Gummi Worms and Reading

This morning Morgan worked from her Open Court Reading Book. She read a story about Therapeutic Touch and how an 11 year old girl did an experiment with practitioners. We have a friend Terri who does TT so this was interesting to us. It lead to a discussion about beliefs and science and how the two can mingle cohesively and effortlessly.

Patrick worked on his English Literature. He does all of his work on the computer now.

His handwriting has always been illegible so now we just use the computer.

A few of you have been emailing and asking to see my "very organized" office (not) and where we homeschool. Well, that's it above. It's not clean by any stretch of the imagination. Our bookshelves are chock full, there is school work, Tibetan prayer flags, white boards, pictures, poems, microscopes and globes all crammed into one tiny space. I try to keep most everything in this room but when you homeschool the clutter always spills out into the rest of the house.

Here is the side wall and book shelf. The side wall has a dry erase board for Tae to work on, the sign language alphabet, a list of things we'd like to do, and photos that have been pinned up there for months (because I don't have time to scrap them). Notice the large pile of papers on the end of the work table. The little basket on the floor is for scrap paper or for the cat to nap in.

Tae wanted to do some "schoolwork" today so we talked about the letter A and the sounds it makes. We also did some nursery rhymes and worked on the shape square. We went on a shape hunt to find things in the house that were square shaped and then Tae drew pictures of them. He turns five in February so I have not done any formal teaching with him. Kids are pushed to early to read and during the preschool years I just let them explore letters, shapes and numbers on their own. He happens to love workbooks and will often pick one up and ask for help with directions. He doesn't always follow them but has basically taught himself the entire alphabet (a few letters he confuses) and most of his shapes. "Do I write the M like a mountain or like two V's?" He decorated a folder to put all of his "work" in so that he could show his Dad at the end of the day.

We also found a kit for making gummi critters that was a lot of fun. The kit came with lemon-lime and grape flavors and then some sour sugar (which was really gross) to dip the gummies in.

Filling up the trays.

Here is Tae after he filled up his trays with the liquid. I have no idea why he is

wearing Morgan's red belt like a sash.

Here is the delicious outcome of just 10 minutes in the refrigerator. Notice the yummy tongue, lips, pawprints, brain, scorpion worms, eyeball and some bug I can't identify shapes that we have.

Morgan and Tae tasting the gummy worms.
Green gummy lips.

And the aftermath of such delicious food. A blue tongue. Morgan said her mouth felt like it was on fire. I later found out that she licked the rest of the sour sugar from the dipping plate.

The kids then helped bring in wood for the fireplace, clean the guinea pig cage and collect eggs from the chickens. We were done by noon. Mommy had a coffee break and the kids went off to play their computer games and do more reading.