A great read aloud chapter book is My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett. It was old enough for my seven year old to be interested in it and yet young enough for my five year old to be able to follow and enjoy as well. I love killing two birds with one stone. (Did I just compare a book to a stone, my kids to birds and reading to them, killing them?) I have already put Three Tales of My Father's Dragon also by Ruth Stiles Gannett on my library request list!
This morning we worked more on our comic book, more Math on the white board and had a lesson on braiding. I got some yarn and tied three strands together on one end. Luke was so not into it. I guess it's a girl thing. We then got a potato in some water and are waiting to see if it sprouts. I had them name vegetables they could think of that are roots. They thought of carrots, radishes and onions. We then looked up more on the internet, garlic, yams, sweet potatoes, Chinese water chestnuts and a lot of Latin named vegetables I've never heard of before.
Today at the park we did a science experiment or lesson. I found this great article on the internet about astronomical distances and time that shows the size and distances of the solar system if our sun was the size of a basketball. We brought a basket ball (sun) four seeds (Mercury, Mars, Pluto and the our moon) two peas (Venus and Earth) a golf ball (Jupiter) ping pong ball (Saturn) and two small bouncy balls (Neptune and Uranus.)
Thirty eight feet from our basketball sun I had Aden place our Mercury seed. Next Luke placed the Venus pea sixty seven feet, and on until we had to stop since Jupiter would have interrupted a football game in progress. I at least showed them the sizes of the rest of the planets and let them know that Pluto seed would be three thousand more feet from our basketball sun. Also that the closest star from our basketball solar system would be from here to New York.
Yesterday was a much better day. We stayed at home, did some school in the morning, cleaning and even baking in the afternoon! I am sure there are more hours in some days. That night I went and got my hair cut by my friend, Lanece, which was a very good and much needed night out for me.
We are all out of ink in our printer (don't you hate that) so we did math on the white board which as it turned out the kids liked doing it that way better. Oh, and despite what it may look like from the picture, Sylvia (my 2 year old) did not just do that 13,370 math problem. Just the scribbles next to it.
Here is Sylvia singing "bitsy bitsy"
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXncW_Nxyi4]
