Friday bullets, March 20, 2020

Well. The world is a crazy place. That about sums it up.

• We did nearly a full week of regular school this week. Yesterday was a little limited because J. was home, working remotely, for the first day. Usually when J. is home we don't do school, but that doesn't seem to be a wise choice, so we just need to become accustomed to all working at home together.
• B. came home tonight along with Romeo, his cat, to stay for a while. The IL governor will be issuing a Shelter in Place proclamation tomorrow, and it will be a lot more fun to be surrounded by family than sitting alone in his apartment. 
• We are now officially four people over the ten person gathering limit. Oh well.
• Earlier this week, as part of our learning for ancient Egypt, everyone worked on writing hieroglyphs. This was made super fun because I had been saving packages of  hieroglyphic writing activities which came in the surprise box sent by a friend last fall. There were really cook stencils as well as two sheets of actual papyrus for each child. 

• In other school news, H. and I started to work on helping her figure out the difference between nouns and verbs. When I told her she wasn't going to do the grammar book along with everyone else; that we would be doing something different together, she seemed exceptionally relieved. I'm realizing more and more that categorizing in a struggle for her, and categorizing words, which are more abstract, is challenging. I'm going to be spending some of my weekend trying to come up with different hands-on learning activities for her to begin to help her, but here was my spur of the moment activity I came up with on Thursday.

I let her choose which colors to use, and we slowly (oh, so slowly) went through each of them and worked on figuring out whether it was a noun or verb. When she had figured it out, she colored it the correct color.

• I'm hearing that the big tests (ACT and SAT) are being cancelled for this spring. Wouldn't it be fantastic if the colleges and universities all decided, "Huh. We're not sure we really need these anyway," and they all went the way of the dinosaurs. Some have already made that move. Talk about something that is a genuine waste of time and resources which purports to give real information, but really doesn't. (Hmmm... you think I have opinions about this?)
• A Chicago area food wholesaler is opening up sales to the public, no doubt because restaurant orders are way down. I spent a ridiculous amount of time looking at the list of things for sale and wishing I had another freezer. I may still order some things and figure out how to squeeze them in because the prices are just too good.
• There has been much game playing around there this week. This afternoon, while I was paying bills (which don't seem to care about viruses or quarantines), there was a very loud game of Scrabble going on in the background between J., D., and A. I didn't know Scrabble could be so loud. I may have to hide in another room when Pit comes out.

• It's probably no surprise, but I won't be leaving for Arizona to visit my mother next week. We're going to try to change the tickets to a later date.
• I am loving how little we are spending in gasoline recently. This whole do-not-leave-the-house-thing has some real budgetary advantages.
• I've mentioned before that we don't have Wi-Fi here. It means that while we do have hot spots, it is not a really great way to try to stream video. We've pretty much given up and rely on discs. This is why when we were doing our library hoarding last week, I grabbed quite a few DVD's. One of those was the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Since J. and I really love Star Trek, I thought this would be the perfect time to introduce our children to it. We all watched the first episode together last night. I think it was enjoyed. 
• We're just having a whole 80's/90's throwback party here. I also got the first season of MacGyver which many of the younger children really like.
• Am I the only homeschooler out there that is vaguely annoyed? I mean, we homeschool for years and pretty much get the side eye from any number of people and public institutions. I have lost count how many 'discussions' I have had with museums and such over whether we are a viable school. Now, everyone and his dog is bending over backwards to provide content (much of it for FREE) to help the poor parents stuck at home with their children. 
• I think I have found a book to read. Earlier this week, I spent too many nights starting a book only to be annoyed at either the writing or the story line or both and then needing to set it aside. Evidently when vaguely stressed my tolerance for poor writing is very low.
• If you are local and need eggs, I am happy to do a porch pick-up. Just message me.
• My seedlings are doing very well, and I have set up my second table and grow lights so I have enough room for them.

Stay home and wash your hands everyone!