Astronomy, Mac and Cheese, and More

We had a really good week at our house, despite the fact that everything is still closed down from Covid-19. We couldn't play with friends, we didn't get to got to Sunday dinner with family, and cooking class was virtual, but thankfully, everything went really smoothly. Here were some of the highlights from the boys' perspectives:

Andrew: We got to look through a telescope with our friends for Space Science. We saw the moon up close. It was cool to see all the craters because we have been learning about the moon. We identified that it was a waxing crescent. After we finished with the telescope, we got hot chocolate. This week I also helped my brother build a Mindstorm robotics project that was really cool.

Hyrum: I got to build my Kiwi crate project for engineering. I made a marble timer. It's called a marble timer because each marble drops at the same speed so it can be used to time things. It was fun to build and play with, but my cats kept stealing the marbles. For cooking class, we made Mac and Cheese 3 different ways. My favorite was the one with velveeta.

Christian: For my robotics project, I built an automatic card shuffler. We used it to play multiple games throughout the week. We played UNO with my robotics club, and the shuffler worked great. I built it using instructions I found online, and then modified it a bit to make it work better. I also came up with some new modifications I could try to make it work even better.

----------------------------------------------------

The kids rocked their schooling this week. They studied hard and got everything done quickly. We are definitely in a good groove now. They know what needs to be done, and usually do it without a fight. One thing that has definitely helped us is moving people around in the house. Hyrum has trouble concentrating when he is in the main school room with the other boys, so he and I sit at the kitchen table to do his work. It has helped immensely! After we finish his core subjects of Math and Language Arts, he can go rejoin the brothers, and I spend some time with Andrew one-on-one. Christian is pretty much self-sufficient, which is awesome! It has been a process to figure out the best way for everybody to learn, but it has been really good for me as a mom to see my kids in this setting. I have gained a lot of unique perspectives about each of these awesome boys and their learning styles and thought processes.

A big win this week was with Christian in math. He generally does well, but scored poorly on one of his tests. He emailed the online facilitator and asked if he could retake it. We are finding that math is particularly hard without a real teacher. Reading the steps to work out a problem online just isn't the same, but he worked hard with Jonathon for the whole week and then retook it. He got a 90%, which we were all ecstatic about. His math is so advanced and challenging that I am constantly impressed with his ability to do it. Yay, Christian!