The Magic Tree House on Our Timeline: Updated August 2022

Back in 2010, I wrote this post about how my little kids and I used the Magic Tree House series as part of a history study by pasting thumbnail images of the books onto a huge timeline mural that we made in our basement. In the dozen years since, and long after those little kids are now big kids who remember Magic Tree House fondly but wouldn't dream of actually picking one up again, I've continued to get comments from readers who wish I'd update my list with all the books that have come out since.

So today, I did! This new list includes all the Magic Tree House books currently published as of August 2022.

Dishes are in the dishwasher, laundry is in the washing machine, dinner is on the stove, one kid is playing LEGOs while the other kid reads on the couch, and the house that Matt painstakingly straightened while we were gone is trashed, trashed, TRASHED.

We must be home again!

We left a few projects in the lurch for our trip--our bat house, the thankful tree, the Disaster Dioramas of Pompeii and the Titanic, a whole slew of Spanish flashcards--and every now and then, as the kids decompress and I continue my manic run through the holiday craft fair season, we're picking them all back up again.

For instance, we finally finished a project that we've been working on for a while--putting all the Magic Tree House books in their proper spot on our huge basement timeline. Because the kids listen to the Magic Tree House audiobooks over and over again, they've gained quite a bit of historical and geographical knowledge, but it can be tough putting that into a wider context, and wider contexts is what I am all about.

So I sent Matt thumbnails of every Magic Tree House book cover for him to lay out and print, and I made a list of where each relevant book belongs on our timeline. Want to see my list? It's pretty great:

• #1 Dinosaur Before Dark--Cretaceous period
• #2 The Knight at Dawn--Middle Ages
• #3 Mummies in the Morning--2630 BCE to 2250 BCE
• #4 Pirates Past Noon--1690-1730
• #5 Night of the Ninjas--1336-1600
• #7 Sunset of the Sabertooth--Late Pleistocene period
• #8 Midnight on the Moon--2036
• #10 Ghost Town at Sundown--1850-1900
• #13 Vacation under the Volcano--79 CE
• #14 Day of the Dragon King--first century
• #15 Viking Ships at Sunrise--9th century
• #16 Hour of the Olympics--776 BCE-393 CE
• #17 Tonight on the Titanic--1912
• #18 Buffalo before Breakfast--1850-1900
• #21 Civil War on Sunday--1861-1865
• #22 Revolutionary War on Wednesday--12/25/1776
• #23 Twister on Tuesday--1870s
• #24 Earthquake in the Early Morning--1906
• #25 Stage Fright on a Summer Night--1558-1603
• #27 Thanksgiving on Thursday--1621
• #28 High Tide in Hawaii--11th century-1777
• #29 A Big Day for Baseball--1947
• #30 Hurricane Heroes in Texas--1930
• #31 Warriors in Winter--100s CE
• #32 To the Future, Ben Franklin!--1787
• #33 Narwhal on a Sunny Night--975-990
• #34 (old numbering--now it's Merlin Mission #6) Season of the Sandstorms--prior to the 8th century
• #34 Late Lunch with Llamas--15th century
• #35 (old numbering--now it's Merlin Mission #7) Night of the New Magicians--1889
• #35 Camp Time in California--1903
• #36 (old numbering--now it's Merlin Mission #8) Blizzard of the Blue Moon--1938
• #37 Dragon of the Red Dawn--1185-1603
• #38 Monday with a Mad Genius--around 1500
• #39 Dark Day in the Deep Sea--1870s
• #41 Moonlight of the Magic Flute--1760
• #42 A Good Night for Ghosts--1916
• #43 Leprechaun in Late Winter--1860
• Merlin Mission #17 A Crazy Day with Cobras--1500-1600
• Merlin Mission #18 Dogs in the Dead of Night--1600s
• Merlin Mission #19 Abe Lincoln at Last--1861
• Merlin Mission #20 A Perfect Time for Pandas--2008
• Merlin Mission #21 Stallion by Starlight--340 BCE
• Merlin Mission #22 Hurry Up, Houdini!--1915
• Merlin Mission #23 High Time for Heroes--1849-1850
• Merlin Mission #24 Soccer on Sunday--1970
• Merlin Mission #25--Shadow of the Shark--before 1511
• Merlin Mission #26 Balto of the Blue Dawn--1925

Some books aren't included in the list because they don't take place in any particular time--wait with bated breath for our big geography project later on. We're also still reading the latest Magic Tree House, the one about Charles Dickens, and then we'll put that one on the timeline, too.

Sydney helped me cut out all the book cover thumbnails, then Willow glued them onto the wall as I showed her where each one went. She coated each in an extra layer of glitter glue, just because, and then I went back and wrote in the timeline info:

I had no idea, until we actually started placing them, how many books Mary Pope Osborne had set in the latter half of the nineteenth century or so. If we ever move and thus need to do our timeline over again, remind me to set aside more room here just for her.

For a while the girls listened to this book over and over and over again--I think they found the part with the ghost thrilling:

 

But last night they listened to this book as they fell asleep:

I was going to encourage them to listen to Thanksgiving on Thursday, but I don't seem to have ripped the audio copy from a library CD yet. Fortunately, we own a paperback copy of the book, so perhaps we'll find time to read it out loud together today.

Interspersed with making Pilgrim paper dolls and the thankful tree and the dinner roll dough to freeze for Thursday, that is...

Work Plans for the Week of January 19, 2015: Essays of Unusual Size

Will was NOT thrilled to write her essay last week, and she will be equally not thrilled to find yet another essay for this week. Write it she shall, however, and I shall attempt to regird my patience for the inevitable upcoming struggles.

Writing, or the battle about writing, took up much of last week, and, as I'd suspected I would, I did need to delete a couple of the smaller, unimportant lessons from our plans--experimenting with watercolors can happen anytime, and Syd, at least, will be pleased to be asked to get messy dyeing Great Northern beans with me during her leisure hours.

This week's plans, however, are all important and unskippable, although I did cull them down as much as possible. I include the children's extracurriculars into their plans, but I don't include the daily book assignment, keyboard practice, memory work, and the chore chart--that's all on top of school, but the reading they'd do for pleasure, regardless, the keyboard practice takes only minutes (although they often remain at the keyboard for much longer--yay!), the memory work takes place in the car, and chores are chores; everyone in the world has to do their chores!

TUESDAY: Yesterday was our free day! Matt was off work, so he took the burden of shlepping the kids around while I slogged through my work at home; the kids skipped our weekly volunteer gig to go to a special volunteer opportunity with the Girl Scouts, and they took their weekly aerial silks lesson, happily freeing up a little more Wednesday for us.

Today, then, as I write Will sits next to me and reads her book assignment, a biography of Charles Darwin (she has just informed me that we MUST go visit the Galapagos Islands one day, although sadly we are no longer permitted to ride the tortoises, and did I know that "galapagos" is the Spanish word for tortoise?), and Syd eats breakfast and reads in the other room. Their math this week is all review drills from our Kumon workbooks--more subtraction with borrowing across zeroes for Syd, and calculating volume and area for Will. I expect that after this extra practice, we'll move back into Math Mammoth next week.

The commencement of horseback riding lessons is also the commencement of the horse breed research that their instructor always gives them for homework. I believe that my emphasis, this session, will be on efficient, effective, and informative displays of their research, so that the children become easily able to reproduce infographics and posters, as the case requires.

Will has by this moment found and looked over the essay requirement for this year's Black History Month essay contest, and already pouted about it. It's another biography from a dedicated pool of names, with some first-person analysis, as well. She's going to loathe it.

She will like better our plans for a swimming date with some friends at the gym this afternoon, and like best of all the first session of this semester's Robotics Club tonight. While she's there, Syd will be able to have some quiet time to work on her design for this year's Trashion/Refashion Show. I REALLY hope that she creates a design that she's able to sew by herself this year!

WEDNESDAY: Song School Spanish is a painless lesson to get through each week, especially as much of the work for it takes place as our daily ten-minute memory work in the car every day. I also enjoy having someone else in charge of horseback riding lessons and Magic Tree House Club (the kids were meant to attend their club meeting earlier this month, but were so busy playing that they didn't want to settle down for it; this is the last meeting for this month, so they'll definitely need to attend this one); I can get some writing done during the former, and have time to cook something a little more involved than frozen pizza or stir-fry during the latter.

THURSDAY: First Language Lessons is scripted, so sometimes I'll save that to hand off to Matt in the evenings. I won't be surprised if I need to on this day, because both kids will need my assistance as they complete pre-writing activities for upcoming essays. We have ice skating plans with children from our homeschooling group, however, so hopefully that will keep them in a good enough mood to stave off the most excessive of the fits.

FRIDAY: I usually try to keep the kids' keyboard lesson early in the week, so that they can use the rest of the week to practice, but it just wouldn't fit into the schedule any earlier than today. Fridays tend to be busy, though, with both math class and Will's ice skating class getting us up and out of the house, so this quick, independent lesson will be a helpful breather for me.

I generally let the kids cook independently these days, but since these cookies are for other people, I'll probably need to be on hand to supervise. I need to remember to set aside time earlier in the week to have the kids choose a recipe so that we can shop for ingredients, unless you think that I can convince them to find a recipe that allows me to use up the random bits of candied cherries and chopped pecans that I have in the pantry?

All this essay writing--or rather, essay dictating, to me--has made it very clear to me that it's high time for the kids to learn keyboarding. I've got several software programs checked out of the public library, so ideally the kids will like one of these well enough to at least learn the functional basics.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: The kids don't have any responsibilities on Saturday, but I'm having friends over that night, so I suppose that I should do some cleaning and cooking. On Sunday, Will has Chess Club, and the cookies need to be delivered to our town's homeless shelter. I imagine there will also be Girl Scout Cookie selling. Perhaps Trashion/Refashion Show material shopping. Minecraft playing. Chicken spoiling.

You know, typical weekend stuff.

Work Plans for the Week of January 5, 2015: Back to Work!

I'm actually hesitant about writing this full schedule of work plans for this week--the kids have spent our entire holiday break doing a half-schedule of schoolwork (Math Mammoth, First Language Lessons, a reading assignment, and a hands-on project four days a week), and then spending the rest of each entire day playing contentedly with each other. They cooperate on video games, they build Kapla block structures and Hot Wheels tracks and LEGO machines, they draw and paint and chase each other outside in the freezing weather, they spin elaborate tales and act them out with their toy animals, they play board games together and Sydney only occasionally throws a fit over the outcome... it's been a great source of joy to me, watching them this active and engaged and content with each other. I don't want to disrupt it.

All that to say that yes, I have a full schedule of work plans for the children, but no, I'm not going to shove them away from their play to complete them. I suspect that with Matt out of the house again (he was able to take the week between Christmas and New Year's off just to be with us, and it was our happiest week of the year, barring digging for dinosaurs), the kids will transition back to our regular schedule fairly readily, but as it's currently almost 9:30 am, they've haven't yet appeared from their bedroom, I promised them a half-hour of LEGO Marvel before they had to start school, AND we've got our volunteer gig to get ready for at 11-ish... we'll see.

MONDAY: I liked the system of handing the children a book to read each day (Syd's a picture book or leveled chapter book, Will's a longer non-fiction book) so well that I plan to continue it this week. The rough theme behind the reading assignments will be "diversity," to help them prep for brainstorming for an essay on that topic on Friday.

Will is in the middle of geometry in her Math Mammoth this week, with an emphasis on circles, so we'll be revisiting the mandala drawing that Syd and I did together early last month, based on a class taught by Julie Gibbons. Not only was it fun and creative, but it was great practice for using a compass and mastering radial symmetry.

The children barely got a start on their Hoffman Academy lessons before our break, so they'll be reviewing the old ones and then completing a new one, as well as doing the written work associated with it. I expect them to practice keyboard in their own time throughout the rest of the week, although I've made it my goal this semester to be more present for this.

Will's goal is to earn ALL of the Junior Girl Scout badges before she bridges to Cadette in the fall, and to that end, her short-term goal is to complete a Girl Scout badge every week. Today, I'll be asking each child to choose a badge and to plan out how they might complete it this week--I'll look over their plans and assist as necessary, whether it be taking them to buy supplies or planning an impromptu field trip or setting up something that might need to be done after this week. I only halfway expect that they'll do this badge work in their own time throughout the rest of the week; I'm prepared to shift or delete other school tasks, if necessary, to accommodate their work, because as I've mentioned MANY times before, I'm sure, I find that these Girl Scout badges are really valuable as a source of cross-curricular study and an encouragement to the kids to stretch themselves academically.

Everyone loves our weekly volunteer gig! There are a number of jobs there that the kids can take responsibility for, although sometimes they choose to read or play or taste the entire time, and that's okay, too, although I don't mark those hours on their log sheets (they're both working toward the President's Volunteer Service Award). I've been researching a couple of additional regular volunteer activities that are quite academic, as well--I'd like us to make a monthly commitment to the Paleo Prep Lab at the Children's Museum, which is excellent science enrichment, of course, and I'm in the process of signing the kids up to be pen pals with a couple of local senior citizens, for additional handwriting and composition practice.

TUESDAY: Since most of the children's extra-curricular activities haven't started, yet, this day works out to be our Free Day this week, AND the forecast calls for snow! Our Girl Scout Co-op will likely come over to play on this day--well, the kids will play, and the moms will discuss Very Important Cookie Business with me, The Cookie Manager. Girl Scout Cookie Season starts on Saturday!

WEDNESDAY: Syd's Math Mammoth this week is a review of place value in the thousands; geometry is up next for her. Will in the middle of geometry now in her Math Mammoth, with fractions up next. Both of their current units are pretty easy for them, but I expect that we'll be doing a lot of hands-on fraction activities in the near future.

Again, we didn't get much out of Song School Spanish before the break, although the kids have kept their vocabulary, and the Latin equivalents, in their heads thanks to my militant ten-minute memory work drill time during our first car ride of each day. Even counting one day every week when we simply don't drive anywhere, that's a good hour of nothing but memory work every single week. It makes a HUGE difference in easing their learning, I think.

Night of the New Magicians is the subject of this month's Magic Tree House Club. It's been our tradition, ever since Syd was so small, to listen to the audiobook of the current book on the day of the meeting. During the meeting, Ms. Roni leads the kids on a cross-curricular study of the book, and then sets up little activities and craft projects that the kids can do in their own time afterwards. My two absolutely LOVE it.

THURSDAY: We blew through a ton of First Language Lessons during our winter holiday, and that was a good thing, because the daily practice with it gave me the time that I needed to work out modifications that I could make to make the curriculum better for us--I added some depth to the poetry memorization, and figured out ways to cut out most of the silly scripted dialogue. Thank goodness!

I had considered wrapping up our endangered animals study, but in the car ride home from Indianapolis last night (we saw Marvel Universe Live, and it was freaking AWESOME!!!), Will randomly started going on and on about Hector's dolphin, one of the animals that she studied during this unit, and I realized that I can't delete a subject that gives her so much pleasure. Since Will needs more practice with visual arts, however, and Syd, who's much cooler on the subject of endangered animals, loves the visual arts, I'll be experimenting with emphasizing that manner of expression in this study. We'll see how it goes.

FRIDAY: You might notice that I'm constantly engaging the kids in whatever academic or arts competitions come along; I think they're great practice in working to a prompt, something that us free-range homeschoolers don't get an excess of, and in encouraging the study of something totally new and totally unchosen by the kid, something that us self-directed homeschoolers also don't get an excess of, and, as Will can attest with her FIFTY-DOLLAR prize from last year's essay contest, AND her FIFTY-DOLLAR gift certificate from a volunteering contest a couple of years ago, they can result in tangible rewards for the kids, which us non-grading, non-sticker-and-pencil-and-extra-recess-and-lunch-with-the-principal homeschoolers also don't get an excess of. There are actually a few contests that the kids are working on right now--an endangered species art contest, a Black History Month essay contest, and this one on human rights and diversity.

Finally, we'll be beginning on Friday a study on Georgia O'Keeffe, inspired by a temporary exhibit that we're going to see at the Indianapolis Museum of Art before the museum begins to charge admission in a few months and our visits to it become highly curtailed--BOO!!! I'd like to combine biography with hands-on art in this study, which means that I need to make a mental note to intersperse some Draw Write Now and other Drawing With Children-style practice into our days starting next week.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY:  The kids have a program on Japan on Sunday, and we'll be taking down our Christmas decorations and hopefully doing some projects with our tree before throwing it out in the yard and letting it dry out so we can burn it this summer, but the big news is that Saturday is the start of Girl Scout cookie sales! It's the kids' first year selling, AND I somehow ended up being the Cookie Manager for our little band of Juliettes, so you can understand why this is big news for us.

Also, want to buy some Girl Scout cookies? Starting on Saturday, I'll know a couple of little kids who can help you out with that...

Work Plans for the Week of November 3, 2014: Back to Work

The kids had a fabulous time on their vacation to California! Their grandparents took them to museums, and beaches, and tide pools, and LegoLand! In fact, their vacation was so educational (they're full of facts about tar pits now, and King Tut, and model trains), that I feel perfectly justified in giving them the first two days of this week off to unpack and get back into the groove.

I also signed Will up for a Minecraft Homeschool class whose orientation technically started last week, so she'll be having some extra time on the computer to complete her orientation lesson and get used to their map before she starts the class in earnest on Wednesday.

Playdates and classes and volunteer work will get the kids back into the swing of the school schedule, and we'll start our school week on Wednesday.

WEDNESDAY: I actually don't remember where the children have left off in their Math Mammoth curricula (gasp, I know!), so I'll have to get them to show me. It's somewhere in the time telling unit for Syd and the endless division unit for Will, though, so I'm not too lost.

Will is beginning her Minecraft Homeschool class on this day, and I'm not yet sure how much time it will take, so I've given it just the one school slot this week. Syd will be reading a biography of Florence Nightengale, as part of the kids' Girl Scout First Aid badge for both Brownies and Juniors--we're studying first aid through the lens of its professionals, since there are so many interesting people to learn about who work in the areas of medicine and civic safety.

Mostly on this day, though, there will be loads of clubs and classes! The kids are taking a class on wildcraft and medicinal herbs as part of our Girl Scout Co-op, they'll be attending their monthly online Magic Tree House Club meeting, and also attending their monthly LEGO Club meeting--their creations from the club meeting are displayed in the public library children's department all month, and this is thrilling for them.

THURSDAY: I've neglected music for a long, long time, but back when I was teaching it regularly, Syd loved the Hoffman Academy online piano lessons so much that I bought the written work that goes with it, and I'll be using it with both kids.

Song School Spanish will bring more Spanish vocabulary into our lives!

The kids (and I! I don't love ice skating, but I hate sitting on my butt more) have an ice skating date with our homeschool group on this afternoon, and we're also going to attend the dress rehearsal of the play "Pride and Prejudice" on this evening. I'm not sure if they'll actually like the graphic novel version enough to read it through, but I've also got an excellent infographic of the plot that they can look at, just so they know what's going on in the play.

FRIDAY: The AMC 8 problems that I'll be showing the kids today are one that requires a knowledge of mean and median (I'll have to show them that, as well, as they haven't encountered it before), and one that makes clever use of Pascal's triangle. The kids HAVE done Pascal's triangles before, so that one should be easy enough--more time to learn about mean and median!

Another option for math on this day is for the kids to re-enroll in their favorite math class, which is back to a time and day that we can make! I'd forgotten about that when I made these lesson plans, so I suppose I'll just present both options to the kids and see which they'd prefer.

Gee... I wonder?

The kids will also have to show me where we are in First Language Lessons. I was pleased to hear that during their plane ride, playing Mad Libs with the little guy sitting next to them, my kids "taught" him the parts of speech. I imagine that most of this involved a child reciting by rote, in monotone, definitions like "an adverb describes a verb, adjective, or other adverb" with little understanding of what she was saying, but still--it beats not having a definition for adverbs at all!

The kids might be interested in a more extensive unit on endangered and extinct animals, or this might be a one-off, but nevertheless, I know that Will loves origami, so when I came across this little lesson and origami passenger pigeon project, I immediately figured out a way to work it into the schedule.

I've also got the kids writing thank-you notes to the firefighters who led our fire station field trip; I'll ask the kids to include the new information that they learned on the trip, so it'll be a good culmination activity, as well. I've got some photos to print for them, and the kids will bake them some healthy muffins, and then we'll bring it all by to them on the weekend!

SATURDAY: Again, our weekend is ridiculously busy. Syd still has ballet twice on Saturdays--once for her class, and a second hour-long rehearsal for The Nutcracker in the afternoons--and Will is beginning her own two-hour rehearsals on Saturdays this week--she's preparing for an aerial silks performance! After Syd's afternoon rehearsal, we'll be driving up to Battle Ground, Indiana, for an evening program at Wolf Park (howling with the wolves!) and a visit to the battle ground and Prophetstown. I am a MAJOR Tecumseh fangirl, and I am SUPER excited. The kids don't know a ton about Tecumseh--it's just a sad period of history, you know?--but we've got The Story of the World chapters on him to listen to on the way there, and then I'll flesh the story out more for them as we walk around.

Sunday brings chess club for Will, maybe a hike for all of us (we've been working on cleaning up the giant 1960s-era dump at the very back of our woods, sigh), and plenty of time for board games, books, and play.

And probably more howling. I think that Wolf Park program is going to be FUN!

Work Plans for the Week of September 29, 2014: Out and About

I got to feeling burned out with homeschooling last week, and thought that I might make this week either a "Project Week" or simply a math, cursive, and journal week, but then I actually looked at my planner, and saw how many outside activities the kids are going to be engaged in--homeschooling around those made lesson planning dead simple this weekend, and should make for a school week that gives us all lots of breaks between the work for extracurriculars.

MONDAY: Right now, for instance, the kiddos are downstairs at one of our community centers having a folk dancing class; this is part of our Girl Scout co-op, and will count towards Syd's Dancer badge. Yay, PE! After their workshop, we'll read and play board games here for a bit, and then go straight over to our volunteer gig. Then there's more horse breed and horse breed geography research (the kids use this Smithsonian horse encyclopedia and CultureGrams for this research, and then we search Youtube together for relevant videos), and for cursive, spelling word copywork. I'd wanted to delete spelling as a discrete subject and move it to our daily memory work, but I almost immediately discovered that memory work works best in the car, and so that dang cursive is back. If the spelling word copywork works well, however, perhaps I can at least combine spelling/cursive into the same slot.

Lapbooks have never worked well for us, but I've been wanting, for a while now, to introduce the idea of a math notebook that the kids would make themselves and then could consult for reference about, say, Roman numerals, or how exactly one borrows across zeros when subtracting. This weekend, looking for a way to have Will review simple division and Syd review simple multiplication, I found lapbooks for both multiplication and division. I copied them and set them aside, with blank notebooks, into their Monday drawer, and voila! We have math notebooks!

TUESDAY: The kids have a horse show next month, so preparation for that is occupying much of their weekly horseback riding lessons. We'll do more spiral form drawing for art, and this week's Math Mammoth is more simple multiplication for Syd and more long division for Will, so no review day needed--I'm sure we'll have to go back to review days after Will moves on to the next unit, though, so they're not gone for good.

Choosing a Junior Ranger badge to earn is one subject that just did not happen last week--that was the day, I think, that both kids piddled around contentedly at the table and made half an hour of math take more like three hours; seriously, I lost my patience with schoolwork that day loooong before they did. We'll try it this week, instead, because I do think that they're going to like it, and it's going to be a valuable way to study geography.

Will has Robotics Workshop on alternate Tuesdays (they're using LEGO Mindstorms, which I'm pretty sure that someone needs to buy ME to play with, too!), so I planned to have Syd and I do a special craft project together during that time; she sometimes has a playdate then, but if so, this marshmallow pop project will be easy to move to our free day, or even the weekend.

WEDNESDAY: A field trip to a local farm that hosts a children's farm festival will occupy this day until mid-afternoon; there should be lots of active, outdoor free play during that time, so I don't feel *too* badly about the kids going home and then having their online Magic Tree House Club meeting just a couple of hours later, and then being fed dinner and shipped off to their LEGO Club meeting.

THURSDAY: I only managed to schedule one First Language Lessons unit this week, but we continue our study of Ancient China through the lens of its artifacts by watching Chinese folktales, and then practicing the four-character Chinese idioms based on those tales. I'd like the kids to be able to recreate one idiom from memory, and I'll be adding some significant dates for Ancient China's development of their writing system to our daily memory work.

Will is ready to start a new Girl Scout badge (I've got a few extra things that I'd like her to do relating to her Inside Government badge, but I didn't want to start them this week--we just don't have enough at-home time for an extensive seat-work project), but I've planned for Syd to hike around the woods behind our house and complete a "bug census" on the woods' inhabitants.

FRIDAY: Free day!!!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Syd has ballet, and then Matt will be taking both kids directly from there to Indianapolis, where they have an afternoon Girl Scout workshop about aircraft engineering; they're going to get some hands-on experience with small planes at the actual airport, culminating in an actual flight! I am really, really, really excited for them.

Our weekdays were already so busy that I moved the kids' aerial silks class to Sunday, which means that Matt will get to take them and actually watch their class for a change; I think he's going to be quite impressed!

Now, next week is another week busy with activities--it's the public schools' fall break, so there's lots of school-age programming at the library, and a day camp, etc.--so that week might actually BE a math, journal, and cursive week. I'm already looking forward to it!

Work Plans for the Week of February 3, 2014: Science and Survival Kits

 MONDAY: We're still happily moving through one chapter a week in Song School Latin (I forgot to update our work plans with this week's chapters--oops!), and the kids are retaining the vocabulary well, and although *I'm* ready for them to get some grammar and conjugations/declensions in, as long as they're engaged and absorbing the material and progressing, we'll go at the textbook's pace.

The kids didn't practice their instruments as much as they should have last week, so we may have to repeat those lessons this week, but most of our time and energy today is going into rehearsal for tonight's Science Fair. Completing the re-articulation of the chicken skeleton took so much time that I'm letting the kids do much of their presentations without a written report to refer to, but this might have been a mistake, too, in that it takes, of course, much more practice to get that sort of presentation down pat.

This week, the kids are going to math class just once (I think they found the two days last week a little much), so we've got space in the schedule for a hands-on unit. Although we did pattern blocks in this space for several weeks, the kids are actively (if slowly, ahem) memorizing the multiplication tables currently, so I'll be keeping a hands-on multiplication activity there until the tables are mastered.

We already did our volunteer gig for the day, and tonight is the Science Fair!

TUESDAY: Math Mammoth and First Language Lessons Level 3 are always easy to schedule, and since I spend hours on Sundays creating these lesson plans, it's a relief to be able to have a few things that I can simply pop into place. The survival kit, however, is likely to take up quite a bit more time--the kids have to prioritize their list based on the budget I'm giving them, and then we'll actually have to go shopping for these supplies. Since I try not to run errands with the kids during the day, a mid-morning shopping trip may seem like quite the adventure!

Will still has a little work to do on her World Thinking Day badge, but Syd is finished and can choose another badge to start earning. We're also going to participate, I *think*, in the Great Backyard Bird Count, and so our science unit for a few weeks will concern birds.

WEDNESDAY: This is one of those rare weeks in which Will has to skip aerial silks entirely (although thank goodness their scheduling system is set up so that we don't have to pay for a class we're not going to attend), but both kids are going to be thrilled to learn that their LEGO club is back after its long winter hiatus.

The subject of this month's Magic Tree House Club meeting--Earthquake in the Early Morning--is well-timed with our California study, especially since I'd been considering drawing out that study a little longer to include some earthquake activities.

THURSDAY: What with ice skating with friends and having another friend over for the afternoon, this will be a short school day. We're ditching art for a couple of weeks in favor of Valentine's Day crafting, but the kids' individual studies are still continuing--I hope that Syd will start actually constructing her dress this week, and Will is going to create a manual version of one of the first computer games.

FRIDAY: The kids claim that their teacher is going to bring cookies to math class on this day, so they're pretty excited about it already. WE are not going to be having cookies here at home, but we will be scrapbooking, completing our mapwork activity for our The Story of the World chapter, and finishing that survival kit.

I'm most excited about the Olympics unit that we'll be working on throughout the Winter Olympics. I'm hoping to set up a somewhat elaborate Olympic nations pin flag work for the kids to do on this day, but that involves plenty of prep work for me this week, so it's a good thing that I always plan to be busy!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: The kids have their all-day nature class this weekend, and we've also got a party at our local YMCA, chess club, and swimming with friends. But with no looming Science Fair presentations to rehearse and no chicken skeletons to re-articulate, we'll also have loads of happy downtime...

...which I need. I am going to be happy to see the backside of that chicken skeleton, I tell you what!

Sunset of the Sabertooth and Story of the World Ancient Times

Still on chapter one, volume one of Story of the World! We actually haven't studied in Story of the World in a while--we were doing Disney crafts, and writing Martin Luther King Jr.'s biography, and goofing around outside instead. However, the girls are fanatically fond of their monthly online Magic Tree House Club meeting (as they are of Magic Tree House and Story of the World audiobooks, in general, even if we aren't "studying" them--so much for the necessity of formal history study!), and since September's book was Sunset of the Sabertooth, I thought it was an excellent opportunity to jump back into the time period, complete one last study from it, and then wrap it up to move on.

To prepare for Magic Tree House Club, the girls listened to Sunset of the Sabertooth and read Sabertooths and the Ice Age, the Magic Tree House Research Guide associated with the book. The Magic Tree House Club meetings are fabulous--Willow loves the leader, who keeps the kids focused and engaged, leads them through some very difficult reading comprehension quizzes (on which Willow always does MUCH better than I do!), offers a ton of contextual information on the topic, teaches them appropriate online etiquette, and presents a fun hands-on craft or two associated with each book.

The craft for this book was clay pinch pots. I bought some air-dry clay (if we'd been back at my childhood home down South, I would have known the perfect place to dig for red clay, but I don't know a good spot here--hence the store-bought clay), showed the girls a video on hand-building with clay--



--laid down some newspaper, and let them go!

The girls had a fabulous time, completely immersed in their project. They each started off with a pinch pot, sure, but I was amused to see that Willow also created for herself a long-stemmed wine glass out of the clay, and Sydney made herself an entire dinner set--bowl, plate, cup, AND fork and spoon.

Even though I KNOW how important sensorial work is for kids, and how drawn they are to it, I was surprised at how much the girls loved playing with clay. We always have a ton of play dough, since I'm always making custom orders of it for my pumpkin+bear etsy shop, and the kids go off and on it, but never anymore with the level of passion that I saw here. I wonder if it has to do with density? One of the reasons why play dough is so good for little kids is that manipulating it strengthens their little fingers and hands--it still feels good to older kids, sure, but it's no longer a challenge to their muscles. Clay, however, is dense! It was certainly challenging for my kiddos to manipulate, and I wonder if that was part of the appeal?

A local artist offers homeschool ceramics classes, which so far I've never considered, since I like to encourage the girls to instead do activities that we can't do at home--gymnastics, ice skating, ballet, etc. Better value for the money, don't you know? I'm thinking now, though, that a session of ceramics from a local artist might be something that would really strike their fancy. Of course, it will have to wait until spring, since I just moved our half-day volunteer gig to the day that the ceramics class meets to accommodate Willow's ice skating classes, and I can't shift it again because Will also does running club three times a week to train for a 5K next month, and after that the girls and I are going on another long road trip, anyway...

Guess I'm going to pick up another tub of clay from the store today!

Here are the other resources that we used to study Ice Age animals: