It is a slow start to our school day today.
Around 9ish - The 8 year old and I sit down to do a practice run of a multiple choice math test - he's never done one of these before but we printed off some because he is interested in doing a math competition in the spring and this is their preferred format. He figures it out fairly well and we go on to review millimetres and centimetres - our lesson from last week. When I'm sure he remembers it all I send him off with a clipboard and a ruler to measure and record ten things around the house.
The little girls are chattering up a storm and colouring pictures for Hallowe'en. I redirect the six year old onto her math lesson - today we are reviewing subtraction facts and introducing the concept of temperature and how it can be measured in both Celsius and Fahrenheit. She's having trouble focusing in the kitchen so off she goes into the living room
10 - Redirect, redirect, redirect...the six year old is not focusing. I send the boy to the church with his father to practice the piano before his lesson.
10:30 - She finishes her subtraction and I get her to go outside and circumnavigate the house running like a crazy person for 15 minutes to get all the wiggles out and then feed peanuts to the chipmunk. When she comes back in the girls and I sit down and read the chipmunk section from The Handbook Of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock, stopping to discuss camouflage and speculating as to why a chipmunk might want two entrances/exits to its burrow. I hadn't planned what to read to the girls but generally these things resolve themselves.
11:00 - Snack, and then getting the girls set up with an Uno game. This is my time to set up our flu shots, handle emails, switch the laundry, etc.
12 - The boy is home from piano lessons and we sit down to leftovers for lunch.
12:30 - The boy peels and chops carrots and works on fractions while he cuts them into quarters for supper and the 6 year old reads me a chapter of a Frog and Toad story. When she finishes we set the stove timer for 15 minutes and she picks picture books to practice reading on her own - today she reads The Paperbag Princess.
1:00 - The boy finishes helping for supper and I get it in the oven. He sets the timer for 30 minutes for his own silent reading time - the fourth Encyclopedia Brown is his choice for today. The only requirement for any self-directed reading is that is has to be text-centric - no comics. While he reads, the six year old starts her spelling work. When she finishes her lesson she does a printing page - the children practice printing daily - and a copywork sentence.
1:30 - It's time for afternoon rest. I put on a dvd for whomever wants to watch it - Mary Poppins - and also put out the tangrams on the coffee table, and lie down with a book of my own.
2:30 - The children are tired of watching tv and are getting louder and more boisterous so I put away my book and get everyone up and outside. We work on cleaning up the front yard and then they help our neighbour carry in her groceries and get a chocolate in return.
3:30 - the girls play while the boy and I start on language arts. His scheduled reading for today is the final chapter of One Day In The Woods, by Jean Craighead George and also some of a science book from the series Outdoor Science - this one is called Grass and Grasshoppers by Rose Wyler. We look at them together as he reads aloud to me, and then I read him Bliss Carmen's 'A Vagabond Song' - the perfect autumn poem. He does his copywork but it is getting close to supper so we skip spelling.
4:30 - Lessons done for the day.
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