What do we do all day?

I haven't posted a weekly report in ages. My husband loves to read them because then he feels like he knows a little more about what we are really doing all day while he is away. It is one of the reasons he doesn't want me to quick blogging. So, I guess, even if it is only him and my mom that read my blog, I should continue writing and posting about the things we do.

Here is a typical day....

We go to the YMCA at about 8:00 and get home sometime around 9:30. I get an hour of exercise and the kids get to play and do crafts at the kids corner. I have tried doing it in the afternoons but then I just don't do it, something always gets in the way, so the morning it will stay. I need it for my mental and physical well being.

School time starts at about 10:00 and usually starts with The Pledge of Allegiance. Then we do morning scripture study. We are still doing Book of Mormon. But we are reading the actual book and not just a reader or a picture book version so it is slow going but has been really good for us. After we take turns reading our one chapter we have been learning The Living Christ. We did our Family proclamation study at this time during September and we just replaced it with The Living Christ. We are using the visuals and copywork from Discover the Scriptures. We are only at about 2 paragraphs so far but we look up the words we don't know and talk about the phrases we are working on. It is actually going better than I thought.
I have added hymn study here too. We usually review the song they are learning in primary. Sing through a favorite primary song and then sing the Hymn or song I have picked for that month. October's song was Beautiful Savior.  November's Song is For the Beauty of the Earth. I am surprised how much my kids love singing. Molly often participates too. She is a great dancer and joins in with hand motions when we do Popcorn popping or Once there was a Snowman.

After our "devotional" time we usually do some Latin (yes we actually do fit Latin in at least 2x a week) or some Language Arts with English for the LDS child. We have a number of poems from this that we are also working on memorizing. This is then followed up with copywork either from the LA or from the Living Christ.

There is usually a snack about this time. My kids can't seem to go more than an hour without food.

We clear up the snack mess and break out Explode the code. The boys are doing great with explode the code. Henry is really becoming a reader. He is sounding out words and can do a few of the pages of his ETC 1 book each day. Ian finds explode the code a lot easier and doesn't fight it as much now that the reading is very easy for him. He actually prefers the pages with more reading and less writing. They used to be the ones he avoided.

Henry reads at least one Bob book to me and Ian reads two lessons from his McGuffey Reader and one chapter of My Father's Dragon to me each day. He is almost finished with the First Reader and will be going into the Second next week. Sophie also reads two lessons to me from the Third Reader and then narrates to me about each of them.  The reading is too easy for her but she didn't want to move onto the Fourth Reader without finishing the Third. While I work with each child the others often run off and play or read books to themselves or work on something else of their choice.

If we can fit Math in before lunch all the better but often it is first thing after a sandwich or some other choice from the pantry.

During the afternoon is when we do our science or history and also take our walks, bike rides and outings to the library or park.

Right now we are almost finished with our science unit on Simple machines and the 3 laws of motion. My kids have loved building all the different machines described in our Knex kit.

Here is the machine to demonstrate pulleys.  Ian is lifting the stapler with his block and tackle.

This is a crack fan. It really showed us how the size of the gears makes a big difference on the amount of effort you have to put in and the resulting movement created.

This was another one about gears. It is a sawmill if you couldn't tell.

We have also really enjoyed the videos of The Way Things Work. The explanations of each of the simple machines have been great! Thank goodness our library has the complete collection.

I admit it hasn't been all Science. I can't help but get a little bit of history and geography in. I have been reading to them about Helen Keller last week and we started listening to Heidi the other day after we read a few of books about Switzerland.  I have the movie waiting for when we finish the book. Oh and since Halloween was last week we had quite a stack of Halloween and pumpkin books that we read through.

Sophie has also been working on her Presidents lapbook. It was supposed to be her project for October but she just didn't finish it for the deadline so has been getting the last few things completed this week. We have also read a bunch of books about presidents. My kids now know all sorts of great facts about the presidents like Taft got stuck in his bathtub, Ronald Reagan loved jelly beans (coconut flavored were his favorite) and even the strange pets some of them kept. I should have snapped a picture of all the books we read before we returned them but in my hurry to get our library shelf cleared on library day it didn't happen.

That sums it up I guess. We haven't really been doing any art or music study recently. I guess we will need to fit them in somewhere too. For now I am pretty happy with the work we are doing and the learning that is going on.