The month of change

I keep trying and failing  (timewise) to type up Finland notes, but meanwhile a month has passed since our trip, so it's time for an update. (Side note: Been having terrible trouble with Chrome, had to download Opera before I could get images to show up on here. Anyone else?)

I'm liking our schedule right now, and usually there is much more daylight by the end of February, so there is a different feeling in the air as the seasons change.

Spring sunshine/ The "clean" version of the living room...

Andrei has fewer class hours this semester, or at least they're scheduled differently. He's home most days by 6 instead of 8 pm. He teaches at 2 universities and even has a few foreign students that need instruction in English, which is great practice for him.

Homeschooling

Currently we spread a 4-day curriculum over 6 days of the week (minus Sunday).

-Monday is a school/work day
-Tuesday is school and Russian homework, so we skip the English copywork.
-On Wednesdays we go to the Russian tutor/speech therapist and then crash...it's a long walk there and back and we do errands, too. I'm tentatively calling this "Music Appreciation" Day, but we don't do anything very formal yet. There are some nice materials out there, but I find there are plenty of recordings and composer biographies on YouTube. St. Petersburg, of course, has many wonderful concert halls, which we will explore more eventually.
-Thursdays are a regular school/work day
-Fridays are for school, BUT Andrei is usually home, so we might do a field trip or have guests or something.
-Saturdays are the alternate to Friday...if we have an outing one day, the other is for the 4th school day. I personally would rather do field trips on Fridays when other kids are in school (and admission is cheaper), but sometimes Saturdays are a better day to get together with friends.

Technically we should be doing Science experiments at the end of the week, and we have an Art curriculum that I've only really used twice...I guess it will roll over into next year!

I'm getting ready to order school materials for next year (think a year's worth of textbooks, readers, and read-alouds). Thankfully we don't have to get the huge math manipulatives kit again, but we'll probably add a spelling kit...so regardless, our suitcases will be full, if our U.S. trip goes as planned.


Health

After the family cold that was around in December/early January, we've been fairly healthy and weren't affected by the flu season or anything. Not sure what is going to happen in the next few months with coronavirus. In general we are cautious even with colds, since you never know what complications another person will develop. So we try not to spread germs to my husband's parents. We would certainly be concerned for them in an epidemic.


Holidays

This Last month we also celebrated Sophia's half birthday (3 1/2), and Russian "Men's Day" which is really for people who have served in the army or something similar, but we usually just celebrate the men since there is Women's Day in March.

On the day after "Men's Day," we went into butter/pancake week which precedes Lent in the Orthodox church. The fast starts this week. And then next week we will have Women's Day, and it's also Purim.

Onward and upward! What signs of spring are you enjoying?