Here's our home school highlights for early October.

Book 16 of our favorite early reader series arrived in the mail: Dragon Masters by Tracey West. Jonathan had pre-ordered it for the girls. These books used to take us a number of sittings to get through, but Jonathan read the entire book to MsE in one sitting and MsC read it herself in a day. I'm sadly out of the loop and have no idea what's happening in the series since Jonathan took it over bed time reading with MsE long ago. She had him read the series on repeat for months.

I don't think I've read past book 8 and I don't want anyone to ruin it for me, because I really like these books. The girls are already asking for book 17 which isn't even written yet.

MsC and I read the classic "Beezus and Ramona" by Beverly Cleary for our bedtime reading. Then we watched the new movie version on Netflix. If you want a cute light movie, this is it. Along with Ramona's antics, there's also a little love story between the adults woven through. It was fun to watch MsC alternate between identifying with the big sister with the "annoying" 2 little sisters and the full of energy Ramona, about whom MsC commented, "I think she has ADHD."

We had Poetry Tea Time with Lemonade in the TeaPot because I wasn't going to risk spilling Pink Tea on my Granny's table cloth. We lit the Pumpkin Candle and I read out a number of Autumn themed poems, while the girls ate the entire Chocolate Cake. The Autumn poems caused some confused puzzling from MsE who just remembers Canada as people special to her and as a world that is always cold.

I'm using a curriculum called Pinwheels to teach MsE (and MsI) to read. We're going really slowly through the material, and started right at the beginning, but MsE's reading has greatly improved in just a month. She's had a number of light bulb moments connecting spelling by sounding words to how reading actually works and that we don't just all magically know what the books say. I'll write more about Pinwheels and what we're doing in another post.

MsC and I did some real life centrifugal force testing by going on the Battlestar Galactica Cylon versus Human Rollercoaster at Universal Studios. The Cylon side goes upside down 5 times! We rode it again just to be sure! MsC says her favorite part is the corkscrew spin. We didn't fall out when we were upside down repeatedly so this counted as Science, right?

On our fieldtrip to Hort Park, we used the Park's educational signs for some impromptu lessons. Singapore's parks are full of these kinds of signage. One of the things I find really interesting is that they don't give you the answer here. We also made a point of identifying the plants and animals we saw in the gardens, including a new one for us, the Oriental Whip Snake.

For History, we finished off Mesopotamia by the girls building Ziggurats (temples) in Minecraft on Nintendo Switch. You use blocks to build anything you can think off in this game. It was actually MsE's idea to create the Ziggurats in Minecraft.

She said, "I could build that in Minecraft. I wouldn't use dirt blocks, because I can't be a Nube. I would use sand[stone]. It's just like a pyramid."

Apparently being a Nube is a bad thing and dirt is the "starter" block in Minecraft. Ziggurats were truly built with dirt blocks, hence MsE's concern.  MsC also avoided the dirt blocks and made hers rainbow coloured.

Now, we've skipped ahead in the book to Ancient India, because we want to learn more about India before the major Indian holiday of Deepvali occurs on November 14. We'll back track to Ancient Egypt after that.

The girls also started a Salon. This means I can never find a hair elastic, brush or my own make up anymore, but my nails are always painted! They talked our Helper into bringing them her old nail polish set to help them out.

After coming up with the Salon idea, MsC immediately said she needed to get someone to help her set up shop. She wrote out an Employment Contract between herself and MsE. MsE is the Boss; but I think MsC must be considered the Owner and therefore she gets all the profits, because MsE only get 50 cents no matter how many customers they have a day.

Their contract says,

• Pay 50 cents every customer day.

Boss: E

• Boss Job: Ask proper way they want done and do hair.

Worker: C

• Worker Job: Do makeup, nail polish.

After signing they gathered their supplies, picked a location and wrote out a price list before soliciting customers. We have a spare change jar that is used to pay for their services.