A Day Off

Actually, it was two days off.
Yesterday we spent the morning with a homeschooling family and then took the rest of the day doing very little school. Did a few spelling words and a handwriting game.
Which I should tell you about! It was great!
Jasmine brought me their little chalkboard and said it would work well for spelling. So I wrote "wh" on the chalkboard, and she chose one of her spelling words to write. (this week all the words are "wh" words)
Once that was done, we played a little game with Bekah involved too. Hudson tried to help too.
Reminder for next time: find something else to occupy him when using the chalkboard.
I would draw a letter on the chalkboard. Then each girl would take her turn to try to match mine as close as she could. I would choose a "winner" for that round (don't worry; it ended up being remarkably close! they alternated almost perfectly!) and that winner would choose the next letter I would write. We got through at least half of the lower-case alphabet, including all the letters that trip them up (y, a and s are their weakest, though I think they forgot g).
Hudson liked to help clear the board but didn't always remember to wait until they'd finish...

Today wasn't quite as free as that. In reality, today was a field trip. Complete with docents who didn't like kids.
We went to the botanical gardens with a few other homeschooling families. This is the Homeschooling Family Weekend, apparently, since tomorrow is music class and Sunday we're going on a train ride with some of the families. Good thing we like each other!
So, since the botanical garden is having a special display of a model train set, we thought it would be a good way to get them in the mindset of trains before Sunday's ride.

They loved it.
But can you see any potential disasters??
Yeah. Like the whole thing being at the kids' level, with a tiny, weak fence around it.
Bekah was the first one in our group to derail the train. They had to fix it, which took a few minutes. It was immediately followed by kids who weren't in our group trying to derail it.
I had words with that child when he came back attempting to recreate his previous crash. I'm thankful he's not one of ours.

One of the things Jasmine was supposed to do this week was to draw pictures of the wildflowers we read about in science. She was dragging her feet over that, so instead we brought her science notebook so she could draw the flowers there.
She drew one: Showy Jasmine.

 This is her interpretation:

Bekah did a little scavenger hunt from the sheets they offered. She did pretty well, considering how little time we spent actually looking for things!
Hudson had fun. Lots and lots of fun.

That, after a little bit of history reading (today was about Alexander the Great), was school for the day. But I'm okay with that. It's nice to have a little (or a lot) of extra time so we can just relax and not have to live by the clock. Even with NYS breathing down our necks!