Rainy Days and Homeschooling Are the Best!!

One of my very favorite things about being a homeschooler is that when it's pouring rain outside, we get to stay inside, snuggling under blankets, playing games or just having a lazy day and hanging out.  Currently, I have a junior in high school who I homeschooled for eight years.  Taking him to school usually negates the ALL day inside plan but today, since he didn't get in from a sports game with his dad in DC until midnight, I used my motherly powers to declare it a NO SCHOOL day for him and we all hid behind the curtains, being lazy and doing a whole lot of nothing for the first part of the day.  Dakota is working on building a Lego family so that kept him busy and then he decided to lay on the sofa and watch a movie, a wonderful rainy day luxury.  I got some of my folders done for my job and then around 1:30, when we were good and ready, we sat down and did a math lesson, learned about forces and magnets and went around the house on a hunt to find what magnets do and do not attract, wrote in his journal about the rain and read some books to each other.  We started a book about all things from Australia and did the cloze activities and coloring on the first few pages then used Enchanted Learning to print off an Australian animals wheel.  We cut it out, glued it to posterboard and added a brad.  Dakota was thrilled!  He said that later he wants to make a game out of it and use the wheel as his spinner.  Bonus!!  When that was finished I asked him to find an Australian animal from his Animal Planet coloring book and work on that then we called it a day.  We were only working about 90 minutes, but with last night's football practice added in, we made the day pretty complete.  Science, social studies, language arts, literature, math, art and PE and the joy of no rush, no fuss and being together.