little house

Here's what our homeschool day was like today -

Mademoiselle practiced her 0-5 times tables, using this website.  She thinks the games are super fun, but more importantly, I'm noticing her response time is faster after just a few days of using it!  I read some Daisy Dawson to her - another in the series she started to read a few months ago.  She received her spelling words for the week, and copied each twice in her best handwriting.  She did a more careful job than she's been doing recently, and the final product looked great!  This week her words are all family relationship words - mother, father, aunt, uncle, cousin, etc.  Maybe 20 of them?  I didn't count.  We also reviewed a bit of what she's learned about the western states - particularly reviewing states and their capitals.  Some of them are tricky, because while she knows the largest city names in some states (like Portland, Oregon) it's harder to remember the name of a smaller town when it's the capital (like Salem, Oregon).

S.A.M. read Go, Dog, Go to me.  An old standby, and something he pulls out when he knows he needs to read, but isn't super interested.  Fortunately, the fluency of his reading has improved over the year since the first few times he read it to me.  Progress is always great.  He received his spelling words for the week (go, so, grow, slow, mow, bow, etc.) and wrote each twice.  He wasn't in top form today, but at least he appreciates rhyming words, so hopefully some of it was retained!  We intended to do some clock play today, and learn and reinforce his time-telling skills, but we didn't get to it, unfortunately.  Tomorrow!  We also reviewed some of what we learned about the western states this semester.

Together we did two projects -

We tried to break spaghetti into just two pieces.  Did you know it's virtually impossible?  Here's where we got this science project idea.  The kids loved it, and maybe kind of sorta understood a little of the physics behind it.

We also made straw oboes.  It was a little tricky to get a hang of, but so much fun, and all you need is a straw and scissors.  A two minute project that got played with for over a half an hour!  The younger kids really couldn't make them work, but they sure liked pretending - humming into them as loudly as possible!

Other than that, we spent a lot of time outside.  The weather was perfect.  S.A.M. spent a little bit of time try
ing to build a boat in our shed.  Mademoiselle played some piano.  And, of course, every meal is a picnic.  Benefactor spent a few hours on our neighbor's  trampoline, and the afternoon was spent with lots of friends!


(ps - I know I have focusing issues, but I'm still trying to adjust to 100% manual on my camera!)