Quote of the Week:
B: Can we play video games?
Me: I say “No,” because I love you.
N: Can you just not love us right now?
This week marked a huge milestone in our family’s lives: our first went to Confession for the first time. She had been terrified, and we prayed about it. She shared beautiful images of God’s mercy coming up in prayer, but still the fears came back. We practiced many times, me playing the part of terrible sinner and awful priest, confessing outrageous things and as the priest, saying silly and equally awful things back to the penitent. There was lots of giggling and she finally wanted to be the penitent and tried to shock me with the worst sins she could think of, like cutting someone’s head off and deliberately giving someone a bad haircut.
Finally, on the morning of her first confession, she waltzed down the stairs and declared she had finally memorized the Act of Contrition. We all went to the penance service together, and she same out gushing about how wonderful the experience was and reassuring her brothers to let go of all fear when it would eventually be their turn.
N (3), for his part, was raring to go and rather disappointed when we left before he could take his turn. After all, he declared, he made a mess at home, so “I get to go in there.”
We had our final (I hope) snow of the season, and the kids spent hours outside creating snow thrones, sipping hot chocolate, savoring pomegranate snow balls, snow volcanoes with vinegar and baking soda, building fairy houses, and painting snow masterpieces. When it finally thawed, they switched to making forts and seesaws and a pretend store out of scrap wood we had laying around.
When they weren’t busy outside, the little ones kept occupied washing the windows with a spray bottle of water and building an inside fort with all the couch cushions. The boys slept in the fort one night and we snuggled inside of it for our current read-aloud, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, the following day.
With the older kids, we are in the middle of a nature study and curiosity took us on a bit of a roundabout journey. Our page on landforms in Nature Anatomy led us to curiosity about the drinkability of delta water, so we examined our LifeStraw and looked up videos testing how well they work under a microscope.
We were also drawn in by the mangroves and archipelagos, doing a quick visual globe search to see how many we could easily spot. We started to wonder about the Florida Keys and those questions ended up taking most of the week as we explored the Everglades and learned how to spot the difference between a crocodile and an alligator (which, as it turns out, is really only a skill you need in the Everglades, the only spot in the world where both species reside).
We also played some trivia games and watched some National Park documentaries (with popcorn, of course), but as we are still waiting for our new curriculum to arrive (sometime between 5-7pm today), we happily explored the rabbit holes curiosity opened up for us.
We also spent a fair amount of time at the library as C declared that she was out of books daily, and are very much looking forward to planting our garden, as St. Patrick’s Day traditionally marks potato-planting time around these parts.
Switching to more outdoor play is leaving me with a cleaner house and more time on my hands (a void I happily filled with books this week). I am interested to see how this trend continues (or fizzles) for us as the weeks go by and we settle into a spring routine.
We struggle with video game and TV time and I've said the same, "No, because I love you", haha. It doesn't always end well, but, I'm trying to get my son to use his imagination and play more! I'm excited that spring is coming so we can get outside more too, it will make for less clean up inside, which is great. :)
Yes! Love the sunshine. But I feel like the mess just moves outside, and some of outside moves inside too 🤣🤣