Today we used The Story of the World like usual, but I actually broke out the activity book. It's been months, probably since Twin Cities, that I've used the activity book. Normally I have the boys use a composition book to write a sentance (I write Conrad's) about the reading and they draw a picture to go with it as I read. It was recommended in A Well Trained Mind, and I love it. This time we not only used the activity book for the printouts (a map of India for ch. 30), but we also used the suggestions for enriching the history book. One suggestion was to make Rakhis. I loved the sentiment behind it: girls made this piece of jewelry for their brothers during a special festival/ceremony, and the brother promised to take care of her. 

Except Abigail was napping and the boys made some for themselves. Conrad surprised me by making two and told me the first one was for Abigail. :) I love when he surprises me like that. These are the Rakhis:

I used this website as reference:

http://www.artsycraftsymom.com/diy-handmade-rakhi/

We also tried using our new The Usborne Encyclopedia of History, but I'm not as excited about it as I was originally. I love the pictures, the thoroughness while being brief so I have the opportunity to go deeper where the kids are interested, and the timelines all over. I was really excited about the internet links, but the very first one I tried didn't work (the site says a lot of them won't work on tablets, that you have to view them on a computer), and the other links didn't really relate to our reading today, so I was disappointed. I'm not giving up though--this was just the first day using it, and I still have high hopes! 

In other news, I actually had plans to start out lap booking today for the first time, but we never got to it. The boys were having fun with the rest of the stuff we did. But Conrad got in a double reading lesson (and started off with "I love my reading lesson mommy!"), Trevor got to try out a new spelling app, everyone did workbook pages, and the boys did some random crafty stuff while the craft box was out for Rakhis. 

It was a productive day, but boy am I exhausted! I didn't get enough sleep last night. Zzz...