Back to School?

Daniel's classes started back last week. He'll be teaching Logic and 2 Intro to Philosophy classes at Midland's Tech and Contemporary Moral Issues at USC. He's also taking 3 classes at USC (this beginning his last year of course work for his PhD.) We are also beginning our homeschool year. Last week we began spending more time in the mornings doing "school work." Dance, museum, and zoo classes are starting back up for the year as well. Monday we had a birthday party with a bunch of kids from our playgroup. Most of them are homeschooled. We have playgroup that meets at a park every Tuesday afternoon and we usually stay at the park at least 3 hours. Monday's party included the birthday girl's "fairy godmother" who came dressed up and painted faces and did some magic tricks. We all had tons of fun.
For our school work I've been teaching reading, writing, and math. Ellen's reading is really getting better and she's gaining more confidence every day. Arianna is learning letter sounds and beginning to sound out words. We also do science experiments throughout the week. Last week we took advantage of a really hot day and did an experiment about the way the color of things effect how hot or cold they get. We made different colored boxes out of construction paper and placed ice cubes in them. We made a chart of what we thought would happen.




This is what our digital thermometer said 2 weeks ago when it was really hot here. It had been in the sun for a little while so I'm not sure how accurate the reading was. But, I think it was close to that temp on the back porch. It gets direct sun all afternoon. I know it is hot everywhere but . . . 125!? I think the weather channel said it was up to 105 that day. By the way it was only in the 90s when we did our experiment with the ice and the girls weren't in the heat for very long:)