We made it! Amazing! I had to curtail a few of the lessons since we missed so much school due to illness/laziness, but all in all I think it was a very fruitful term.
1. Meditation with music from R. Carlos Nakai
2. Journals
3. Current Events - Khy read about how iPods are causing hearing loss while Stormy read about the Iditarod Sled Race.
4. Khy helped me with library preparation. I always love those Saturdays just after term when I can actually go to the library to browse aimlessly, instead of armed with a mile long list full of books I need for class.
5. Nicky read to me the rest of the Dick and Jane collection. He's been reading it on his own at bedtime for the last few nights, and I can REALLY tell he's been practicing. It's so exciting, how far he's come and how proud he is of himself.
6. Spelling Test - review words. Khy and Stormy both got 100%. Nicky practiced typing (he's ahead of the older kids on typing skills, I think that's kind of cool) and then took his phonics test for the letter L.
7. Paper airplane science. Each student made their own paper airplane, and each were given one paperclip to put wherever they chose. Then they took turns flying their airplanes, and we would measure and record the distance. Between each turn (each student got 5 turns) they were allowed to make adjustments to their planes, primarily through the placement of the paperclip. When it was all done we took their measurements and then I showed them how to find their average distance. Nicky and Stormy's averages were in the 8 foot range, and Khy was in the 10 foot range. We talked a long time about what variables were at work, what they could have done to improve their planes, why Khy's seemed to do better than the others. It was a great class.
8. Interviews - Based on the job application for Greek godhood they each filled out yesterday, I brought them in to "interview" for the positions. We had fun.
9. Music - We finally managed to get both Yellow Submarine and Maxwell's Silver Hammer videotaped on my camera and onto the computer, so I should be able to add them to the next Chaos Magazine website. Way cute.

Last week we didn't do much. Lots more sickness, with a few educational movies thrown in. We watched some more Aviation ducumentary, and we watched Clash of the Titans which was fun. Today Khy is sick again - it's a regular Monday thing with him these days. But we're soldiering on, because I have two weeks of Spring Break scheduled and I, for one, don't want to miss them.
1. Meditation
2. Journals
Khy & Stormy:
3. Current Events
4. Finished final draft of Greek God report
5. Did division problem on dry erase board
6. Spelling (review words)
Nicky:
3. Read ten minutes of Dick and Jane
4. Reviewed letter sounds for A - K
5. Stormy read My L Sound Box to him.
6. Played Jumpstart Kindergarten Reading on computer.

1. Meditation with focus on deep breathing
2. Journals
3. Current Events (Khy read about new species of butterflies and birds discovered, and Stormy read about the vice president shooting someone) while Nicky read Dick and Jane to me. The book has gotten progressively harder, and today we went back and re-read a few of the first stories and he was amazed at how easy they are now.
4. Livejournal entries "My best-friend is" and practice with the HTML bold tag. (Stormy) (Khy) (Nicky)
5. Math practice - I wrote out 4 problems for Khy and Stormy (subtraction and addition with regrouping, multi-digit multiplication and division by one digit) and a few money problems for Nicky.
6. Nicky project - he had half made a man out of construction paper, and today he finished him up by giving him arms.
7. We all worked together on library prep.
8. Nicky's phonics test for J.
9. Spelling test - Stormy missed "absolutely" and Khy missed "reunion."
10. We listened to "As an unperfect actor on the stage" from Love Speaks
11. Nicky was excused from school, Khy and Stormy added another paragraph to their reports on Greek Gods and Heroes.

Extra: Yesterday we implemented a new reward program specifically for Nicky. The idea came from Jacqui, as her son Kade's school is using this system and she thought it might be useful. Essentially Nicky starts the day out at 3 (on a scale of 1 - 5). Every time he misbehaves or tantrums he loses a number, but every time he does something extra helpful or well the number goes up. If he finishes the class time (up till lunch) with a 1 then he loses technology for the afternoon. If he ends the classtime at 5, then he earns a sticker to put in his sticker book. After 5 stickers he'll earn a special small prize (to be determined). It's worked AMAZINGLY so far. He's really responding to having the consequences so clearly defined and the positive spin on the discipline, the feeling that no matter what, it's within his control to improve his daily number.

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 with "Pompeii" from E.S. Posthumus
2. Journals
3. Current Events - Khy read and shared about Michelle Kwan dropping from the Olympics, and Stormy read and shared about the mummies they've found in Egypt.
4. Nicky read another chapter in Dick and Jane to me.
5. Math on the dry erase board.
6. Nicky did math in his workbook (today was story problems) while Khy and Stormy finished the Aphrodite assignment.

( The Letters )

7. Nicky and I read My Letter J Sound Box while Khy and Stormy did 20 problems of division.
8. We canceled spelling to take a walk/bike-ride outside in the sunshine before lunch.

1. Meditation
2. Journals
3. Baby check
4. Read the poem "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" and then listened to Annie Lennox sing it on When Love Speaks
5. Math problems on dry erase board
6. Read three myths with a love theme from Mary Pope Osborne's Favorite Greek Myths
- Echo and Narcissus
- Apollo and Daphne
- Eros and Psyche
7. Assignment (Khy and Stormy) write a letter to Aphrodite asking for advice with a love problem. (Tomorrow we'll switch papers, and they'll write answers as Aphrodite.)
8. Spelling words (Khy and Stormy)
9. Phonics practice and printing - Letter J (Nicky)

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/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.

Activities:

1. Meditation/journals
2. Did our baby check and sent Jacqui an email card for Happy 10 weeks, and drew a 3.1cm line on the dry erase board to track the baby's growth.
3. Introduced unit on Greek Myth. Read aloud pages 10-43 of Random House Greek Myths, introducing the major gods and a few of their stories. (Touched on Hades and Persephone, Arachne and Athena, Apollo and Daphne, Zeus and Every Female Ever.)
4. Assigned research project. Khy and Stormy will each choose a Greek god to study over the course of the next few weeks. They will assemble and organize information and then present it orally to the class in February.
5. Khy gave Stormy her make-up spelling test (she missed zero) while Nicky and I sorted books out for a library trip.
6. We went over the spelling words for this week.
7. The kids had free educational time for an hour.

Everyone seems very excited about mythology.

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.