Fun Friday

That's not a real thing here. At least, it wasn't even planned to be like this. But we had a great time today reinforcing the week's lessons through hands-on activities.

Actually, "normal" days have looked a lot like this, too. I guess it's just that we had so many projects we wanted to do that today just felt extra fun.

On an average day, we do our obligatory lessons (spelling, grammar, writing - though that is about to become a fun activity because we're working on writing a real book now - and math). Then we move along to the fun stuff: literature, art, history, and science, though not usually on the same day. We can spend hours and hours on our favorite things, and we do.

Today, since we took yesterday off, we wanted to finish out our week with our intended projects. These included whittling soap (just like the boy who whittled Paddle out of wood, but our projects were not as ornate, to say the least), painting and filling and hanging a bird feeder, and baking and decorating a cookie dough map of ancient Egypt.

Whittling soap to get a feel for whittling, as the boy who created Paddle whittled a canoe out of wood. Whittling soap is harder than I expected and we have a great appreciation for "real" whittlers now. 

We're going to start observing local birds, so making them a place to eat seems like a logical place to start. 

Ours is made from a 1/2 gallon milk container, a stick, some yarn, and some paint. 

Hands-on is a great way for Tuna to commit a subject to memory. I expect she will not soon forget her cookie dough map of Ancient Egypt. We used peanut butter cookie dough (1 cup peanut butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg), butter-cream frosting, food coloring, and colored sugar. 

In Tuna's own words: "Today was fun, amazing, awesome, and I loved making the cookie. I pretty much loved everything about school today."