We recorded a Friday for our homeschool day this month. We all woke up, dressed, ate breakfast, and did chores. Everyone ate a variety of grits with cheese, yogurt, bananas, and cereal.
Our chore system has a list of daily family jobs the kids do just because they are part of the family and then another chart of weekly jobs and monthly jobs that have monetary value assigned to them. The kids choose a chore or two everyday from these lists (or an odd chore offered by Mommy that does not fit on these lists - for example, maybe the coat closet needs cleaned out, which isn't something that needs done, necessarily weekly or monthly. I would announce that along with what it pays and then someone would volunteer.) It's working well so far (We've been doing it since June) and the kids are enjoying earning and managing their money. Adam begged Alexis to put "Let it Go" on youtube, so she played that for him, which quickly progressed to a few piano guys videos. He was in heaven. Listening to music with Alexis is one of his new favorite things to do and Alexis loves it, too.
Meanwhile Ashley was setting up her own "Build a Bear" workshop in the library. She had saved up her chore money to make herself a pink Teddy and we visited the shop this past Tuesday. So she's been playing Build a Bear the past couple of days and we have been the customers.
After everyone was finished and ready for the day we started our Family Gathering time. For this time we all meet together as a family and cover a variety of subjects that vary from day to day. We opened with a prayer and our current song, "The Family is of God." I pull up the lyrics through youtube and project it on our TV and we pause it and go over words and phrases every day until we have it memorized. Ashley and Adam sit on a blanket with activities to do during family gathering time since it tends to last at least 45 minutes between all the different things we do.
After prayer and song we did our new state, which happened to be Ohio today! The kids were excited about this and the girls all got out their notebooks with their blank maps and labeled the capital along with any facts they found interesting. Alexis writes down all the facts she likes while Emily and Ashley prefer to draw pictures of things like the state bird or an airplane to represent that the Wright Brothers were from Ohio.
When Ashley heard the State tree was the buckeye, she ran off and returned with a pamphlet from our nature table showing the Buckeye tree and excitedly pointed it out to us.
After our state, we did some music time. We're using a fun book right now, called "The Story of the Orchestra." Right now we're learning about the various eras in music and specific composers in each era, which Alexis is very familiar with already, so she will throw in some fun facts and stories for the younger ones and yet there are still new facts and stories in this book she learns, too. We read about Beethoven today and listened to one of his pieces on the CD that comes with the book.
While we were listening, Emily doodled a picture of a recorder in her notebook.
After music time we did a bit of poetry study. We read a poem about Autumn written by a little girl who was only 6 years old. We talked about some of the meaning in some of her phrases and about various similes and metaphors.
Ashley decided that since she was 6 years old, she should create a poem, too, so she created one on the spot. I quickly ran over to our computer so I could type it down for her and printed it off. She decorated it with a picture of a pink butterfly. I thought it was pretty good for her first poem and definitely cute. :)
While she was decorating her poem, we pulled out our US government studies. I couldn't find a good curriculum for my kids ages, so I ended up just pulling something together using a variety of sources. Right now we are focusing on the Declaration of Independence. I found a good book that breaks it into little sections and then explains what each section means and gives little background stories and examples to help kids understand. We are really enjoying it and learning a lot.
At this point family gathering is over and the older two girls scatter to work on their independent studies. Ashley makes a magic wand and does a few magic tricks for me. Emily and Ashley have both been into magic tricks lately and we've been blessed to see several great shows.
I then ask Ashley if she'd like to do some activities with Mommy. First I read a story to her and then she wanted to read me a story while she pretended she was Mommy and I was her baby. Adam listened in, as well. We're not really using any sort of Reading curriculum with her since she just picked up reading starting when she was 3 with no instruction. So for now we just read every day. Next we did some Math. We're using a gentle Math book called "Math Lessons for a Living Education" and it's all about a little girl and boy visiting their grandparents' farm. They weave the Math concepts into the story and have practice problems for her to do. So far she really likes it. Next we worked on her pencil grip. Despite the fact that Ashley is constantly cutting and coloring and making projects she has a horrible grip. She is still using what is called the Palmar grasp (something most children outgrow by age 3). I did some research and figured this out and found a great website that offers tons of activities and suggestions to help them progress past this and onto a more mature grasp. We did an exercise today where I gave her a clothespin and made a pond out of blue construction paper and sprinkled bread crusts on it. I then gave her a little duck and told her she need to pick up all the pieces of bread with her clothespin and feed her duck. I marked where she needed to put her fingers on the clothespin and she transferred every last piece to her hungry duck. Next I reminded her where to grip on a special pencil grip I bought for her and she practiced making P's in her "Handwriting Without Tears" book. When she was done I pretended to be the judge and judged which P was my favorite and gave it a star. I then gave her a sticker for the whole page, which she was very excited about. During all this time Adam was making messes, playing, and beginning to whine, as he was needing some attention and a snack.
I took some time and changed his diaper, played some cars with him, and got him a snack of a banana and some crackers.
After that we made some cookies together. She's been asking to make umbrella shaped cookies all week and I promised her we would make them on Friday. She measured, mixed, and poured and I think got about as much flour on herself as she did in the bowl. :) Adam, of course wanted to help, too, so she let him try to stir which just about ended up in disaster, but I stopped it just in time.
Meanwhile, Emily had been practicing her cursive, reading scriptures, playing the piano, and doing some independent reading. Now she was writing. She's working on a story and we discovered this year that she likes writing stories if she can do it on the computer. She's writing a fairy tale all about some little girls and a magic potion. I can't wait to see how it turns out!
While the cookies were baking Ashley and Adam ran off to play in the playroom and I did some Science with Emily. We read about Space Stations today.
Meanwhile Alexis had almost finished her individual work of Math, independent reading, Science, scripture study, spelling, writing, personal project, piano, and violin. She was playing the piano before she did a Science experiment..
I did a bit of All About Spelling with Emily. She got every word perfect in our new lesson.
Then I explained her Math to her (some review practice on multiplication in her Math for a Living Education book) and she got busy on that.
Meanwhile Ashley and Adam were into the dry erase markers drawing on dry erase boards and apparently Adam was trying to draw on his leg. I stopped him and we picked up the train dominoes and put the number puzzles together. Then Adam and I built with some blocks and visited Ashley's Build a Bear shop where I helped Adam build a bear with shopkeeper Ashley's help.
Afterwards Ashley rolled out her dough to cut some shapes out. We used a circle and a candy cane shape and cut the circle in half and attached the candy cane shape to make the umbrellas. I gave Adam a bit of dough to play with and he sampled a bit of it during this time....and so did Emily and Alexis. It was very tasty dough. :)
While we were working on dough, Alexis did a science experiment where I broke a flashlight according to instructions in her Science book and then she had to create a hypothesis, try it out, and figure out how to fix it. She figured it out fairly quickly and did great with it.
Then, because apparently cookies weren't enough sweets, Emily made some homemade ice cream. :) (We really don't normally make one sweet, let alone two in one day! ha ha ha) We're trying something new this year. I'm asking each older girl to choose at least one individual project to work on every week. It can be ANYTHING they want to learn more about. Emily has chosen at the moment to learn about making homemade ice cream. So she research recipes and the science behind it and chose a chocolate ice cream recipe. We bought ingredients and she did the whole thing herself, except that I did pick up the big heavy glass mixing bowl and carefully pour it into our ice cream maker for obvious reasons. ;)
At this point it was around 12:30 and everyone ate lunch and then I put Adam to bed. The cookies had cooled and all three girls pitched in to decorate them and then have one for a snack while we watched an old episode of The Andy Griffith Show. They then headed outside for a while and Adam joined them after his 45 minute nap.
At around 3:00, we climbed into the van and took off to Hobby Lobby. We bought some fabric on sale with a coupon we had. The girls are going to practice their sewing skills while making pillows for the Children's Hospital in Columbus. We're going to spend some time tomorrow (Saturday) and Monday sewing and then drop them off on our way to take Alexis to homeschool choir in Columbus on Tuesday. We tried to browse for a bit afterwards, but Adam wasn't very cooperative. He kept wanting to get down and when I tried letting him down once and he was really good for about 5 minutes and then suddenly took off at full speed. I chased him down an aisle and he disappeared around the corner. I got to the end and there was a gentleman smiling and pointing, saying, "He went that way!" He was quite amused, but I was not quite so much. :) After I caught him and put him back in the cart, fussing, we decided we better head home, since it was getting close to dinner time already.
Here's the fabric they ended up choosing.
After we ate dinner and did chores everyone headed back outside to play some more.
He's telling me about the "Woof Woofs" in the neighbor's yard.
After everyone played and I came out and took a few pictures, Adam was getting very tired, so I took him in, washed him up, put his PJ's on and nursed him to sleep. By then it was almost 8:00 and the sun was setting so the three girls came in. I came downstairs and Ashley and Emily were playing in the playroom. I called Alexis into the playroom and we called Daddy, who was out flying. We read our scriptures over the phone, sang a hymn, and said family prayer. We then read a chapter of "The Secret Garden."
We had some of Emily's homemade ice cream and it was delicious! I tucked Ashley into bed and the older two stayed up a bit longer and then went to bed, too. And that's the end of our day! Tomorrow we'll be sewing, watching a parade, and catching up on some laundry. ;)
