75

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.

23

Started with reading Why I Sneeze Shiver Hiccup and Yawn by Melvin Berger. Then we finished Platt's _Egyptian Diary_ and read Seeker of Knowledge by James Rumford. I had E do a worksheet deciphering hieroglyphs, and another alphabetizing Egypt words. Then after recess and lunch, math, and then I had her start reading A Place in the Sun by Jill Rubalcaba on her own. She and T both watched Peep.

22

Started the day reading The Skeleton Inside You by Philip Balestrino and Use Your Brain by Paul Showers. Then more from the ever-popular _Egyptian Diary_ by Platt, and we paged through and read bits from Judith Crosher's Technology in the Time of Ancient Egypt. Was planning to build a model shaduf (from Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors by Marian Broida) but it needed a little more prep than I could do this morning. So we'll try that tomorrow. But we did start making "faience beads" (painted ziti) for our Egyptian necklaces (The Egyptians by Gillian Chapman) I read to them from Dewey's _Antarctic Journal_ while they painted the beads. The painting resulted in baths for everyone. E did her first Review in her math book and got 100%. T watched Peep while she was doing that. Now she's doing a Draw Write Now page till it's time to go to Dance/Tumbling. If we do hieroglyphics tomorrow, and Hatshepsut on Wednesday, that gives us Thursday and Friday to work on our Egyptian Feast. Then on to Greece!

20

We started reading Barnyard Dance! by Sandra Boynton, jumping around and doing everything it says in the book, which was fun. Then E narrated "It Could Always Be Worse" from the Hirsch book, and I read some more sections from Platt's _Egyptian Diary_,which they both enjoy a lot. Then I read Hear Your Heart and A Drop of Blood both by Paul Showers. E did her math while T watched Peep and then I gave them each a picture of a heart to color while I fixed lunch. After lunch we went to Pump It Up in Trussville and they had a good time bouncing and sliding. E made a new friend, Jill. I had E read Gail Gibbons' Spiders aloud to T on the way there.

16

Well, I guess you could say I was the one in dawdle mode today. So we didn't do much in the way of formal schooling. But on her own, E read What Happens to a Hamburger? by Paul Showers and Mummies and Pyramids by Mary Pope Osborne, and we put together the Canon model of the Great Pyramid. She did also do a math lesson, and we all watched a big orb spider weave its web right outside our kitchen window. At the bookstore I found a display folder for the state quarters, so I bought that for her and she's filling it now. And she set up a "school" this morning in the basement, in which she taught Daddy and T while I fixed supper. So not a wasted day, thanks entirely to her. I can see now how unschoolers do it, though I think I still want just a little bit of structure, anyway.

T knows all about his skeleton and how to feel it under his skin. And last night E read You Can't Make a Move Without Your Muscles by Paul Showers to him. This is too easy.

15

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.

14

Well, a better day today! This morning we started right after breakfast with a little fun compass activity I got here. I made up a "treasure" in a shoe box with some toys, stickers, and chocolate coins, and hid it under the rose bush. Alan drew a skull on a big rock in our back yard to make "Skull Rock" and I typed up the directions with some free pirate fonts I downloaded here. Then I printed them out onto some parchment-like paper, and Alan burned around the edges to make it look like a real treasure map. This morning when I came in with the paper, I dropped the document on the table, saying, "Look what I found in the yard!" They had fun using the compass and finding the treasure, though I think E is just barely not too old for this, so I'm glad we did it now.

Then after we were all ready for the day, we still had about a half hour before her piano lesson, so E sewed on her toy dinosaur project and I read a chapter from _What's the Difference?_ by Lacey about the difference between hares and rabbits, and the book The Indian Ocean by Ylvisaker. Then when we got back from piano, I read "The Boy at the Dike" in the Hirsch book, and E narrated. Then You Wouldn't Want to Be a Pyramid Builder! by Jacqueline Morley, which covered again the stuff we saw in the movie yesterday, and we took a little online tour inside Khufu's pyramid, provided by NOVA. I had E start working on her math, but she didn't get far and she and T were hungry so we broke for lunch. I told Jen she could send G over after lunch while she runs some errands, so instead of going back to math, I just read The Magic Schoolbus Inside the Human Body and Your Insides both by Joanna Cole. _Your Insides_ has some neat transparency pages at the end to show the different systems. After G goes home I'll have E finish her math, then maybe we'll build the paper model of Khufu's pyramid that I got at the Canon website, or maybe I'll send her out to play with Hayden and Dawson, as this may be their last day here.

Yesterday I read Green Eggs and Ham to T at his request. Later in the day, he asked me to read it again. I got as far as the first "I do not like green eggs and ham" when he interrupted and said "But Mommy, he tried them already and liked them!"