Crazy Cold

Today we woke up to crazy cold weather.  The temperatures are low, the wind chills lower and there is ice and snow on the ground to add the look of a frozen tundra.

I thought I was going to be able to stay in all day because they cancelled our homeschool review for the afternoon, but my daughter's car door broke and I had to run out to pick her up and take her to work.  The roads were actually in good condition and I was only gone about a half hour.  I got home just in time to start Dakota on our schedule.  While he made his bed and straightened his room, I made chocolate chip pancakes.  I was surprised yet again when he willingly went into his room at 9:30 to have his personal reading time.  This is the kid who complains loudly for all to hear about how he hates to read, yet this half hour of time seems okay for him.

10am brings morning work for him that is done independently.  He works on language arts activities and some fun papers.  This week is all about the new year, writing goals, making a flip book etc.  We moved from that through spelling and math with little difficulties and it was nice to not have many interruptions to get us off track.  One daycare baby was sleeping and the other was watching an ABC video in the livingroom and playing with big plastic animals quite content to be by herself.  The noisy little granddaughters stayed home ;)

Next was a mixture of history, science and art.  We continued learning about Galileo and focused on his Heliocentric Theroy, stating that the sun is the center of the universe.  Before Galileo built his telescope to prove this, the world thought that the Earth was the center of the universe.  We read about his discoveries and then watched a short biographical video then started painting styrofoam balls in our solar system kit to put together tomorrow to make our model.

Lunch is looked forward to eagerly around here since we are doing our Writecraft Minecraft unit from www.educents.com.  He is working on his first project, a fort, and he is very pleased to be able to play during lunch, which is usually not allowed.

After lunch is always harder for him.  He does not like to work in the afternoon.  He started by finishing up painting the styrofoam balls, which before lunch was great fun.  Now it was stupid and boring and he hated it.  Next was two chapters, partner read, of Kingdom Keepers, Disney After Dark.   He griped and complained about writing his summary after and then griped and complained some more when I asked him to fill in the layers of the atmosphere on his balloon diagram, draw the diagram and add what happens in each one and then watch a short video on the ISS.  He couldn't wait to be done, so I am not sure how much he got out of the afternoon.

This evening I am inside, warm in front of the fire.  I am unusually restless.  I have just made a pot of coffee and I am going to sit and watch American Idol tonight.  Maybe that's it.  My mind has been very busy lately planning for school and working my independent contractor transcription job.  We are going to the Science Center all day tomorrow for activities and classes so no planning tonight and my contact didn't send me any new jobs.  Nothing to do!  I don't think I know quite what to do with myself!