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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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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 we saw a traveling exhibit from Pompeii at our art museum. It was fantastic and very moving--they even had several of the plaster casts of the victims. Now E and T are playing with the Playmobil Roman soldiers and siege tower Grandma and Grandpa bought them at the gift shop. Roman soldier: "This armor is too hot! We don't have air conditioning, you know!" Emperor Augustus: "You're going to war, and that's final!"

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Today E had her piano lesson, then after running several errands we came home and did math. I read Pompeii...Buried Alive! by Edith Kunhardt and The Buried City of Pompeii by Shelley Tanaka, and we painted the bullas we made (instructions in Spend the Day in Ancient Rome by Linda Honan, though somehow she forgot to mention the glitter which is of course essential to true Roman-ness) and now she has mixed up some paints from the dry pigments that came with her Klutz Book of Artrageous Projects and she and T are painting outside, more or less (or less) amicably. When she's done I'll probably have her write a thank you note to her godfather.

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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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What a busy day today. I'm exhausted, and it's only 7:30. This morning E read Fox in Socks to T, then I read from Galen by Marissa Moss and Spend the Day in Ancient Rome by Linda Honan. We started on volcanoes today with Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld's How Mountains Are Made and Hill of Fire by Thomas P. Lewis. Then E did math and everybody watched Peep. After lunch E barely had time to begin a Draw Write Now page before we had to go to Dance and Tumbling, and when we got home from that we barely had time for Kid Cuisines before she had to go to basketball tryouts. And she got 3 baskets! Yay E! That's one more basket than she got all last year! I think she may do really well this year.

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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.