Slices of Life

I barely slept at all last night.  My somewhat icky feeling I woke with yesterday turned into a full blown head cold last night and I'm all stuffed up, grouchy and tired.  Not a great way to start a homeschooling day. I debated about taking a day off today but since the boys were a bit restless I pulled out a little bit of work to keep them occupied. They each had all day to do three worksheets and I had planned to read a few stories but that was it. They loved that they could come and go and work at their own pace today.  I loved that the worksheets were mostly independent work and I could be mostly left alone to rest (hey, at least I'm honest!). My oldest son couldn't wait to get outside and shovel.  His ski pants were in the wash though and so he had to wait.  The wait seemed like it was going to do him in so I suggested he start on his work.  His brothers were not ready to start school (one of them wasn't even awake!), but Ian is my morning per...

While I was planning our school day today the boys ate breakfast and then Alec worked on putting together his new Lego set while Ian and Evan played with the Gears, Gears, Gears bucket.  They ran around and pretended they were Harry Potter and using Evan's old robe, glasses and wand they made up spells (that Alec wrote down in a little notebook).  It was a wonderfully child- led learning kind of morning but the boys wanted to settle down and get to work.   We began with decoding the sight words for Evan.  I had cut up some computer paper into small squares and wrote sight words using white crayons.  He then had to use watercolors to make the words magically appear.  I then had him spell and read the sight words to me.  While we were working on that Alec and Ian started on math.  We had ordered some 12 sided dice from Amazon the other day and since they had finally come in I pulled out a fun worksheet called Kno...

We've picked up a lot of books and movies about Australia.    I try to keep a nice mix of fiction and non- fiction.  I also ordered quite a few aboriginal folk tales and lots of books about the animals of Australia since that is what the two youngest boys are interested in.  Ian couldn't wait to watch this travel video about Australia .  We watched this video some time last year and he really wanted to see it again. The younger two boys took off with the books  Diary of a Wombat  and  Diary of a Baby Wombat  (two more books in the  Christmas Wombat  series that they just love) and went to Evan's room to read them together. For our Australia study we read Possum Magic , and Australian Animals . We then made a quick and yummy snack called Fairy Bread that they eat at children's parties in Australia.  The boys enjoyed this yummy sugary snack.. well except for Alec! To make fairy bread you take soft, fresh whit...

What a crazy day! We had so may errands and spent much of our day running around. On days when we have to spend a lot of time in the car I look for ways that we can squeeze in learning activities on the go. Often we'll: Listen to an audiobook Watch a movie on our portable DVD player Bring activity books like dot to dot books or mad libs to work on while driving Use worksheets, clipboard, and a pencil to complete work in the car Rely on life lessons; dealing with cashiers, adding up our purchases, comparing prices, navigating our way around, etc. Play educational games on the Kindles/ Nintendo DS  Bring along picture book for the older boys to take turns reading Today the boys were all up and ready early so we headed to the grocery store.  We listened to the Boxcar Children's Caboose Mystery   while driving in the car.    At the grocery store they helped me, like usual, with Ian pushing the second cart and Alec and Evan reading the list and crossing the items off...

We had a shortened day of school since this morning found all three boys playing so well together!  They were playing, writing, and problem solving so I just let them be until they all came to me looking for some ideas of what to do.  Ian and Alec worked on a winter vocabulary crossword puzzle.  It was, I think, a fun way for them to work on reading, spelling, and, of course, vocabulary. Evan was working on a sight word sheet with our magnetic letters. We finally read all the words on the sheet together.  He told me each of the letters he needed (though he still struggled with h and f so I think we'll play some more alphabet games to reinforce those a bit) and set to work finding them on our refrigerator.  He put them in order on his paper and then I asked him to spell them for me and read them one more time.  He struggled and struggled and finally I just let him go play. searching for letters Our completed language arts papers He picked...