Fifth Grade Fun

Today is the first day of fifth grade for my youngest child.  The last year I will ever have my own child in elementary school.  He doesn't like that he missed the cutoff date for 6th grade by 3 days, but I am happy to have him here with me an additional year to homeschool.

I started off the morning oversleeping.  UGH.  He also got to "oversleep", although for him no amount of sleep can be too much.  I finally got him to the table for breakfast a little before 9 and at 9:55 we are still on morning work, but I am not going to push him and make him a grouch.  We moved our morning out to the deck and it's enjoyable sitting here with him, stopping to talk, watching the crazy cat do flips on the outdoor carpet.  There are no granddaughters making noise this morning.  No daycare baby running around.  Just Dakota and I, the way I like it best, sitting on the deck watching the world go by.    The trashmen just came by.  Young and shirtless.  I mentioned that I thought that since they were working they should have some kind of shirt on.  His comedic response was "so they don't look...trashy".  Hahaha!  He is a funny boy.  Yesterday his dad asked him to sit on his lap so he could tell him something.  Dakota promptly sat down and said "Santa I want a fire truck this year!"  You had to be there, but his comedic timing is great.  He's grown so much in the past year, not only physically, but emotionally.  My other son was always very young for his age.  Dakota is years older, a teenager before he was even a preteen.

We stayed outside until around 10:30  finishing morning work, checking out the National Geographic Kids website and having Dakota start a new novella that goes along with our audio book, The Copernicus Legacy, The Serpent's Curse.  We listed to the first one, the Forbidden Stone, over summer break.  It's a great series with a lot of mystery, clues and historical references.  When we came inside we watched the first episode of America:  The Story of Us.  What a well done video series.  Excellent for history.  Dakota wanted to watch more, but it was going further than I wanted to go in chronological years so we stopped.

We had some unexpected fun learning about Magellan, who is also featured in our Copernicus Legacy books.  He started his journey on this date in 1519 so we read a short blurb about his journey and then tried to do a global mapping activity about his journey.  Well, we now know we obviously need a good map with latitude and longitude clearly marked.  We tried an ancient globe.  We tried an ancient map and we laughed as we got nowhere, trying to answer questions flying by the seat of our pants on a world map.  We didn't do well and I'll definitely be getting us a good map soon!

My oldest daughter dropped by for lunch today.  She bought Chinese as a back to school treat for Dakota.  I was excited to see the older two granddaughters' reaction to the Barbie house I got them yesterday.  They loved it!  And it didn't cost a thing!  I love freecycle!  Lunch this way took longer than usual, but we got back to work after about an hour and while Dakota is doing his math I vacuumed and threw in a load of laundry.  He's groaning, but he'll live.  Next is our Scholastic magazine and we are going to do it online I think.  If we have time maybe an experiment or two from an old Magic School Bus acids and bases kit.  It's too young, but we might as well use it up.  He starts his EcoAdventures class this week and his chemistry on Thursday so there won't be too much formal science here at home this year.  

Tonight is football.  UGH.  It's very hot and humid.  It's supposed to rain tomorrow and break the back of the Indian Summer heat wave that's been hovering over us for days.

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