Thursday

My brother came over Sunday, we haven't seen him for over a year. He lives in Fla. and doesn't come to NY often...
I made baked Ziti (w/0 the meat) and we had a nice dinner, the kids missed him so much and loved having him here for a few hours. J made him a special b day card and some other drawings for him to take home.
Monday started another week of homeschooling... F did his 2ND chapter in his Writing program, math, watched a movie about George Washington's crossing of the Delaware and the battle of Trenton, looked up Aaron Burr, more vocabulary words, read some of his books, went bike riding and leaf collecting etc...

We also went to the Library and took out a few books of insects, caterpillars, and plants. I found a great book for simple science experiments that we can do at home, written by Janice Van Cleave. The first one we did was the leaf experiment where I filled a glass with water and food coloring and placed a leaf to show how water travels throughout the leaf. F read the explanations and wrote them down in his book. So far it is doing OK, except I think the season is not right for this one, the leaves are still green but not taking in as much water so the red is not spreading a s much as we'd like... oh well... we will move on to making a replica of a cell with jello :).

Yesterday we did more schooling in the morning, both for J and F. Then F asked me to go to the park so he could ride his bike, he now wants to ride every day...
So we took a walk to the park/playground 20 blocks away. F is doing great with his bike, learning the safety rules for riding a bike. Always helmet, look both ways before riding across the street and stop at all lights.
The girls ran around playing together, swinging and F rode his bike all over the park. Then they all dug for worms and other insects. A got hungry so we started for home, but got side tracked by the thrift store :). I got about 8 really cool books(most of them look brand new) and a video tape of Ben and Me, a cartoon about Benjamin Franklin, all for $3.50. I love thrift stores....