Hmmm ... publishing still unavailable. What fun.

OK, yesterday was mainly a social and PE day. We spent half the day at a friend's house, and much of the rest of the day playing outside. Connor did work on his thank-you letter again some. Boy, is that slow going.

Today was a different story! Today I had Connor take the K12 math placement test. I used the Kindergarten 2nd semester test, and he got 5 out of 8 correct. Not too bad, but more importantly we did a page of math. Then we did the first two pages of their first grade phonics placement test, and he got them ALL right!

Then he spent some time on the computer making birthday cards for his Daddy and Aidan, and party invitations. We came across a poster of the solar system that recently arrived at our house with our Book of Knowledge books, and we all looked at the planets and talked about them. "Why are they called 'outer' planets?" asked Connor. Aidan wanted to know the names of all the moons. Connor wanted to know if we've ever sent any spaceships to Pluto. I need to do some NASA research for him.

Further computer time had him composing music on his Arthur CD.

Then we broke out Susan Wise Bauer's "Story of the World" for the first time, and began the chapter on the Minoans (starting with chapter 19 because he's interested in the Greeks). We read the chapter, and here is the narration that he did afterwards:

The Minoans lived on the island of Crete. They were the early Greeks. For fun they tossed over bulls. They built ships to get rid of the pirates. It was the best navy in the world.

The Minoans went away and turned their country over to Greece. They went away because a volcano erupted and they were starving and it was getting hard to breathe.

The Minotaur ate people, and was killed by Theseus. He used a ball of yarn to find the Minotaur in the center of the labyrinth.

Tomorrow I will try to get him to draw pictures to go with these narrations. He does this orally, and I write down what he says. I prompt him with specific questions, so it's not like he's just rattling off paragraphs.

Then using the activity book that accompanies SOTW, we colored a map of Crete and a picture of a bull-jumper. Then he worked through a labyrinth. Then he asked for more things to do! But we stopped there - quite enough for one day.