Today feels, um, normal for the first time in a long time

So today was packed full of lots of stuff to do. This morning I had to finish clearing out the broken fridge. I had left some items in the freezer since everything in there was keeping itself pretty cold. I also finally got to the scary stuff in the back of the fridge. Please, do yourself a favor, never forget about Pad Thai.

The morning was unusually productive. Rocket Boy and talked all about plants. We took apart a couple of pine cones looking for seeds. We read about how seeds germinate and checked the progress of our seeds. Next we talked about how plants get nutrients. We ran a fun little experiment that involves placing a stalk of celery in a glass of water that has a generous helping of blue food coloring. After about 2 hours the leaves started exhibiting blue areas, much to our excitement. I was actually pretty surprised by it, since there was very little evidence of the blue in the stalk, really it was only in the leaves. We decided to run the experiment on one of the morning glories we've been growing. As of the end of the day there was no blue, but it's a very small plant and I expect it will take a little longer to transpire a visible amount of blue water.

Then the delivery guy came at 11:30. First he took the old fridge away, so I took the opportunity to give the never-seen behind the fridge area a thorough cleaning and I put down anti-roach gel all around. We've been fighting a battle against those buggers for a while, but we live in an old, old house in Brooklyn with lots of cracks and crevices. We usually keep them away for a 2-3 weeks then they start showing up again. Another round of baits and all is quiet for a few more weeks. It has never been very bad, compared to friends I know who turn on the lights in their kitchen to a scene that looks like a concert letting out. We've never had more than a couple at a time and usually in very isolated areas. Still I don't like 'em one bit.

Then we had a nice session of unpacking the cooler into our shiny new fridge. After a lunch inspired by some of our finds, we opened up the National Geographic Kids Atlas and started our new attempts to address social studies and geography. Today's look at the atlas was dealing with the whole world and how it fits together. They have lots of good specialty maps and we worked on making connections between climate and population (why do so few people live in Antartica?) and also talked about how landforms influence where people live. Next we'll start going continent by continent to get a good overview of what our world is like today. Once Rocket Boy has a very basic grasp of continents and regions, we're going to switch gears and talk about ancient civilizations. That should be fun, since it will involve lots and lots of mythology. Rocket Boy loves hearing those stories. I just hope I can find some good material that I can retrofit for a bright 6 year old that looks beyond Greece and Rome. I want to be able to address early civilizations all over the world, but I don't think Rocket Boy is ready to deal with Jared Diamond. I know I'll be looking to Joseph Campbell for some inspiration.

The one annoying thing about the National Geo Kids Atlas, is that it is web-integrated. Now I love the idea of that, it's great for enrichment, but my child obsesses over the computer, so much so that I have exorcised it from any of our curriculum. As we went through the atlas he kept fixating on the links, which are called out with easy to read graphics.

At that point it was only 2:30 and I was seriously sleepy. We tried a rousing game of Dinosaur Go Fish, but I was practically drooling on my triceratops. I gave up and laid down while he watched Between the Lions. 10 minutes later, Rocket Boy's dad came in for his lunch, and was seriously bent out of shape that the boy was watching TV during school time. That little row woke me up plenty. So we went back to looking at plants and the plant books, then finished the day with another 10 pages in his school-issued math workbook. He's whipping through that thing and is more than ready to move on, but for the sake of being a completionist, I'm going to have him finish the book. Besides, it's so easy for him that he happily and confidently does the work. That means he's getting lots of practice holding a pencil. Anything that gets him to practice writing, even if it's just writing his numbers, makes me happy. He doesn't get too upset about writing numbers the way he gets upset about writing letters so I'm hoping that will work as part of the strategy to get him writing more.

Overall the day felt really productive and normal, in a good way. Lately I've been feeling a little out of sync with teaching. It hasn't been bad, it's just been a little unfocused or vague feeling. I don't quite know what made today feel so much more together. We still wandered through our day driven by what RocketBoy found interesting. I'll have to think about it more, because I want more days like today.