What a good (homeschooling) day looks like around here

I.e. a day where I feel like we get enough accomplished, the kids enjoy it, and no one cries (about school). Like today! Also because I've been meaning to describe a semi-typical day for awhile now for posterity (and anyone who cares). I feel like so many details get lost in the weekly review.

We got started at 9:30 this morning, after I had my morning internet (I don't drink coffee, so I use the internet as a substitute). I always mean to start earlier, but really, on Mondays when we have nowhere else to go, it doesn't matter much. I printed out Waker Uppers, and everyone got started on that. Gus is not really old enough for Waker Uppers (I think it's recommended for 2nd through 5th grade), but Gus does not tolerate being left out of things, so he does it with my help. Ari always finishes first and then, while he's waiting on the others, turns his paper over and works on the latest installment of his comic, "Mr. Can" ("He's in a Can; He's a Superman!"). When everyone finished, I read the last poem from Voices of Ancient Egypt, "The Marshman" ("Think of it!/A simple reed that grows in marshes/ means Egypt's story will not be forgotten...."). Then I read a couple of stories from the DK Children's Everyday Bible. It's supposed to be every day, but we actually only do this part where we get together at the table and read about 3 times a week, so I generally do several (very short) stories at a time. I've got my eye on the SOTW-esque Bible curriculum that Peace Hill Press is supposed to be putting out in February, but until then we just read through this book. For the last part of our version of circle time, we did a couple of activities from the workbook for Puertas Abiertas. Gus and Milo are on their second time through watching the DVDs this year, but we didn't do a lot with the workbook the first time, so we're concentrating more on that now.

Then we broke up for math. Ari went into the kitchen to finish the final few pages in Singapore 5A, and I set Milo up working on some subtraction in 1B. Gus draws or plays or looks at books or whatever while I get his brothers going. Sometimes Ari needs help with math; sometimes he doesn't. Today he handled everything except a couple of word problems; I took a look at them and decided we'd let DH help him with those when he gets home. Because I hate Singapore word problems. Today I sat with Milo and wrote down the answers for him, as I often do when the math is something that requires concentration. He still has trouble with reversals with his numbers and just a typical 7 year old boy aversion to lots of writing, so I figure writing the numbers for him gives him less to worry about so that he can focus on the problems. He got through the exercise fairly quickly, and I gave him a page of Explode the Code and a spelling assignment from Spelling Workout to work on while I checked on Ari. Ari was doing fine, so I reminded him to do his Evan Moor Daily Math Practice and Paragraph Editing and then review his spelling words once he finished math. Then I went back in and did a few pages of Singapore Earlybird with Gus. It was all about measuring, so first we measured how many foot lengths long and hand widths long various things in the room were, then moved on to talking about concepts like longer/longest and taller/tallest.

By now Ari and Milo were both finished with their independent work and off to read in the living room. Milo read for 30 minutes from Matilda and Ari read for 45 from The Golden Goblet. I read a library book to Gus, "Monkey Creates Havoc in Heaven: The exciting tale of the fearless Monkey, one of China's best-loved mythical characters." The book was a bit longer and more...episodic than I expected (not to mention full of rather advanced vocabulary like "martial" and "imperial steeds" and "brandishing"), but Gus was pretty into it. At the end, the monkey is imprisoned inside a mountain for 500 years. "They were mean to the monkey," Gus commented. But really the monkey totally deserved it; he was a giant pain in the ass. Gus read a (very) little bit to me from "Dragon Tales" (not the TV dragon tales). He wasn't feeling it today. He finished up his school time with a page from Explode the Code.

Milo finished up his reading and came back in to do Writing With Ease. Today was narration day, on a passage from Dr. Dolittle, and it went pretty smoothly...more smoothly than usual, even, probably because the narration was only supposed to be one sentence today. Like old times! (last year's WWE 1 old times, that is).

By then Ari was finished reading, so I set Milo and Gus up to watch Puertas Abiertas and do their piano practice, and Ari and I went back to the schoolroom for language arts. First we took care of the Caesar's English quiz that we didn't get around to last week. He couldn't remember what lofty meant, and wanted to sit there staring at the paper until he got it, but I finally insisted we move on (I haven't graded it yet, but I think he only missed that and maybe one other word). He did a sentence from Practice Town, and then we started reading the lesson on topic sentences in Paragraph Town. Then we had last week's spelling test. I have to make up a ridiculous story using all the spelling words, because I did it once and obligated myself to continue forever. Today's story was about a woman who was teaching a lesson on ladybugs to her class and wanted her father, who was a police officer in a ladybug village, to help out. But her father was still holding a grudge about an incident that happened when she was young, wherein she accidentally stomped on and wiped out an entire ladybug village. I make them up as I go, a sentence for each spelling word, although I know it sounds like a story that it took me weeks to compose ;-).  Then I left Ari on his own to write a 2 paragraph version of the story of the Minotaur. I came back when he finished, read through it and made some comments so that he can write another draft tomorrow.

Lunchtime! In theory we have an hour break for lunch and playing, but in reality I am more than happy to have this stretch on later if we're not in a rush and everyone's playing nicely. Today was one of those magical days; when the hour was up they were all out playing in the woods, so we probably wound up taking more of a 90 minute break.

When they finally came back in, we all sat down for history. We'd already listened to chapter from Story of the World (on Crete) in the car over the weekend, so we jumped right into the review questions from the activity guide. I mention this only because my kids, particularly Ari, hated history for so long: they LOVE the review questions now and fall all over each other trying to answer them first. We read through the corresponding pages from our Usborne encyclopedia, then started in on D'Aulaire's Greek Myths. They were kind of spellbound. I'm very excited about Greece! We're going to read Black Ships Before Troy as bedtime reading, I think. While all this was going on, I kept having to forcibly stop Milo from reading The Monster in the Maze and assuring him that he could read it later. I sent Ari out to start looking through the Usborne quicklinks on the netbook while Milo and Gus each did a narration. Then I took them to the real computer to look at quicklinks (we mostly looked at pictures from the palace at Knossos). And then we were officially finished, but the kids went into the playroom to work on making mazes, complete with Playmobil Egypt skeletons and a toy cow to represent the Minotaur.

And there it is--a successful day! Except Ari still needs to practice piano, I just remembered.....