a sample day

In case you're wondering what we do all day...here's what happened today:

Diego was the first one up...I bathed him and then took a shower myself. Juan Pablo had already rushed off to work, almost late. Then I got Joaquin in the bath while I straightened up a little. Next, it was Isabela's turn...believe me, baths are definitely the hardest part of the day...we need to start doing them at night again.
Joaquin helped make blueberry muffins for breakfast, while Isabela took her bath.

While we ate our muffins, I finished a story from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. (I didn't think we would like these because of some of the big words they have, but they are pretty good tales. The one we finished was How the Whale got his Throat.)


Then they drew a picture of something from the story...this is like narrating to see how much, or what. they understood from the story.

We did our calendar time in English and Spanish then read a story from Widsom and the Millers about the diligent worker...the ant. (If we were only like the ant.)

For math we used our bear counters and I told a little story with bears coming and going to see if they could add and take away the right number as the story went along. Then they each wanted to tell their own story. This was not in the plan, but I thought it might be fun. Joaquin went on and on in his story and the math part of it went way out the window. It was hard to pull him back around after that, which is why I'm sometimes hesitant to deviate from my plan...however "fly by the seat of my pants" it is.


I read a section on Ben Franklin and his experience at the printing press. They thought his pen name of "Silence Dogood" was funny. We then made potato stamps and printed on big sheets of newsprint. By chance, we learned how letters must be reversed on your stamp when you want to print them or they come out backwards.


We took a little music break to sing a song at the keyboard. Then I think I sent them out for recess. They didn't really want to play outside today for some reason.

Diego had woken up by this point...he takes a great morning nap.

We read some poems by A.A. Milne from Now we are Six. We are loving these poems!


Copywork was next. Isabela copies something from what we've read during the day. Joaquin practices just one letter. Today it was A. He had a melt down at this point....I should have stopped for a snack or even an early lunch but didn't realize it in time.


So we had lunch...Isabela made scrambled eggs for her and Joaquin, I had egg salad. I also started dinner...brunswick stew, which is our new favorite dish. Joaquin requested it for his birthday dinner, and I'm just getting around to making it.

We also made Jello.

At some point a bee like bug had gotten in the house, so we used Joaquin's bug sucker to suck it up and put it outside (not before studying it through the magnifying glass), where we were then chased by multiple insects until no one wanted to be outside anymore.

I ran out to the grocery store, without kids, when JP had come home for an hour in between jobs.

Then we delivered the thank you notes from Joaquin's party. He had written his name on each for handwriting one day...if you haven't guessed it, he HATES writing, although he loves painting and coloring and drawing. We ran into several friends doing this, and got home around 6:15pm, where dinner was ready to be eaten.

We had Jello for dessert, read stories, and went to bed.

Whew! So that's a typical day. We are normally through any "school" stuff by lunch. We went to a park one day and hope to start other little field trips soon. Plus we have art, spanish, music, and dance starting next week!