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Today started out s...l...o...w... E was is full dawdle mode and didn't get her room ready (in fact it still isn't ready) till 10:30... So we skipped narration, because sullen, just-yelled-at kids very rarely have much in the way of concentration, I've found. Instead I read Petersen's Antarctica, and then I read the first three sections of Egyptian Diary: The Journal of Nakht by Richard Platt. After that I read Your Skin and Mine by Paul Showers, and we did some of the activities in the book ie looking at our skin and fingerprints with a magnifying glass. E sat down to do her math (from yesterday) and went back into dawdle mode, occasionally asking me such questions as "Mommy, what's 25 + 1?" Now, I don't mind helping, but she knows darn well how to add 1 to something, so she got some chewing out and I sat on her till she finished, then told her no reading today, since she wasted so much time NOT doing her math. While she finished lunch, I read the next chapter of Lacey's _What's the Difference?_ about Octopuses and Squids and other cephalopods. The kids really like this book and ask for it often--too bad it's OOP. I'll have to see if I can find it at a library sale or used book store sometime. After she had lunch, we watched the first episode of A&E's "The Greatest Pharaohs". Dad taped it for me from the Cable in the Classroom version. E's verdict: better than the classification video, but still boring--not as good as the Great Pyramid video. Not helped by very poor sound quality on the tape Dad made for me. But she wanted to watch it through. She wants to see Tutankhamen, her favorite. I told her he'd come later. I want to see Hatshepsut. Hopefully the show will perk up a little, though it doesn't seem likely. After that I forced them outside to play ( AM a mean Mommy today) and when they came back in I gave E a new Draw Write Now book that dealt with the Polar Regions, since we read about Antarctica today. She's working on it now, then I will probably have mercy on her and tell her she can call G to play or read or make the paper model pyramid with me if she wants to.

T played with Legos and Play Doh, and requested a reading of _Your Insides_ by Cole.