Three. One. Three.

It was another beautiful day today so we spent the morning outside again. For Math, Babe practiced her 6, did her worksheets, then she was ready to move on.

She read "Tortillas and Lullabies" by Lynn Reiser for Reading Comprehension. She was a bit confused about how generations worked, but when she finished the book, I explained it to her a bit more. I asked her who she thought was the oldest person in her family was.

"Mom."

"You have someone in your family even older than mom!"

"Hmm...dad? No, I know that mom was born first."

I had to chuckle.

I explained to her that GG (Babe's great-grandmother) is the oldest person in our family, and that her daughter is Gramma. And that Gramma is a mom to Babe's dad. She kind of started seeing it, but I could see that she was still a little confused, so I had her draw it.

I took her drawing and I reread "Tortillas and Lullabies", replacing the familial terms the author used with the terms we use.

By the third part of the story, Babe was understanding how families, more specifically generations, worked.

After a bit more of a discussion on families, we went into Science and learned about pollution and things that make our environment sick.

Babe is a stickler for littering and wants to pick up every piece of trash she sees on the ground, so she was in full understanding of how litter makes our planet sick. I asked her if she could think of any other things that make the air dirty, or make the animals and plants sick.

"Bird poop?"

Leave it to her to bring that into the conversation.

I explained to her that smoke can make the air really dirty and makes it hard for us and animals to breathe. We talked about cars, factories, and cigarettes and how each one produces smoke. Then I brought up how sometimes, oil spills into our oceans and makes the water dirty, which sometimes kills the animals and plants that live in it.

"Like that one boat did a long time ago?"

Yes, she is talking about the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf. How she remembers that, I have no idea, but I do remember it happening and her seeing some of the images on TV.

To help her better understand what oil can do to animals, I brought out two bowls, one filled with vegetable oil and one filled with water. Then I gave her two pom-poms to pretend they were feathers, and had her stick one into the oil and the other into the water.

She immediately noticed how heavy the oiled pom-pom got. I asked her if she thought birds could fly with heavy feathers like that.

"No way! They'd fall into the ocean!"

When she put the second pom-pom into the water, she noticed the weight didn't change at all. I asked her what she thought would happen if a bird's feathers got wet.

"We just saw a bird dive into the lake and then it flew away!"

Bingo. And she was right. There was an osprey circling the lake a few times before it finally dove for a fish. I love the natural visuals we get.

The aftermath of our experiment was...messy. But Babe noticed how fast the watered pom-pom got, and how messy the oiled pom-pom stayed. After her Science worksheet, we were done for the morning. We finished just in time for Bubs's and Z's class at the library, so we were off!

After lunch, I attempted to sit Babe down and have her write her book, knowing she was a little tired. We got as far as her decorating the cover before she got frustrated at me because I was restricting her word usage for the book, and by that, I mean, bluntly, I wouldn't let her write 100 words per page like she wanted. So we took a break from the book and I told her we would try again tomorrow.

It was a good time to run into her online lesson on parts of a computer, but since the home computer is broken down, I brought my laptop. I set it in front of the real computer though, so when the video was showing her and explaining the different parts of the computer, she'd be able to physically see each one.

She got a perfect score on the quiz at the end, and after that she was very fluent in computer speak, meaning she had a very good understanding on which devices were input and output.

We printed out her little certificate from Oliver the Owl and she was good to go - a very proud student.

While Bubs and Z were still napping, I taught Babe the rest of November's song, "My Country 'tis of Thee." After about 30 minutes, she had it down pat and sang it with the music multiple times. Another proud moment!

She spent the rest of the day doing the last few days' worth of Checkpoints.

Another completely full day! I love these kinds of days. They are sure exhausting, but totally worth it. And seeing Babe have as much fun as she is having everyday makes it that much more awesome.