We spent ALL DAY last Sunday deep sea fishing near San Francisco.  The kids learned so much, enough to call it educational.  We practiced fishing skills, got a physical workout, and learned about seasickness.  The fisherman showed us his "fish finder," an on-board radar system that detects fish under the waters.  We caught lots and lots of rock fish, and practiced patience while NOT CATCHING cod!

Anyway, we were exahuasted come Monday morning.  HIP HIP HOORAY for the freedom to let the whole family sleep in and basically take Monday off of school (we still a few schooish things, but later in the day, after sleeping in, a leisurely breakfast, and housecleaning).  I enjoyed having a day to go through all the boys summer/winter clothes without feeling like I "had" to get certain things done.  Homeschooling truly makes life simpler!

Bible
We read through I Kings 11-15, for the most part out of Ergemeir's Bible Story Book.  I figured if I was getting confused by all the names that sounded alike and all the kings from Judah and Israel, the kids must be getting lost as well.  The children's book makes it much easier, without leaving much out at all. 

We began a "Kings Chart," listing all the kings we come across for the divided kingdoms.  We are writing the kings the Lord dispproved of in RED, and the kings he praised in BLUE.  So far, there is lots of red :(  The kids were cute, wanting to put Saul's name up in half red and half blue!

History:
We put aside Texas history and the Mexican War to focus on the California Gold Rush -- in preparation for the Cub Scout trip to Sutter's Fort this weekend (see "Real Life" below).  We read 2 delightful historical fiction books, which I would recommend to anyone in this time period:  Treasure in the Stream:  The Story of a Gold Rush Girl and The Legend of Freedom Hill.

We read a few more chapters of Johnny Texas.

We read an excerpt from Biblical Worldview magazine about "mythstorians" and how the media tends to re-write history.  The article mentioned Washington Irving being one of the first to bring the Columbus flat-earth myth to life.  The boys glued this excerpt into their notebook page on Washington Irving, along with their narration of Rip Van Winkle.

Math:
CJ, Miquon -- measurement in meters and centimeters, figured out areas and perimeters, lots of math with cups, pints, quarts and gallons, and learned about temperature measured in Celsius.  CJ also spent several hours playing with his new calculator and adding up the words in all his favorite books :)
Micah, Miquon -- Addition and Subtraction, learned about the number line and how taking hops down or up it is the same as adding or subtracting.
We read Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland aloud -- what a great book!  It introduced kids to concepts of degrees, angles -- acute and obtuse and 90 and 180 degree angles, and parallel lines.  The book is written in such a way that the story was amusing even if some of the facts went over the boys' heads.

Daniel and Micah spent a few hours playing in our math manipulative box, measuring rice, counting sticks, doing one-to-one correspondence, etc.

Language Arts:
Phonics for Micah:  moving right along in Alpha Phonics, lessons 41- 55 this week.
The boys continued doing copywork.  English from the Roots Up came in the mail on Friday, so CJ will begin this next week.  I am spending more one-on-one time reading with Daniel, and allowed him to play starfall.com because I think it will help with his auditory processing.

Science:
We read Chapters 1 and 2 of The Burgess Animal Book for Chlidren.  We also read Rock Collecting by Roma Gans and Prairie Dogs Kiss and Lobsters Wave:  How Animals Say Hello by Marilyn Singer (thanks to my dad's school for this donation!).  The boys each drew and wrote about something they learned in their nature journals.  We read the Magic School Bus book about honey bees.

Literature: 

We read The Tempest from Beautiful Stories of Shakespeare for Children, and four of Aesop's Fables.

Computer: 

CJ learned how to hack into his blog template and change the color scheme, using an html color chart found on the web.

Real Life (in educationese this is referred to as "Field Trips"): 

Besides deep sea fishing, CJ also visited a very cool exotic pet store with his cub scout den and learned neat facts about reptiles and other creatures.

We went to Sutter's Fort with Micah's cub scout den on Saturday, bringing our current history stories a little bit to life!

We went to a dog park to work on training our dog to come when called.  There we met a man who is writing a book on the language of dogs.  He taught us a few things to look for to understand what a dog is communicating with his body language.