Thursday January 8, 2015

Yesterday we had a slow, rough start to school (as we so often do.) Amy and I finally got to work and had a little writing/ interview time about math. I asked her questions about definitions like what is adding and how to draw pictures of 3 plus 4. Then we played a math game that Amy made up. It was similar to a couple games we had played the day before only it made far less sense. It still worked though. I was glad Amy was creating ideas. We wrapped up the math lesson with a math story. It was about a Greek philosopher named Thales who lived in the 600-500'0s BC. He was interesting. He figured out how to determine the height of a pyramid using proportions and lengths of shadows. We used that as inspiration and measured ourselves and our shadows. It didn't work too well since there was a lot of natural light. We started a book called Mathematicians are People Too. It was a hit.

Then we read from Little Britches. We learned yesterday that he called piggy back rides pick-a-back rides. We thought that was interesting.

Then clean up the school room and fold a load of laundry for family work.

Lunch.

Reading and Writing and Drawing Class found us working on Let's Play Music stuff, read some Pinkalicious, and I started a new book called The Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe. That's for my own personal math study.

I may or may not be out of control. I started those two books at school, and we read the first chapter of The Phantom Tollbooth last night with Daddy for family reading time. That's a good one to read with Daddy cause he loves it. Starting three books in a day! Oh wait, I read a Magic Tree House fact tracker last night while trying to convince Eliza to sleep. Then I started another one. So I started 5 books yesterday! I am already reading a bunch. I'm out of control.

Despite the pretty little picture that this explanation of our school day paints, it was rather rough much of the day. Kids ignoring instructions and fighting and talking back. I don't know how we got that much done and still had the learning a good experience because the interactions between us were rather unpleasant in my opinion. I finally sent them all outside to play and took a break. I was so ready for bed by the time I finally got to go last night.