What we actually did today

We didn’t hit all the things I had planned for the day, but she was incredibly patient when I got distracted by ixl.com and wanted her to complete a few more skills. She’s been well fed, well read, and I’m dead, so we’re stopping school for now. It’s a beautiful day outside and we may still take Dog for a walk during which time we’ll probably sing our Buffy song and dance around. Now that I’m officially ‘off work’, it’s time to get the house ready for my mother and sister’s visit, finish the presents for the cast of the play the Kid and I are in, put the finishing touches on the quilts for my mama and my fantastic MiL, knit the rest of the scarves for my family and wrap some books for Christmas presents. I might find time to make dinner in there somewhere.

I’m happy with what we did today; The Kid learned a lot of new skills, practiced some old ones, got to read quite a bit, ate a ton, she’s still happy, her chores got done this morning, and we’re heading to the grocery store to get some bread flour for home-made bagels.

And here’s what we actually did:

Read a chapter of The Patchwork Girl of Oz

Independent reading during breakfast: Schroeder, Music is My Life (Peanuts)

Presented schedule to the kid, let her pick the order of the activities

Decimal worksheet (compared to money, fixed misconception that 10.6 =$10 and 6 cents.)

Ate snack of bananas and milk

Stopwatch for addition facts worksheet

Drawing while practicing multiplication facts

Got distracted with card manipulation, still practiced multiplication

Finished all multiplication practice, discussed metric prefixes and powers of 10.

Played with dog while we did related subtraction facts and addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division terms on IXL.com (discovered ‘minuend’ is fun to say, even though I had no idea what it was before we started practicing)

Practiced identifying states by region, then took a lunch break (independent reading of Peanuts while eating lima beans and black beans with corn)

Note: One of the things that she has repeatedly mentioned about homeschooling is how wonderful it is to be able to eat whenever you want so her brain can keep working

Took a 15 minute break to digest; she used it to draw

Counting patterns and skip counting stories from ixl.com

Practiced identifying states without the regional boundaries

Translated two resolutions from Seneca falls convention, focused on prefixes and suffixes to decode words (example: indelicacy in- = not, like inhuman, impropriety/im-proper/not-right)

Danced around while the kid threw Christmas bows at my butt. She had to calculate her ‘hit percentage’ with each throw (1/2=50%, 4/6=2/3=66%, 4/8=2/4=1/2=50%), then we switched and I threw at her.

Danced around to “When You’re Smiling”

Introduced kid to Powerpoint to record her learning about simple machines. Used search engines to locate images, taught basic mouse and keyboard commands, finished slides about levers, included two examples for each

More independent reading while Chicken Ramen was cooking and being eaten

Had The Kid tell me about the story she just read, then she asked if she could read it aloud to me. Uh, heck yeah!

Did not:

Practice spelling (wanted to throw stuffed moose while we take turns saying letters of spelling words)

Practice sign language song

Work on her fable

Introduce formula for simple machines

Introduce economics