The Month of May

Today is the last day of May - welp - and I'm still in disbelief. We have been homeschooling/online learning for over ten weeks at this point (first five weeks here and second five weeks here), but still have four more left before it's officially "summer". The temps are already heating up here (think 110F or so) and as a result our outside time has decreased in proportion to the temperature increase. 🙄

Before it got too hot we headed out to the dirt lot in front of our compounds and raced the remote-controlled mini trucks our friends bought the girls and took turns in the bigger off-road vehicle.

1. Outside movie and snacks to celebrate the end of the school week. We've enjoyed this Thursday tradition with our neighbors. 
2. Playing games together.
3. Making "soup" and a giant mess. 🙄 
4. Evelyn getting a piggy back ride. 
5. Family ice cream after a walk outside.
6. Scooter sisters.
7. Delicious bacon-wrapped scallops for Wednesday date night! 😋 
8. Homemade passion fruit coulis from a friend made into a delicious margarita.
9. Helping the neighbors with their dismantling.  

1. We've been making homemade pizza dough and sauce every Friday. Evelyn decided to make a smiley face pizza for her and her sisters. 
2. Jason and my pizza - we've been grilling them on the pizza stone and it really is a game changer!
3. Homemade (but not by me) cherry pie from our neighbor.
4. Water balloon fight!
5. Playing with water to cool off. 
6. The world's most spoiled cat. She was given her food and a blanket and carried around in a basket by Madison. 
7. Pancakes on the weekend!
8. I didn't want Jason to be left out with the girls all having off-road vehicles so I surprised him with his own Lego one. 😉 
9. Frozen 2 sisters going for a drive! 💓 

The girls had a week break from school for the Eid holiday and during that time we decided to sort through their clothes to see what needs to be switched out. What better way to get them excited to try on their whole closet than a fashion show!

We also let them paint shirts. Who am I?! 😆 

1. We worked on a family bucket-filling list to promote kindness with one another as everyone is getting a bit stir crazy 😜 
2. CeCe finding comfort in an awkward sleeping position.
3. We've had some virtual playdates with friends where the girls love coloring the same picture, playing Lego, or doing a game.
4. Homemade french bread and homemade meatballs on spaghetti Sunday!
5. Qatar made masks mandatory anytime you leave the house so I got out the sewing machine and busted out some masks for the girls to play outside. 
6. Zoey has been loved on immensely with the increased together time. 
7. They chose to be twins that day by wearing the same clothes. 💖 
8. Nachos and margs on the patio.
9. Family bike ride COVID-style. 

1. CeCe lounging - it's what she does best. 
2. Zoey had a rough day. 🙄 
3. Roasted hatch green chili egg sausage casserole. Yes, I hauled those from America last summer. No, they hadn't expired yet 
4. Madi lost two more teeth! (One was today so I don't have an updated pic.)
5. Dressing up fro Friday church on zoom!
6. Charcuterie board dinner for the win.
7. Jason's company sent a box of sweets for Eid - yum 😋 
8. We setup a splash pool that some friends passed down to us. The girls came out with snorkel masks on. We allowed it. 
9. We also froze buckets of ice and hid their toys in them. It helped to cool the pool off and entertain them. Double win. 

We've also had a lot of movie nights. Jason purchased a projector and we used it outside until the heat and the mosquitos became unbearable. Then the operation moved inside. We kept the girls busy one afternoon making a snack tray out of old cereal boxes and we let them setup their sleeping bags in the playroom for a movie night / sleepover. It's been a weekend favorite since!

The girls also recorded the first episode of their new show - 2 Sisters Baking Show. They made some delicious banana bread and Jason did an amazing job editing the video!

Zoey practicing her batting skills one evening. 😂 

It's been a busy month with lots of fun outside before we've had to stay mostly indoors. Things in Qatar has worsened in terms of lockdown and the numbers have kept increasing causing all commercial activities to close for awhile and a location tracking app to be required if you leave the house. We are thankful to have a few more weeks of school to help with a routine and keep us busy and we are looking forward to when we can see our friends again! 

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Homeschool Chronicles: Weeks 6 - 10

If you missed the first post about the start of our Homeschooling adventure you can catch it here. 😉

As we've moved into a routine with school things have gotten slightly easier. Madi has started working more independently and gotten used to the technology to read through her assignments and how she can contact her teacher with questions during the school hours. It also helped that we had overlap in a few of the topics all the girls were covering so I could combine/modify some activities to do once for everyone.

She continued with her Unit of Inquiry (UOI) on "How the World Works" with lots of different experiments. Her favorite being the last one before the Eid break when she made three different parachutes and dropped them off our balcony. Her Language has gotten better as she works hard on her writing and she's taking quickly to the different methods of adding and subtracting using tens work that they've covered in Mathematics along with looking at 2D and 3D shapes.

Making oobleck

Testing best cleaning liquid for coins

3D shape monster

Yoga with her teacher and classmates

Testing what dissolves ice the fastest

Draw based on verbal instructions

Parachute experiment

Passion Project - building a lego horse stable

Performing Arts - make puppets and do a show

Madi wrote and did a skittles experiment with her sisters

Teaching her sisters subtraction ;-)

Madison's Chatterbox Tutorial she made for her class. 

Evelyn and Olivia have continued in their Art / Artist Techniques UOI and they investigated lines, brush strokes, splatter painting, and dot painting. The unit ended with them making a final art piece of their choosing. The next unit is looking at pencil strokes and writing utensils along sketching. Their Language continued with sounds and practicing writing and Mathematics continued with numbers as well as 2D and 3D shapes, volume and capacity, and patterns.

Class "field" trip to the z-z-zoo during "z" week

Meddy Teddy yoga

Evelyn's Final Art Piece

Olivia's Final Art Piece

3D shapes

Exploring writing utensils

Beginning sounds activity

Beginning sounds activity

Landscape sketches

It's crazy to think that we've been at this now for 10 weeks! Wow!! 😮 We still have a few weeks to go after the girls Eid break next week and I am thankful for the routine it's providing for them.

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