’s pitiful voice last night telling me she was cold.  When I got to her, she was shivering and could barely hold herself up to walk, so I took her to the bathroom just incase.  It seemed to take forever to get her warmed up, even with her body pressed against mine under several blankets in my bed.  Eventually we moved to her twin bed, and slept on and off until morning.  Farm chores are taken down to "necessity only", so I let the chickens out, checked their food and water, milked and fed the goats, and filtered the milk for the fridge.  Feed the dog, the cats, and done.  I'm praying I do not get sick, because just these few things will be way more difficult when I am sick.

When the girls are sick, I let them stay in bed with books, Sparkle Stories, and an occasional movie.  (I wish I could do this when I am sick!)  Chelsey started feeling bad after breakfast, so she joined Kayla in their room for the Martin and Sylvia Sparkle Story, “The Crud”.  Appropriate, right?  Martin was sick in this story, and couldn’t do something special he had planned.  So thankful for our 15 day trial, we will be continuing it for at least a month after we finish the trial. 

After being up most of the night with Kayla, I didn’t have a lot of energy for detailed homeschool lessons, so Julia and I snuggled up on the couch in front of the Christmas tree with tea and blankets to finish our book, The Wishing Spell from the Land of Stories series.  It was a very good book, and once we finish some school related books we are going to move on to book 2 in the series.  We also started Meet Felicity from the American Girl history book series.  I love using these books in addition to our history curriculum.  Julia is currently learning about the end of the Revolutionary War and this ties in nicely.  She enjoys hearing stories that are written as if the person lived through it.  It is a much better way than the dry facts I learned (and promptly forgot) back in school. 

At lunch time, I went in to ask the girls if they were hungry.  Kayla was sound asleep, and I think Chelsey was as well, but heard me walk in.  Poor babies.

I guess if we are going to be sick, we picked a pretty good time.  The rain was relentless today, even the cats and dog didn’t want to go outside to play.  Lennon is our dog, whom we rescued from a shelter about 6 years ago.  He is a good, lazy dog.  Before my cat Daisy died, she tormented him constantly.  I’ve never seen a dog scared of a cat, but even without front claws, she had him terrified.  When Daisy walked in a room, Lennon would turn his head away and “hide” from her.  If Daisy came over to drink from his water bowl while he was eating, Lennon would stop and go to another room.  Up to the day she died, he was afraid of her and all cats.   When Miss Kitty came, she was such a different cat than Daisy.  She always wanted to rub against Lennon and he would yipe or run.  Today I saw this:

Is that not the most adorable thing ever?  It took over a year of Miss Kitty living with us for him to come around and not be afraid of her.  She will rub on him, and now even lay with him.  I had to snap a picture.  

Come dinnertime, I was so grateful that Kevin got me the Instant Pot for an early Christmas present.  There is nothing better than homemade chicken noodle soup when you’re sick, or in this case, turkey noodle soup I made with leftover frozen turkey from Thanksgiving.  I’ve only used the IP three times now, but I am impressed and looking forward to finding more recipes.  It took 20-25 minutes from starting cutting to finish for the soup.  Amazing.  Several of my friends have sung it’s praises for months, but I wouldn’t buy into it.  When Amazon had it on sale for $69 after Thanksgiving, we decided to take the plunge. 

The younger girls got to watch Rudolph while eating dinner, poor Julia was stuck with us adults talking at the table.  She wanted to watch Harry Potter, but it was already too late in the evening for that.  

It's been a long, tiring day.  I'm glad for it to finally be bedtime, and I'm crossing my fingers that everyone sleeps through the night tonight!  

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Our homeschool "trial run"

After a very long weekend of Julia being sick, we decided to keep her home Monday.  She still was weak, but feeling much better.  So what better time to try homeschooling!?  We will be perfecting our schedule and using different materials in the fall, but wanted to get a general idea of how things would go.

We started our day off the traditional way, breakfast and morning chores, then she wanted to do the "if you're happy and you know it song".  I knew Chelsey, my younger daughter, liked this song, but it was a hoot watching them both sing and dance to it!  I decided to work on Calendar because it seems like that has been lacking at her actual school, and then we did the "Days of the week" song.  They both loved it as well (sung to the Addams family theme song you can find it here).

I wrote a little guide of what subjects to do on our whiteboard, and did a variety, even though we will do less per day in the fall I was surprised how much we were able to get done!  Even with an extra long math session (we watched a video by mathtacular for about 45 minutes because she was really enjoying it) we finished "school" by 1:30, including lunch.  Here is a brief description of what we did:

Literature:  I read to her from a book called "Be a friend to trees", which actually lead into our science.  It was a very descriptive book and she enjoyed it.
Writing/Spelling:  Julia copied a paragraph from the book, and I verbally asked her to spell words.
Art: used finger paints to paint a picture about something from the book (she drew an orange tree)
Science/Nature:  we went outside and followed an ant.  The ant was carrying another bug, and we followed it "home" to its ant hill.  Julia enjoyed watching the ants try to find the hole on the ant hill. 
Gym:  played outside on the slide, counted how many jump ropes she could do, kicked the ball up and down the hill.
Lunch
Math:  watched the mathtacular video, did a worksheet on addition
Geography: used her Tag reader and map of the US to locate the states and find out information on them.

It was a fun day, and it gave me the "I can do it" feeling that I needed.  We are both excited to start in the fall and use the curriculum I have planned out.  It was nice to be able to include Chelsey, but also a challenge.  I'll definitely have to have little activities set up for her to do when I need one-to-one time with Julia.  For now it worked well just letting her do a mini version of what we were doing.  (pencil and paper during writing/spelling, letting her finger paint, etc.)  We also did the math and geography during nap time which worked out nicely. 

Overall it was a great day!  Today she is home again, I just don't think her immune system is ready.  She will probably go back to school tomorrow, and I will miss her :)  We used http://www.theheadoftheclass.com/ today, and I wasn't really impressed.  It has been suggested to me several times by other homeschooling moms, but it is not quite up to par with what I want to teach.  It also doesn't remember what you were doing if you happen to x-out the screen.  When you go back all the subjects are listed again, which frustrated Julia because she thought she had to do them all over again.  It also listed subjects several times in one day.  It's a free online curriculum, so I suppose you get what you pay for.  :)  We will stick to the Charlotte Mason method and maybe use Head of the Class for those crazy busy days.