2020 has been a whirlwind of a year! Even though we’ve been strictly quarantined since March quite a lot happened around here. We’ve celebrated multiple birthdays — including the birth of our newest daughter Rose.
Back in September, I did a couple talks for the Montessori Homeschooling Summit, while in prodromal labor no less. If you watched the videos you may have noticed it was a bit choppy, and it was choppy because I had to catch my breath or lost my train of thought since the contractions were a good 10-15 mins apart throughout it all (I had baby about 48 hours after recording those). I was two weeks overdue by the time she arrived and completely miserable in every way. But somehow we muddled through — and not only that — the day after I finished recording the Summit talks, I threw my oldest kid a birthday party too. Rose was born about 24 hrs after the party.
I’m shaking my head now reading this. The nesting urges are fiercely strong you guys. All I have to explain how I pulled that off.
I write about this all now in December mainly because I have owed Timberdoodle a product review for months, and I will tell you all about it finally now.
Back whilst all that birthday / birthday / summit fun unfolded (within a span of a few days of each other), my kids had been busy finishing the Mini Bricks Great Wall of China. We’d done a preliminary overview of ancient China for the 3rd Great Lesson.
In the past we’d reviewed Mini Bricks with the White House set and found it to be a really fun building challenge. So I requested a set to review from Timberdoodle that fit our history studies. Again I was very, very uncomfortably pregnant when my kids embarked on building the Great Wall this Summer. With absolutely no help from me whatsoever, they (ages 7 and 9 at the time) did an amazing job. Especially in spite of the incorrigible toddler who thought destroying their building progress to be a ton of fun.
We found the fact that the real Great Wall of China is in ruins in portions helpful to explain the damage William did to our version — it made it all the more authentic! Ha. Ha.
So what do we think of the Great Wall set?
It’s a big project. I love it for older elementary or middle school or even high schoolers. I would allot a week to work on it in half hour to hour increments just because there are so many pieces. But wow what a cool building challenge. You can even wash the glue off when you’re done and rebuild it later. Aside from giving a hands-on history component to your curriculum, it of course is brilliant for boosting spatial reasoning skills and executive functioning by following directions.
Nothing about it aside from the size and scope of the project is particularly challenging. Well as long as you can provide a toddler-free space for it anyway. We honestly never completely finished ours because it kept getting wrecked, but had I not been very uncomfortably pregnant at the time, it all would have played out differently. Life!
Back to birthdays…
Want a great idea for a super easy birthday party, my Montessori friends? How about an “around the world” party utilizing continent boxes as decor! We of course used our homeschool materials — including our Great Wall Mini Bricks set as a centerpiece for our birthday party table. I prepared a ton of simple freezer snacks that were associated with various countries (macarons, enchiladas, won tons and what not). I added an EPCOT theme because we’re big Disney fans, and we watched the live-action premier of Mulan. So that’s what’s going on in these photos.
As for me, I contracted regularly all through the party.
Then the next day I labored in the pool all day long and headed to the hospital at 8cm, and pushed baby out in one big push vbac style!
Told you 2020 has felt like a whirlwind. I still can’t believe little Rose is here and three months old already. Let’s hope 2021 is a little calmer right?
If you’re interested in the Mini Bricks Great Wall — we loved it. It was a great project and diversion for the kids and inspired them to want to know lots more about the Great Wall of China. Check it out here from Timberdoodle Co. It’s part of their 7th grade curriculum kit too.
