Spring Break was a bust - two weeks was too long. It's good to be getting back into a schedule, even if we're all tired.
1. Meditation
2. Journals
3. Baby check 22 weeks
4. Current Events: Khy read about protests in France while Stormy read about the President of Liberia.
5. Nicky read from a Disney storybook that I'm too lazy to check the title on right now.
6. Math review - Khy and Stormy had 10 problems of multiplication that they both had some trouble with, while Nicky and I worked on fact families in his new math workbook.
7. Nicky played Jumpstart Kindergarten Math while Khy and Stormy did A to Z Geography sheets A & B.
8. Listened to about twenty minutes of Ender's Game.

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.

While Khy and Stormy investigated 5 more Mystery states - something they're becoming very adept at - Nicky and I worked on his phonics workbook and read a Dick and Jane book together. I remember learning to read with one of those at his age, and I'll tell you, they're still fabulous. Generally when we read beginner books together, I'll put him in charge of reading certain words whenever we come across them, while I read the others. We started out that way with Dick and Jane, and the words are re-used so often in each different section of the book but in different ways, that Nicky was reading it entirely by himself by the last two pages. He was SO excited and proud.

Khy and Stormy also did some mapping exercises (the Pacific Northwest and the Southwest regions of the U.S.) and then we read from the Emily book. Today we covered Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Texas and New Mexico. It was fun talking about the area where I'm from and some of the things I remember from childhood (adobe houses, luminarias at Christmas, the hot air balloon festival in Albuquerque, oil wells). Instead of looking up images on Google image search to show them, I let them do their own searches as I read. That worked pretty well, as quite often Khy would be looking up Gila Monsters while Stormy looked up javelinas, and everyone got to see the pictures. More manpower, less time spent.

I downloaded a quiz buddy game that will help them practice state placement and capitals, and I also helped them find and bookmark another site with lots of state capital games online.

We sang Fifty Nifty United States by memory, and then they took a spelling test that both aced. I tested Nicky on his "u" words, and he came up with run, umbrella, underwear, ugly, duckling and uncle.

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.