Monthly Moments with Little Sweetie: April 2020

It's a strange new world that we are in right now, but we are doing the best we can day by day. Shelter-in-place directives are still in place and our days are becoming fairly routine. We've adapted as well as we could have with this new "normal", but wish for our old normal to come back in some form. With the notice that schools are now closed for the rest of the year, we have to take our new education jobs seriously!

I'd say that's been the biggest change for Little Sister. She'd been having such a lovely kindergarten year and had adapted to a full day at school, made a great group of friends, and had grown in confidence and ability. To then be sequestered at home, away from the new little life she had just created for herself, has been difficult. She's been admirable in her adaptation to everything, but it's still heartbreaking for all of us. But, we soldier on, with Momma as lead kindergarten teacher.

After morning announcements, we usually start our day with language arts...

Sight words and spelling games are always a big hit.

Some Easter themed spelling and writing!

The biggest goal of the pandemic at-home learning plan...keep her reading level up and increase her proficiency.

Math is usually the next part of our morning.

Number ordering, writing numbers, and shapes!

We use A LOT of M&Ms in math time!

Following math, we normally take a break for a bike ride, dog walk, and snack. Then right back to our studies! Sometimes we do Social Studies...

Making and explaining an amazing timeline of her life!

Map work!

Finishing up a unit on the United Kingdom with a tea party!

We've also been enjoying all of our science activities!

Nature journaling, structure building, experimenting with frost, and learning about clouds!

Neighborhood walk to pick up trash and help the environment! Both a great science lesson and helped her earn one of her Daisy petals!

We split the day with centers, lunch, recess, and PE. We've really been nailing PE lately!

We watched Space Jam as our family movie and now she's ALL IN on basketball!

After PE we work on Specials. She does Computer, Art, and Music (which mostly is her piano lesson). We've been having fun trying out different art activities!

Finally trying her hand a very popular pandemic art project!

After school, Little Sweetie pretends like she's coming "home" and usually watches an episode of Scooby-Do. She then finishes any "homework" that she may have (just things we may have run short on time for during the day) and then it's dinner, bath, and bed to get up and ready to go again!

Checking off her subjects on her to do list!

It's kind of monotonous for the parents, but the kids seem to be doing well with the routine. We do try to spice it up a bit on the weekends.

Since we can't go anywhere, we have been lucky that our backyard is as big as a park!

And a backyard campout was also a big hit!

Although we haven't been cooking as much (we've had A LOT of together time, so sometimes we need a break from each other and Momma just needs to get the cooking DONE), we do still enjoy our kitchen time.

Pandemic stress can be calmed somewhat by chocolate chip cookies!

We wanted to make sure her half birthday was special, so we put up some decorations and make individual banana cakes to celebrate!

We have gotten out (safely) for a little bit. Taking a drive somewhere feels like a real luxury now!

Drive-thru horse petting at Big Brother's Therapeutic Riding Ranch! So good to see Roany the Pony!

Had to take them out in their matching outfits, that I looked high and low for, to get some bluebonnet pictures!

Height and Weight

Little Sweetie is 50 pounds this month and up a little bit to 45 and 7/8 inches.

Personality

While still doing well overall, did have an understandable emotional break when the announcement came from the governor that schools would remain closed for the rest of the current school year. It's so hard on the kids who can't fully understand the scope of the problem. But thankfully, she's been pretty resilient and finds ways to play, adapt, and thrive around the house. Proud of our girl for feeling her feelings and finding healthy ways to cope with them.

New Spidergirl pajamas from the Easter Bunny are easy mood lifters!

Developmental Milestones

Our girl is still doing wonderfully with her school work and we are trying our best to make it fun and instill a love of learning. We're started some family read-alouds of longer books to help her develop her long-term reading comprehension and she's done great!

Two thumbs up for James and the Giant Peach!

Also, at-home education means learning how to take care of our home! We're sadly behind on Little Sweetie's chore education just because of the difficulty about doing them during the day with Big Brother, but we're trying to make an effort now since we're home all day!

Polishing up the cabinets!

Fun Tidbits

One of the most difficult things about sheltering in place is that our usual spring celebrations have to be significantly altered. We can't go to Church, so we live-stream it, but it's different. It very much impacted Easter but we made the best of it we could!