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Today E had her piano lesson, then she did math. After lunch we read Big Bang! by Cinami DeCristofano, and The Magic Leaf by Winifred Morris and watched the DVD Pioneer Life for Children: Westward Expansion in the U.S. E also worked on her drawings that she's giving for Christmas gifts.

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Yesterday I read two more chapters from Margaret Pumphrey's Pilgrim Stories, and On the Mayflower by Kate Waters. E did math and more of the TOPS Green Thumbs 38: Radishes. I read a few more pages from Kids Discover Magazines Stars & Nebulae issue. Then we went to the science center with Grandma and Grandpa to see the Imax movie Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs, which was very good, and we played a little at the science center afterwards.

Today E had her piano lesson and then we went to the library. After lunch we did more TOPS radish experiments.

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Friday we read more about Jamestown in the excellent John Smith Escapes Again! by Rosalyn Schanzer. I read a biography of Sandra Day O'Connor by Mary Hill (O'Connor's birthday was actually last Wednesday, but we didn't get to it then), and we began our study of plants reading A Seed Is a Promise by Claire Merrill. I also showed them some pollen I got cleaning the clothesline and we looked at some flowers and identified the pistil and stamens. Later this week I hope to look at both under the microscope. I also read a few pages of Kids Discover Magazine Volume 18 Issue 3 about Stars & Nebulae, and E did her math.

Today I read the first chapter of Mary Pope Osbourne's Pilgrims and the first 2 chapters of Margaret Pumphrey's Pilgrim Stories revised and expanded by Elvajean Hall, and a book about Bees by Susan Ashley. E is doing a math review and after lunch we're going to start the Tops Green Thumbs: Radishes #38 activity sheet series.

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Wouldn't you know it, no sooner do I get my computer fixed than a storm brings down our utility pole and we have no power/phone service! Here's a wrap-up of the last week or so. Thursday 2/14: Native American festival and Valentine's party with Grandma and Grandpa. Friday: sick day (me), Monday: Presidents' Day--holiday/play day with their cousin and half the neighborhood kids. Tuesday-Friday we learned about the ancient Maya. We read The Maya by Robert Nicholson, You Wouldn't Want to Be a Mayan Soothsayer! by Rupert Matthews, Secrets in Stone: All About Maya Hieroglyphs by Laurie Coulter, and Technology in the Time of the Maya by Judith Crosher. E learned about and copied out a Senryu from A Kick in the Head by Paul B. Janeczko, and did math every (school) day. She can now add 3 digit numbers with carrying over in her head!
E had 2 basketball practices and 2 games. Sadly, basketball is over now. Yesterday we saw Cirque-Works Birdhouse Factory, an amazing show, and went to a first, organizational meeting for Earth Scouts. Today E and I went to the planetarium to see "Ancient Skywatchers of Mexico" which just happened to be showing as we are studying the Meso-American Indians. Too cool! She also did some easy Mayan math worksheets--I'm too lazy to link to them; just Google "Mayan math worksheet" and a bunch of stuff pops up.

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Yesterday T had a really bad crick or something in his neck, so we didn't go to dance or tumbling and we took it really easy (in fact he and I spent most of the afternoon napping--woe is me). I finished reading Owl At Home by Arnold Lobel, and introduced the concept of atoms with Robert E. Wells' excellent What's Smaller Than a Pygmy Shrew? Then we read Who Were the First North Americans? by Philippa Wingate and Struan Reid, and E did her math. She spent the rest of the day reading (mostly ahead in the Native Americans books: Me: "You know we are going to be reading them all over again in school so T can learn about it" Her: "I don't mind" oh well--I did put them out where she could get to them...)

Today we started with the Cherokee Indians: ...If You Lived With the Cherokee by Peter and Connie Roop, and we read The First Strawberries: A Cherokee Story by Joseph Bruchac. Then we talked about synonyms and antonyms, and looked at two books about opposites: Nina Crews' A High, Low, Near, Far, Loud, Quiet Story and Tana Hoban's Exactly the Opposite, which I loved because it is wordless, so you have to come up with your own antonyms, and sometimes more than one set will work. I had her list synonyms and antonyms for 5 words I wrote in her notebook, and then we read about Mercury by Larry Dane Brimner. After lunch she answered questions about Mercury in her notebook, while I started making a game called Fast Track which I found in Peggy Kaye's Games for Math. E of course was VERY interested in what I was doing as I took care to do it on the same table she was working on, using colorful index cards and colored pencils and pens for the game board. She finished her Mercury questions as quickly as she could so she could help with the game board and then we all played the game. The game is a brilliant, sneaky way to use flash cards for addition and subtraction facts without being boring drill. You advance around the board by completing the math sentence on the card, ie. a card with 2+4=? would let you advance 6 spaces. She had to answer T's cards as well, which was a bonus. They both enjoyed it and we played till we'd all won several times. Tomorrow we will play again with a slightly more difficult set of cards. I need to think if I can come up with a game to practice her note flash cards for piano...

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Back at school today and brrr is it cold! Actually I should say that yesterday even though we had no school, she read Straight Hair, Curly Hair by Augusta Goldin to T and then they spent what seemed like a couple of hours testing her hair's strength by weighing various objects on the kitchen scale and suspending them from a single hair (T got to break them off of her head, which was a big thrill, apparently). They spent AGES on this--it always amazes me how long children can spend doing the same thing, over and over and over again. Anyway, this morning we got up and officially started school again. I read Pluto by Larry Dane Brimner, (an older book, which gave us the opportunity to talk about how scientific knowledge is always expanding and so you should always read science books as "what is known at that time"--Pluto is now a dwarf planet) and we read about the canceled Pluto-Kuiper Express mission and the replacement New Horizons mission on wikipedia. We also read a chapter from Owl At Home by Arnold Lobel, and North America by David Petersen. We started our study of American Indians with Aliki's Corn is Maize, E did her math, and then she answered questions about Pluto in her notebook. Finally, we read Caves and Caverns by Gail Gibbons and did a demonstration of limestone cave formation with sand, water and sugar.

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Ok well it's been a very long time since I blogged but I've just been struggling with the blues, a cold, T being 3 1/2 (that was the worst), and all the busy Christmas season stuff. We did do school every day, so I'm going to just write it all in no particular order. E did math most days and has finished level 1B. She'll start the 2A book next semester. E went to see the Nutcracker with Grandma and Grandpa. We did several Christmas-y things. I finished reading Galen by Marissa Moss and read all of Julius Caesar by Richard Platt. E and T went to Dance and Tumbling class. E went to piano class and had a piano recital (she was great!). She also went to basketball practice and had a basketball game. We watched a lot of Peep. In honor of Beethoven's birthday last Sunday we read Ludwig van Beethoven by Mike Venezia and listened to the 9th Symphony. We made igneous rock out of melted chocolate, ate sedimentary Snickers bars, and made metamorphic rock (rice crispie bars--heat and pressure, don't you know). We did scratch tests and streak tests on our minerals, and also tested them for magnetism and put several of them into vinegar (calcite bubbles). All these activities are from the great book How the Earth Works by Michelle O'Brien-Palmer. I read Growing Crystals by Ann O. Squire and we looked at crystals of calcite, iron pyrite, quartz and amethyst. We also looked at crystals of salt, sugar and ice, and saw how a single line viewed through a piece of calcite seems to split into two lines. We made borax snowflakes. I read Comets and Meteor Showers by Paul P. Sipiera and we looked at some animations of comets. E answered several questions about Neptune in her notebook. Tomorrow E has her final piano lesson of the year and then we'll add Neptune's main moon Titan to our solar system wall and call it done! Vacation here we come!

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Read a little more from Galen by Marissa Moss, then Neptune by Larry Dane Brimner and Judy Hawes' What I Like About Toads. Then I read Let's Go Rock Collecting by Roma Gans, and gave them the starter rock collection I got from rocksandminerals.com. They have a set of rocks, minerals and fossils that goes with activities in the book How the Earth Works by Michelle O'Brien Palmer. We labeled the rocks and minerals and I let them play with them and the info cards (from the O'Brien Palmer book) till lunchtime. After lunch, E did her math and several grammar pages, and then we went to Dance and Tumbling classes.

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This has been a terrible week for getting anything done. Oh well, bound to happen. Yesterday was a wash--the only thing we got done was making E's ornaments to give everyone. Today I read from Galen by Marissa Moss, and then Hannibal and His 37 Elephants by Marilyn Hirsh, which I would not recommend (it's really twee and light on the history) but it was all I could find on Hannibal at the library for this age group. I can recommend the next book I read: The Pebble in My Pocket: A History of Our Earth by Meredith Hooper and Chris Coady. Then in preparation for Daddy's little cotton unit tomorrow, I read Cotton by Chris Oxlade. We checked out some animations of different kinds of tectonic faults, and got some info on Uranus' moons. Then E made little drawings of the 5 biggest ones to add to our solar system wall, and I printed out a list of all of the known ones to post beneath. E did her math, made some felt bracelets from a kit as presents for her friends and cousin, and is working on a Draw Write Now page. And of course they both watched Peep.

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Piano lesson and zoo class today. E also finished answering her questions about Uranus and labeled an outline map of Australia.

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Today E had a review in math; she did very well. She also answered questions about Uranus that I wrote in her notebook. Mom and Dad came over to watch the kids while I went to the dentist; Dad read Australia by David Petersen and numerous other books, and Mom and E made red and green paper chains to count down to Christmas. Now E is off with her friend G and her dad to play soccer for a few hours.

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Sore throat today, but we soldier on. Armed with aspirin and oj, I read Uranus by Larry Dane Brimner, then Earthquakes by Franklyn M. Branley. We played with a model seismograph from our Nature Lab kit, and E did math and T watched Peep. Now E is completing some workbook pages on punctuation and then we'll go to Dance and Tumbling classes.

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Today we got a late start, but once we got going we did ok. I read The Best Book of Ancient Rome by Deborah Murrell, and then we went online to this site about Pompeii and Vesuvius. We also checked out Nova's site about the Roman baths at Caracalla, and then we visited this supercool virtual volcano. It has lots of info about the different types of volcano, and a neat thing that lets you design your own volcano and watch it erupt. We did that for a while and then we went outside and erupted our own baking soda/vinegar volcano (several times). Then E did her math, T watched Peep, and I fixed lunch. After lunch E answered several questions about Jupiter in her notebook, and we watched some videos of the Great Red Spot and Jupiter's atmosphere. Then she took notes on the sizes of the four Galilean moons at this site, and made little moons for our solar system wall. We printed out a list of all the known moons (a ton) and taped that below for reference. Now E and T are downstairs at the art table playing with some modeling clay she got for her birthday.

I should add that something really cool happened yesterday. Ever since the middle of her kindergarten year (at public school), she has hated writing. I mean, really hated it. I don't know why or what happened in school to make her feel like this. Very concerned about spelling and just freaked about having to make up anything to say. So I've been taking it really easy with the writing, having her practice handwriting with the Draw Write Now books (which give her easy text to copy) and write short answers to questions in her notebook, but not much else. Last night, all on her own, she decided to start a diary! I was so delighted, I nearly fell over myself in my haste to find her a blank notebook to keep it in. (Actually, I played it cool, not to scare her off) It's only been one entry so far, of course, but she seems intent on keeping up with it and I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

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Today E narrated parts of "Felicia and the Pot of Pinks" from Lang's Blue Fairy Book. Then I read Atlas of the Earth to T, and Volcanoes by Franklyn M. Branley and Volcanoes by Seymour Simon to both of them. E did her math, T watched Peep, and after recess and lunch I read Destination: Jupiter by Seymour Simon and a bit more from Marissa Moss' Galen. E is currently finishing her Draw Write Now page, and then we're done.

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E read Snakes Are Hunters by Patricia Lauber by herself this morning while I read Lauber's An Octopus is Amazing to T. Then I read a bit more from Galen: My Life in Imperial Rome by Marissa Moss and Linda Hoban's Spend the Day in Ancient Rome. Then we made bullas out of clay, and E did math while T watched Peep. E picked Jupiter to learn about next so I read Jupiter by Larry Dane Brimner.

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Yesterday E had a great piano lesson, and then we went to the library for about an hour--they were having storytime and we all checked out books. E wanted the librarian to request a book for her, but the librarian ended up trying to show her how to do it herself on the computer. Not sure how much of it stuck. Then E did a Draw Write Now page and after lunch she had her Habitats class at the zoo.
Today we went first thing to the orthodontist, so I wasn't sure how much school we'd get done, but we actually got back about the time we usually start school. I had E "narrate" from the story she'd been reading in the car, about Jason and the Argonauts from Collier's The Junior Classics Book 3, Myths and Legends. Then I read Gravity is a Mystery and The Beginning of the Earth, both by Franklyn M. Branley. We looked at some cool graphics of the breakup of Pangaea in National Geographic's pop up/moveable book The Earth Pack, and also a cool animation of the same. Then we did an activity called Egg Tectonics, using the shell of a hard-boiled egg to demonstrate the movement of the tectonic plates, and then we cut up the egg to show how it resembles the earth's crust, mantle and core. We also looked at a moveable of how the Himalayas were formed by tectonic action in Rocks & Minerals by Dougal Dixon. All this takes almost longer to type than it actually took to do.
I read a bit of Galen: My Life in Imperial Rome by Marissa Moss, and also the beginning of Spend the Day in Ancient Rome by Linda Honan, and we broke for lunch and Peep. Then E did her math lesson and helped me finish building a paper model of the earth, with a cutaway to show the core (T has already managed to dent it, much to everyone's dismay). Now she is finishing her questions about Venus, and then we're either going to stop or make bullas, a project in the Honan book. So, a pretty full day after all!

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We all woke up tired today, so it's only been a so-so day. To start out I read "Why the Sea is Salt" from Lang's Blue Fairy Book, then How to Be a Roman Soldier by Fiona Macdonald, and Many Luscious Lollipops by Ruth Heller. I had E do several adjective worksheets I found through this links page on the Our Homeschooling Expedition blog, and she seems to finally be getting it, sort of. There's nothing like elementary grammar to make you realize just how weird and complicated the English language is. I mean, is "that" an adjective? It is when you say "Look at that dog." But what if you say "I told him that he needs to put a jacket on."? Really I never thought about how tricky adjectives can be. Good thing we're not doing adverbs till next year, although they keep coming up (if she's labeling some words in a sentence, she wants to know what they all are) so I may be eating those words before long. Instead of doing math in her workbook, I had her do some Roman math, using the "Shopping and Spending" activity page here. And she answered several questions about Venus in her notebook, though I had mercy on the poor flagging girl halfway through and told her to go outside and play with her brother. She can finish the questions tomorrow. And of course we all watched Peep--our favorite show!

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Today we had a tiny bit more of Ancient Greece, because I got a great book from the library about Eratosthenes: The Librarian Who Measured the Earth by Kathryn Lasky. I read "Rumplestiltskin" from Lang's Blue Fairy Book, and E narrated part of it. Then we read Who Were the Romans? by Phil Roxbee Cox, taking a break midway through (it's a thin book, but packed) for E to do math and T to watch Peep. Then we read about Venus in the book by Larry Dane Brimner, and to kick off our study of the composition of the earth, we read The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth by Joanna Cole and How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World by Faith McNulty. Then we set up experiment 18 "Grow a Stalactite" from Neil Ardley's 101 Great Science Experiments (and the fact that the book plainly states that it will take several days for the stalactites to grow has not stopped any of us--me included--from checking it several times an hour). E made a thank you card for our neighbors who gave us all the great Let's Read and Find Out Science books, and did a TINY bit of weaving on her round mat, now destined to be a Christmas present for Grandma and Grandpa.

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Started out reading about the end of the Greek Empire (Alexander's Empire) and the beginning of the Age of Rome in Carlson's Classical Kids. Then I read Living in RomanTimes, by Jane Chisholm. E did her math, T watched Peep, and then E answered questions about Saturn in her notebook. We looked at the super-long list of Saturn's moons, and decided we would just make a few of the most important ones for our solar system wall, and post the list beside them. She also added the dwarf planets Ceres (with the Asteroid Belt), Pluto, and Eris. We looked at these photos of King Tut being exhumed and reboxed and the reconstruction of his face.

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A short day today--we're busy getting ready for the party! E narrated "The Great Bull of Crete" in Heather Amery's Greek Myths for Young Children, and I read the rest of Odysseus' adventures from that book. Then we read about Perseus and Medusa and Andromeda and the rest in D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths. E did 3 more pages of grammar, and I showed her some neat pictures of Saturn and Titan from the Cassini mission. Then we cleaned house and put together costumes! Oh, and of course, we watched Peep.