Royalty lives here

...as if you needed a proclamation to tell you that!  But more on that later.

We started off the day writing in Zoe's journal.  On the off chance you need a translation, it reads, "Flower help princess fairy."  We took some time today to look back and talk about how far she has come in 2 months with her writing.  She could really see the progress.

While Zoe was writing, Lucy was sorting by color...

...and by shape.  This stuff is so easy for her, and she knows her letters and sounds pretty well but isn't ready concentration-wise to do lots of in depth work.  I'm working to find ways to challenge her (and to channel her power for good!)

Our math concept right now is ordinal numbers.  I pulled out an OLD teaching resource called story mats.  They listen to a story and then move their markers accordingly.  They enjoyed it - it reinforced concepts like shapes, directions, listening carefully etc. as well as ordinal numbers.

Our reading today was a special surprise!  Nonnie and Papaw picked up some leaves from Radnor Lake and sent them to us!  We loved observing them.  Thanks Nonnie and Papaw!

Zoe read the letter from Nonnie like a champ!  I just picked up a set of nonfiction easy readers and we had one about leaves so we read that as well.  She did a great job and was very proud of herself.

Then, we learned about the Edo people of Nigeria.  We read about ancient Benin and how the royalty and warriors made metal plaques to tell others about themselves.  Then, we went to the Smithsonian collection of Edo Plaques.  We loved looking at the details - what an amazing resource!  We even noticed the nail holes at the top so they could be hung on the wall.

Since we are royalty in our own minds here at the Smithey Science Academy, we made some plaques of our own using plaster of paris and some meaningful objects: jewels, rocks and shells generously donated from Zoe's collection, and our favorite animals (zebra and giraffe, of course, with a random cat thrown in for good measure).  We added plenty of glitter, and it worked like a charm!  We love our plaques and think they tell whoever sees them all about us!

After rest time, we observed a physics and measuring lesson while we watched some folks put up our Christmas lights.  We are helping a friend promote her new business, so our lights went up way early this year.  We enjoyed them tonight but will keep them off until Thanksgiving.  It just seems wrong to have a rainbow pumpkin and rainbow Christmas lights out at the same time...unless you are 3 or 5.