We've been having a good time, despite chronic late starting.  I get discouraged once we get going well with routinely setting aside school time -- seems like everything we do takes a long time.  Yesterday we did our usual reading, played a few games (a kids' yahtzee game and Go Fish), and then went out for a walk and a bit of snow play.  We did start late, and then by the time we were finished eating "lunch", the afternoon was practically over.  Today we started with our usual reading.  We are still working on memorizing the Articles of Faith.  I'm doing well with it, but D has lost interest.  I remembered that we have a poster with them written out on it that we bought through our church's distribution centre.  I showed it to the kids and suggested that we read them all and put the poster up somewhere to help us with memorizing it.  D decided *he* wanted to read them all himself.  Unthinkingly, I also told the boys that once anyone memorizes all of them, they get a little card with the A of F printed on it to carry in their scripture case.  Then I thought, is this bribing?  Rewarding?  Is it going to diminish the natural, intrinsic desire for learning and make the reward more important to them?  Gah. 

So after our reading, again we played some games.  This morning I printed out some math games from Joyful Math and dug up the rest of our dice, as well as checker pieces.  D and S found them (before school time) and decided to make their own checker board while I was showering.  It didn't quite work.  I let the boys choose books to end our reading time, and D chose the Magic Schoolbus book we have on hurricanes.  They go up in a hot air balloon in it, and in a sidebar they describe an experiment you can do with a pan of hot water, a bottle, and a balloon (you put the balloon over the bottle opening and put it in the hot water; when the air expands, the balloon fills).  The boys loved this.  Then we each chose a game to play.  We did yahtzee again, and then checkers.  We rolled to see which two people played first -- S and I.  I won (though he did very well, and caught on quickly).  He said I hurt his feelings when I won.  Then D and I played.  I won.  He cried.  I told him I had been practising playing checkers for 20 years, and this was (he told me) his third game.  Of course it would be nearly impossible for him to win.  But if he keeps playing against me, and notices how I play and what kind of moves I make, he will get better and better and win more and more often.  I'm not sure if that was the right way to handle it, but he felt better, anyway. 

That was pretty much the end of our school day, as M was majorly fussy and we were all ready to eat.  The boys were restless during quiet minutes -- probably because D chose his "airplane book" to look at and S kept trying to get in and see it too.  So I pulled out one of the Charlie Brown encyclopaedias that MIL gave us, on cars and trains, for S.  So of course D wanted one too; he got Machines.  We read from it after quiet minutes.  They then went outside to build snowmen, and are now playing at a friend's house.  Our babysitting charges will be here any minute.  I haven't done one bit of Hebrew or nearly enough reading to keep up with my reading challenge.  :P