Happy Day (Charizard's title)

Today it was just the two of us at home. Charizard chose to follow all the activities on the whiteboard sequentially. We said a quick prayer together, and then started with Fractions, on Time4Learning, and looked together at how to multiply fractions. That meant we had to learn what an improper fraction was! Which was lucky, because then when we played Ko's Journey there were a lot of fractions that needed to be added together (and some of them we had to do several times before Jigglepuff could remember how to do it, it is a long time since she was at school!)
We ended up playing that game for ages, nearly 1 1/2 hours on maths today. After a break, in which Charizard read Asterix and ate burger rings whilst lying on the floor of the kitchen, and then a second break where he started Inotia 3 on his tablet (fascinating game, he's been telling Jigglepuff little bits about it all day) we went onto to read about the Fertile Crescent and how nomads became the first farmers. We remembered how Ko from Ko's Journey was a nomad. Then we read about the beginning of the Ancient Sumerian/Akkadian empire together. Somehow that meant we also ended up talking about military spies and being a double agent. Charizard also noticed how similar the story of Sargon is to the story of Moses, since both were put in baskets and floated down the river, then picked up by a servant and raised in a royal palace. Fantastic cross-cultural references, Charizard! Jigglepuff noticed something quite exciting about Charizard's ability to use language beautifully: she was writing down that Sargon had founded an empire and Charizard pointed out that "created an empire" sounded better. What interesting materials we are going to produce together, with Charizard helping Jigglepuff to think of exactly the right word.
After lunch Jigglepuff asked Charizard to check out a maths website, with two different ways to do long division. She was surprised that Charizard understood the second way immediately, although we've not covered that yet. Then we both read The Midnight Folk - Jigglepuff read it on paper, and Charizard listened to it on his CD player. Jigglepuff noticed how Kay, the boy in the centre of the story, is homeschooled, but by a rather nasty governess. She hopes that is not how Charizard feels about her teaching! Finally we came together to look at and join an online community called DIY.org, where children from all over the world get together online to learn about projects and earn badges. Charizard would like to do the "Orthinologist" badge. Tomorrow we'll choose which project we will start with.
But there was also a surprise experiment today. After lunch Jigglepuff showed Charizard a saucepan filled with flour, with cocoa-powder layered on top. We threw rocks into it, and made the most amazing crater-shapes...just like the craters that asteroids made, landing on the Moon.

Our moon dust

Jigglepuff's favourite part of the day was finding out about the Orthinologist badge, and working out what skills we would need t earn it.
Charizard's favourite part of the day was everything.