In all honesty, I wanted to wait until the fall to get started with Story of the World Ancients, but after getting the text and activity books in the mail, I just couldn't wait to start. I felt like the activities and the content were something my older kids would love, and I just loved all of the extra reading suggestions. For my kids, and myself, this is the best history curriculum at this moment in our homeschool journey. In the introduction, I tried to keep it simple. We read Me and My Family Tree, by Joan Sweeny, and Archaeologists Dig For Clues, by Kate Duke. We made a great timeline of my son's life, and then we did the most amazing activity that really kicked off our history adventure. The dirty dig activity was absolutely great, and very fun to put together. I told my children that the ancient civilization of (our last name here), left clues as to what kind of lives they lead. My husband and I had chosen things from around the house for my kids to "excavate," and they had the best time doing it. We talked about what they might have eaten, (a sweet potato, and a fork to eat it with), if they wrote or not, (a pencil and a note written for my son in a ziplock bag), and what kind of activities they participated in for fun, (Legos, little random toys). It was amazing, and it happened to really fit with our science lesson that week, which happened to be classifying and organizing things. We had a blast.

I can't believe how fast the 5 year old is picking up reading! After a slightly bumpy start at a very leisurely pace, you can almost here the gears whirring in his head. I think i made a good connection with him tonight while we were reading aloud the first Harry Potter book. He kept asking me questions and telling me what he thout was going to happen next, and I kept telling him that we could guess or we could read and find out. This is a major theme in our reading lessons, as he is constantly guessing what the word is after reading the first letter. He's actually getting much better about that, but hopefully tomorrow there will be zero instances of guessing.

I can't believe how far we've come since Christmas. If you had asked me two months ago how I felt about our homeschooling, I would not have been as excited as I am now. I'm so happy we chose to let him go at his own pace, because I want him to love learning for the rest of his life, not feel like it's a chore or something that is forced.

Gelatin Insanity

I've been following notimeforflashcards.com for a couple of years now.  It's a great resource, and has hundreds of craft, art, and learning ideas that take only a few minutes to set up.  I was inspired once again to try one of the more ambitious ideas.  And, while I was going for broke, invited my friend and her three children over to participate, too.  I should mention, that in the http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2012/02/rainbow-gelatin-sensory-tub.html version, the Rainbow Gelatin Sensory tub looks really great.  It looks like it could get messy, but nothing I couldn't handle.  It was just so pretty.  So, I made my 6 trays of gelatin last night, and cut them to a size I thought would work and set them all in a tupperware box on the bathroom floor.  It was really fun.  It was a lot more mess than I thought, and it was interesting to see who liked it best.  The friend's kids are 5, 3, and 1.  My kids are 5, 3, and 1.  Her 5 year old and my 3 year old were the last men standing.  And by standing I mean the 5 year old was sitting in a pile of goo gelatin (of her own making) and my daughter was squatting in the tupperware, on the goo, in only underpants.  They obviously had a great time.  All of them did, however 3/4s of them could not resist the lure of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and blueberries.

I need to get messier.  Don't get me wrong, my house is pretty messy, but I feel like I am so tightly wound when it comes to making a mess that I could maybe justify as art....  They had such a great time with it.  I can't wait for the warmer, not rainy, weather so that we can go outside with paints and craziness again.

today was a very busy day, but w did have time to fit in our reading and some handwriting practice.  Bo is doing a great job!  He does start off the lesson looking only at the first letter of a 3 letter word and then just trying to guess the rest, but by the end, you can see the lightbulbs going off.

My quote of the day goes to my daughter, Zee.  In the bath, the two girls were fighting over the few plastic toys I let them have in there.  I heard her say: "You will only get what I am willing to give you."

Rage of the day: Coco, in the same bath as above, hurled a wet washcloth directly at my face and screamed "Nooooooo" when I told her it was time for her to get out.  She then screamed for my mother.

Most interesting: My son got to stay up while his sisters were "napping," and he wanted to play school.  He was the teacher, and I had to draw a planet I had imagined.  It was just like the old times, pre-sisters.  It was quiet, and he was kind, helpful, chatty, and sweet.  

The Fat Cat.

My son and I have been using "The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading" for a few months now.  I absolutely love it.  Today, I watched him read THREE sentences.  He started out the unit guessing and not really paying attention to sounding out the individual letters and then combining them, and ended with excellent combining and great reading.  I'll be making a reading window for him tonight:

http://readingwindow.org/home/chapter-1-making-reading-windows/.

I cannot wait for our history text and activity book to get here.  It shipped today, so hopefully by the end of the week, we'll be digging for evidence of our household civilization in the back yard!  I think all of the kids will love doing it, not just my 5 year old.  I honestly haven't been so excited to do something for a long time.
This is what we'll be using for history:

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/store/story-of-the-world-vol-1-combo-pack-1-of-everything-for-volume-1.html