DD had a great time at school today and has lots of friends in her classes and she likes all of her teachers, including the one who is supposed to be an "old hag" according to many students, but DD thought was really sweet. Of course, DD can get along with just about any adult on the planet. Or child for that matter. DD needed a graphing calculator for Algebra 2 and she'll need it next year for pre-Calculus, too. We picked that up after school. It cost $56. Her photo package will be $38.



The first day of homeschool went well with DS. Not that we can do the official stuff because WAVA still hasn't finished the enrollment process or sent us the password. So I'm just doing some general stuff that I've found online and that I'm putting together myself.

I've set spelling words for the week. This is something that will be beyond WAVA anyway, since they don't do spelling at this age. So he did write out all of his spelling words three times and then we went through and defined any he didn't know. We also looked up photos of gazelles so he would know what one looked like since it was one of his words. And so were Connecticut and Argentina so we talked about where those were located and found them on the map.

After spelling we did a math review of prime and composite numbers that I found on IXL. DS got all but one right which is great. Then he did two pages of cursive handwriting practice.

When he had finished that we read the first chapter of Little House in the Big Woods for history/literature. The first chapter covers things like preserving foods for the winter, how they smoked their meat and fish including how they built the smoker, how they braided onions and strung peppers and hung them in the attic, how they dried and set aside both cooking herbs and medicinal herbs.

It talked about how they butchered the pig, but had to wait until it was cold enough out for the meat to stay frozen through the winter. It talked about rendering lard and how they used every part of the pig including the bladder to make a balloon for the kids to play with and how Mary had a real rag doll, but Laura's doll was made out of a corncob (although I think it was really made out of corn husks).

It discussed how Pa went hunting, but sometimes he didn't get anything and that was why when he did get deer or something else big, they would preserve most of it for the winter. It also talked about bringing in the big squashes and pumpkins to keep in the attic and root vegetables to keep in the cellar.

Anyway, I found a UNIT study online for some of the things you can do along with the Little House book including making a cornhusk doll and making your own butter from cream so we might do those things as part of our study if WAVA doesn't get on the ball and send us our password soon. I also found a word search and word unscramble that went along with it, as well as vocabulary lessons based on the book. Like what is a trundle bed, etc.

I'm looking around for some easy science to do, but not terribly concerned with it as it will be easy enough to catch up on. We will start the beginner piano book tomorrow. I'd say the first day went really well.