17-18

Monday: Watched two short video clips from Discovery Education about clouds and the water cycle. (We get this service free through our public television station) Then read India ABCs by Marcie Aboff, The Children of India by Jules Hermes, and Savitri by Aaron Shepard. E had a spelling lesson. After dinner she presented her interpretive dance of the life cycle of a flower, which was fun. That night after the kids were asleep, I put up a Weather Station in the hall. Right now it has a page for each day, with little pictures of the three main types of clouds (cirrus, cumulus and stratus) and the different types of precipitation and weather conditions (wind, snow, rain and sun). The pictures are velcro-backed so they can stick to the pages for each day, and the kids can put up the weather conditions for that day. We'll be adding to it as we get more into weather.

This morning (after playing with the new weather station!) we read We Hate Rain! by James Stevenson and Where Do Puddles Go? by Fay Robinson (I should say that E had already read this book and yesterday after viewing the videos, she ran into the kitchen to show T how to prove that air has water vapor in it (put a glass of ice water out and watch the condensation form). Then Water, Water Everywhere by Mark J. Rauzon and The Cloud Book by Tomie de Paola. After this we went outside to look at the clouds (and hang up laundry). The kids were having so much fun outside (our first beautiful fall day) so I let them play for a while. When they came back in, we got back to India with This is My Faith: Hinduism by Holly Wallace, Sacred River by Ted Lewin, and The Monkey and the Crocodile by Paul Galdone. We had a spelling lesson and a math lesson after lunch and then we went to the library. I also gave E Jinny Johnson's Maps and Mapping to read on her own.

33

Piano first thing today, then we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house to make costumes for the dollhouse dolls. They are very scary! E followed our route on the map as we went there. That's really all we accomplished though.

31

Today our regular teacher (Me) was sick, so we had our substitute teacher (Sick Me) teaching. Unfortunately, she was too lazy to be bothered to follow the detailed lesson plans laid out for her. She skipped narration and went straight to finishing the USGS Map Adventures packet--winding up with learning about map grids and scales. E got the grids right away--less so the scale--but then I don't think I've ever used the scale on a map anyway. Then E was dispatched to math while T watched Peep and Mom had a lie down. Post math, E did some more of her zoo homework while T beat Mommy with two balloons. Lunch, and then a scavenger hunt in the backyard. One of the items to find was "Something with words on it" for which she impishly handed me back my own list ("See, it has words on it, Mommy!" Indeed.) Now they are "washing" dolly clothes, which has got to count for some kind of educational whatsit, I dunno. They're having too much fun and getting along with each other too well for me to break it up now, even though I threatened to make them clean up the mess in the basement today.

30

started with narration: Damon and Pythias from _50 Famous Stories Retold_. Then we did some more lessons from the USGS Map Adventures packet and E drew a map of our house. Then I read The Sun by Allison Lassieur and looked at the sun in various wavelengths, then watched some animations of 3 kinds of solar eclipse. We had lunch and E worked on her homework from her Habitats class at the zoo (which included some drawing and handwriting), then she watched Peep with T and did her math.

28

Today was so much better than yesterday! E really has had a good attitude since our little talk yesterday. Once or twice I've actually seen her visibly restrain herself from a sigh or "Awww!" when I ask her to do something. What a great kid! We started out with a narration of "The Sword of Damocles" from James Baldwin's 50 Famous Stories Retold (available free online) then I read Gail Gibbons' Stargazers to kick off astronomy. E did several pages on nouns from a grammar book Jennifer got me at a yard sale for 50 cents (and about an hour of erasing!) The book is pretty much your typical worksheet crap, but I wanted to make sure she has a solid understanding of nouns, verbs and adjectives, and she speeds right through the pages (and gets to practice her handwriting). We sat down on the couch again and did the first few lessons from Map Adventures, a free Teachers' Packet about using maps from the US Geological Survey. Then I read Me On the Map by Joan Sweeney and had E draw a map of her room like the girl in the book. After recess (Yes! We got all that done before recess!) we had lunch and then E did her math while T watched Peep (he is seriously addicted, but it is a really great show). Then since Sunday is Grandma's birthday, I gave E a choice between two craft kits I got at the thrift store for 99 cents each and she chose to make some foam flowers.