Monday we were all so tired from the weekend that we decided not to go to the homeschool group's Foreign Land event that day - except for J. She created a cool presentation on Thai music on Sunday when we got home - she even downloaded popular Thai songs into her ipod. One of the other hs moms picked her up to take her to the event. Tuesday we stayed home to clean and then left for dance at 4.

Wednesday we took a trip out to the Vanderbilt Planetarium and Museum out in Centerport, Long Island. The 4th-8th grade homeschoolers in our group got an hour long planetarium show. After that was over, we visited the Vanderbilt museum, which consists of the Vanderbilt mansion and marine museum. William Vanderbilt II had his summer mansion on Long Island and collected tons of things from the late 1800s to about the 1950s. There was a lot of stuffed animals he killed on safari, birds, butterflies, fish, shells, a room dedicated to his ships, a couple of shrunken heads, and a real mummy he brought back from Egypt. The kids liked it. I found it all very odd and somewhat disturbing. The mansion and surrounding land (right by the water) was so amazingly gorgeous and hard to imagine someone actually living there.

Yesterday I wanted to finish cleaning the whole apartment, but we stopped to watch a scary movie together. The kids always ask for the horror movies. I don't mind as long as I'm there with them and they close their eyes when I tell them to. They're good like that. It was fun. K cleaned her whole bedroom, W took a nap, and J had dance. She's learning some acro now and will start having a regular class on it in June. The studio owner is deciding where we're going for Nationals now. We've done both regionals that she's considering for Nationals now, and it's just a matter of choosing which competition we liked better overall.

W and I played an online reading game last night before bed. He typed in names for his characters, chose which bad guys he wanted, and a whole interactive story was created based on popular fairy tales. He's hit a plateau with his reading, but I can see that when I back off, his interest starts up again. J's been doing lots of writing - beautiful cursive - making lists, writing letters, journaling, and copying down poems I print out for her. She is choosing to watch lots of documentaries on tv lately, too. Both girls are starting to read up on Papua, New Guinea for the next Foreign Land hs event coming up in 2 weeks. I love homeschooling!