Russell Ramblings: When Knee Surgery Interrupts Dinosaur Studies

Our week took on a whirlwind feel when the surgeon's scheduling office asked us on Monday morning, August 29, "How does knee surgery on Wednesday the 31st sound?"  

Let me back up and say that my husband tore his ACL in 2014 when I was 31 weeks pregnant with MJ.  After surgery when I was 37 weeks pregnant, he had a great recovery and things were going well until a slight misstep and twist on uneven ground in the summer of 2016 (when I was 31 weeks, 6 days pregnant with Russell #5).  We only found out on Monday, August 29 the extent of the damage from the MRI results.  We were already prepared for surgery again simply because of how he was feeling, and we were praying we could get surgery done before the baby.  We thought, at the earliest, they would probably get us in mid to late September.  So, we were shocked, but elated, when they offered surgery on August 31.

All that to say, home school did happen this week, but there were days when we didn't do school because the kids were with babysitters while Daddy recovered.

This week we were studying dinosaurs and the letter "D."  The highlights of the week were making a plesiosaurs out of modeling clay and digging for "dinosaur" bones in the garden.  We also enjoyed the book What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs?  (This book came along with our My Father's World deluxe package.)  It was a lot of reading, and I wasn't sure it would hold my boys' attention.  I planned to read it over several days, but they kept asking for more, and we finished it in two days.

Below they are making a plesiosaurs.

And here is the dino dig.  (The bones were chicken bones I saved from two whole chickens that I baked several weeks ago.  I deboned the chicken, cooked the bones for about an hour in boiling water, and laid them out to dry on newspaper for about 3 weeks.  I did this all without the boys knowing.  Then I photographed the bones and created a paper with pictures and labels for the boys to use a search guide.)  Of course, I explained that these are just "pretend" dinosaur bones.

There's something about boys and dinosaurs that just go together.  They were so fascinated by their massive size.  One of my goals for the unit is for them to be able to identify at least 3 types of dinosaurs.  We still have several dinosaur activities to finish up next week.

In other studies, AJ continued working on learning shapes in math.  We learned some new words like trapezoid, rhombus, and hexagon.  His favorite activity from the week in math was figuring out all the ways to cover the hexagon using rhombuses, triangles, and trapezoids.  

In language arts, AJ focused on the -ng sound.  I introduced him to Bob Books this week with the first reader in the Beginning Reader set.  A friend recommended these books to me, and I was delighted to find the set at our library.  I'm excited to use them as a supplement to the My Father's World grade 1 language arts that he is doing because the MFW program does not come with any type of "readers" with real stories.  The Bob Books remind me of a Dick-and-Jane type reader, but with more of graceful feel to the text - not so much repetition of the same word.

CJ focused on the "d" sound and hearing it at the beginning of words.  We will work on blending it with the other letters he knows as we continue our dinosaur unit next week.

So, to you other homeschooling mamas out there, what do you do when life sends you major interruptions?

For me, I decided to use these 3 principles to guide my week.

1) Relax, and take a few days off school without feelings of guilt.
2) Look for a few opportunities to integrate some school activities into their free time.  I'm a believer in lots of unstructured play time for young children, but this week I chose to have them do their "dino dig" and a simple art project during free time.  They loved it and didn't know they were doing school.
3) Look for the life lessons to be learned from the interruption.  This time, it is learning to serve Daddy and learning how to behave around someone who has had surgery.

All in all, it was a full, busy week where we were reminded that sometimes life interrupts school, and that's okay.

This post is linked to the weekly wrap-up at Weird, Unsocilized Homeschoolers.