Jan. 30, 2006 - On a roll...

For the fourth week in a row, I did a menu plan and grocery list for the week... bought all the groceries within budget (even on the low $$ week!!)  AND did my lesson plans ~  all BEFORE Monday!

So today we had a good school day, in spite of the interruption of our day for a library trip.  I quite often go by myself since its just faster, but decided we could all go today.  I kind of needed the help with two bulging backpacks of books to take back... and to pick up!

We got some really cool looking books on Ben Franklin;  Ben and Me, The Amazing Mr. Franklin (The Boy Who Read Everything), and The Benjamin Franklin You Never Knew.  I also got a "fun" book about time traveling back to find Alexander Graham Bell.  Its called Blast to the Past #3 Bell's Breakthrough by Stacia Deutsch.

Other than the library trip, we did the typical school day.  We learned how to square numbers easily (as in 97 squared, etc) ~ so easily in fact, that I was able to do the page myself in a matter of minutes instead of having to use a calculator to have an "answer key"!!

We learned about electricity (and thank you to Janice VanCleave!!!  The most AWESOME science books ever!!!) Our vocabulary words being protons, neutrons, electrons, electricity, nucleus, atom, etc.  We acted out soem electric things, more to come tomorrow.

The kids had a homework assignment to do a book report or timeline page on someone or something.  We have a timeline book in a three ring binder that we add to each time we learn something interesting.  A lot of the pages were solely done by the kids.  I'm enjoying our new timeline wallchart from Konos, but I definitely like the timeline book for the amount fo information you can easily add and organize in it!  I started with a timeline book with pages labelled at the top with every 100 years (every 50 years as we got closer to the present)  We use the clear page protectors, and the kids will do a one page "report" on someone with drawings and whatnot...then we just clip it in the binder in the appropriate time period. 

When we studied world History (Van Loon's Children's History of the World), we added to our timeline about once a week.  I wish we'd had it when we did US history!  Oh well, we'll get around to the US again soon, I'm sure.

Oh ~ and for our prayer and devotional time all this week we're praying for daddy, knowing God's will for his life and a new job ~ or at least better work conditions where he's at.  We're also discussing work/jobs in general and having good work habits... and developing good habits NOW, not waiting until you have a paying job.  Thankfully their daddy is a really good example to look up to!

That's all... (as if its not enough of a book!)