Friday, April 3, 2009

Planning and being spontaneous - both are good!

We had a full day - filled with fun in our workboxes.  Isaiah was excited to see the Monopoly Jr math book I bought for him last night.  The planning for our day is helping us all so very much.  So much more gets down and the fun isn't left out!


Eliana had speech therapy today and is doing well.  The progress is slow, but she is trying to say various things.  Most of her speech is just the beginning sounds or syllables.  For example, "da" for dog.  She is just so much fun - and so very cute.  Here's a picture of her from earlier in the week.  It just has to make you smile.



We also had our science lab today.  We meet with friends and the older boys work on Chemistry while the older girls work on Rainbow Science.  They are also doing chemistry at the moment too.  When they finished, I was looking for a lesson from our Beyond FIAR to do with them.  I obviously hadn't planned anything and was just winging it.  I was stumped as to something in our current chapter and then I looked back at things I wanted to cover, but hadn't yet. 


Here's where the spontaneous came in.  An idea popped into my head and then we just ran with it.  Here's a hint - can you guess what we did?



I asked the girls if they would be interested in learning about campfires.  We reviewed the types of campfires and then I asked them to go clean up the campsite/clearing in our backyard.  They got to work and cleared the area and made a place to build a fire.


I hadn't quite considered that it had poured yesterday and things were still quite wet.  Oh well, we went with it anyway.  It took some time and considerable tries to get the fire lit.  Some paper ended up helping with that as much of the wood was still damp.



Then we broke out the roasting sticks and got to work.



We all enjoyed them, though a couple of my kids modified theirs - one had no chocolate and one had no marshmellows.  We ALL had sticky fingers!  Even Eliana tried a little bit of the s'mores, though she preferred the plain graham crackers I think. 





I love that the FIAR lessons are flexible.  They work well if I plan and if I'm running on a whim.  I love that the lessons can often include the whole family.  I'm thankful that we were able to to make sweet memories today. 


Blessings,


Leslie