Ancient Greece I Day 8

We woke up to winter.  Seriously, cold temps, overcast days, and rain are what we usually get in winter, not fall.  Fall is generally warm, dry, and sunny. But we are happy to have the rain while it lasts. We started our homeschool morning with a Java Log in the fireplace and candles lit on the mantel.

We did grammar and math.  I'm starting to feel like a broken record.  In general, every one of our homeschooling days begins with grammar and math.  It's something we took away from those two months at the beginning of our last homeschool year; grammar and math happening every morning works best for us.

Our main lesson was drawing Pythagoras's Golden Ratio in the form of a star and pentagon.  To keep it real, we struggled. It seemed so much easier looking at it in the book and I realize now that I should have practiced on my own before the lesson.  It's okay though; it can be good to model staying calm when things aren't quite going as planned.

The reality is that working with rulers and compasses on plain paper is a little tricky.  Marking off one inch intervals on a line isn't exactly precise when using a #2 pencil.  Compasses move when you use them.  My second attempt was much better, although I plan to redo it.

I ended up printing out 1" graph paper for the boys to work with, to make the measuring easier. The boys didn't want the drawings they did today to go into the blog; they are going to redo them Thursday afternoon during our make-up time.

P.E. was cancelled because of the rain, but none of us minded all that much. It gave us the opportunity to have a quiet afternoon. T-Guy's long awaited copy of Rick Riordan's The Son of Neptune (Book 2 in The Heroes of Olympus series) arrived this morning and J-Baby settled in with a wonderful iPad app based on Richard Dawkin's new book, The Magic of Reality.  It is full of really cool science!

I've found that I am very much missing singing from Mary Thienes-Schunemann's Naturally You Can Sing Sing a Song of Seasons, so I placed an order for another copy and it should be here tomorrow.  I remember some of the songs and have been singing those, but others have slipped away from my memory.  I also think J-Baby might enjoy playing some of the tunes on the piano.