I'm bored

I didn't really set a list for myself today. No priorities. Nothing specific. I'm also tired and have a bit of a cold, which means I'm not thinking super clearly on my feet. (Ok, admittedly, I'm kind of laying across the couch as I type this. So, I'm not thinking very clearly on my derrière. ;) )

What could I be doing?

• there's laundry to fold
• we didn't do our house blessing this weekend
• I could do the next section in grade 10 science
• I could plan what I want to have ready for tomorrow
• I could work on finishing my crocheted blanket--for which I've set myself a deadline of Feb. 28
• I could start the novel I've been wanting to start for years (and have actually started a few here and there) and said I would definitely get started on once we got the laptop (we've had the laptop since Christmas--I took some notes from a book about writing a novel during a year, but only working on weekends; does that count? )
• I could play piano
• I could put on a movie
• it's only 7:40--I could go do some treadmill
• I could read--I have Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy out from the library plus I started reading Eragon
• I could watch tv (but I don't think there's anything on that would interest me at the moment--I'm pretty picky!)
• I could write about my day
• I could finish putting things into Homeschool Tracker

Let me write about my day:

The 12yo was away on a sporting competition, as I had mentioned in previous posts. His plane didn't get in until something like 10:30 last night. Which means he didn't get to bed until close to midnight. Oy. He's also got bronchitis and an ear infection. His dad expected him to wake up between 9 and 9:30, so left the kids at home and went to work, thinking he'd be going back to get them and bring them to my place in a short while. The 12yo slept until 11 am. They decided to come anyhow and we went to park day.

But back to the morning... When I finally knew that I'd be waiting a bit for the oldest two to come, I decided to do some school stuff with them. It was so odd trying to get our day started without our usual routine. But it was fun. I sat down and read with ds--we found some rebus French books at the library and he's beginning to read some of the simple words, too, like "la", "le", "de" but surprised me with reading "facile" and "super", too! He was so proud of himself (I had commented on how he was reading more and more words), that he asked to read again with me tonight and read even more words. He ended up reading almost an entire sentence on his own and giggled a little over the fact that there were so many words in a row he could read. (And as I type this, he somehow ended up pulling out a special notebook he hasn't used since November and is tracing over the pencilled letters with a new, special, pen I got him last week.)

After that, I tried seeing if dd would do the French Professor Noggins cards with me. She gets so worked up over not knowing the answers and doesn't get that learning means that you figure out the answers, don't just know them (she's always been that way! Even as a baby!). So I asked her if she could just read the cards to me and we'd see if I could figure them out. She was keen to do that. It was good oral French reading practice for her, plus, since I'd picked the Canadian Geography set, some exposure to geography info. I also vocalized my problem solving when I didn't automatically know an answer, which is probably good for her to see.

After that, ds and I tried to do a science experiment: mix lemon juice with a bit of water, try to 'write' on paper with it, then heat the paper after the invisible ink has dried. It didn't work very well, but I may have had too much water for the amount of lemon juice, or maybe we're supposed to use a fresh lemon instead of the concentrate stuff I have. But it was fun.

After that, I helped dd resume work on her Around the World project--she's only on day 10 of 80!

After THAT, we did a little oral problem solving in math. Things like, "If you have 5 dollars and I give you another 3, how much do you have?" for ds and "If you have 9 cookies to share among 3 people, how many cookies will each person get? How did you figure that out?" for dd. She hasn't spent a lot of time on her multiplication tables--although she completely understands how to figure them out--so it was interesting to get an answer for the question, "If you get 4 dollars a day for 6 days, how much money will you have?" She figured out it was 24. I asked her how she'd figured it out. "Because 6 times 2 is 12 and 12 times 2 is 24." This is something she's done for sometime--she just 'sees' the simple factors in certain numbers. She knows that 6 x 2 x 2 is the same thing as 6 x 4. She also knows that she doesn't have her x4's mastered, but does know her x2's and figured out how to get an accurate answer. This is something she actually started doing with addition when she was in grade 1. And yet I've been in grade 5/6 classes, and even worked with older students, who didn't quite 'get' that 6x4 could be broken down into 6x2x2. Hm... I wonder if I should show her factor trees...

That reminds me. Before I started with ds and reading, I spent a little time on the computer with dd. I discovered this virtual math site yesterday and we ended up doing a coordinate grid 'maze' game together. She picked up on the idea very quickly. She decided to continue when I went upstairs to be with ds and my niece and ended up doing stuff with all 4 quadrants (so, dealing with negative numbers). Oh, and during this time, she ended up typing a few messages to the 15yo, who was at home and checking her email, logged into MSN Messenger.

What else did we do? Oh, the 15yo had an idea last week to make Valentine's Day Rice Krispie Squares for our party, making them with our leftover Christmas Rice Krispies, but then realized there were green in them. She suggested we pull the greens out. I was game, so ds and I started that. He and my niece ate all the greens that got pulled out. So far, we have about 1 3/4 cups of cereal ready--we need 6 cups. lol. Then we watched "You Are What You Eat" during lunch, which I count as Health class.

So, it was quite a productive morning! The two oldest will be gone for a week, starting next Wednesday. It'll be very different and will really give me a chance to do more things. But I think it will also help me focus more on providing interesting things to do rather than 'trying to get the kids to work'. I don't need to try when they've got something interesting.

This afternoon was supposed to be a kind of Winter Carnival at our park day. Unfortunately, it was so cold, they couldn't do the quinzee building (the snow would not have stuck together at all), the picnic barbecue thingies were blocked off for a snow sculpting thing and that meant they couldn't be used to heat up maple syrup to then create candy on snow and most of the skating 'team' rounded up last week to practise was not present this week, so most of the people who volunteered to take their place had no clue what to do. The kids had fun anyhow--they went sliding and ds played on this little hill with some other kids (kids he'd never played with before--yeah, those homeschoolers have no social skills! don't know how to interact with other people! yeah, yeah).

Now that's not all. (Are you even still reading??) I had printed off some sheets this morning for le Carnaval de Québec--a little late since it finished yesterday, but what the heck--and dd and ds worked on those after supper. I also continued to read to them from Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke.

So now I've managed to use up a fair amount of time. And I fixed my boredom problem. lol. And I've realized how many things I haven't put into HST! Best do that before I forget.