A wonderful day!

Morning schedule: We got a rough start this morning. We were up late last night with Family Home Evening and we slept in. We were also tired from cleaning and parking yesterday. We started at about 9:20. Learning time is supposed to start at 9. Kalani and Natalie were done with their music time and all three of the oldest had done their morning chores. I did the morning dishes and started a load of laundry, but didn't rotate it. Raymond spent most of his time making paper airplanes. Ben spent his morning taking away whatever Rebecca had. We do need to shore up our morning routine.

Devotional: We didn't continue reading in the Book of Mormon today. We started with Genesis 1 to read about the creation. We read the whole first chapter of Genesis with some great discussion.
-"in the beginning" of what? time? the earth? The children all felt it was the beginning of time, but logic led them quickly to the beginning of the earth
-we discussed how the Lord spake and the elements obeyed
-we discussed the days and what was made when
-the sun, moon and stars used as signs-I asked when they have been used for signs and they answered, with Christ's birth. It occurs to me that I don't know many other times...something to research.
-we discussed the concept of dominion-the girls are reading a series called "Heartland" which talks about Horses. In it two different types of horse training methods are discussed. One involves listening and respecting the horse, the other involves forcing the horse to obey. We read Proverbs 12:10 "A righteous man regaurdeth the life of his beast". We talked about spiders...are we being stewards of our home when we let bugs run free in our home? How should we treat them outside and why? How about a horse, is it good dominion to let a horse roam through the garden? How about leadership and dominion over people?
**we need to discuss the purpose of man's creation more, Christ as creator, dominion and leadership...

Reading: A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
What a great book! Now that I have read it myself, and talked to my dad, I was more prepared for what to teach the children. In the section we were reading (I think we only read 5 pages in 90 minutes! The discussion was great, but the children wanted the plot to progress) the Professor and the nephew were discussing difficulties they would encounter with their travels. The nephew brought up a few points which we discussed:
-gravity in the center of the earth-we talked about what gravity is, what it is like on the moon, how it would be different in the center of the earth. We talked about zero gravity and how you could move in zero gravity. Raymond wants a fan for zero gravity...we talked about what is in air that you could push-including Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen and as Raymond reminded us...lots of other minor ingredients. We talked about how gravity actually helps us and the concpet "there must needs be opposition in all things" from 2 Nephi 2:25. Opposition is helpful and painful! **movement in zero gravity
- pressure - we talked about the states of matter, gas, liquid, solid. We talked about how atoms move in each state and how temperature and pressure effect matter. Raymond brought up some atoms being heavier than others and wondering if they separate out, or condense or freeze sooner than others. **there is science experiment potential here...
-distance- they had only traveled 50 miles down into the center of the earth despite already walking 255 miles. (We rounded the radius of hte earth to be 4,000) We worked out the proportion and did the math to discover they would need to walk 20,400 miles. If they walked 4 miles an hour that would take them 5,100 hours. If they walked 10 hours a day, that would be 510 days, or just under a year and a half...one way! The circumference of the earth is 24,901.55 according to http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqzcircumference.htm. They would be walking almost the circumference of the earth, just to get the 4,000 miles down to the core...this is all hypothetically assuming they could walk to the core (we then discussed hyothetical statements). **differences in the circumference of the earth, the fact that they would be walking five times the necessary distance to go down-why did they need to do that, what kind of triangle would that make? What would the angle of their descent be if they continued at that pace. How long would their trip take if they had a bike? A car? A train? A plane?

Frustrations-Today there was only one good coloring book in the house...a My little Pony coloring book owned by Lydia. She wasn't willing to share. I haven't separated out the markers form the coloring stuff and I got colored on. I needed to get some toys out before we started, so the little children are guided in their actions, instead of loudly proclaiming their dissappointment that the ONLY good coloring book in the house (today) could not be theirs. The children were frustrated that we talked so much and didn't read very much. Perhaps this is a good time to work on reading more in the evenings and conintuing the discussion during the day? Would they learn as much to have the discussion separated from the reading?