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For T I read Aliens Love Underpants by Claire Freedman & Ben Cort (my husband wanted some "boy-friendly" books--when he saw the title, he said, "Yep. That's about right."), and Parts by Tedd Arnold. Then Thanksgiving by Alice K. Flanagan, which is a good introduction to the holiday and its antecedents. Then Lon Po Po by Ed Young, Two of Everything by Lily Toy Hong, and The Dragon's Tale by Demi. We did spelling and the kids found China on the world map and colored China's flag and banners with their Chinese zodiac characters (dragon for E and monkey for T--I always said he was a little monkey). Then math for E and the letter K for T. She finished writing her thank you notes for birthday presents and now they are downstairs watching her new "Schoolhouse Rock" DVD.

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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!