Slices of Life

We decided to take a purposeful day off from school today. I always have a hard time figuring out WHEN is a good time for taking a day off. We take days of here and there when we have too many other things to do; doctors appointments, errands, preparing for holidays, etc. We take days of here and there when the kids or myself get sick. But we rarely take days off just to take them off and enjoy; like a vacation.  Today we decided to pretend we were on vacation. Ian and I finished up The Hunger Games last night at bedtime and the younger boys and I read another chapter in the Gameknight999 series so as I settled into bed last night thinking about all the reading we had done and the fact that two of the boys had completed their math workbooks, I decided it was the perfect time for a day off. We were all excited at the prospect of a long weekend. I was hopeful to turn this Friday into a field trip day but the weather was iffy.  It was cool and cloudy and looked like rain. I did n...

We've had a lot of fun slacking off for the last week or so but it's time to get back to work. We did lots of sledding and pursuing our own interests but I could see it was time to get back to the real world.  My boys were really getting addicted to video games and screens and I was feeling guilty that I wasn't teaching them anything.   We started in lightly and kept it nice and fun today We did not worry about everyone covering every subject We played lot of games We made sure most of our subjects were hands- on We left plenty of time for self- guided learning  For science:    We tried to make a dough combining hair conditioner and corn starch. We made a great sensory snow dough last year using conditioner and baking soda so we thought why not try corn starch?!  Once we combined the two we noticed it was still a pretty watery dough and it was a bit to sticky for what the boys had in mind so we ended up adding some baking soda to it as wel...

We had a rough morning of tears and frustration.  After trying repeatedly to engage all of my boys in learning I decided we just needed to take a break. So, of course my boys occupied themselves and showed me, once again, that hands- on learning is best.   Ian was "plowing" his math facts and Evan was reading.  Building on Evan's sight word road block game , we drew up a road of math facts for Ian to practice and covered them with corn starch for his plow to uncover.  I observed silently from the sidelines and just let them be on their own.  I was happy they were doing work and content to see what else they would do.  I was impressed with how fast and how well Ian could recall many of the multiplication facts on his sheet and the strategies he used to come up with those answers he didn't know.      Alec started playing Beyblades and the next thing I knew they all were giggling, laughing, and having Beyblade battles....