Has the rain really stopped?

Today it looks like spring. The sun is shining, the sky is clear, everything growing is a glowing green... and we've had a number of days like this lately, but then the rains come back. About a week and a half ago, maybe two, my BIL went ahead and tilled the veggie garden plot, even though we had heard there was more rain to come. When he gets an idea in his head, there is no turning back though, and now we have a solid mass of hardened mud instead of a soft bed for baby plants. Ooops! I had originally planned to get a load of compost to till in anyway, so M and I will do that in the next week or so. In the meantime, we are plotting and planning what to grow, and we have seedlings started in our mini greenhouse. Among our planned plants are tomatoes, beans, peas, salad greens, chard, peppers, eggplant, strawberries, maybe some corn, cucumbers, and squash. More herbs will be going in the front yard as well. The rosemary I planted out there last year, then about 4 inches tall, has now turned into two big bushes about 3 feet tall. I planted one on either side of the front gate to keep the evils away, and I tuck sprigs under the children's pillows at night to keep bad dreams at bay. The lavender, also planted last year, is bushing out beautifully. And the pineapple sage is finally coming back! Our dwarf peach tree is a mass of silky rosy blooms, the apple tree has tiny green leaves, and the cherry tree is sending out new branches left and right. All the rain has been a boon this year - our yard depends on well water, so the higher the water table, the better. Still, I am ready for the rains to cease and planting to begin!

Because we started our spring break a week earlier than the "school" calendar, we started back up this week, a week "early". Elf worked on a Saxon Math assessment yesterday, and with very little instruction, managed to do quite well. Fairy was introduced to place value, which provided a good review for Elf as well. I want to get back over to the dollar store, and pick up a big pack of colored popsicle sticks for teaching place value. Maybe today we'll walk over there. We also had back-to-back 4H projects agin yesterday, starting with my Global Arts & Crafts (our final meeting this year) and ending with a makeup lesson in foam weaponry. We "visited" Mexico with papel cortado, woven placemats, and images of the sun (dating back to Aztec times). In foam weaponry, we made shields and flails, then the kids staged a mock battle. It was a lot of fun! I am impressed with the teen leading the project - he stays very calm even with kids flailing each other left and right!

We also got our timelines this week, something I have wanted for the last couple of years, and which are now placed approximately as a chair rail in our dining room, where the bulk of our sit-down education takes place. I got Elf a new dresser recently, and his old, and too small one, is now being repurposed as an arts-and-crafts storage unit, also in the dining room. After we placed the timelines, which come in 4 sections, the kids asked me to show them where we have gotten to in history... almost to the end of the first section. And next year's plans take us only halfway through the second section... I had thought and thought about how to do our history rotations, and finally decided on the following:
Ancients
Medieval (and some light California history)
Renaissance/Reformation (beginnings of US history)
Early Modern Times (and US history)
Then we'll move back to Ancients, and forward again up through modern times. I decided that since we are taking so long to get there on the first go-round, we'll skip modern times the first cycle, plus I think a lot of it (World Wars, etc.) would be better when the kids are a bit older, especially Fairy. I have no intent, at this point, of splitting up either history or science with them - we enjoy doing it as a family.

Today I am going to go through this website with the kids, and maybe we'll do some writing on Gladiators. We'll do some more math, Elf will work on a grammar lesson, and Fairy can review some phonics. Light schooling to ease back in after a couple of weeks off!