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.

Today we started with meditation. While I had them all settled and paying attention, I led them through an exercise where they all had to picture someone from the family who wasn't me, and feel love for that other person, and think of something about them that was really great. We've had a lot of sibling angst lately, and I really just wanted them to take a minute or two to consider the positive side of having siblings, because it's easy to wallow in the negative side. Says me, raised an only child. :P

We started with Spelling Bingo, and dived right into an ethical dilemma for Stormy. She hasn't won in weeks, and only needed one word to win. It was "pieces," and she mispelled it. We were all sad for her. So a couple of rounds later the word she gets to spell is "vacation," which we all know is the word that Nicky needs to win. I watched the struggle on her face, and she hesitantly spelled "V-A-C-A-" pause-pause-guiltylook-pause - "I-O-N." I looked at her another beat and then said, "you did that on purpose, didn't you?" She had the grace to be embarrassed immediately. I asked her if she would really feel good about herself, winning, knowing she'd basically cheated her little brother. She took another minute, and then respelled the word the right way, giving Nicky the win.

We watched The Adventures of Huck Finn, which we all enjoyed. Khy was disappointed that Tom Sawyer wasn't in the movie at all, but we all really liked Jim's portrayal. Then we took a final test on the whole she-bang - I just asked the questions aloud and we all discussed the answers. Everyone did well. We didn't have time to finish our raft project, so we'll have to do it tomorrow. But for all intents and purposes, we're done with Huck.

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

Stormy absolutely could not sleep last night (and naturally I'm feeling guilty for passing on some mysterious insomnia gene - I mean, really - she's EIGHT) so she and I watched an hour of the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice ("Mom, Mr. Darcy is a creep.") and finally fell asleep at 2am. Morning was hard. We started late, but still managed to finish reading Huck Finn today. (What a great story! Now I remember why I loved it enough to want to force it on my kids.) That was about all we did today, aside from going over the week's spelling list and letter B for Nicky.

Today was hodgepodge - we listened to two chapters of Huck Finn, made spinning color wheels out of cardboard and string, practiced with our fact family cards, and played Spelling Bingo (which both boys won.) In fact Khy and Stormy are getting so good at their spelling lists I might have to jump them up a level next term.

We listened to another 4 chapters of the Huck Finn audio book today. We're running a little long with this unit if we want to be done by Winter break. I think, since I'm still a little thin on Science and Art stuff for the next couple of weeks, I'll be putting in some extra time on Huck Finn instead - this way we'll get a chance to see a movie or two of it as well, hopefully. Still, we're getting close to the end, and everyone has been enjoying listening to it. For an activity today we learned a little bit about watersheds, and the kids made their own 3-D relief maps. This turned out SO very neat, I really had no idea they would look so good and be so fun and easy.

Spelling Lists, Nicky and I talked about the short letter U sound, and that was it for the day. The kids got some free time that Nicky spent on the computer, Stormy spent re-organizing her cubby, and Khy spent reading the Phantom Tollbooth.

I'm still not completely sure whether I was really sick last week, or just blew everything off and pretended to be. Either way we didn't get much schooling done. This week I've come back with a new perspective, because I think I was already getting burnt out. More than anything I've been getting really tired of trying to stick to such a strict time schedule. I thought it would work because I, personally, need to be very scheduled and structured or else I'll blow things off. But I still thought I'd left enough wiggle room to make it bearable, and I really don't think that I did. Or maybe I just wasn't taking advantage of the wiggle room. But really, I'm a homeschooler, so why am I getting up at 7am?

( More about our day here )

Today we had to do a little catch up from yesterday, since we took a family sick day. Most of us just had the blahs. Or maybe we're broken - we don't know how to do a full week of school! Anyway, today we caught up on 4 chapters of the Huck Finn audio book. We played Buzz and a "ball game" (players start across the room, teacher stands at the finish line, says a multiplication problem and tosses ball, student must say correct answer before catching the ball. Student advances one step for every correct answer, so the time to answer gets progressively shorter, the closer they get to the finish line.) to help drill the multiplication facts we've studied, and we went over this week's spelling list. While Khy and Stormy took a multiplication quiz, Nicky and I reviewed the vowels he's learned so far - A, E and I - and we started working on O. I'm really pleased and surprised by his memory, and he's really starting to show signs of connecting with reading now. We read a Spongebob beginning reader book together that Nicky was very excited about but I wasn't impressed with it at all. I guess it was nice in that it makes a non-reader feel like he's reading along (it had pictures in place of certain words) but I didn't see a lot of use for it beyond that. I really like the early reader books that have a few simple words that are repeated, because then I can have Nicky be in charge of reading those words, and he begins to remember them and watch for them and pay more attention to the text as I read to him. We're skipping PE again today, since Stormy's still nursing a sore throat and has a basketball game tonight. Besides, I need a nap.

I can't believe we're at the halfway mark of the fall term already.

Today we listened to 5 chapters of Huck Finn, the audio book. Quite amazingly, all the kids got to follow along with the text on their own computers today. It pays to marry a computer geek! The hospital regularly upgrades their computers, and they often donate the older ones to local schools. Shane works pretty closely with the guy who handles all of that, and didn't have to work too hard to convince the guy to donate three computers to our homeschool. So we now have our own computer lab! We just got them set up over the weekend and I'm still in shock over our good fortune. We'll need to get speakers (we’ll probably do headphones instead, actually), but aside from that, we’re good to go. I’ve only started to imagine the possibilities with this!

Khy did his make-up spelling test from last week, and didn't miss any at all. He was VERY excited and proud. After that we went over the new list for this week, and then I just let them have at their new computers for some free play. It's so funny to see how excited they are, since it isn't as though they've never been allowed near a computer before. I suppose it's a different feeling, though, when you know it's All Yours.

I'll have to spend some time this week working on a list of goals for computer lab. Obviously I plan to incorporate the computers into a lot of the pre-existing lessons, but I also want to have specific work-at-your-own-pace things for them to do as well. I have a Spongebob Typing program that I'll install, plus I've already been requiring them to write one email a week. They can borrow educational games from the library once the speakers are working, and I might think about setting up a new links page similar to the one I already made for them, but with educational links only. I need to start planning how to go about teaching them graphics and web page stuff, too, since they've shown an interest. I was even thinking about eventually setting up a blog or livejournal situation for them as well, since they're already in the habit of keeping a paper journal every day... I'm so excited about this!

Yes, evil person that I am, I made my kids do school on Halloween. They were sort of shocked, really, it being such a big holiday for us. Probably I would have skipped it if we hadn't had so much random time off earlier in the month. Anyway, I didn't make today terribly hard. Nicky and I are both sick, so neither of us were up to a lot.

I did end up getting the audio book of Huck Finn from the library, and that was awesome. I had to return the book to the library last week, so I brought up an internet version of it so that they could follow along. I had them do a worksheet answering questions about the Mississippi River. And we read a book called Riverboy: The Story of Mark Twain by William Anderson. Khy was the one who discovered this book at the library, and it was really great.

We started a new spelling list for the week, and Nicky and I spent some time on the letter E and it's sounds. We spent the rest of the time making gifts for Shane's upcoming birthday. Now I'm going to take a nap and try to find some energy for tonight. It would really suck to have to bail on my own favorite holiday...