We didn't do history today

LOL, no really, we didn't do history today. This morning, after I checked my emails as blogs and such, I pointed my browser to the BBC's Prehistoric Life page. Cameron comes into the room and asks me if I'd like to play backgammon, but I said no that I was going to play a caveman game instead. "OH!" he said, "Can I play too?" Insert sly laugh here. After we finally made it through the whole game (with a pathetic 43%), I informed them that I was going to go jump in the shower. I asked if they'd like to watch a caveman movie while I showered or just play. To my delight, but not much surprise, Cameron excitedly exclaimed that he wanted to watch a caveman movie. So I popped in The History Channel's Ape to Man DVD and enjoyed a few minutes of solitude and steam. Cameron was glued to the screen the entire time. When it was over he said, "Wow, that was really good!" I have to admit, I'm a bit proud of the fact that my newly 6-yr old is into History Channel documentaries. I was afraid he'd get bored, but he doesn't appear to need the flash and hype and the catering to nano-second attention-span that most kids' videos seem to think children need to have to be interested in something educational. (That was a heck of a bad sentence, lol!)

After that we ran a few errands then came home for lunch and some quiet time. OK, I was hoping for some quiet time since I had a raging headache but no such luck. We finally got around to some book work around 4pm, lol. Bad, I know, but wasn't I just saying how great the flexibility of homeschooling was? Cameron did one math exercise, subtracting things like 68-5, and then... get ready... chose to read a reader instead of doing a phonics lesson! I was so happy! He read Thomas and Percy and the Dragon with only a little help. A couple pages from the end he said, "This is too long, I shouldn't have picked this" but then he realized how very close he was to the end. He was pretty proud of himself when he had read the whole thing. I think part of the inspiration for this is that we were looking at some of the readers in K-Mart today while we were running errands. He saw that there were a lot of cool books out there if he would just read them.

Once we finished the 2 r's, I asked if he'd like me to read him some history or some science. He said, "I don't want to learn about history today." ROFL, I didn't remind him of the two hours he spend this morning learning about cavemen. I guess that was prehistory though. ;) Oh that reminds me, we read One Small Blue Bead last night before bed and he seemed to really like it. It may have just been that dazed listening that he sometimes does when he just wants an excuse to stay up, but I think he did really enjoy it. The story was a nicely lilting rhyme with gorgeous pictures. I'm going to try to read that one to them again sometime in the next week or so. Cassia didn't get a chance to hear it; she sent herself to bed early, lol. Tonight I'd like to try reading Dar and the Spear-Thrower, but I'm afraid it might be a little long and/or advanced. We'll see. He did like listening to Harry Potter so maybe he just needs a fair bit of adventure to keep his interest and this one seems like it may have it.

And that was our day. You know, this keeping attendance thing is really keeping me honest. I've really made an effort to make sure we do school every day (no matter the time of day) and that way, when I do have to *fudge* a day - like when I counted a day of driving across the state as school because a school certainly would've recorded a day of traveling to an educational field trip as having all the students in attendance - I don't feel guilty about it in the slightest.