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Today has been one of those days. The kids haven't been exactly uncooperative, but they haven't been enthusiastic, either. Going from activity to activity has seemed like pushing water uphill. But we got a lot accomplished anyway. I guess there's only so much you can expect on a gloomy winter day.

We finished the Hopi Pueblo Village model, and glued some cornmeal all around it on the base to look like desert sand. Since it's Ben Franklin's birthday, we read Aliki's The Many Lives of Benjamin Franklin, and Bryna Stevens' Ben Franklin's Glass Armonica. Then we watched a video of William Zeitler playing "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from the Nutcracker on an armonica (which it was originally written for) and a short little History Channel bit about the armonica. They also tooled around on a virtual armonica, and we got out the wine glasses and played around with different levels of water to get different pitches and so forth. This really entranced E for a long time, but T didn't like having to keep his fingers wet, so he went back to the virtual version. E did her math, and everyone watched Peep, and then after lunch we explored more homonyms in Allan Fowler's 1-One-Won! and did some reading and experiments with Salvatore Tocci's Experiments With Air. Finally, E copied out her poem, and I made her a Hopi dress (following the very simple directions in More Than Mocassins by Laurie Carlson--only I used some fabric ("Too itchy!"--it figures!) I had instead of a towel.) Oh, and we made pine cone bird feeders and watched birds for a bit. I really don't know how we managed to do so much--some days it works. Today didn't feel like a day that was working, but I guess it couldn't have been that bad.