--read Catherine Vos Story Bible
--Mom read two sections from JC Ryle book and discussed (on obedience and love)
--read Prince Caspian
--practiced mult. and div. facts
--more double digit mult. problems
--SD practiced guitar
--Mr. D practiced piano
--Mr. D and Mom played Flip It with Chicklet
--Mr. D gave Chicklet a reading lesson
--SD and Mr. D did dinosaur books with Chicklet and B3
--SD and Mr. D went to friend's house to skateboard and play guitar
--Mr. D had piano lesson
--SD wrote two email thank you notes
--Mr. D wrote paragraph

--watched carpet go in to newly constructed bedroom
--watched trim and towel bar, toilet paper holder be put up
--cleaned house
--played Trivial Pursuit with Grandma and Grandpa
--SD prepared for his Christian BarMitzvah
--had the service and a party afterward for SD
--SD practiced guitar; played with friend
--hung out with friend from Germany
--Mr. D practiced piano, played for relatives

Enrichment classes:

Mr. D & Chicklet learned about chemical reactions in Discovery World Science; made their own white glue and Slime.

Mr. D and SD practiced figure-drawing in sketching class; learned tactics and battled in foam swords class; discussed optical illusions in Critical Thinking

(The Critical Thinking teacher sought Mom out to say the boys were a pleasure to have in class--they are very mature and B13 takes such a helpful leadership role with those who are less inclined to stop talking and listen...!)

Chicklet and Bantam 3 enjoyed their Playtime class, and Bible Stories and Crafts class.

Chicklet made ? in her Crafts class, and B3 played ball with a friend in open gym, played Concentration with Mom in the Game Room.


At home Mr. D practiced piano, SD practiced guitar, Mom read Little House to Chicklet.

--read Prince Caspian, Catherine Vos Story Bible
--reviewed mult facts
--SD read Eldest; Mr. D read Harry Potter
--Mom gave Chicklet a reading lesson
--Mom read Little House to Chicklet
--watched trim and doors go up in basement project

--SD attended a play, The Diary of Anne Frank

--gym classes at Carthage X 1 hr.
--theater classes X 2 hrs.
--boys practiced guitar and piano
--reviewed mult facts
--read Prince Caspian
--read Harry Potter
--watched the ongoing construction in the basement: tile was laid today

--practiced math facts
--boys read Harry Potter
--Mom gave Chicklet two reading lessons; Mr. D reviewed and continued two more lessons with her
--SD did one DVD guitar lesson and practiced one hour
--Mr. D practiced piano, had piano lesson and practiced more
--read Prince Caspian
--read D is for Democracy and discussed concepts
--observed ongoing construction projects in basement--drywall finishing and priming; painting
--wrote paragraphs on Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Mrs. Frisby and the rats of NIMH really got me thinking. After I read the book I thought that the rats should've stayed at the laboratory a little longer so that docter Schultz could see what they were capeable of doing. Because in a way I kinda felt bad for docter Schultz. Also later on in the book all the rats move to a new home. I think the author should've explained a bit more about how they liked it and where it was. At the end of the book there was two rats that died and I wanted to know which of the rats died because I thought they were heroes. I think this book is worth reading again. (SD, unedited)

Wed--Fri. Oct 15-17

--continued to read aloud: Prince Caspian
--practiced mult and div facts daily
--boys practiced piano, guitar, magic tricks
--SD went running (twice?)
--boys continued reading Harry Potter series
--Mom gave Chicklet reading lessons
--watched the continuing construction project in basement--framing, electrical, drywalling

Thursday--enrichment classes X 4 hrs.

Friday--attended The Legend of Pocahontas musical and cast party afterwards

--read Catherine Vos Story Bible
--read Ch. 3 & 4 of Prince Caspian
--reviewed X facts and opposite division facts, added new X facts; reviewed multi-digit X and long division with 2-digit divisor
--Carthage College PE classes--one hour (SD played volleyball; Chicklet and Mr. D played gym games; B3 had a preschool "class" taught by a big sister
--we discussed Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH some more (study guide): Was technology a good or a bad thing in the book? Who were the bad guys and why/good guys and why? (complex plot with several ways of looking at these questions)
--theater classes X 2 hrs.
--SD practiced guitar
--Mr. D practiced piano
--both boys read Harry Potter books
--watched a Harry Potter movie
--read another chapter of The Endless Steppe
--SD practiced guitar again

On Sunday, SD attended a ceremony for a new Eagle Scout (friend of Blondechick's) and learned what all is required.

Monday evening an exchange student from Germany came over and hung out with SD; they talked music, bands, guitar, cultural differences, etc.

--we started Prince Caspian (including Chicklet)
--read Catherine Vos Bible Storybook
--practiced multiplication facts and their reverse (division)
--the boys practiced magic lessons
--SD practiced guitar
--MR. D practiced piano, had a lesson
--Mom gave Chicklet a reading lesson and we did 9 pgs in her workbook (Get Ready for the Code)
--Chicklet and B3 watched Eyewitness: Cat
--Mr. D played Axis and Allies with himself (and with a friend a week ago)
--SD went for a 3-mile run

(on the weekend) we watched Speed Racer, looked up the old cartoon on Wikipedia and talked about Japanese anime

The Usual.

Except we finished Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, discussed it and then the boys each wrote a paragraph about it.

And Mr. D practiced sketching, and sketching, and sketching...

Today we had enrichment classes--see last Thursday.

The boys are really excited about sketching--came home and practiced drawing human faces.

Chicklet painted a flower pot; she and B3 made a Noah booklet and craft pg.

--we practiced mult. and subt. facts

--Mom read picture books from library: Probuditi (about a magician/hypnotist and two boys who hypnotize their little sister) and The Piano Man (about a silent movie piano player)

--Mom gave Chicklet a reading lesson

--Mr. D practiced piano

--both boys practiced magic tricks

--read Catherine Vos Story Bible
--read Mrs. Frisby
--practiced X facts with flash cards
--practiced problems with missing addends, factors, subtrahends, minuends
--Chicklet and B3 watched You're a Good Man Charlie Brown
--boys practiced magic tricks with new book
--boys finished paragraphs from yesterday
--Mr. D and Mom edited two of his paragraphs from before
--we published one here and one here
--SD practiced keyboarding first half of his essay on foam swords
--Mom gave Chicklet reading lesson
--SD and Mr. D babysat for the M's, performed magic tricks for them! and played Axis and Allies with P
--Chicklet and B3 watched Eyewitness: Horse
--Mr. D practiced piano

A Visit to the Water Treatment Plant

Today I went to the water treatment plant. There were a lot of machines. Some were cleaning; some were sending clean water through pipes to the city. What was really cool was the sand filtering room. One of those things that isn't cool but interesting is the laboratory. The control room looked like the inside of a starship! I learned lots of things I didn't even know.

by Mr. Diner

--both boys read Harry Potter all morning--for HOURS. Mom let them.
--we reviewed multiplication facts and our vocabulary--addend, sum, minuend, subtrahend, difference...etc.
--we read 6 more pgs of homonym riddles, with the boys figuring them out and spelling them.
--Mr. D wrote paragraph about second Harry Potter book
--SD started paragraph about foam swords
--SD pored over his new book of magic tricks
--Mr. D practiced piano
--Chicklet practiced singing You're a Good Man Charlie Brown and Happiness Is (along with YouTube videos)
--All three attended theater classes X 2 hrs.
--Mom gave Chicklet a reading lesson
--Chicklet did two lessons in Get Ready for the Code
--SD practiced magic tricks
--the boys searched diligently for a missing hamster; SD came up with an idea to figure out what room she was in by putting out a few grains of seed overnight in each upstairs bedroom. He figured whichever pile was missing seeds would indicate that she was in that room! But she appeared, on her own, before we could put his sleuthing to the test.

--added 6 new multiplication facts; reviewed all 18 several times
--reviewed tricks for nines
--reviewed missing addends, factors and subtrahends/minuends, how to solve and check
--read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (2 chapters)
--read first 10 pgs of Eight Ate: A Feast of Homonym Riddles (Mom read the riddle and the boys guessed and spelled)--SD and Mr. D read aloud together (each taking one paragraph) first story in True Stories of Wonderful Deeds
--SD selected an article about lasers in Discovery Magazine back editions and read it to Mr. D
--Mr. D practiced piano
--Mr. D had piano lesson
--both boys read their Harry Potter books; SD finished sixth book
--boys played Uno with Chicklet
--Mom read from My Book House Vol. 1 & 2--nursery rhymes/poetry and Aesop's fables--to Chicklet and Mr. D
--Mom read Chapter 15 of The Endless Steppe to SD, Mr. D, Blondechick and Bantam17
--SD bike riding with friends
--SD practiced guitar
--SD and Mr. D helped carpenter move 2X4's, drywall
--whole family watched The Inheritance (DVD) based on the book by Louisa May Alcott

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.

Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.

Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater.
— Albert Einstein

All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
— Sir Walter Scott

HT: Mental Multivitamin

--read Catherine Vos Story Bible
--read Mrs. Frisby
--boys read Harry Potter
--SD, Mr. D (with Mom) practiced multiplication facts, went over extended notation, reviewed how money amounts are written and lined up, what to do with parentheses, counting numbers, whole numbers (and not-whole numbers), reviewed addend+addend=sum, minuend-subtrahend=difference, factorXfactor=product, dividend/divisor=quotient, and did problems using the vocabulary sum, difference, product, quotient. (All from Saxon 87 first couple lessons.)
--observed crystal growth
--used an old calendar with photos of weather events (hurricane, tornado, volcanic eruption, Northern lights, eclipse, etc.) to discuss those phenomena
--Mom gave Chicklet a reading lesson; read Little House in the Big Woods
--boys made breastplates from cardboard, decorated with duct tape and electrical tape, staged battles
--we cleaned whole house in record time
--SD practiced guitar
--Mr. D practiced piano
--SD performed magic tricks for company
--we watched 4th lecture of Do Hard Things

First day of enrichment classes!

Mr. D & Chicklet learned about magnets and electricity in Discovery World Science; made their own circuits which light up a Christmas tree bulb.

Mr. D and SD enjoyed a sketching class; made foam swords and fought in a battle; wrote a paragraph in Critical Thinking
Create
Chicklet and Bantam 3 enjoyed their Playtime class, and made a Creation Book in the Bible Stories and Crafts class.

Chicklet made a caterpillar and a butterfly in her Crafts class, and B3 played with a friend on scooters in open gym and later built quite a set out of Duplos in the Game Room.


At home Mr. D practiced piano, SD practiced guitar, Mom read Little House to Chicklet.

SD researched, selected and ordered book on magic.

--read Catherine Vos Story Bible--about Elijah and the chariot of fire...reminded us of John Fawcett, Mendelssohn's Elijah, what he said to Dad and what Margie saw
--read two ch's of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
--SD helped our carpenter building basement bathroom X 45 min.--learned some basics of measuring/sawing/measuring again/framing
--Mr. D, Chicklet & B3 studied pieces of Holy Land Treasure Box. Dressed paper dolls of Egyptian, Crusader, nomad. Put stickers of famous landmarks on map, read about them. Read about history of Holy Land, religions, Crusades, etc. Mr. D used decoder to figure out his name in Hebrew and print it with printing blocks. Looked up Hebrew alphabet online to figure out why there are no vowels in it.
--dinosaur workbooks--all 4 looked up "code" to spell meanings of dinosaur names
--spelling test for SD and Mr. D--triassic, jurassic, ankylosaurus, etc.
--practiced new multiplication facts
--reviewed math concepts from first couple lessons of Saxon 87 with both boys
--talked about Holy Land kit, the Crusades, Christianity vs. Judaism, evidence for Christianity...
--Mr. D wrote paragraph: (STILL NEED TO EDIT W/ HIM)

When I read Harry Potter it feels like you're in Hogwarts in the dormintrees on the quadiich feild even into secret rooms. It's hard to put the book down cause it's really adicting. My mom was going to have only one kid in the family that would never read until I started Harry Potter, now my mom sort of wishes I didn't read so much cause now whenever we are just about do math or something I dissapear then she finds me upstairs in my bed reading harry Potter. Whoever starts reading Harry Potter can never stop reading.