A few months ago I wrote  I love Thursdays! about a lovely day at home.  Life has changed a lot since then (ever-expanding, in wonderful ways).  We have a few extra regular activities – we’ve started going to a home ed centre (45 minutes drive away) one day a week, the kids have started French lessons on a Thursday morning, and we’re well into our summer habit of spending weekends at the coast  All that travelling makes me sooo extra appreciative of our time at home!

Today has been a wonderful day that just worked. We did enough “educational” stuff to keep me happy – reading, handwriting, maths (not just one but two kinds! Singapore Maths, which we’re trying out as a core curriculum, plus Living Maths (we read How Did Numbers Begin  and continued with The Great Number Rumble, and looked at some ancient number systems in Think Of A Number). 

But there was also plenty of time for everyone to relax and take time out doing their own thing.

We honed our writers’ observation skills using all our senses describing cups of hot chocolate topped with fluffy pink marshmallows (something out of The Writers’ Jungle I’d had in mind for weeks) – some of my favourite descriptions were C’s “It’s like foam on a beach, glistening pink in the sunset” and J’s “I like the way it jiggles”:-). (Thanks, Gaynor, for introducing me to Brave Writer!)

All that makes it sound like we had a busy Monday, but we really didn’t. There was a wonderfully relaxing quality to our day, with plenty of room for the kind of spontaneity that is my absolute favourite part of home educating. An example – I’d loosely planned a science experiment continuing our recent fun with water.

But when J noticed “Seed Babies” on my iPad and asked me to read it, we found ourselves on a very pleasant bunny path culminating in seeds “planted” in jars with varying degrees of light and water – documented in a very scientific manner using these great free notebook pages 🙂

It’s great to be a homeschooler 🙂