Friday

~Kids painted with water colors.
~Kids and I played dominoes.
~M crafted while E played. I tried to organize all our stuff. It’s impossible.
~Lunch!
~E is getting really quite good at drawing. This is not the best example of how detailed his pictures are becoming, but it does show how very clear his intent is.

~After lunch, M and I talked a little bit about our fish Rainbow (who died over a year ago) and memorials and Samhain. She felt sad.
~I made up some Ooblek for her. E wouldn’t go near it. This is a really cool video demonstrating non-neutonian fluids.

~Which required a bath.
~TV Time – Kids watched Charlotte’s Web (cartoon) and then Gumby.
~M played outside.
~Dinner.
~Kids and I played Wii Sports (golf and bowling) after dinner.
~Stories and speech at bedtime.

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Tuesday

~M played in her room.  E played with cars out here.
~Math time – we read Arctic Fives Arrive. M’s comment: “It’s weird. It’s about MATH.” That earned her a lecture on how you can actually also find science, language arts and geography in the book. Then we painted handprints while we counted by 5’s. Later we will write the numbers as well.
~Kids continued painting for awhile.
~Lunch
~M “played” guitar while E sang along.
~I showed M some brief videos of the Northern Lights from YouTube (how did anyone homeschool before YouTube???)
~Off to PE. M played dodge ball, E played on the playground. When PE was over ALL the kids played on the playground and E played with a little boy (littler than, say, grownups, but still older than M). They had such fun together, but when Trevor went to play with someone else, E was brokenhearted. M fell down and that was our cue to leave. The other moms complimented me on my calmness through it all. They should have seen me last week! HA!
~M played outside with neighbor kids. E watched a video.
~Dinner, bath, bed.

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Wednesday

~We’ve moved E’s speech appointments from Thursday to Wednesday so we went and did that today. ST and I talked about his progress, where he’s at in relation to “average” and some concerns I had.
~While E was in ST, M & I worked on her ST and then did some math with Unifix cubes we got last year through the school. We did more division like last week’s pizzas. This time we told stories. She had a toy penguin and she had to figure out how to divide “ice bloks” up among the penguin’s friends. We did 9/3=3, 10/2=5, 10/5=2 and then she made up 10/10=1 all by herself!
~We went for a 2 1/2 mile walk at the marina. It was a long walk (on a lovely day!) and I was really proud of her that she remained so positive through the whole walk, even when she was tired. We saw marsh birds, a bird of prey we don’t know (We’ll be asking Lev about that one), coots and ducks, and seagulls, of course. We stopped by the “Singing Sculpture” (as so named by ME!) which has wires that hum in the wind. When quizzed, M told me it was “vibrations” that caused the music. While walking we noticed the party boat was gone! According to this article I am not very observant as it’s been gone since last June. M was sad that it was gone (not because she, you know, partied there) so we talked about how it was terrible for the ecosystem and what that meant and food chains and etc.
~Home for lunch.
~Off to M’s speech appt. E played on the computer.
~On the way home in the car and back at home, M re-read one of the Bunnicula books.
~OK, Margie actually read two of them in entirety.
~Margie and I observed a daddy-long legs spider in the bathroom having an ant for an afternoon snack. He wrapped it and wrapped it and wrapped it. And then held it to his mouth. I’m unsure if he was drinking the blood as Charlotte suggested, or if he was biting it to save for later. We watched this video which is pretty exciting but made me have chills and make lots of strange noises as I tried to sit through it. Geh.
~Stories at bedtime.

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Tuesday

~We had a free morning while I got some stuff done and began to prepare for our lesson.
~While the kids played together, Margie noticed Elliott had chipped the porcelain tea set. At first she was very angry and told him he could not play with it anymore, but then, when she saw how seriously he took it, she told him he may play with it while she is watching him. I liked how she handled that interaction. Recently I have noticed her using redirection and distraction with him as well. For instance, when she is using the computer and has to take a bathroom break, she used to scream if he usurped her turn. Now she thinks ahead and offers to let him flush for her so that he follows her in the bathroom. I like her planning, and her gentle redirections and especially the lack of screaming. That is my favorite part. But someday she is gonna be an awesome mommy.
~After snacks we began our lesson. The kids had grown tired of circle time so our new pattern is:

Light a candle and say the working verse (formerly the closing verse).
Work on Speech
Practice Counting
Daily Assignment
Practice Scissorwork
Morning Verse
Make our intentions for the day while blowing out the candle
Gymnastics homework.

So in today’s lesson, we counted by 1’s, 2’s, and 10’s. M helped E go through the ABC’s on the flip chart. We had a math assignment regarding sorting and classifying where we named some attributes of various shapes and then sorted them in a venn diagram. Then M practiced cutting. She has always insisted on holding the scissors backwards which is dangerous and awkward. Now I am sitting down with her daily to practice holding them properly.

~Shortly into our lesson, I heard Elliott playing with the tea set again and I got up to remove it from him, but I was too late. As I got there, I heard a small, “Oh, it’s broken.” and sure enough there were shards all over the couch. I was furious and Margie was brokenhearted. Elliott saw how it could not be fixed and sow our reactions and began crying himself and locked himself in the bedroom while I vacuumed it up. When he came out he cried to me, “I don’t want to go to jail!” Which is just about the cutest thing he could have said at that moment. So Margie and I both comforted him and each other and all was well again. Once again, I was pleased with how well Margie handled the situation.

~After nap/quiet time, M read some books, including one based on the song/nursery rhyme A Tisket, A Tasket. I looked up Ella’s version of it on YouTube and M & I watched that. ~M played outside for a short time. ~Gymnastics. I had to take E for a walk for part of the class so I missed some, but they did circuit training, tumbling, and played tug-of-war.

~Back at home we had dinner.
~At bedtime, Alex read stories to her.

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Tuesday

~Circle time. Margie read a chapter out of Animal Friends about Pixie going to the vet and then we looked at the first chapter of The Tale of Jolly Robin again (we began reading it at bedtime last night) to look at some of the details – the food the nestlings ate, the way the nest was constructed, etc.
~Lesson time. Today M & I looked at American Robins online a little bit, saw pictures of them, their nests and their eggs. Then we sat at the table and discussed what we had read and learned online. We composed a sentence together and M wrote it out in capital letters and then drew a picture of Jolly Robin. I’m quite impressed with her drawing.

~E played and colored happily all morning and then he and I looked at a book with numbers.
~Free time in which they played with toy food, trains, bed-jumping (PE for the day?), and more.
~Bath time!
~Lunch!
~Naps!
~Margie actually slept! Shocker. Sweet thing, we bought her a new bedding set yesterday because the yellow one she’s been sleeping with is older than she is and is beginning to fall apart. She’s quite sentimental about it, though, and ended up pulling it into bed with her for her nap today. Heh.

~E watched an episode of Blue’s Clues while we waited for her to wake up.
~M awoke while I was poking around YouTube to find videos of robins, particularly nest-building ones so we looked at that a bit – will look at it more later. Created a playlist so we can refer back to them with ease.
~Ran errands – two banks, a grocery store and Roberto’s for a quickie dinner.
~I left for a meeting. Alex had Margie finish a math assignment from last week, she played outside, read books to Elliott, and at bedtime we read chapter 3 of Jolly Robin.

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