Day #6/175

Today we did the following:

1. We colored American Flags for a deployed solider. I read Blissfully Domestic & it has many blogs that are part of that. One is called Military Bliss. One writer asked for volunteers to adopt a military member in her husband's unit & send packages to them. So I had the boys & Miss H color a flag to be included. I read Farmer Boy to them while they worked on this.
2. Mr. H was getting fussy at this point. I needed to give him his morning bottle & get him down for his morning nap. I planned to let the boys watch JellyTelly so this was the perfect time for that!
3. I then started reading the first chapter out of a wonderful nutrition book I am reviewing for the TOS Homeschool Crew this month.
4. Mr. H finally fell asleep so we all went outside for recess. The boys, Miss H & I all kicked around balls for about 15 minutes. I'm trying to help Conductor with his soccer skills as practice for the rec team started this week.
5. We came in & had snack & then played two games of Sum Swamp (math) & three games of Rat-A-Tat-Cat. Today was about having fun. I think I managed it.
6. Then we had to do a bit of "serious" school. I gave each of the older boys a spelling diagnostic test from Spell To Write & Read. I haven't compared it to last year's yet, but I feel they are showing progress although they did slip a bit with summer, but what kid doesn't. We'll be hitting spelling & writing hard this year.
7. At this point we took a 2 hour lunch break. I make lunch for six people & have to get a two year old down for a nap & feed a six month older some cereal or veggies. Needless to say, lunch time here can be crazy! Lego-Man also goes to get the mail every day with his great-grandfather - a 1/2 mile walk round trip.
8. We finished up the day with more fun. We watched videos posted from YouTube from Homeschool Freebie of the Day. We watched the fun ones posted on Monday. Typically you cannot do this with Homeschool Freebie of the Day. They typically post one freebie each day & you have 24 hours to download it to your PC. These, however, were videos off YouTube so I knew we could watch them whenever & we did.
9. I then sent the boys to their rooms for 30 minutes to read independently. I need to follow up with Lego-Man & Conductor on what they read. I fear Lego-Man read his new copy of Brickmaster magazine that just arrived today. I sat on the couch & read to Happy. He ended up falling asleep. The youngest three napped for about three hours today. Lovely.
10. The younger boys in particular are becoming more interested in The Magic School Bus & watched an episode on the nose & smelling today 2-3 times (love my DVR).
11. Conductor had his second soccer practice of the season. He's had a rough start as he's now playing with older kids (grades 3-5) & it's the town rec department. I'm pretty sure he's the only homeschooled kid there. He does well though & everyone is his friend. The skills are a bit above him & tonight he broke down at one point. I was glad to see the coach stop & teach everyone the skill (kicking the ball behind them) in order to help Conductor. No one seemed to give Conductor a hard time about it either & he's gung ho to continue - so we will.

While we were doing school, here are the things that Miss H did:

1. colored a map with us (she loves) to color
2. colored in a coloring book
3. played with milk caps & a large coffee can (I call it my collection - I save all the plastic tops off milk jugs & have for about the last year. I have quite a stash now & Miss H loves to play with them.)
4. lacing cards - I have some that have a shape in the middle that pops out. The shape can be used as a regular lacing card (which she did) but you can also match the shape to its base like a puzzle which she did first
5. sorted and played with counting bears
6. puzzles
7. books

My plan is make up an inventory of what I have for toddler type toys/activities & then set up a school bin for Miss H - we'll just rotate through to the beginning of that set until we are done with school for the day.

Overall I thought today went well. I am continuing to work on getting everything going but the slow start seems to be working this year. Happy has not started much formal stuff at this point so I need to see where I can fit that in for him. He needs far more one-on-one time at this point. I'm considering some sort of workbox system for him, but we'll see.

Photos from the day....

Playing Rat-A-Tat-Cat

Miss H working hard on the lacing cards.

Conductor kicking the ball at soccer practice.

I just want to end by sharing this: Printable book list journal I saw it on a blog today & plan to make some for the boys.