1. Meditation with music from R. Carlos Nakai
2. Journals
3. Math - Khy and Stormy did a worksheet of long division, while Nicky finished the last two pages in his first grade math workbook. He was VERY proud.
4. When Love Speaks Sonnet #17 "Who will believe my verse in time to come," read by Richard Attenborough.
5. Livejournal topic - "For my next birthday I would like..." review of HTML tags - italics, bold and font color. (Stormy) (Khy) (Nicky)
6. Review of Greece and Ancient Greece. Kids looked up the flag and colored a picture of it. Reviewed map terms. Handout of the Greek alphabet, each of the kids used it to write their names.
7. Khy and Stormy filled out a Job application for Mount Olympus, pretending to be a god applying for a retiring god's position.
8. Nicky read Dick and Jane for ten minutes. The book we're reading from is actually a compilation of three Dick and Jane books. The first one starts very simply and gets progressively harder. The second one stays at about that same difficulty all the way through. And the third one is similar to the first, in that it's very simple in the beginning and increases the difficulty as you go along. So today we started the third book, and Nicky was actually making fun of how easy it was to read.

1. Meditation
2. Journals
3. Current Events (Khy read about dog show, Stormy about dinosaur bones) while Nicky read Dick and Jane. Then Khy and Stormy livejournaled "If I had a million dollars..." (Stormy) (Khy)
4. Math practice - Khy and Stormy did a page of multiplication while Nicky did a page of subtraction from here.
5. We read a myth about the start of the Olympics in ebook form from netlibrary.
6. We read about the history of the Olympic torch here and here.
7. Khy and Stormy finished their math and spelling homework while I worked with Nicky on a money worksheet. I swear he was a banker in a past life - he took right to counting money.

1. Meditation
2. Journal
3. Read three stories from Mary Pope Osborne's Favorite Greek Myths (Helios and Phaeton, Midas, and Atalanta.) Discussed.
4. Assigned paragraph to Khy and Stormy on their favorite story of the day. Met with pretty major resistance from both. It's interesting because I've raised expectations lately with all three kids, and Nicky has really risen to the challenge. For the first time he's excited about school, asking to do extra things. Khy and Stormy, on the other hand, have been fighting it tooth and nail. I think it's just a transitional period, but there's no doubt they've gotten a bit lazy.
5. Nicky and I worked through mixed addition and subtraction problems. This one was set up so that it was much easier to show him the relationship between all the numbers.
6. Nicky took his phonics test for Letter H.
7. Stormy and Khy took a spelling test and vocabulary test. Khy missed 2 on spelling, Stormy missed 2 on vocabulary.
8. Nicky was dismissed from school early so I could focus on Stormy and Khy as we work through their first research paper. They've assembled the research on their favorite Greek gods or heroes, and now they're learning about the structure of paragraphs and papers as they write. (Khy is writing about Hercules and Stormy is writing about Hades.) Interestingly, both seemed to be having fun with the research paper, as opposed to their earlier attitudes about the paragraph I had asked them to write. Maybe it's just the difference between long hand and computer, since I'm letting them use the computer for the bigger project...
9. Tonight we'll be watching the Olympics opening ceremonies.

1. Meditation
2. Journals
3. Current Events (Khy read about Bush's State of the Union address while Stormy read an interview with one of the kids from Nanny McPhee) - Nicky read the first five chapters of Dick and Jane to me
4. Math problems at the dry erase board.
5. Map work - Greece. I gave them all a blank map of Greece and made a list on the board of what landmarks I wanted them to find and identify. Nicky learned about islands, mountains and peninsulas, and then browsed a map site on the internet. He was especially amused when I told him that Iceland is green and Greenland is icy.
6. We watched a video about Greece. It was lovely and fun to see, but speaking only for the teacher, not the best choice to watch on a grey day in Mid-Winter Funk. Funny note - they showed images of a monastery in Greece where no women are allowed, and it's said no woman has set foot there in a thousand years. Stormy immediately said she wanted to go there someday.
7. While I read another book about the sound of G to Nicky, and he then chose a G word for his word wall and another one to draw a picture of (and he is finally, finally starting to grasp phonics), Khy and Stormy worked on spelling homework. I also assigned a paragraph where they have to explain what part of ancient Greece they would've wanted to live in and why.

Today could have gone better - we had problems with the map assignment but I think it boiled down to my not being clear enough with my expectations and instructions.

1. Meditation/Journals
2. Baby check - 12 weeks. Sent Jacqui email card.
3. Read aloud from the Random House Book of Greek Myths while the kids drew pictures of gods.
First Humans - Prometheus steals fire from the gods. Discussed what Prometheus had in common with humans (he loves his brother) and what makes him super human (his liver regenerates every night.) and charted it.
Pandora - A different version of the myth than we were familiar with, discussed the differences and deeper meaning.
The Great Flood - After reading this we read Noah's Ark online and compared the stories.
4. Nicky and I read My F Sound Box and then made a list of F words (nice ones, that is) on the dry erase board while Khy and Stormy worked privately on their research project.
5. Nicky played educational computer games while I reviewed last week's spelling list with Khy and Stormy. First we spelled them out letter by letter together (Khy saying all vowels in their turn, Stormy saying the consonants) and then we played a spelling game.

( more spelling game info here )

6. I walked them through the beginning process of creating on-line journals.
Homework - Cursive page.

I am sick as a dog, but officially on winter break. Hurray! For our last day of fall term we finally finished our raft experiment, floating the popsicle stick rafts in the bathtub and seeing how many pennies they could hold before sinking. When the first one took 54 pennies I got a little worried that we'd done TOO well at building the rafts, because the kids were getting a little bored with it. Once it went down, though, it seemed to up the stakes a little and they all got into rooting for their favorites to win. It was a pretty fun exercise.

After that we made scented ornaments for the tree. They were sort of a pain to make, but that could have just been me. Regardless, we had fun, and last night the whole house smelled like apples and cinnamon while they were drying! Very cool.

( Scented ornaments recipe here )

The spelling test went well - Stormy missed none, and Khy only missed one, and I think that was more carelessness than confusion, because he spelled "brain" as "brian." Nicky named 5 "B" words with ease, and would have kept going if I hadn't stopped him.

And I narrowly managed to finish the aviation unit and the Greece/Myths units for next term this last week. I really pushed myself to get it done, maybe a little too much - but now I should be able to relax through Winter break. Hallelujah.