Nicky had a little trouble coming to school today, on account of he was throwing a fit about getting out of bed. So we shook up the schedule a little bit, and started with Khy and Stormy's times tables. I'd sort of dropped the last few - the hardest few - numbers on them and run, so this is the first time I've gotten a glimpse of how they're faring with the 4's, 6's, 7's, 8's and 12's. Not too bad, really. Better than I expected. While ideally I want to see them memorized so they don't even have to think too much about the answers, they're doing an excellent job at mentally figuring out the answers that they don't immediately know. When Nicky joined us we did journals and phase one of our raft project. It's an activity that I found when I was looking for supporting materials for Huck Finn. Using popsicle sticks, you glue them together to make model rafts. You always start with two as supports, and then glue the rest across them. For the first raft you only use two popsicle stick "planks," and then four on the next, six on the next, 8 on the next, and 10 on the last. Then you glue a dixie cup on each one, in the center. We got that much done today (Nicky and I built the biggest raft, using the 10 planks, while Stormy and Khy built two rafts each) and then left them to dry. Tomorrow we'll fill the bath tub up with water and float one raft at a time, adding pennies to the dixie cup, to see how many we can add before the raft sinks. I have a chart for them to fill out, and then we'll graph the results as well.

During snack time we finished a story web that we've been doing for Huck Finn, and I walked them through a book report form on it as well. Then we switched gears and practiced our music. I finally tracked down a site that plays a midi-style version of both Yellow Submarine and Maxwell's Silver Hammer, so the kids can perform sans the Beatles' voices. We're stuck with Elvis on Return to Sender for now, though. We spent the most time on Yellow Submarine, first trying to get it down with different music, and then polishing up the choreography a bit. I've decided they'll be performing it for us on Yule, and I think it's going to be awesome, if I do say so myself. We also practiced a little bit on the other two songs, but they won't be ready until after Winter Break. I did ask for volunteers for a solo bit on Return to Sender, and both Stormy and Nicky tried it and were just adorable. It's going to be hard to decide which one to use. But I have something special planned on Maxwell's Silver Hammer for whichever two don't do a solo on the Elvis, so everyone will get a chance to shine. We are SO doing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody next! :P

Today we studied the band Queen, listening to some of their music and watching a video of their Live Aid performance in 1985. We practiced our songs - the two Beatles songs and the one Elvis. The kids are able to sing them without the sheets now, and I have some cute ideas for choreography. Shane is planning on talking to someone at work who might be able to come up with the background music for us, since right now we're having to just sing along with the originals. I'm hoping at some point to video tape some of this stuff, as a record of what we worked on this year.

We drilled multiplication facts, did flashcards, and learned all the secrets of 9's. Nicky worked on subtraction in his workbook, while Khy and Stormy took a timed multiplication quiz. This is the first time I've timed them, and I really thought it would be Khy that the pressure got to from it, but instead it was Stormy in tears over it by the end. Still, she finished. I hate doing it to them, but they do need some experience with this since they'll have to face testing eventually, both to stay homeschooled and someday, hopefully, in college. So I've got to toughen them up a little. She'll do fine next time, I think.

Planned to have the kids write emails to Santa today, but we had all sorts of computer problems, so that will have to wait for tomorrow. The kids got a little practice with the Spongebob Squarepants Typing program, which is really great.

It was pretty hit and miss today. My students bailed on me, first of all - Khy used a coupon to get out of the school day, while Nicky used one to start an hour late. So it was just Stormy and I doing meditation and practicing the 3 times table. We did a worksheet together and then I quizzed her with flash cards. After that Nicky was compelled to join us, and he was pretty resistant. I finally got him to do some subtraction worksheets from his workbook. He enjoyed it a lot when I phrased it as "Look, Nicky has 6 apples. And that MEAN MOM of his STOLE 2 of them! So how many apples does poor little Nicky have left?" Yeah, he liked that.

We had some choir practice, singing Yellow Submarine and Return to Sender. Then Nicky had another meltdown, this one taking about half an hour to diffuse. Afterward, we finished singing Maxwell's Silver Hammer, and then we read a great book called Monster Money. It was a very cute, simple story, introducing the concept of pennies, nickles and dimes. It included a ton of really neat and easy supporting activity suggestions in the back, too, so we did several of those. This was way below Stormy's level, but she pitched in as a great helper and played along. I got out change from my wallet for Nicky to work with, and he caught on really quickly.

The day is nasty so this afternoon we'll have to do an indoor P.E. I'm thinking we might tackle one of those dance activities like the Y.M.C.A. or the Macarena. We'll see. I'm feeling better than I did yesterday, but I'd honestly rather be in bed. Nasty weather, good day for it. Does napping count as Physical Education? :P

Today went strangely. I think everybody felt a little off kilter going into it, for one reason or another. I quizzed Khy and Stormy aloud on the multiplication facts that they've learned so far, and they're really getting them down. We added 3s today.

For music class I had checked out two Elvis movies from the library, and let the kids vote for which one they wanted to watch. They chose King Creole, so that's what we watched. I don't even know where to begin with that movie. It wasn't like I went in expecting something spectacular. It wasn't really like I went in expecting anything at all, actually. Not a big Elvis fan, here. And I realize it's a different age, but still! The character Elvis was playing treated his girlfriend like total dirt, and she, the whimpering spineless little wretch, ATE IT UP. Gross. Just gross. Well, it was a good example to my children of how NOT to behave in a relationship, at least. As for Elvis himself I have to say, everytime I started to think for a minute that maybe he was awfully pretty after all, his hair would start flopping around and dancing on it's own and all I really wanted to do was hand the boy a comb. Guess I'm a Beatles girl at heart. I'm not sure what the kids really thought - but I do know they enjoyed dancing around to the music.

When we went to practice our songs, Khy couldn't stop yawning. At that point he was acting kind of strangely anyway - almost rebellious - so we wound up calling off rehearsal for today and I assigned everyone stuff for independent work. Mostly spelling related. Then Khy and I had a heart to heart in my bedroom, covering everything from his concerns about being good enough to play on the basketball team, how hard it is to be the only homeschooler at the Boys and Girls Club, how to handle conversations with his friends about God and religion and how important it is to believe in yourself instead of waiting for others to tell you you're okay. He's always so stressed about what people think of him that it nearly paralyzes him, and since I have some of the same problems, it's hard for me to help him with it. But we had a good talk and both went away feeling a little better. Though I'm still not sure what any of it had to do with yawning during music class. :P After we finished he came back in, very serious and sincere, telling me there was one more thing he needed to ask me about. "Mom, why did we buy paper cups?" We bought some little dixie cups for an experiment we're doing this week, and because the only package they had at the store was a big one, we've been having the kids use the extras for water. Khy was VERY distraught over the waste of so much paper product. Hee. I love my little environmentalist, yes, I do.

But I do know that it's some of the very same qualities that tell me what a good man he's going to be someday that also make me sad, thinking how hard every day is for him. He's such a thinker and a feeler, and long after most people have forgotten all about something, he's still analyzing it for deeper meaning. It's hard to live in the world when you're so sensitive to things, so aware of every little detail.

We're about to head out to do some P.E. I think we'll mostly focus on basketball stuff, since Stormy has her first practice tonight. She has the same coach as last year, which is FABULOUS, but I have a strong feeling she's going to be the only girl on the team, which is hard.

It amuses me how much I enjoy our Music and Math days. They seem to be the best of the week right now, and I was very resistant to teaching the kids math because it's always been such a weak subject for me. The way that I was taught was very much by rote, so none of it ever really made sense to me and I didn't always know WHY we were doing what we did, I just did what I was told. It really squashed any intuitive understanding I might've had for numbers, and caused me to spend years struggling until I finally gave up and decided it was just something I didn't have the capacity to understand. Then there's my husband who really understands numbers and is able to communicate them to the kids in a very natural way so that they don't just learn how to do things by memorizing what they're taught, but they have an understanding of how and why. It's so much more solid and useful that way, and I was afraid that I would ruin it for them by confusing them with my way. But obviously Shane works full time, and it's been a struggle for us to make time for him to teach the kids regularly. So we've compromised, and Shane works with them for about an hour a week on Wednesday evenings, and I work with them during the week now as well. His focus is on theory and application, while my main purpose is drilling and practice. It's been working out pretty well. Now, the day will certainly come when they'll be far beyond my abilities and then we'll have to make other arrangements. But you know, I actually feel like I've been getting better at math, and that by being around Shane and the kids' classes I'm re-learning the more intuitive approach that was once drilled out of me in school.

So today we watched Multiplication Rock from the Schoolhouse Rock line of videos. LOVE them.

"And nobody really knows
How wonderful you are
Why we could never reach a star
Without you, zero, my hero
How wonderful you are"

Then I did flash cards of 0, 1, 2, 5, 10, and 11 with Khy and Stormy, while Nicky used the wipe-off board to practice his small letter printing. (Up to now he'd been participating happily with us during multiplication classes, but then I discovered he would get really confused later about the difference between multiplying and adding 1s and 0s.) After that I gave the big kids another 64 problem quiz, and this time they both finished much faster and with much less stress. Khy missed none and Stormy only missed one. So I think we'll be moving on to learning 3s next week. Nicky did a page from his addition workbook - it was addition up to 20 which he had a little trouble with. I worked with him, letting him figure the easier ones on his own, and then helping him count using his fingers for the harder ones.

Then we did music - today we moved from the Beatles to Elvis. (Yeah, we had to backtrack slightly.) We read a little bit about him in Kathleen Krull's Book of Rockstars and we listened to Hound Dog, Jailhouse Rock and Suspicious Minds. I printed out the music for Return to Sender, so we're learning that to sing. Fun song. We also practiced Maxwell's Silver Hammer and Yellow Submarine by the Beatles. I figure if I add at least one song per artist to our reparatory we'll be able to make our own little concert before too long! Rehearsal was really fun, and I have some great ideas of different things we can do for a performance. That will definitely be something for the video camera!

For P.E. I went in with nothing planned at all. I ended up doing some old Tae Bo stuff with them to begin with, and that sort of led into all of us suggesting new things to try. I taught them some footwork exercises which they thought were great fun, which inspired me to teach them how to do the grapevine, which led to them all making up new ways of walking (my favorite was Khy's "walk like an action figure" where he jumped on both feet across the floor - too funny) so we just sort of had a controlled free for all across the garage floor. We played leapfrog next, and then I had them try walking three-legged race style, without the race. By the end we had gotten pretty silly (I tied Khy's left leg to Stormy's right leg and her left leg to Nicky's right leg and they tried to walk that way), but we never got dangerous, everyone had fun and we all got some exercise. Very good day. I wish I could bottle it to make every day this relaxed and fun. I think that's probably the key, though, right there - that it was all very casual and no stress and so everyone could enjoy themselves. Note to self - take a hint.

Bonus link: Rhythmic Activities
I think I might try some of these for future PEs. Hokey, some of them, but fun.
In fact, this whole website seems to have a lot of great resources for Physical Education.