Journal

Inspired by Lizo, J and I started a journal this evening. He already has a Bionicle Blog for all thoughts Bionicle, but this one looks like it's going to be a take-off on our nightly bedtime ritual.

Every night when we're all curled up in bed, I ask the boys, "What was the best part of your day?" and "What was the worst part of your day?" So when I asked J which topics he wanted to write about in his journal every evening, he chose these:

1. Something good that happened today.
2. Something unpleasant that happened today.
3. Something I learned today.
4. Something I read today.
5. Something I want to write about today.

He came up with that last one after hitting me with about 15 topics, rapid-fire (like the dragon egg I didn't buy him over the weekend, what he's wearing today, etc). I had asked him if he was sure he wanted to write about each of those things every day, and he came up with #5 as a catch-all.

This morning we made an Egyptian fig cake that I thought was pretty awful, but the boys devoured it. We baked oatmeal cookies this afternoon and they're wonderful. I had to do oatmeal chocolate chip, because B won't eat raisins.

We read The Seven Voyages of Sinbad for history (our history book says it depicts the same time period as the Assyrians we're finishing up) and J copied Emperor Penguins (by Douglas Florian) for his copywork. He's already memorized the poem before he's finished the copywork, which seems to be his newest trick these days.

The rest of the day he spent on the computer and outside.

Happy day!

We've had a fun week. We started studying the big cats, lions, tigers, cougars, etc, and since they're our first mammals this year, we did a quick mammal review. Platypuses (platypi?) bent J's mind. He came running to tell me that they didn't have live young like other mammals and just went on and on about them. I went to our library online and quickly added a few books about them to our holds.

We finished the Phoenicians, started the Assyrian resurgence, and are moving on to Babylon's 2nd heyday. J's also been reading lots of Greek and Roman myths again. He really loves those stories and said the other day, while watching Toy Story II with the little boys, that Woody was just like Odysseus. It was during the part when Woody hides on the side of the dog to avoid detection while he's trying to save Squeaky. It reminded him of the time Odysseus rode on the side of the sheep to escape the cyclops. He's enjoying Adventures of the Greek Heroes, right now. He likes comparing and contrasting the new versions with the ones he's already read.

We've hit our stride with the Saxon 2 material, and I'm not having to skip around as much. We're about a quarter of our way through the book, so I guess the first quarter was lots of review from the previous year's material. J's also doing alot of math on his own. He asks me questions about multiplication and division throughout the day and started filling out a multiplication grid on his own. He did about half of it and then started using the abacus to finish it out. I think he's on his third grid. He also picks out Miquon sheets of complete whenever he feels like it. He usually does a few of those every other day or so.

The most fun, of course, has been the snow. We played outside alot, made snow angels, of course, and we read Snowflake Bentley together when we were tired of playing outside. We made maple candies and he helped me watch the thermometer until it reached 236 degrees. We talked about the different qualities of the syrup as it changes from cold to bubbling hot liquid to solid candy. He really liked watching me whip the syrup until it started getting hard. Today I have a giant bowl outside collecting snow for snow cones or jack wax, I haven't decided.

The nifty bird-feeder Dan made for the boys (Jonathan is finishing up his bird study this week). We're going to put some reflective tinting on a big piece of plexiglass and put it between the feeder and the house so that we don't scare the birds when we come to the window to watch them. 

New Year

We started off the new year with new maths. I gave J the option of going ahead to the grade 2 stuff or just skipping math and doing other things for the rest of the year, just learning math through our day to day activities. He chose the grade 2 maths, so I ordered them and he's enjoying them, so far. Of course, I've skipped alot. We've had four or five lessons, but we're on lesson 20 in the book. Saxon starts the year with lots of review, I guess. I'm hoping we get to the meaty stuff pretty soon. I don't want him to lose interest again.

We're finishing up the Phoenicians in history. I've loved learning about them and J has, too. We're reading an adaptation of Virgil's Aeneid since Dido features prominently and she was the mythical founder of Carthage, a Phoenician settlement that became a huge merchant port city. We'll do a couple activities in the next week and finish up our extra reading.

We're studying birds for our life science and papa built J a birdfeeder right off of the rear living room windows so that we can watch and keep a list of birds who visit. It's a big platform feeder that spans the window. I want to get some window tinting so that we don't frighten the birds and so the boys can get close up views. We've finished classifying them and now J's reading books from the library on songbirds, birds of prey, tropical birds, big birds (ostriches, etc), waterfoul, arctic birds, etc. I also print out coloring pages for whatever animal we're studying and often read to him while he's coloring. After we've read a book (either him, on his own, or one I've read to him), I try to take a narration, but it's dodgy. He usually either balks, in which case we don't do it, or else he goes on and on and on, describing details from the book verbatim (which, incidentally, is why I think he balks sometimes; because they often take so long to describe and write down). We should be finished with birds by Friday and ready to move on to big cats (lions, tigers, etc), our first mammals! After the big cats we do bears and then we're done with animal study, ready to move on to The Human Body (ody, ody). I've been watching too much Bill Nye.

J still hasn't regained an interest in Latin, but I do see him occasionally thumbing through the books we have. I'm sure he'll let me know if he wants any help and/or structure with it.

We're about 3/4 of the way through first grade grammar, and I don't think he's learned anything new, yet. It's good review and lays things out more formally and with more detail than I usually do when I answer his questions off-the-cuff, so I think it's good. The activities are fun enough to keep him engaged and he likes doing them, so we'll finish, probably by his birthday at the end of February.

We haven't been doing any formal spelling since he finished the 2nd grade book. We've just been keeping a list of the words he misspells in his everyday writing and words that he asks me how to spell. That's been working well.

We haven't been doing copy work since the end of December. We use poetry as copywork and then he memorizes the poems as he goes. Since Christmas, though, we've been reviewing all of the poems he's learned so far and solidifying those in his mind, and copywork has fallen by the wayside. He's been writing, though. Yesterday he made a birthday card for LDM, his godfather, whose birthday is this week. He's written 5 thank-you notes from Christmas, and he works on his little stories and descriptions for the pictures he draws. So he's getting his writing practice in, but informally, which is fine (better than fine!).

In addition to his history and science reading, we're reading Bedknobs and Broomsticks and the Chronicles of Narnia to one another for fun. We usually read B & B during the day and then CoN at night before bed. I'm enjoying them, too, as I don't think I've read either of them before.

I'm wanting to start a weekly art study using this book, which looks wonderful. I've flipped through it over and over again, but keep wondering if I can keep my cool while trying to teach three crazy boys (it's not something the little ones would leave J and I alone with). I may make the plunge soon. I also want to start doing some music study and daily yoga, but I may be pushing it, there.

We shall see.