Busy Monday Fun: A Typical Homeschooling Day

We woke with a huge list once again for our Monday.  Schooling was just the tip of the iceberg.

Math:  Evan was ready first so we started with his verbal math lesson and he, once again, worked on adding two and three numbers together up to sums of nine.  I have to remind him often not to just guess but to figure out the answer.   I took turns working with Alec and Ian and we finished up their current lesson on adding two digit numbers.  They did great and even managed to answer word problems that had all sorts of added numbers in there that they didn't need; they were able to sort through the problem and pick out the information they needed to solve the equations.  They both studied their flash cards and took their math minutes.  Ian passed his 5's and will move onto his 4's so that him and Alec are working on the same facts for now.


Spelling and Writing:  This is a fairly new subject for us and today I needed the boys to all write a sample post card for our swaps this month as well as practicing their spelling word lists.

Ian wanted to practice typing his spelling words on the computer while Alec told me he was ready for me to quiz him.  

Alec flew through all the words and I asked him if the thought these words were to easy.  I had started him at a third grade level not knowing what would be a good fit for him.  He asked me to move him to 4th grade.  I called up the fourth grade list 1 and he flew through those too only getting two of the twenty wrong.  He asked me to try another list.  We tried list 6 and he found those words to be a challenge.  Thinking they might be too hard I then tried list 4.   Ian offered to quiz Alec on list 4 so I could work with Evan on his reading.  Alec only got three wrong and since that would be graded at an 85 I allowed him to go onto list 5.  I printed those words off for next week.  

He's ahead of Ian in spelling but so far Ian seems to be OK with that understanding that Alec reads a lot more and is exposed to so many more words.

Ian typing up his words-- he made some rather funny and creative sentences out of them too!

Reading: Evan and I were mostly done his reading lesson by the time the older boys finished spelling.  We started on lesson three in his reading book and learned the sounds g, short e, and th.  He then read part of the book Up! Tall! And High! to me.  It's a cute book about comparisons and is broken into three short stories.  He read the first story to me and I read the other two to him.  I also read Dance!, Is it Dark? Is It Light?, and What Will Fat Cat Sit On?   While I was supposed to be the one reading to him, he often chimed in and read a few words here and there anyway.

Evan was ready to practice his spelling words.  He wanted to try writing them in shaving cream and after writing one word decided that was too messy for him.  We finally settled on pulling out paints, paintbrushes and paper and he wrote his words in paint.  He seemed to really enjoy this and was able to read all the words to me as he wrote them.  While they were all at the kitchen table they asked for some hot cocoa for snack and the next thing I knew we had a science experiment on our hands!


Self guided Science: Evan wanted to make his cocoa more chocolaty and wanted to know what would happen when he put Whoppers in his mug.  He put a few in and shared with his brothers so they could experiment too.  They were surprised to see that the Whoppers were floating but I asked them if they thought the Whoppers would ever sink.  I wasn't sure myself but figured if the chocolate wore off of the outside the wafer part inside would probably suck up the cocoa and sink.  They kept checking on the Whoppers and comparing results.  My husband argued that this wasn't science (later when we told him about it at dinner) but I pointed out that the boys wondered what would happen, made a prediction and carried out an experiment to see what the results would be.  That, to me, is the basic basis of all scientific experiments.

Their inspiration


Checking on the Whoppers
Read Aloud: During lunch I read another chapter of Harry Potter to the boys and they all stopped me half way through to remark on how different the book is turning out to be from the movie.  They were genuinely excited about some of the parts of the book and couldn't seem to contain themselves.  They love to repeat their favorite parts to one another and so I waited while they played around with the words.

Life Skills and Science: We got cleaned up and headed out for an afternoon of errands.  We got pumpkins, picked apples and went hiking.  We had a lot of driving around to do and so we listened to another CD from the House of Hades book.

We had a great time on our hike.  We went to a new state park called Bigelow Hollow and we walked a trail all around the lake.  It took us about an hour and we had fun looking all around at these new surroundings.  We ended our day with a stop at the library.  We picked out another huge bagful of books and watched a giant blue jay playing on the lawn when we came out. 
  
Apple picking

Checking out the park maps

Looking at the streams

We discovered beaver signs on our walk

The fall colors aren't super vibrant this year but they're starting


Look at this huge rock!

Alec found a fun tree to play on

The boys pointed out the different colored pine needles to me on the
forest floors

Looking down the lake

The blue jay we saw at the library

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