Self-motivation, PE, Venus, and Phantom

The kids started their book work early this morning, all on their own. I usually dont have them get started until nine but they all were going before breakfast this morning. It's so nice to see the self-motivation start showing up in regards to school.

After they finished their work they asked if they could listen to the Madagascar CD. (they LOVE that CD).. and so started a hour of "dance" but more karate and gymnastics than dance. I decided to get some good PE in today and so I led the kids in a few songs worth of "aerobics". We marched, did the "grapevine", jumping jacks, push-ups, sit-ups, and leg lifts to name a few. We all had a great time and got our heart rates up too! After that the kids got out twister, as Taylor decided it was a good stretching game. Next was Battleship and Mancala which Cat and Kaleb played while the others built a HUGE tent in the den. The the pretending started with each kid being a different animal and a few of the kids being "owners".

During breakfast the kids watched a DVD about addition and at lunch they watched a sesame street DVD (sesame English).. After lunch they played for a while and we watched a High-Def program about Bangkok, it was very interesting.

For science today I read to them from out book about Venus.. here is what Joseph remembers:
It has volcano's on it. It has Lava. There are clouds that keeps Venus hot. The Clouds here on Earth keep us warm too. Another word for the clouds and stuff is Atmosphere. Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, those are the Planets. Mercury is closer to the Sun but Venus is hotter. It is hotter because of the clouds and volcanoes.

And Nathan adds: They said that everything goes around the Earth but it doesn't, everything goes around the sun. Mercury is closer to the sun but Venus is hotter. (thats it.. he just ran to the other room after that sentence) :)

We also talked about the difference between Gaseous and Terrestrial. We got out our "English from the roots up" and looked up Terra-Earth, and talked all about Terrestrial, Terrace Farming, Cairn Terrier (which is what our dog is). We then went on to Philia-which means Love and Friendship. We talked about Philosopher- which means= one who loves wisdom. (Sophia means wisdom). That led to Philadelphia-the city of brotherly love.. which led to Adelpho=brother.. so I asked Taylor to tell her Adelpho he was cool! .. That was fun. Kaleb decided he liked brother better.

From The Phantom Tollbooth I read chapter seven. We had fun hearing about a banquet Milo and Tock were invited to. The duke asked for Milo to try some "somersault" instead of salt and we got to talk about synonyms by way of Milo being offered a "Synonym bun" .. what a fun fun Punny book this is.. and if you know me I LOVE puns.. this book has been great so far! .. Next Chapter is 8.. cant wait to see what HUMBUG volunteers for :)

Well.. the girls are down for their naps and the rest of the gang's doing tracings of animals out of library books they got yesterday.. I still need to work on the flash cards with Joseph and will get Kaleb and Catherine to practice their math facts for fun.

Such a beautiful low stress, high learning day :)