Alphabetical order, Sick Days and thoughts

Double duty teaching is here again: Beginning consonant sounds for Dash and alphabetical order for Nature Man. The Artist (4th) stood by as a teacher's assistant.

Nature Man has already covered ABC order, using our poster and worksheets, but extra FUN practice never hurt anyone. :-)

First the boys put their new 10-foot long ABC puzzle together, down the hallway.
This was a yard sale bargain. Thanks, K!

I gave Nature Man (2nd grade) a list of words to alphabetize: Bear, Spoon, Horse, Purse, Apple, Leaf, Cookies, Watch. Then the boys received items, one by one, that corresponded to the list. Dash (4) had to sound them out, and tell his big brother where they should go.

I would have given them a different "H" item, if I'd realized that the puzzle actually had a picture of a horse there!
When they were finished sorting their items, Nature Man wrote all of the words in the correct order on his page.
We also did an experiment today on water states, but I neglected to get pictures (gasp.) We worked ahead today, too, because Daddy was home to help (swollen and sore from the swarm of yellow jackets he encountered.)

All of that was before we fell ill.

Dash was sick with a stomach bug on Saturday night. Thankfully, it passed after a few hours (of non-stop vomiting.) This evening The Artist, Little Lad and I all got the same thing. :-( Whimper...
And I missed the homeschool house tour because of it. Whimper...
And I have 20 loads of disgusting laundry. Whimper...
But we'll all be okay. I believe we may be all better by tomorrow!

However, even if we have to trudge through any more sickness, we won't get behind. There's no pressure. Ah, the beauty of homeschooling. If The Artist was, say, sick in bed for 4 days, she wouldn't be recovering under a mountain of make-up work and tests. We can school right through it, if she's able. And, if the load needs to be lightened, then the schedule is adjusted and we can smoothly move along. This evening I took over her chores, and just read to her, even though she had some math "homework" (ha) to finish up. She'll finish it soon enough.

If she feels able tomorrow, she can sit at the computer and get her math done, lie down and orally give me her spelling answers, and so forth. We'll do fun calm work, versus our usual fun enErGeTic work.

It's a huge weight off of me to be able to focus on the kids, and not on what they are missing during this time. I fully expect to fall behind on the house, too, when I'm ill and Little Lad is throwing up and needing cuddly time, and The Artist requires attention and care, plus there are still the two healthy boys. Yeah, I'll fall behind. No sweat. Just don't visit the sick house for a couple of days. It will be a wreck, I can assure you, because I am attending to more important matters. Although I AM sanitizing everything!! And doing tons of laundry and dishes. I'm just not cleaning up toys, or hanging clothes or anything else *minor* like that. :-)

Sooo, well or ill, tomorrow will work out.