Monday apples

 Daddy had school today - and he wasn't feeling the best today, so they did a lot of computer stuff off and on over the day.  Then they peeled, cut and dried a bag of apples.

9a    - dragon city
10a    - minecraft
Mark said they built an apartment complex in Minecraft for the villagers, then made a lava pit to keep the population down...uh huh.
12p    - break
12.30p    - minecraft
1p    - dragon city
1.30p    - break

2p    - apple dissasembly & drying (math, splitting between trays, keeping count, staying 'four apples ahead of Daddy' while peeling (she was proud of that).
3p    - done

When I got home from work there were Mackintosh apples drying in the dehydrator and a very proud little girl.  She showed me the squishy spongy but delicious apples!  They had also saved the seeds - we might scatter them in the woods.  She knows they won't breed 'true' (from the documentary we watched) but that there is a chance, and she really wants to give them that chance.  We are still planning on buying another tree to be a partner to the one we planted last summer... she has been keeping a close eye on it.

She showed me the butterfly dragon she hatched in dragon city, and the dragon book with all the info of its 'habitats', combats and stages of growth.  She also showed me her Aqua Tent (which is her play tent in her room that is now 'pretend water' and has all of her sea creature stuffed animals arranged in it like they are living in the ocean, told me about the Minecraft projects, and begged to read more of the Poems and Rhymes book for bedtime reading.  We also went over the French words from the video we watched yesterday...she will need to go over it again.  I have an early day tomorrow though - so I'll be going to sleep soon. I made my 'signature' dinner of grilled egg (and cheese) sandwiches, which Esme eats and I was feeling in the mood for.  She had already eaten an early supper with Daddy, so I split the two sandwiches unevenly and she had a smaller portion - then came up to show me all the dragon things.

Bits : //we've talked about getting her banty chicks to have grow up, as her chickens are not laying many eggs...and she wants to pet them more.  But, she says she is not ready to take care of them, yet.  We feel the same....we're not ready either!  ha.  She has started to remind me about Easter, and talk about what the 'Easter rabbit - who is a spirit, not a rabbit' might have in mind for this year.. she knows it's kind of me, but that I look up things that are on the computer that were done for Easter, too...   I was so VERY cold last night - the humidity, probably... I've left her to read her Mama Cat Tells Time book in her bed with her light on, will go turn it off for her in a few minutes.

Friday Snowpocalypse snow construction (and more Minecraft)

All the knit things, and time to play in the snow.

Calvin, anyone?

I told her how I grew up in the frozen North and making igloo walls was an essential part of my education - we talked about using snow as 'glue' and also smoothing things out and looking through the snow to see where the weak points are - if you see light, it needs more snow there.

Take aim and fire!

Three snowmen, and she learned how to 

roll a huge snow ball, for the first time in her life.

Other than that, she had just seen it in books.

She was so amazed at how the snow stuck together - and even more so at how heavy it became so quickly!

Trek - or do we have gnomes?

Having a thoughtful moment after her snow wall was falling down.

And before all of this we did a lot more building in Minecraft for school today - as you can see on the map below it is getting quite crowded in our little world!  I've kind of spoiled her this week allowing Minecraft to be most of school for several days - but she is actually getting in and doing things..thinking, planning... and just when I think maybe I should be having her do something more traditional she has a really great idea or does a really good job with something I have asked her to try.  **Mark made a point that if she was in public school she wouldn't have had school at all this week - that we have covered this much ground is something to remark on...  Actually, since October, we have covered so much ground the only things I am worried about she might not be 'on par' with is her English 'parts of grammar' identification..which, considering her language issue, is difficult enough in itself for her in speech, much less in reading yet.  She is probably not getting what passed for history there either, but she does ask lots of questions, like the arch question from the other day, or the phoenix question from today.  **Mark points out we did all of Liberty's Kids this year, and she did learn from it.

We built two marketplaces, a new Indian village and places to harbor up boats today.  She also started doing requests and deliveries and we explored a few deep caverns.  She made 'the most beautiful place in the world' in a valley with a waterfall and flowers - part of what she had picked out of our Natural Wonders book (which was a Crimean peninsula photo full of green and mountains and water).  We made a money system in the marketplaces and did some trading with the villagers.  The money and market information kind of counts as a precursor to history or social studies.  We're laying the groundwork.  She also told me today she was 'an environmental Minecraft, a Steve that is part of Nature.'  She is a little bit worried about all of my tree clearing for making roads...lots to be said and learned there.  She had to clear trees to build her houses, too...but she is thinking on a pretty deep level there.

After doing all that horse riding in Minecraft she has found her old hobby horse I made again and been 'riding' it around the house from place to place.  It's really cute.

9a    - minecraft
12p    - Frozen Planet ep8 - on thin ice
1p    - minecraft
2.30p    - snowman construction
//phoenix discussion
//practicing making larges soap bubbles with bar soap - discussion about how the water swirls in the film of the bubble as it runs down towards the bottom
3.30p    - done

Thursday treehouses and transportation build

 We built a transportation system in Minecraft today - mostly at my prompting, because she had tamed some horses.  I had also built a library the day before while she was asleep - she put an anvil and tieups for the horses out in front of it.  We are writing books about the world and storing them in chests in the library.

 I could count some of the book writing as spelling practice.  And she read the book about transportation that I had made.  I built a bridge across the river for our horses and she helped me build a railroad called 'all you can hurl' rollercoaster across the world to a new place.

 The glass structure is her 'skydiving station'. There is a little village near there we are building on, but she is up and down whether or not she wants to make decisions there.

Then she built teepees with me, to play Indian.  Her rules for Indian Minecraft are you cannot fly, wear a helmet or destroy any of the 'ancient forest' which are the jungle trees she planted.

Midafternoon we watched some Frozen planet and she also measured pork rub spices with Daddy on the balance scale according to their recipe, making enough for porkchops for dinner and a pork roast later tonight.  She is really getting good at measuring exactly enough and telling that it is correct before she dumps it into the mixing container.

9:15 - dragon city, maintenance, decisions, war, breeding, etc.
9:50 - Minecraft LAN, bridge, rollercoaster, road, skydiving station, library books
12:00 - Frozen planet dvd over lunch
1 pm - more Minecraft LAN, Indian Teepee, treehouses, exploration, watering hole with road
2:30 pm - measuring spices with balance beam scale
3pm - more LAN, discussing village, sheep, more Indian teepee and decorations (she used skulls in hers)
4pm - done with school, but she is still playing...thinking, she says... 15 minutes after that she still  hadn't made any decisions and had a fit over my disagreeing with her how to grow jungle trees (if the grass needed to be removed or not) and went to her room in a tizzy.

Dinner is in an hour... she was playing pretty much straight most of the day so she really needed to take a break but didn't want to.

Wednesday

 copywork from her Calvert book



9.45a    - dragon city
10.15a    - PE(200x jumping jacks, 20x 20lb stair laps)
10.30a    - break
11:30a  -  discussion about volcanoes
11.45a    - copywork
12.30p    - reading (3 billy goats, stone soup)
12.45p    - Frozen planet ep 2, 3, 4 (Spring, Summer, Fall)
3p    - done

//She wants to play soccer in the hallway, show me her new LEGO builds and then we might talk more about either seals or volcanoes.  We had done some discussion about volcanoes before I left for work - had promised her a video but didn't have time before I had to go.  She told me that Daddy and her talked about different kinds of seals.  I asked her what they eat, and what eats them - and she was able to tell me good answers.  She still wants me to make a seal toy for her - but wanted it to be 'real'..said that wasn't going to happen and she said oh, yea.  heh

She was reading some in the new HONEY book she had borrowed from the library.  Her complaint is that the books are just so long - but she had trouble only with a few higher level words.  'barrelling', 'honestly', 'forged', 'meant', 'Peterson', 'fostered'.  Her reading is really 'forging' along, but she still gets tired of it quickly.  Daddy and her had an argument today about what day of the week it is...she wanted it to be Thursday so she only had one more day of school left.

//We watched a geography video about volcanoes, and went over some of the vocabulary written down.

Tuesday Building

9    - dragon city
9.30    - lego presentation and engineering, arches and supports
 --She really thought the 'arch' was just the shape of a bridge.  I told her how important that really was to history - making open spaces with fewer materials and making STRONG spaces and bridges.  We found several LEGO pieces that were already arch shaped, some wooden blocks from her room, and we built an arch going over the swimming pool and practice items she had made the night previous for her puppy character.  We then built (and rebuilt) a slide for the pool and the arch bridge to show how to make something stronger.
10.30    - break

11:15am - LAN Minecraft to discuss the arch, setting time with commands, etc..  When asked she made an arch all by herself over a porch we had made another day.  She did it quickly and showed understanding very well.  I made a little building in my area with double arches ... she thought it was OK, but was already on to other ideas.
1.15p     - break

A shot of the LAN world,she added the treehouses, the arch over the porch stairs and the stable post for the horse today.. among other things, I am sure.  The blue 'Moon Castle' is the building I added today.

1.30p    - minecraft on her own world, building
2.30p    - break

 
9:30 - revisiting Lego, invention labs, spaceships and egg nests, reading new book from library
10:00 - bedtime


//I really hope we don't get this snowstorm they are predicting.

Monday

9a    - dragon city
9.45a    - PE (running outside)
10a    - Joy of Painting s06e11
10.30a    - PE (100x jumoing jacks, 10x 20lb bench, 100x 10lb bench, 10x 20lb stairwalk)
11a    - break

1p    - GS discovery walk
2p    - break

3p    - library & town run
4p    - break

6.30p    - Frozen Planet ep 1
7.30p    - done