How to homeschool on a snow day

First, there's time to catch up on all the stuff you plan to do but just never get around to it. The Daisy really needs to work on her spelling so I got her on SpellingCity.com. It was met with a heavy sigh the next day but I sat and did it with her and it seemed to go better.
Then there is the 30-day trial of JumpStart, which both The Daisy and The Boo did for hours. There is actual learning involved - your student has to complete math or language problems in order to earn coins and "buy" things for their JumpStart house and such.For science, I scammed a project off 5 Oranges blog and we worked on "iridescence." Using ice cubes, salt and food coloring, we watched how some colors melded together while others took a little bit of time to do so. The colors also brought out the cracks in the ice, which was pretty cool.
The result was so pretty I just had to put it at the intro to this post!

Ruining the Valentine's Day surprise

Art project of the day called for making salt dough valentine ornaments so we can get them in the mail. So if you're on our list for Valentine's Day, just forget you ever saw this post.
Once the kids measured all the ingredients (1 cup flour, 1/2 cup salt, 1/2 cup warm water), both took turns rolling out the dough. Good practice for The Boo. The Boo got the large cookie cutter and The Daisy used the small one. The ornaments baked for two hours at 250.
Painting and decorating came next.
And here are the end results:

Finished product from the day we cheated in art

Here are the finished products from last week when I took the kids to a paint-your-own-pottery studio

Snow, snow and more snow

Ok, I'm from the south and all this snow here in central Kentucky? Well, I'm over it.

No sooner does it start to melt and turn everything to mud, but then Winter Storm 2010 hits and there's 4 inches of snow on the ground and more coming down.

This is when having children comes in handy. I asked The Daisy to shovel off the deck and stairs.

You get through that and the next day there's more. Over it. And I'm not the only one. The chickens and ducks refused to come out.

Part of the universe

The Daisy brought this to my attention the other day: She said the sun is blue because she didn't have a yellow marker. Works for me.

Stars, "Horse Show" & money

That's what this week in homeschooling brought.
Our Outdoor Nature Hour was about the moon and the winter sky. Since the past full moon appeared slightly larger than usual due to the closer proximity of its orbit around earth, we were able to talk about the shadows on the moon as we drove home the other night.
I got out our Philip's Planishere, which shows the positions of the stars and constellations for any hour of the year, for The Daisy to find the stars we had just studied (from Orion's belt, Taurus and the Pleides, among others) and she did really well.
In an attempt to be a good and creative homeschooling mom, I've tried playing more games with the kids. The Daisy and I have already gone through "Totally Gross" one entire time and now we're back to her "Horse Show" game. We haven't really yet figured out how to play this so it's still a work in progress, but it's great math practice. And, speaking of which, The Daisy wanted to work on money skills so after she read a section about money in the math notebook, she completed this money math file folder game.

Meanwhile, The Boo worked on his alphabet. We're actually up to J now.

Budding vet

Earlier this week, I saw a robin hopping around our pasture. It was just hopping, not flying, and I wondered if it had gotten too cold.
Of course, I mention this to The Daisy and she runs out and actually catches the thing.
She had to check it out to find any obvious injury
and, finding none, put it in this box.
It promptly hopped out and flew all over the house. The Daisy was able to catch it again and took it outside ... where the dog and one of the cats got it. Rats.