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Yesterday was our last day of school for the semester. E had her piano lesson, we went to the library, and watched Pioneer Life for Children: The Pioneer Journey Westward on DVD

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Today we read the rest of Beijing Through Time by Richard Platt, The Chinese Story Teller by Pearl S. Buck, The Transcontinental Railroad by James P. Burger, and Coolies by Yin. I gave E two books to read on her own: The Iron Dragon Never Sleeps by Stephen Krensky and Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan. E did a spelling lesson and two math lessons (so she'd be done for the semester) and we watched the DVD Pioneer Life for Children: Daily Pioneer Life.

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I was at the dentist again today. Grandpa read several books including Winter: An Alphabet Acrostic by Steven Schnur, and Adventures in Ancient China by Linda Bailey. E had a really long math lesson and the kids watched "Building the Transcontinental Railroad" on the DVD This is America, Charlie Brown.

Last Friday I read a few more pages of Beijing Through Time by Richard Platt, and Striking it Rich: The Story of the California Gold Rush by Stephen Krensky. E had math and spelling, and on her own she read California Gold Rush: A Guide to California in the 1850s by Julie Ferris. She also had a basketball practice and a game on Saturday.

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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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Today we started out with Dear Rebecca, Winter is Here by Jean Craighead George, Why Do Bears Sleep All Winter? by Mary Engler, and Old Bear by Kevin Henkes. Then I read a page or two of Beijing: Through Time by Richard Platt (almost everything he writes is terrific), and then Bronco Charlie and the Pony Express by Marlene Targ Brill and Buffalo Bill and the Pony Express by Eleanor Coerr. After a nice recess outside (gorgeous day this morning) T and I did the letter "M" and E had a spelling lesson. After lunch we read Cells and Tissues by Leslie Jean LeMaster and The Quest to Digest by Mary K. Corcoran. Then E did her math lesson and now she's finishing some ornaments she's giving as gifts.

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Today while I was at the dentist Grandma and Grandpa read When Winter Comes by Robert Maass, Time to Sleep by Denise Fleming, Dandelions by Eve Bunting, and Pony Express! by Steven Kroll. Then after lunch we went to see a children's theatre production of A Christmas Carol. In the evening they asked me to read I Know Where My Food Goes by Jacqui Maynard, and we all watched the Charlie Brown Christmas special on tv.

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We did a regular day of school last Tuesday, but I can't remember what any of it was! I think I read Cassie's Journey by Brett Harvey, The Emperor and the Kite by Jane Yolen, and The Fourth Question by Rosalind C. Wang. Probably there was more, but I can't think of it now. And of course math and spelling. Over the weekend E got to bake some cupcakes with the little mini set she bought with her birthday money.

Today we started with Polar Bear, Why is Your World Melting? by Robert E. Wells, then Dakota Dugout by Ann Turner, and Warm as Wool by Scott Russell Sanders. While we were on the subject of wool, we looked at a little folder with samples of wool at different stages of manufacture that I got free from Pendleton. Then I read The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack and Ms. Frizzle's Adventures in Imperial China by Joanna Cole. After lunch and spelling I read I Know How My Cells Make Me Grow by Kate Rowan and then E did math. Over the weekend we did a lot of getting-ready-for-Christmas stuff, like making an advent wreath at church and making paper chains to keep track of how long until Christmas (and keep T from pestering me: "Is it tomorrow, Mommy?") and we started listening to the serial radio program (from the 1930's) "The Cinnamon Bear" which we got from homeschoolradioshows.com.

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Since last time I posted:

E had her final 2 art classes, and a sewing lesson, piano lesson, math and spelling. Read The Fourth Question by Rosalind C. Wang, The Empty Pot by Demi, A Time of Golden Dragons by Song Nan Zhang, Mei-Mei Loves the Morning by Margaret Holloway Tsubakiyama, A to Z China by Justine and Ron Fontes, Celebrating Birthdays in China by Cheryl L. Enderlein. We also watched the DVD "Families of China" and Disney's "Mulan" (ok, not so much Chinese as...not. E has the story of Mulan in a book and she kept saying in a wondering voice "But that's not in the book...". Hey, they enjoyed it anyway--at least she's not a "princess") On her own E has read/is reading The Mystery on the Great Wall of China by Carole Marsh and Day of the Dragon King by Mary Pope Osborne. We also finished Ellen Levine's If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon and Going West by Jean Van Leeuwen. And she and T did this online activity about electricity. I also out of curiosity had her start taking the sample test in Get Ready! For Standardized Tests, Grade 2. She's done about half the test so far and gotten all of them right except 2 questions which asked which part of the word was the suffix--we've never talked about suffixes so of course she didn't know.

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Monday we had a really good day, which is a relief because it looks like the rest of the week is mostly a wash.

Monday: read You Wouldn't Want to Be an American Pioneer! by Jacqueline Morley, then did a bunch of experiments/fooling around with electrical circuits, wires, bulbs, making a nail into an electro-magnet, and so forth. Got some of the ideas from All About Electricity by Melvin Berger (note to self--a stack of nickels and pennies won't make a crude battery any more...not enough real nickel or copper in them!) and Experiment With Magnets and Electricity by Margaret Whalley. Spelling and math, then read Count Your Way Through China by Jim Haskins, The Seven Chinese Brothers by Margaret Mahy, The Cloudmakers by James Rumford, and The Empress and the Silkworm by Lily Toy Hong.

Tuesday my parents were taking care of my niece who had the day off from school for Veteran's Day and they absconded with E to keep her company. So I took T to see the model train exhibit at the hands-on museum and we played with a friend of his in the neighborhood.

Wednesday was piano lesson and library day, and we went to have T's "school picture" done.

Today I'm feeling under the weather, so instead of school I think we'll clean our rooms and clean house and play until it's time to go to Grandma's house for E's sewing lesson.

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Yesterday we all took a break and after Alan and I voted, we went out for lunch and then to the art museum. Last night I got E out of bed so she could watch our first black president elect deliver his victory speech.

Today we read The Apple Pie That Papa Baked by Lauren Thompson, and Autumn: an Alphabet Acrostic by Steven Schnur. Then we wrote some of our own acrostics (Nemo and Sheila are the names of our dogs):

She is a dog;
Her friend is Nemo.
Every morning she jumps
Into E's bed for
Love
And a scratch.

Not as small as he thinks he is
Every time someone is on the floor he jumps on them.
Mushy, lovey dog
On my lap.

Doorknob rattles
And
Daddy is home!
Delight!
Young monkeys jump on his head!

I've asked E to write two more on her own before Friday. Then I read some more of If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine, and The Josefina Story Quilt by Eleanor Coerr. After a break we had spelling, lunch, and math, then read Look What Came from China by Miles Harvey (what came from China? A whole lot more than you think!) Also The Cloudmakers by James Rumsford and A Song of Stars by Tom Birdseye (this is an Asian legend about the stars Vega and Altair and the Milky Way between them--we looked the stars up on Stellarium, an amazing free planetarium for your computer). And finally, we started learning about electricity with Melvin Berger's Switch On, Switch Off! (My copy a little out of date, so I had to explain how CF bulbs work, but still a very good intro).

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Read to T while E practiced her scales: The Accidental Zucchini by Max Grover, The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons, Apples and Pumpkins by Anne Rockwell, and It's Fall! by Linda Glaser. Then, An Illustrated History of Japan by Shigeo Nishimura, The Paper Crane by Molly Bang, and The Greatest of All by Eric A. Kimmel. After a break we read more of If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine, and Apples to Oregon by Deborah Hopkinson, which was really fun. After Spelling and lunch, we read What Magnets Can Do by Allan Fowler, What Makes a Magnet? by Franklyn M. Branley, and did experiments from these books and Experiments With Magnets by Salvatore Tocci. Then E did her math.

34-36

Tuesday: In preparation for our camping trip next week, read It's a Hummingbird's Life by Irene Kelly. Then we went over some of the reasons people went West that were covered in Araminta's Paint Box, and I told them there were some people who went unwillingly, then read The Trail of Tears by Joseph Bruchac. It's a good thing for Andrew Jackson that he's already dead, or E would have his head! And former slaves went, too, for their own reasons, as we learned reading Wagon Train: A Family Goes West in 1865 by Courtni C. Wright. Spelling and math, and then I read The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks by Katherine Paterson. Very rainy--we recorded 1.5" at our Weather Station.

Wednesday: Piano lesson and library.

Thursday:Read Calendar by Myra Cohn Livingston and Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington to T. Read some more of ...If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine, and Wagon Wheels by Barbara Brenner. Spelling, and picked out Japan on the world map. Read Jim Haskins' Count Your Way Through Japan, The Stonecutter by Gerald McDermott, and Ina R. Friedman's charming How My Parents Learned to Eat. Then they colored Japanese flags and made little paper Japanese lanterns, and we went to mom's house for E's first sewing lesson. Currently E is reading on her own The Song of the Water Boatman by Joyce Sidman.

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Busy day today. With T I read My Apple by Kay Davies and Wendy Oldfield and the ingenious The Turn-Around, Upside-Down Alphabet Book by Lisa Campbell Ernst. Then we read Japan ABCs by Sarah Heiman, The Terrible Eek by Patricia A. Compton, and I Live in Tokyo by Mari Takabayashi. After a break we read from ...If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine and Araminta's Paint Box by Karen Ackerman, which manages in the course of an interesting story to cover many of the various reasons people had for heading west. After spelling and math we did an experiment to make a cloud in a jar, which I found in The Ben Franklin Book of Easy and Incredible Experiments from the Franklin Institute Science Museum and we are now the proud possessors of our own home-made barometer, which we learned how to build in How the Weather Works by Michael Allaby.

On her own, E's been reading The Ordinary Princess by M M Kaye, The Kid Who Named Pluto by Marc McCutcheon, and The Toad on Capitol Hill by Esther Wood Brady.

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This week has been a mess with caring for my parents' (ailing) dogs and our neighbors' dog...but here goes:

Monday: Celebrated Johnny Appleseed's birthday (even though it was actually last Friday) -- read The Story of Johnny Appleseed by Aliki, and assigned E to read Who Was Johnny Appleseed? by Joan Holub on her own. I also baked an apple pie. This was meant to be a shared experience but, let's face it, peeling and coring a dozen apples lacks the allure of cooking a full multi-course Indian meal. So I did almost all of it myself, but for the eating of course! I read selections from the January '08 issue of Calliope magazine, "Spark Along the Indus", and E went through this neat interactive virtual adventure at Mohenjo-Daro. She did her math on the way to my parents' vet to pick up their doggies.

Today I read the chapter on India in What Your Second Grader Needs to Know by E. D. Hirsch Jr., and then Scott Russell Sanders' The Floating House. Then we made a model of a canal lock from Carol A. Johmann's Going West!: Journey on a Wagon Train to Settle a Frontier Town
(my advice: do the demonstration in the bathtub...it leaked) and I played and sang "The Erie Canal" which I found in From Sea to Shining Sea by Amy Cohn. After taking a break to take care of the neighbors' dog (during which T let him out and he ran away) I read How's the Weather? by Melvin and Gilda Berger, and gave E a weather map reading activity sheet I found, um, somewhere on the internet. After lunch, spelling and math. I was hoping to build a barometer with the kids this afternoon, but went out to catch the neighbors' dog instead. Sigh.

24-26

My computer's been acting up.

Wednesday: piano lesson and then we went to the beach for a "not back-to-school party" with other area homeschoolers. Lots of fun!

Thursday: should have gotten more done, but I was in a very very bad mood due to the computer. Started Westward Expansion with The Amazing Impossible Erie Canal by Cheryl Harness, and E did spelling and math. We also watched part of an extremely lame movie about ancient India. Very disappointing.

Friday: art class for E and tumbling for T, then in the afternoon E and I made an elaborate and yummy Indian dinner.