Austin didn't want to get dressed this morning so excuse us for the pajama pictures! 

I switched out Austin's school activities and he enjoyed trying some new things and some things we have done before but not in a while.  The first thing he found was the 'hammering golf tees into the styrofoam' activity.  He did this for most of the morning.

While Austin was hammering, Gavin was reading and practicing capital cursive letter 'I'.

Then Austin moved on to this fun puzzle game called, "Where's My Tail?".

It's a combination matching and puzzle game.  Each animal is in two pieces - a head and a tail.  You match the correct animal together and they fit together like a puzzle.  Austin really liked this game!

In math we have been working on finding the parts to a number.  I have been showing Gavin how to find all the parts to a number by following a pattern starting each equation with 0 and going up to the number you are trying to find while the second number counts backwards from the number to 0: 0+5=5, 1+4=5, 2+3=5, 3+2=5, 4+1=5, 5+0=5.  Anyway, today I had him use the pattern to find all the possible parts to the number 5.  That's what he is doing in this picture.

By this time Austin was working on this nature memory game.  He just used it as a matching game.  It has beautiful pictures on the cards.

Then Gavin and I reviewed parts to 10.  I slide some beads over on our abacus, keeping the rest hidden behind a paper, and he had to tell me what was left on the other side.

Then he used his abacus to count to 100 by 2s.  He also counted by 2s from 2-30 on his own and by 2s from 1-29 on his own today.

In science today we learned about rain and what causes it and about the water cycle.  After we read our books Gavin showed me the water cycle using this felt set I made for him.  The water cycle is review for him since we read about it a couple years ago when we first started our garden and were learning about plants and just from general observation.

Then we did two experiments.  First we put on hand sanitizer and noticed it made our hands feel wet but after a minute our hands were dry.  We talked about how some soaks into our skin and some evaporates into the air. 

Then we made a cloud in a bottle!  We put warm water in a bottle (only about 1/3 full), put on the cap and gently sqeezed the water to see the water condense at the top of the bottle.  Then came the exciting part!  I lit a match (fire always makes for a great experiment!) held it inside the bottle for just a couple seconds to heat up the air, then let it drop into the water to heat the water and put the cap back on.  Gavin gently squeezed the water at the bottle to create air pressure and we got a foggy bottle!  We did this three times in a row because the boys thought it was so neat.

Dad was nice enough to make us a weather vane to use for our continued weather-related learning.  We have been keeping a weather chart the last couple weeks with the temperature, wind speed and direction, etc.  Today Gavin started painting the weather vane so, of course, Austin had to paint too!

Gavin painted his weather vane in red, white and blue stripes.  Tomorrow or Friday we will paint the back side since we had to let it dry.

Here is Austin's painting...yes, he did finally get dressed!

We read these books today.

As if that was not enough for one morning...we got on the Mount Vernon website to play this really neat game I found on it yesterday.  Basically you are looking for secret items around Mount Vernon (all things that are really there) but you go around asking people there, i.e. the Washingtons, their family members, slaves, servants and friends, about the object and they give you clues as to what it is and where to find it.  As you go around the plantation you pick up bonus items, again all items that are actually at Mount Vernon, and it shows a photograph of the item and tells you a little bit about what it was and how it was used.  It is really fun!  Gavin and I both were having a great time.  We saved our game so we can play some more later.  So far we found a dress that Martha Washington wore when she was First Lady, an instrument the slaves played and a special lantern they used that had just been invented and gave the light of 60 candles! 

What I think is neat, after seeing Mount Vernon firsthand, is that the furniture and even the colors in the rooms inside the house are exactly like they are at Mount Vernon so it gives a really good 'feel' for what it is actually like if you can't go yourself.  Gavin is just happy I'm letting him play a video game!