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A few days there I was just too lazy to post. And then we took a week's worth of days off for spring break, partly because of my laziness! and partly because we were taking care of E and T's cousin who was on spring break from her school. We finished learning about explorers and did math and some art on GeeArt, and music, too. Umm, also some poetry, from A Kick in the Head by Paul Janeczko. Today, we did a bunch of experiments with water, from Graham Peacock's Water and from Neil Ardley's 101 Great Science Experiments. Oh and one from 365 Simple Science Experiments by E. Richard Churchill et. al. Then E started learning about measuring length with metric units in math, and they helped their Daddy do yard work. Tonight E starts her first real job, taking care of a neighbor's dog while he is out of town--she is very excited.

118

Today we read Michelangelo, part of Ernest Raboff's Art For Children series. Then about a third of Where do you think you're going, Christopher Columbus? by Jean Fritz. E practiced piano, did math, and did an art lesson on GeeArt. It's Ravel's birthday, so I'm playing a CD of his music.

117

Much better day today, helped no doubt by the fact that I had my act together and we started in good time... It's Michelangelo's birthday, so I read Mike Venezia's biography, Michelangelo. Then Explorers of North America by Brendan January, and we searched for a Northwest Passage on the globe. E wanted to know why they didn't build the Panama Canal sooner. Our poetry form for the day was the cinquain. I didn't particularly care for the example in Paul Janeczko's A Kick in the Head, so I found some more (google "cinquain") and printed them up to read to her. I chose this one, unfortunately unattributed, from this site for her copy work:

Moonbeams
Lighting the sea
On a still cloudless night
Illuminate the seaponies
At play

This is another good cinquain site.
She needed to look up and define "illuminate" and I explained to her that the seaponies were the foam on the waves, not seahorses as she originally thought! Then she did her math--much more expeditiously today, so after lunch I let her go over to G's to play for the afternoon. This evening she gifted us with her first real cartwheels!

116

Today I read Follow the Dream: The Story of Christopher Columbus by Peter Sis, and then to show the other side of the story, I read Encounter by Jane Yolen. We went to the library and ran some errands, then E spent 3, yes, 3 hours on her math. No, it wasn't that much math; she just dawdled and daydreamed instead of doing it and I decided to let her, hoping the loss of an entire afternoon would teach her a lesson about spending her time wisely. All the same, it didn't really sink in until her friend G wanted to play and she was still not finished. Will we have the same problem tomorrow? Probably...

On a more encouraging note, tonight after supper E and T were playing with some foam airplanes Santa brought. E came in to where I was doing the dishes and started telling me about it:

"She flew all the way to the top of the bookcase! And then she parachuted down and saved the crew! They had to swim!"

Yes, SHE. My feminist heart leaped with joy...

115

Yesterday E and I and her friend G went to hear the Amadeo Modigliani string quartet. They were wonderful players, but not so good educators and they had very thick French accents, which made them a little hard to understand. But the music was wonderful. Today I read The Sad Night by Sally Schofer Matthews and The Discovery of the Americas by Betsy and Giulio Maestro, and E labeled a blank outline map of South America.