A week of homeschool pictures

We are hitting that late winter hump, where my son says he doesn’t feel like doing some of those things that we just have to do, like math lessons. I count myself lucky in that up until this point I have had two mostly willing and eager students. Last week Noah said he wasn’t in the mood for our morning circle time, so we scrapped it. The next morning I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea; I thought we’d take the week off our normal circle activities and all three do yoga together. Yoga followed by our Mr McGregor/Bunny chase game lasted one morning, and then the next day was met with groans…so we scrapped that and just got to the meat of the matter which was probably also met with groans.

This week went a little smoother. I abbreviated our circle time which includes an assortment of movement verses, finger plays, songs while running and skipping, alphabet and counting verses, bean bag games, string games, clapping games,  copper rod games and a Yup’ik language call and response segment. This week I made sure to plan out our math so that I squeezed two lessons into the first three days of the week; busting out six lessons and still getting the end of the week off math.

Avery started coming down with a cold mid week. We cancelled our play visit for Wednesday afternoon. Then on Thursday we stayed home from a special Imbolc celebration that our home-school cooperative organized. That was a pretty big disappointment, especially for Noah who was not sick. Then today the kids were invited to spend the night at their Grandma and Grandpas with their cousins and mom and dad were going to have date night. So we are all disappointed that we’ve cancelled that as well. I told the kids today that their is an invisible cord that links me to them that allows me insight into what is best for them. I told them that while their umbilical cord is severed at birth, there is still a connection, and if I listen very carefully I can hear and see what each of them need. I told them this invisible cord is called Mama’s Intuition. After this they asked if I could hear their thoughts and of course I didn’t really want them to think that I could always hear their thoughts. But I did tell them that sometimes this connection allowed me a pretty good idea of what they were thinking. Then they each wanted me to say what they were thinking and how they were thinking and from the expressions on their faces, they were pretty impressed with my accuracy. Of course it wasn’t difficult because we’ve been weighing the pros and cons of outings while sick for a couple days now.

This has been one of our best winters as far as not being sick very often and when we do get a cold it is very short in duration. We’ve had a couple colds that we started to where we felt better the following day. We managed to make it through cold season without any colds and I thought it was because we were taking so much Colloidal Silver and Echinacea at the start of any sign of cold. We’ve been out of both for quite a while now. I thought since I’d made my own Spilanthes tincture and glycerine that I’d try and use that instead of buying Echinacea tincture and glycerine. So I have been and it seems to work just as well which I’m excited about. This was our first January that I can remember where none of us had a cold.  I’ve started thinking that the reason we have not had any big colds is because we are all taking such high doses of High vitamin butter oil and fermented cod liver oil which has high really high amounts of the best source of fat soluble vitamin D and A.

My mothering intuition is strong and when I listen to it, I feel confident and in the right. Staying home and babying ourselves at the first sign of sickness really helps our colds not turn into monster colds, and we also recover quicker. The kids nor I have had any sinus infections or chest colds in at least a year or more like two. Not only that, but I was thinking how uncommon it is for children their age to never have had antibiotics for anything. They have never had a cold that was bad enough that I took them to the doctors and was prescribed antibiotics. Now I’ll confess that part of this is my mistrust of western doctors and a stubbornness that if a cold is properly taken care of there should be no need for a doctor’s interference.

When we feel a cold coming on we take immune supporting tinctures or glycerines. We take garlic supplements which prevents colds from going to our chests, and extra vitamins. We juice carrots and other vegetables, and drink herbal teas. We eat light meals, lots of bone broth or vegetable soups. We limit sweets, dairy and grains even more than usual. We have easy, lazy days spent reading on the couch, but still get out for fresh air and movement, and we go to bed early.