Blizzard!

We’re in the midst of a “blizzard” here.  Supposed to get up to 18 inches of snow!  While most kids are rejoicing today in a “snow day” from school, we have used the opportunity to actually get more done!  One of my favorite things about homeschooling is to not take many days off during the winter, but when the spring weather comes, we will have a “SUN day!”  We will take off the first nice day there is.  After all, wouldn’t we rather take a day off when we can go outside and enjoy the warmth!!  So today since we could not go anywhere, we stayed in our Pj’s and got to work.  It’s nice working when we have no other distractions, and know that we have all day to get our work complete.  Everyone (including Mommy!) is so much more relaxed!
Today in science we completed our lesson on space rocks.  We then attempted to construct a scale model of the solar system.  The first part of the model just compared sizes of the planets.  We uses a big ball for the sun, and then sprinkles, sugar crystals, nuts, and candy to compare the sizes of the planets.  Next we learned the distances.  If we truly wanted to make our model to scale, would need one half mile to fit in all the planets! And that was a scale of 1:10,000,000!  So we discussed the distances, but were not able to actually show the distances with our model planets.  It was quite interesting though.
In History, the kids wrote in their notebooks some of the many inventions of Ben Franklin that we have learned about. We discussed them and then each child picked one to research further.  Grace is going to write a report on her choice.  (the odometer)
We also began learning “America the Beautiful.”  This is partly hymn study, and part of our history studies.  We are going to memorize all of the verses, and for today’s copywork the kids each wrote the first few lines.
After our together time today, we did not use our workboxes.  Rather I spent alone time with each child, going over all of their individual work.  One thing I have changed with Grace’s literature reading is rather than give me an oral narration after each reading, she is now to do a written narration in her journal.  I am focusing more on her writing for the rest of this year.  This will be helpful in improving her writing, as well as reinforcing what she has read in her literature.

I think God gives us these snow days in the midst of the long winter for a reason.  It’s definitely a nice change of pace to just be indoors and take things a little slower.  Everyone’s mindset changes, and we get a much needed change of pace.  The winter can be a tough time for many people, especially homeschoolers, so having that little time to break up the monotony is great.  I will praise Him in the storm!