Drawing, Gardening & Puzzles

We are all getting more used to our new "normal".  I have been enjoying having the kids at home but it is crazy to look at the calendar and realize how many more weeks they have at home before summer break officially begins.  Since school is closed in Michigan through the remainder of the school year, we are looking at doing homeschool until June.  All MI schools need to have a plan in place for remote learning through the end of the school year.  Our kids will start their "real" school work this week.

Up to this point I've been giving them some daily work in each core subject and they use checklists to monitor their progress.  It's been going pretty well thus far, although it will be interesting to see this week what their teachers will actually require of them.  So far the school kids do their couple hours of "homeschool" in the mornings and then have the afternoon to play.  It took us awhile to get into a rhythm because until last week we just HAD to get outside in the mornings to ski.  (Crust skiing is only good until the sun warms the snow and then it gets too soft.)  We would usually head out around 9 and spend a couple hours in the woods.  Which meant school happened in the afternoon.

Last week a "homeschool" rhythm was easier because there wasn't enough snow to ski.  One of their science projects from earlier this month was learning the different kinds of conifers in our woods. Clare really loved this project.

Of all the kids, Nora is having the hardest time with this change to "school at home".  She no longer has Mom and Lena to herself all day and she's no longer the boss of kid activities (which is a good thing as she was getting pretty bossy).

Lena just does her own thing all morning - playing in her make believe world, building puzzles, playing farm or doll house, drawing pictures.  She loves to play princess; usually she is Elsa from Frozen.   She wears a skirt every day.  Lately she pulls her hair ties out and runs around like a little ragamuffin.  The only thing she'll keep in her hair is an "Elsa braid".  She is starting to take after Karl with drawing - good attention to detail and good fine motor coordination.  Here is one of her recent drawings.

Nora and Lena helped me get soil ready for planting the other day.  We've started most of our early vegetables indoors (like broccoli and tomatoes) but we also put a few "winter sown" milk jugs outdoors with cold-hardy seeds like more broccoli, kale, lettuce, and a few flowers.  The girls liked getting their hands dirty.  All the girls planted sunflowers as well.  Karl didn't have much interest in planting.  He was busy with his Legos.  He and Matt have been working on a Technic set from when Matt was a kid.  They got the dune buggy built and Karl thought it was pretty awesome, even without batteries.

I walked into the playroom one day and noticed the girls had made a real farmhouse:

We recently got hit (yesterday and today) with a big storm that buried all my gorgeous crocus plants.

And... puzzles!  These kids have been building so many puzzles!  We had plenty on hand, which was fortunate.  Nora has been flying through our 200 and 300 piece puzzles, sometimes building the same one again the next day.

Nora and Clare built this 1000 piece State Birds and Flowers puzzle.  It took them over three weeks and a little help from me.

Karl spent the same amount of time working on this 1000 piece tractor puzzle.  He did at least 60 percent of it himself.