Just thought I'd post what we did on Monday (for anyone who wants to know what the life of a homeschooler is like).
We did devotional first thing as usual (we're studying the Preach My Gospel manual and looking up all of the scriptures). Then we noticed that some ugly caterpillars were attacking the honeysuckle plant growing up the bird feeder, so we got some jars and picked them all off and we're going to feed them leaves and see what they turn into. I told Quinn that we only had 15 minutes before it was time to go to his Debate and Speech class (which he does once a week in Centreville) but he is time-management-challenged, and I intentionally did not remind him again, and he didn't wake up to how much time had passed until he had made himself late. But this is the painful process he needs to go through, I think, or he'll never be able to get himself places on time.
While we were waiting for him, Luke and I read a Genevieve Foster book Abraham Lincoln's World, and tried to do some spelling, but I think I need to change what we are doing with that. Luke can spell great, though he has never had a spelling program (because he resisted it in 1st grade and several times since then). But I thought that this year he was ready to take on a book that lists all of the frequently misspelled words. I think I'm going to wait on that.
Then we went to the library, and the boys did an assignment in their Classical Writing program in which they pick some words out of a classical story, and look them up in a dictionary, a thesaurus, an etymology book, and a quotation dictionary. It's really interesting to do that, and they enjoyed it. After that they got to browse the library and pick out books, then we got lunch (which we do when they've had a good past week) and went home. In the afternoon the boys did math and it was "fun math" day (we alternate doing Saxon math with non-traditional math topics). So Luke wanted to see if there was a pattern in the squares of the numbers in the base 7 system (as opposed to our base 10 system). We wrote them all out on the dry erase board and Luke found that yes, indeed, there was. He spent about 1/2 hour on this and it used his arithmetic skills quite a bit, but more importantly, like the John Holt quote says, his mind was "powerful when discovering."
Then Luke read his library books until school time was over. I did laundry and Relief Society stuff. Later Quinn and I went to orchestra down in Woodbridge, and he watched his chemistry lesson on the in-car TV while we were traveling. While he was there I shopped (it's right by Potomac Mills) and read. And that was our day.
