Sun and Greece. Yesterday and Today

Today is cool and nice outside to I let the kids play a little longer in the backyard this morning. K went over to preschool but before she left she played on Jumpstart Spanish. That little gal just LOVES that computer!

We came home from taking Kam to school and I read some library books about ancient Greece. We learned what things we have today that come from Greece, like the our alphabet, the Olympics, medicine, and many other things.
I also read a book called "Mr. Semolina-Semolinus : A Greek Folktale". It is a story about a princess who makes a man out of batter. It reminded me of the Gingerbread Man.
After Kam gets back from preschool we will make some Greek cookies.

Right now the kids are doing bookwork. Tay-her math, Jo has finished his math and spelling. Cat is reading her book in bed (she is not feeling too good today), Nate is playing with Legos. Ka has finished his bookwork for math and spelling, he is waiting for me to get off the computer so he can practices his math facts on mathusee.

It does seem like the excitement of having bookwork has gone away and the "newness" has worn off a bit. A few weeks into getting things going again around here is when the bookwork becomes just that... work. . Learning, I believe takes place all the time but bookwork, handwriting, math, and English are important skills they need to know how to do.

I am looking forward to a fun filled day. Here is a look at what we did yesterday:

Our Monday:

Oh .. can I just say that I love the Apologia Science! Yesterday our lesson was on the sun. We learned that the sun is 20 times hotter on its outside that the hottest you oven can get at home. (about 10000 degrees) we also learned that it is millions of times hotter on the inside. Other things we learned:

*The sun looks smaller than it really is because it is far away.. we practiced this using our thumb to cover up things that we new were larger down the street, like a stop sign, or a window on a house... sometimes we used each other!
*The sun is in its exact location. God put it exactly where it needs to be, so we wont be too cold (frozen) or too hot.
* We learned that if the sun was the size of a basketball, the Earth would be the size of a peppercorn. Over one million Earths could fit inside the sun!
*We learned that Astronomers believe that the sun has enough gas to last 5 Billion more years.
"We also learned why we dont look at the sun. When you have a magnifying glass with the sun shining on it the lens focuses the beam of light on one spot.. our eyes have a lens too and that is what it does to our eyes! If we looked at the sun thats why it could cause us to be blinded!"
*Other things we learned: Orbit, Seasons, Axix, Tilt, .. oh .. I could go on an on!
*We then looked at satellite images on the internet from a satellite telescope to see what he sun looks like. It had pictures of the sun using different filters so the sun was blue, green, red, etc.. "

Of course the kids did their math, Jo and Tay practiced their addition facts on the mathusee sight. Nate and Kam played on jumpstart Spanish.

We started reading King Aurther and the Sword in the Stone.

Our bible verse for the week: "Children obey your parents for this is pleasing to the Lord" Ephesians 6:1 (we are on letter "C")

For Journal pages they drew pictures of the sun and wrote about something they learned.

Ka and Cat played Scrabble for their spelling. This was great to see them actually figuring out how to spell using the tiles they had and adding up their scores. (The game we used was Js grandmothers and it has a turn table with holes the wooden tiles fit inside so the words stay in place. This worked really well for the kids)