Clouds on a Sunny Day

Today we started late because the girls wanted to make pancakes for breakfast. Shannon did the bulk of the cooking!  She stood on a stepstool with her apron on and poured the batter on the griddle and flipped the pancakes.  She did a great job and managed not to burn herself.  Of course there were a lot more drips on the counter and stove, but overall pretty awesome job.

To continue with the storm theme, we read the short and sweet book, "Little Cloud" by Eric Carle.  I then had them paint what their "little cloud" would look like and why.  There were a few false starts on this one.  Kodi was unhappy with his "dog cloud" and had to start over.  Shannon kept changing her mind on what she wanted her cloud to be.  But their finished products are great.  Shannon settled on a "snail" because Little Cloud, "saw a snail on a tree".  Kodi painted "2 dogs" because Little Cloud "wanted to bark". I love that reason!

Next we made cloud shape books.  They had to cut out pictures of clouds in different 3-D shapes (cone, cylinder, sphere, cube) and match them to the right page.  Then they traced the word and copied the word below the shape.  Next they drew their favorite of the four shapes and finally they drew a cloud in a shape of their choice.  Kodi's handwriting amazes me.  Even though he is struggling with reading, he can write letters so neatly and they always face the right direction.

It took Kodi awhile to trace and write all of the shape words, so I had Shannon do an extra thing about grandparents to tie in with "Storm in the Night."  She had to write about memories with her grandparents.  She wrote "Walk the dog with Nana and Grandpa" and "Me a My Grampa and Grama at Bufalo Thundr".

Then I had Shannon do a lesson assessment I found online for "Storm in the Night".  It was for 3rd grade.  She had no problem answering the multiple choice questions for comprehension and vocabulary.  She didn't enjoy answering the write-in questions so she found a way to answer in as few words as possible.  But her answers definitely showed comprehension.  

After that Shannon did 2 exercises in her 2A math workbook on division.  Kodi worked on dolch sight words on spellingcity.com.  Then they both played Dreambox (math).  Kodi loves Dreambox and gets very excited when he gets to go on this site.  Which is great because he is doing a ton of math! 

After lunch we headed to the library.  Shannon was so excited about this huge spider outside the building.  She took some photos with my camera:

The spider from underneath

It is blurry because she wouldn't get closer on this side!

Then off to the Siskey YMCA.  We just joined yesterday so that the kids could take home school classes starting in September (Spanish and Sports).  They will also be doing taekwondo at the Simmons Y.  And Shannon will be doing gymnastics at the Harris Y.  So we will definitely be getting our maximum benefits from the regional membership!  

Today was Maddy and Mia's fitness orientation.  They are both old enough to use the cardio equipment (treadmill, bike, etc).  Maddy can use the facility without an adult.  Mia can use the equipment if I'm with her (until she turns 12 then she can go solo).  There is a great youth center for kids 6-12 that Shannon can go to whenever we are there.  It's kind of like child watch but it has a rock wall, foosball, pool table and scheduled activities.  She was thrilled to go there while Maddy and Mia did their orientation.  Poor Kodi had nowhere to go since childwatch for 5 and under was closed from 2-4.  He just hung out with me and played Fruit Ninja on my phone.   In less than a year he will be able to join Shannon in the cooler youth center.  

Then off to the pool.  We had some drizzling earlier in the day, but when we got to the pool the sun came out!  The Farleys met us there and they played in the water for a few hours. Kodi is so happy he has his green band and can go on the big slides!

Random photo of Mia at the pool
I was testing to see if I could upload photos straight to the blog.

After dinner tonight we did some more shifting of items from the schoolroom to other rooms in the house.  We have decided to completely overhaul the schoolroom now that we have the nice new windows. The thought process was like pulling a thread...If we have to paint one wall, let's just paint all of them.  Hmm, if we have to move the furniture, let's take it all out and clean the carpets....Hmm, why clean the carpets when we can replace them with laminate, I mean, how many times are we going to move all those books out of that room?  And so on....So we are almost done moving everything out.  Just have the freezer, table and my desk left in there.  Jake and I will rip out the carpet tomorrow night and see what kind of shape the subfloor is in (expecting bad).