More Christmas Activities

Here are a couple of things I'm going to do with my kids and something I did with the Activity Day girls a couple of years ago.

Terra Cotta Trio just looks like fun. It also looks easy enough to keep the kids attention. I like the idea of them making their own little nativity. I have another one I'd like to make, but that will be for next year, when I have time and can breathe a little.

Marshmallow Snowmen. No link, but it's easy. Just use the marshmallows as paint brushes--the big ones for the snowmen and the little ones for snow. It's another quick and easy activity.

Now for the more involved activity:

This is the song: The Nativity Song.

Here are the pictures I used with the girls:

Some Christmas Activities

This is a list of some of the activities I would like to do with the kids. There is no way I'll do them all, but that's okay. With everything that is happening in our lives right now, I think keeping Christmas fairly simple is going to be the way to go.

Religious Activities (primarily):

A Week for the Christmas Story: We did this last year when the Friend came out and it was neat. I'd like to do the same thing again this year. It condenses the Christmas story into a week and even I won't forget, I hope!

Advent Calendar: What Is Christmas?

I like this advent calendar, I remember working on it a couple of years ago with Harry. There is another one I like better though.

Christmas Countdown

It's the one above. (Because I'm importing links, the spacing is a bit off, sorry.) Annika likes this one mostly because of the Baby Jesus and the animals. I'm hoping she won't like it enough to tear pieces off of it, but we'll see.

We've already made the next two things that also came from past issues of The Friend. I can't find them in the index right now, so here are the directions. Both of them are slightly harder than they look to be. I used a glue gun for both so the kids wouldn't have to wait for them to dry too much. Also because it was easier in the long run. I also used wooden craft spoons instead of erasers because I happened to have them on hand. I'm trying really hard not to run to Michaels each time I see a neat thing I want to make.

Okay, I found the link just now. It is: Christmas Workshop

That's it for now, I need to concentrate on Harry's party that is coming up, not on things further away. I also need to find a place for us to live come the 28th (Happy Birthday Ben!). So I'll post more another time.

More Christmas Books

We went back to the library this morning to get more Christmas related books. It's okay since we read 2-3 a day. They are short picture books, although I am looking for some longer ones for Harry.

Oh yeah, before I forget, if you have taken a look at my other Christmas Book List, I would not recommend Christmas Tapestry. Parts of it are really good, but the book introduces the Holocaust. I don't think my kids are ready to know about such a horrible event yet. It also talks about the stresses of being a "preacher's kid" which my kids can't relate to. So that one is off our shelf for this year.

On with the updates:
There was no snow on Christmas Eve / by Pam Muñoz Ryan ; illustrations by Dennis Nolan.

The Christmas bird / by Sallie Ketcham ; illustrated by Stacey Schuett.

Lucia and the light / Phyllis Root ; illustrated by Mary GrandPré.

One wintry night / Ruth Bell Graham ; illustrated by Richard Jesse Watson.

The Christmas cobwebs / Odds Bodkin ; illustrated by Terry Widener.

Sing Noel : Christmas carols / selected by Jane Yolen ; musical arrangements by Adam Stemple ; illus

A December to Remember?

With all of the house chaos and birthday chaos and baby chaos, school for us is going to be pared down a bit until after Christmas. That doesn't mean we won't do anything, but the style will change somewhat. For instance, you read my big list of books. That's about half of the books we'll be reading this season. The rest are at the library waiting for me to pick them up. That'll be, to an extent our reading "curriculum" for the month. We'll read other things, but that's what I'm focusing on.

For math, we'll continue as usual. Math is a skill that needs to be repeated often or the facts get lost. However, we won't just do book work. We'll double cookies, figure prices for gifts, and do some worksheets (gasp) that are Christmas themed.

Grammar and spelling will continue also. I don't want Harry to backslide because we're having too much fun!

On the other hand, we're adding in one Christmas project a day. That is a little tricky for me because I don't want to decorate the house just to put everything away in a few days, plus we don't really decorate until after Harry's birthday. But we'll muddle along. The projects are loosely broken into categories: cooking/baking, gifts, religious, fun. That doesn't mean they can't be more than one thing, but I'm trying to pull from each of these once a week.

For geography, we're doing a Christmas Around the World Theme. We're reading books that talk about Christmas in other places and maybe doing a project about it. I don't want to do too many projects, that get tiring and the amount of "stuff" gets overwhelming, but some are fine.

Gotta go, speech classes. I'll update some specifics later. If I get a chance!

Christmas Reading List

Here is our preliminary reading list for the season:

My Little House Christmas Crafts Book
A World of Holidays: Catherine Chanbers
The Baker's Dozen: Heather Forest
The Night Before Christmas: illustrated by Tasha Tudor
The Beautiful Christmas Tree: Charlotte Zolotow
Let's Celebrate Christmas: Peter and Connie Roop
The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree: Gloria Houston
The Little Fir Tree: Margaret Wise Brown
A Christmas Celebration: Pamela Kennedy
An Early American Christmas: Tomie dePaola
The Legend of the Poinsettia: Tomie dePaola
The Christmas Camel: Nancy Winslow Parker
Hark: A Christmas Sampler: Jane Yolen
Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree: Robert Barry
Christmas in Denmark (they didn't have one for Sweden, I figured it was close enough for now)
Cranberry Christmas: Devlin
On Christmas Eve: MW Brown
Christmas Tapestry: Patricia Polacco
Silver Packages: Cynthia Rylant
Joy to the World: Saviour Pirotta

This isn't an exhaustive list of everything we're reading this season, but it's a start. We have some that I haven't typed in also, because I can't find them. Unfortunately most of our books are already packed away ready to go. But I imagine I'll update this every few days, assuming I can find some more.

Oh, here are a couple more:

Who's that Knocking on Christmas Eve: Jan Brett
The Gingerbread Baby: Jan Brett

We have a bunch from Sweden by Astrid Lindgren, so when Annika isn't sleeping in the room they are in, I'll get them and type those in too.

Back to the Grindstone

Sort of. It's hard to call anything where your six-year-old says, "Yay, we're learning about Carthage now," a grindstone. That is a direct quote. Jason's been playing a game on the computer where the Romans pretty much defeat everyone under the sun and he's fighting Carthage right now. How's that for a "real life" application of history!

Jason went back to work today after taking last week off for Thanksgiving. There was much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth on Annika's part. She was most unhappy that Dada was leaving. I figured that we should get back to work too.

We started off the day with Happy Times in Noisy Village. We read a chapter about a sheep so the entire time Annika baaed like a sheep. It was a little distracting, but she's supposed to be working on her speech, so we didn't say too much.

We were then joined at the table by an entire army of Bionicles. After telling their commander that only one was allowed at the table at a time, they took turns sitting and watching Harry and Sam do their work. Annika's doll, perhaps wanting to keep her distance, stayed on Annika's lap! That's how we did Math (lesson 28--we're almost finished with the book!) and grammar. Grammar culminated with some copywork, which Harry is strangely compliant about. It makes me worry--have we turned a corner where he will be okay with writing from now on or is he going to regress into his "I don't want to write" mode? I try not to shake too much as I hand over the part he's to copy and just go with it, but it's harder than it might seem.

He played a while after that--actually they all did. I lured them back to the table with the promise of some clementines. As they ate the last three clementines, my mouth watered and I devised plans to steal one. Harry also did some spelling. Not very exciting, especially since he's just beginning the book. I'm trying to whip through it, but not let him miss anything. So we do a book lesson a day, but go over the rules all week.

Once he finished his clementine (no I didn't actually steal anyones) we read about the Phoenicians, glass blowing, and snail boiling. Apparently Tyre was an incredibly smelly place since that is where they made all of the purple dye for the ancient world. Boiling sea snails does nothing for your reputation as a vacation spot--it's too smelly! That's when the above comment about Carthage was made--as Harry asked if we could read another chapter of history. I actully said no. Normally I'd say yes and bask in the glory of raising a kid interested in the outside world, but today he's going to a friends for the afternoon and we needed to have lunch and some quiet time.

That's where we are right now. And despite the fact that I went to bed at 7:30 last night and work up at 7:15 the morning, I'm going to lie down before we need to get in the car.

I can't remember now

if it's Wed, Thurs, or Fri! I had a mini panic attack a while ago because I suddenly thought it was Friday and I had all of these things to do, RIGHT NOW before going to Bunko at 6:30. (Yes, I know it's lame that I play bunko, but it's something to do occasionally). Anyway, I realized it was Thursday and I was fine, but then somehow I decided it was Wednesday a little while later. One of the problems of homeschooling maybe? Although I don't think I want to blame my inability to follow a calendar on homeschooling. Pregnancy maybe, but not homeschooling.

So what did we do today? Again, we started put with Math. Harry did two pages. Moved onto 50 Famous Stories and read about William Tell. Harry drew a picture of WT shooting the apple off of his son's head that's pretty neat. We talked about what a tyrant is and isn't and had a nice little discussion from that. I think they went to play after that for a while.

I lured them back into the kitchen with the promise of snacks and we read a couple of Thanksgiving stories. I keep meaning to post our Thanksgiving readings, but I also keep forgetting to. Maybe soon I'll get it finished. Hopefully before Thanksgiving. Harry did some spelling words and then we read some pages from D'Aulaire's George Washington. I'm not entirely sure everything is totally accurate in these biographies, but I'm willing to overlook that for now. This isn't the only biography Harry or Sam will read on Washington--it's just an introduction. Anything that needs to be cleared up will be.

During quiet time he read more of Eragon. He is really into that book. A lot more than Harry Potter. I think it's more exciting to him--there are dragons and a quest instead of a kid going to school. I got him out of quiet time early to work on his science. We are still studying rocks and fossils. Today I got out the igneous and metamorphic rock kits. We looked at them and tried to decide the colors, texture, and a bunch of other things that have slipped my mind now. We also did a sink or float experiment. He told me if he thought the rock would sink or float and we tested it. It was a lot of fun--we had a great time together looking at these rocks and talking about them. Harry's observational skills are getting better and better.

At the end we made Edible Igneous Rocks. It's basically fudge. We boiled the ingredients and then cooled them until they were hard. The only problem is that they aren't getting hard--in fact, quite the opposite. They are as runny as soup. So much for that, but he was so excited and could really grasp what we were doing.

Ahhh, what will tomorrow bring?

Tuesday

Someday I'll think of clever post titles, but it won't be tonight. I'm going to bed right after this. Today Sam and Annika both had their speech lessons and we jumped Jason's car so he could go to work. A library run was scheduled after that, but I decided that today we really needed food more than books. Tomorrow, we'll see. We got home in time for lunch, which Annika decided to fix for herself. She opened up one of my yogurts and had eaten half of it by the time I realized. All this to explain why we didn't get much done.

What we did? Math and spelling. Harry did one page of MUS quickly and well. I decided to see if I could skip Harry ahead in his spelling book by testing him on the words in his list of the week. Oddly enough, he got most of them wrong. Even the ones I know he knows--like Mom. It was a very strange moment. So he worked a bit more in his spelling book, which at this moment I'm not sure I like and am planning on trying something different. I'll check him again on Friday. After that he did another of his timed math drill. I learned something the other day--cover up the timer. When he can see it, he gets distracted thinking about the time going by. All I have to do is cover it with a sticky note and he can sit down and just get to work. Amazing what a post-it can do!

Tomorrow I don't expect us to get a whole lot done either, he has his coop classes. But I plan on getting a bit more done. The other issue with this week is Sam's birthday party on Saturday that I need to finish getting ready for--so the time that I would have extra is being used for something else. That probably doesn't make much sense. Here it is in plain English. Usually if we don't finish our work in the morning, I push it off to quiet time and finish it then. But this week I really need to use that time to get ready for Sam's party--I can't just push that off at all. So things are a little tricky in that department.

Okay, this has taken me way too long to type since I'm tired. So I'm going to bed. Good night!

Monday again

So on Saturday Jason and Harry washed the car and listened to music. I went out a few hours later and the music was still on--the battery was completely run down! The point? We took Jason to work this morning.

That threw us off a little--it's always hard to get started when something unexpected comes up. Somehow though, we got things together and really worked today. First up was math. I cannot wait to be finished with the MUS Alpha book. I honestly think Harry's ready to move up now, but there isn't any harm in waiting just a little. He's on lesson 26 of 30, so just a little while longer--by Christmas certainly.

While Harry worked on his math, I drew him a picture of a volcano to demonstrate where different igneous rocks come from. I had planned on saving it for later, but since he saw me making it, I decided to let him work on that instead of spelling. He labeled where the rocks come from, made some inferences on which were the hottest and coolest and answered some questions about igneous rocks in general. Our rock study is going well and he's learning a lot.

He finally finished his Benjamin Franklin copywork--again without complaint, even though this was the longest section with the biggest words in it.

We began some spelling work this morning as well. We haven't done spelling before because I have this feeling that there is no real reason to start this early, but after some more study, Jason and I decided that it would be a good idea. So he had ten super-easy spelling words and he breezed right through it.

After that we worked a bit on our Thanksgiving Notebooks--talking about the Pilgrims and what they found when they finally made it to the New World. We are reading a fabulous book called N. C. Wyeth's Pilgrims that has amazing pictures and just enough text to make it challenging for both boys. They have to listen while I am reading and can't just wander off to do something else.

Since we were of a historical mind then we talked about Moses and the Israelites. I'm still having a difficult time considering that history--we read the Old Testament Stories version just a couple of weeks ago, so I'm thinking I'll skip the rest of this chapter and move on to the Phoenicians.

Now we are in quiet time. Ahhh, the silence. I savor it and dream of it. Even though I'm going to get Harry soon and see which of his igneous rocks sink and which float. Then we can move onto sedimentary tomorrow. Oh yeah, one of the reasons we did so much this morning is that we're trying out a new schedule and I told Harry that if we were able to finish what we needed to, we could go to Legoland this afternoon and see if they had anything for his Bionicle birthday Party. It's amazing what a little bribery will do for a six-year-old!

Thursday already?

I love Thursdays--we only have one speech appointment and then we get to spend the rest of the day at home. I use it to catch up on all of the things that didn't get finished through the week.

So, knowing that. Today Harry did a couple of pages in MUS. He wrote some copywork from Benjamin Franklin. We finished the book earlier in the week, but it's great to have Harry write without complaints. He just really liked the book and the sayings in it. He'll spend a couple more days finishing the work, but it really is an accomplishment for him.

Everyone needed a snack about then so while they at their yogurt, I read a couple of Aesop's Fables and King Alfred and the Beggar. Harry's understanding of the true meanings of things is growing by leaps and bounds. I'm trying to figure out what I want him to do with the morals of the stories, but aside from copying them down, I haven't come up with anything. And I know that forcing him to copy these won't make them stick, it'll backfire and he won't want to read them anymore.

We took some time to create autumn leaves out of markers, coffee filters, and watered down glue. That was a lot more time-consuming and messy than I thought it would be. But it turned out kind of cool. I'm just not sure it was worth the time and mess. I'm planning to leave a review for this craft on the crayola website.

They played Bionicle people for a while after that, had lunch, and we dove into our study of rocks. We got a kit that has a whole bunch of igneous rocks in it, so we looked at each one and tried to describe them. I made a chart and everything to fill out. Sam and Annika got into the action too. The most common phrase of this part: "No, Annika, don't eat the Mt. St. Helen's ash!"
Now it's quiet time, which is nice because I'm exhausted. We have a busy evening tonight, well, the kids and I do, Jason will be home resting. He had a longer night than I did yesterday. So I'm debating between a shower and a nap. And maybe getting some lunch. We'll see. Stay tuned for the next exciting adventure!

Narrations and Stories

Benjamin Franklin:

Benjamin's friend stuffed Ben's pocket with pennies. Benjamin ran to the toy store. He gave the owner all of his pennies for a whistle. Benjamin walked through the house while his family was eating dinner blowing his whistle.

His brothers and sisters teased him and called him a spendthrift. A spendthrift is someone who doesn't pay attention to what he is buying. Benjamin bought the whistle for four times what it was worth. After that he looked at how much something cost and he gave the person he was going to buy it from that amount. He also thought about how he would spend his money after that.

The Fox and the Grapes:

A fox went walking along and he spied some grapes. He really wanted them and he tried to get them. He couldn't so he said they were sour grapes and he quit. Then he just walked off.

Horatius and the Bridge:

The Most Interesting Part:
They put out his eye and he jumped into the river and they thought he was sunk. But he wasn't because he was the best swimmer in Rome.

The Fairy Forest, by Harry

The fairies use oranges for food. The peels make their beds. Big ones are for the Queen and King and small ones are for the servants and everyone else. If they are stuck together they use their fairy chainsaws to break them apart.

They also eat apples. Then they use the peels to make their pillows. They get their apples and drop them out of the tree. Then they get a big needle to put the peels in and they pick the grass with their fairy chainsaws. They put the grass in the apple peels and use the needles to make sure there aren't any holes.

Monday, Monday

So, I feel like today is a fresh start after a bad week last week. We're settling down to our lessons and such and things are planned, but not too planned. And here we go. (I'll update as we go along today.)

Friday Funday?

The fire danger has mostly passed for us and it was back to our normal days. More or less. I woke up at 3:30 this morning and didn't fall back asleep until 5:30. Those are an important two hours apparently in my world, so I'm a bit tired.

Anyway, this morning Harry did a timed math drill and got 66 correct in 5 minutes! That is the most he has ever gotten and I'm really proud of him. He just sat down and worked really hard for the entire five minutes. We're working on a goal of 100 correct in 3 minutes. This supplements the MUS work he does. He finished his lesson yesterday, so I'm waiting until Monday to introduce another one.

We also read another chapter of Children of Noisy Village and the children who live in my noisy house clamored for another. So I think later at snack time we'll do that. They are all really into it.

And we finished Midsummer! Yay! When I started this our, I was pretty nervous, not sure if Harry would follow it or understand everything, but he turned out to be really interested in the story and fascinated by the fairies. This morning he got out another version I had from the library and read that on his own. So now he really knows the story.

Still to do today: a chapter from Burgess Bird Book, writing practice, and a few pages of Benjamin Franklin. I'd better go get him from quiet time and get started!

Fire, what fire?

We don't need no stinkin' fire!

(A tribute to Sam--he memorized that and will spontaneously come out with it using whatever is nearby!)

Anyway, Jason is still home. There are still fires, but in my efforts to keep things normal, we did our normal stuff today. Of course between fielding phone calls from concerned family (thanks everyone, we're fine).

Harry managed to do his timed math drill without too much trouble. He also did some writing practice and cooler than all of this, we did an easy little experiment about water condensation. We just got a glass, filled it with ice and water and watched what happened. He also filled in his little experiment record about it.

During quiet time we read some more Benjamin Franklin and talked about some of his sayings. Then Harry had to write one of them for copywork.

That's it--it never looks like as much as it is.

Weird Day

The fires in San Diego County are all around us, and since there are 8, it's not too hard to be surrounded!

Jason's work was closed for the day, so he has been home, which is always nice, but throws off our studies a bit. I thought about just playing all day but decided that we needed to have as normal a day as possible.

So here's what we did, more or less. Read a chapter from Story of the World about Egypt's Middle Kingdom. Is it possible to be tired of Egypt? It seems as though most of what we study in history is new and totally interesting, but Egypt is cool for a while and then just is kind of done. Anyway, we read and did a map and looked it up in a couple of other books.

After that I pulled out Benjamin Franklin by the D'Aulaires. Harry has been very excited to read it so it was a big hit. We read a few pages but not too far, I want the book to last. Harry narrated the pages we read--I'll post it tomorrow.

He played for a while after that. Jason took Sam out to get batteries and Harry and I got back into the math. He did both a page in MUS and his timed drill. I need to make sure he does the drill every day, I can tell by his scores if he takes days off of it.

He also practiced his writing. And we read the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. After that we drew some wolves that actually look like fluffy turtles!

A True Adventure

I've been feeling lately as if our Family Learning Adventure is, well, lacking in adventure. So I've been looking for ways to remedy that. A hs group here in our area sent out an email that they were going to have a nature walk this morning in a place a little less than an hour away. It didn't take me long to scrap our learning plans for the morning/day, pack a picnic, and set off.

The first sign that this plan might go awry was the place where the nature walk was to be held. It wasn't in some gorgeous park with trees and good signage. It also wasn't really in a great neighborhood at all. But we were on an adventure so we persevered on, making sure to lock the car doors.

We were the first to arrive--only a bit nerve-wracking when we realized that we were in a not-great neighborhood and even the coordinator wasn't there. Still, we were up for an adventure. And we wandered around the preserve. It was billed as a native-plant preserve, so I pictured some cactus, sage, stuff like that. And it was there, kind of. There were very few signs to tell us what we were seeing and of the signs that were there, most were broken. Also, quite a few of the plants were dead.

Honestly, I was thinking, "I wasted my gas for this, I put three kids in the car to see a few half-dead plants which we can't even identify? And where is the coordinator? Was the whole thing a scam to get pregnant women and their children into a remote, not-very-nice place?"

But I sucked it up and adventured onward, trying to have a good attitude for the kids while looking around the whole time for escape routes. They, on the other hand, had a good time finding neat plants and rocks, sitting on the various benches and rating them for cleanliness. They also sat down on one of the clean benches and drew pictures of one of the things they had seen that they liked.

Even I was getting into the adventure. Until the dog came...But you can read about that below.

Lame

What kind of person sees that his large dog is terrorizing three small children while their very pregnant mom is trying to pick all three of them up so the dog doesn't jump on them, and then walk leisurely over to get the dog? And then not even put the dog back on the leash which is in said lame person's hand and allow the dog to run more through the park?

Sometimes I get REALLY annoyed with people.

Terrific Tuesday?

Today went quickly. It seems as though the days do that lately.

Harry started off in Math--he did a page in his MUS book, actually he did two. It's hard--he needs the practice on these simpler problems, but at the same time, he's kind of past it. I want to start him on the next level, but I don't know if he truly is ready or it's me pushing him.

Anyway, he did his math in record time. I had a little thing for Sam and Annika to do, gluing letters onto some paper, and Harry joined them once he was finished.

Ahh, and the bane of Harry's existence came next. He HATES copywork. Actually he hates any kind of writing. But the only way to get better at it is to do it, so...he had some copywork next. It dealt with the weather which is what we are working on for science. It took him less time to actually accomplish it than it did to whine about how much he didn't like it, a point I made sure to show him!

Since we got home from speech classes late, it was lunch time, and we read yet more of Midsummer. During quiet time he and I looked up the weather around the country and our area.

And the schooly part of our day came to a conclusion!

Monday, monday

I was all set to post and blogger was down, so here's the Monday wrap up.

We started out by reading more Midsummer. Not a whole lot, but enough to advance the story. Harry really thinks it's funny. I love it. While I was reading he painted a picture of the Fairy Forest in the story and when I was finished with our reading for the day, he told me all about it. I'll post his story in a little while when the kids aren't right here. Plus I have to go downstairs for it and I really don't want to again.

After Harry and Annika went outside to play for a few minutes while I got set up for our next thing. Which I suddenly don't remember. We read some Aesop's Fables, he narrated one. We also read Horatius at the Bridge from 50 Famous Stories Retold. He narrated that too.

Harry watched the next Math-U-See lesson on subtracting from 10 and did the page in his book for that. He also did his timed test for the day.

We picked up Sam from preschool and did some shopping. (Harry needed new church pants and a white shirt for Sunday). I ended up without a white shirt but with church pants and a couple of outfits for the new little girl that will be joining us soon. That was fun!

In the afternoon we did a neat craft that involved acrylic paints and a chrysanthemum. The boys made "Mum Prints." Annika painted herself with blue and purple kid paints. I'm not about to give her something that's going to stain.

That's about it. It was a pretty nice day.

I didn't realize

it had been quite so long.

Yikes. Well, in my defense, there has been learning happening here, I just haven't posted about it.

So without further ado, here's what we've done this morning:

Math--one page of his current lesson in MUS. I also decided that Harry really should know how to grip a pencil correctly, so we worked on that.

We read a bunch pages from Midsummer Night's Dream. The version we are reading is really interesting and fun, Harry keeps asking to read more. Sometimes I do, but most times I don't--I have to make sure he understands what is happening. (True story: Harry just saw me writing this and, I quote, said, "I wish we were reading Midsummer right now. I really like it. So, does Oberon think that Puck is funny? I don't, he plays mean tricks on people") I think he understands it pretty well!

I had them color and cut out a bunch of autumn shapes yesterday so we strung them onto a ribbon for a decoration. Today they had to match up some leaf stickers by shape and size so we could make it even prettier.

Play and snack time.

I got out the play dough and everyone joined in. We read a chapter from Story of the World about ancient China--farming, pictograms, and dynasties. We used play dough to make up our own pictograms and talked about how life was different back then. Harry and I used the SOTW activity book directions to begin making our "Ming Bowl." Once it dries, he'll paint it blue and white.

Lunch time and Child's History of the World. We read a chapter on the Egyptians. This led to another chapter also on the Egyptians and a discussion about if these people were alive at the same time as people in the Bible and Book of Mormon. I really need to get started on some kind of a Book of Centuries or time line. Things will make way more sense.

It's quiet time and Annika is asleep. Sam and I are going to play a game he got from speech (I'll have to write about that soon) and then I'll get both boys up to paint with acrylics. Not something I'm willing to do when Annika is around!

After that is an early dinner and soccer practice.

Thursday is our "day off," we only have Sam's speech class which ends at 8:25. Then we get to go home and do fun learning things. I love Thursdays!